A major challenge for many researchers and practitioners relates to how to recognize and address cross-scale dynamics in space and over time in order to design and implement effective governance ...arrangements. This editorial provides an overview of the concept of multi-level governance (MLG). In particular we highlight definitional issues, why the concept matters as well as more practical concerns related to the processes and structure of multi-level governance. It is increasingly clear that multi-level governance of forest resources involves complex interactions of state, private and civil society actors at various levels, and institutions linking higher levels of social and political organization. Local communities are increasingly connected to global networks and influences. This creates new opportunities to learn and address problems but may also introduce new pressures and risks. We conclude by stressing the need for a much complex approach to the varieties of MLG to better understand how policies work as instruments of governance and to organize communities within systems of power and authority.
Decentralization of natural resource management is often presented as a novelty. However, successive attempts to decentralize authority were undertaken during the development of forest policy in the ...Northern Territories of the Gold Coast Colony between the 1930s and 1950s. From 1960, however, this was rolled back. Forest policy was thenceforth characterized by centralization, exclusion, and restrictive legislation. New forest policies of local management from the 1990s attempt to change this but differ from “colonial decentralization” in terms of institutional fragmentation and the absence of effective fiscal decentralization. The assumed illegality of people’s use of the resources and the non-enforcement of the law provides a context for monetary and political rent seeking for political agents.
•The GVC approach gains from better integration in the transaction costs theory.•Shea wholesalers successfully solve the coordination problems of the shea chain.•Local shea traders play a key role in ...the sharing of value down to the rural poor.•The shea value chain runs counter to the trend toward buyer-driven value chains.•Development actors should look at shea traders more carefully and positively.
Market globalization has had only a weak impact on the regional shea nut supply chain in western Burkina Faso despite the boom in the shea trade and the arrival of leading foreign firms. We show that despite the fact that wholesalers have kept the shea chain locked in an oligarchic organization for the last 50years, they still play an important role in the smooth functioning of the chain and in profit sharing down the chain to the rural poor. We suggest that development actors should consider shea traders and their role in the coordination of the chain more carefully.
The participation of local communities in the governance of protected areas in the Democratic Republic of Congo is challenged by several external and local factors. This article aims to understand ...the representation of local communities and factors that influence their participation in the governance of the Yangambi Biosphere Reserve. Three principal sources of information (archival records, focus group and semi-structured interviews) were used to collect data. The results indicate a top-down participatory approach. The cumulative failure of several projects in the context of local development has led to different perceptions by local communities of their role in the participative governance of Yangambi Biosphere Reserve. Initiatives in participatory management and local development only function during the lifetime of externally-funded projects when initiators are present in the intervention area. The results call into question formal claims made by both conservation projects and the Congolese government regarding the actual participation of local communities in the governance of Biosphere Reserves. Furthermore, although Biosphere Reserves in DRC are recognized as part of the national network of protected areas since 2002, their management is still not aligned to either the Seville Strategy or the statutory framework of the world network of Biosphere Reserves. To achieve this, local development initiatives need to focus on poverty alleviation (through the diversification of income sources, entrepreneurship, farmer training and the creation of employment opportunities) and a better understanding of local practices and cultures in the design of such projects.
Globalisations in a nutshell Wardell, Andrew; Fold, Niels
International journal of the commons,
08/2013, Letnik:
7, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Pre-colonial patterns of trade in West Africa included exchanges of shea in periodic local and regional markets. The collection, processing and marketing of shea products in such markets continues to ...be predominantly by women to both meet subsistence needs, and exchange of surpluses. In the early part of the 20th century, the British colonial administration considered the possibilities of starting large-scale exports of shea kernels to Europe. Multiple colonial initiatives to develop the global trade were not successful due to a composite of factors. Contemporary patterns of production, trade and regulation are contrasted in the context of globalisation in the post-independence era. The government of Ghana has progressively reinforced its ambitions to expand the shea nut trade as part of the state’s portfolio of major non-traditional agricultural export commodities. This policy is embedded within the (now) dominant orthodoxy of neo-liberalism, which privileges monetized production systems and private over public regulation. Historically and culturally-embedded patterns of shea production and trade by women in northern Ghana may now be challenged by the emergence of new processing technologies, the emergence of an oligopolistic global commodity chain and the anticipated continued growth in global demand for cocoa butter equivalents. Nevertheless, the cumulative impacts of increasing commercialisation and world market integration at the national and local level in Ghana, and other West African producer countries, are still unknown. There are risks, however, that this process may result in social differentiation, changes in household consumption patterns and loss of livelihoods, particularly for women.
From LTER to LTSER Haberl, Helmut; Winiwarter, Verena; Andersson, Krister ...
Ecology and society,
12/2006, Letnik:
11, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Concerns about global environmental change challenge long term ecological research (LTER) to go beyond traditional disciplinary scientific research to produce knowledge that can guide society toward ...more sustainable development. Reporting the outcomes of a 2 d interdisciplinary workshop, this article proposes novel concepts to substantially expand LTER by including the human dimension. We feel that such an integration warrants the insertion of a new letter in the acronym, changing it from LTER to LTSER, “Long-Term Socioecological Research,” with a focus on coupled socioecological systems. We discuss scientific challenges such as the necessity to link biophysical processes to governance and communication, the need to consider patterns and processes across several spatial and temporal scales, and the difficulties of combining data from in-situ measurements with statistical data, cadastral surveys, and soft knowledge from the humanities. We stress the importance of including prefossil fuel system baseline data as well as maintaining the often delicate balance between monitoring and predictive or explanatory modeling. Moreover, it is challenging to organize a continuous process of cross-fertilization between rich descriptive and causal-analytic local case studies and theory/modeling-oriented generalizations. Conceptual insights are used to derive conclusions for the design of infrastructures needed for long-term socioecological research.
Climate change can be addressed by mitigation (reducing the sources or enhancing the sinks of greenhouse gases) and adaptation (reducing the impacts of climate change). Mitigation and adaptation ...present two fundamentally dissimilar approaches whose differences are now well documented. Forest ecosystems play an important role in both adaptation and mitigation and there is a need to explore the linkages between these two options in order to understand their trade-offs and synergies. In forests, potential trade-offs can be observed between global ecosystem services, such as the carbon sequestration relevant for mitigation, and the local ecosystem services that are relevant for adaptation. In addition, mitigation projects can facilitate or hinder the adaptation of local people to climate change, whereas adaptation projects can affect ecosystems and their potential to sequester carbon. Linkages between adaptation and mitigation can also be observed in policies, but few climate change or forest policies have addressed these linkages in the forestry sector. This paper presents examples of linkages between adaptation and mitigation in Latin American forests. Through case studies, we investigate the approaches and reasons for integrating adaptation into mitigation projects or mitigation into adaptation projects. We also analyze the opportunities for mainstreaming adaptation–mitigation linkages into forest or climate change policies.
The paper analyses land use trajectories in savannah woodlands in the Central-West Region, Burkina Faso and the Upper East Region in northern Ghana by use of satellite images and historical archives. ...Observed trends differ in terms of spatial location and correlation with population pressure from normally accepted characterizations. Colonial forestry policies are proposed as key determinants of present-day land use patterns. However, these reinforced pre-colonial land use patterns inasmuch as land gazetted as forest reserves were tracts affected by vectors of human and livestock disease. It is suggested that the transformation of wooded agricultural landscapes in the Sudano-Sahelian region is the outcome of historically and culturally embedded interactions between complex social, economic and ecological processes which operate at widely varying scales and which change over time; the implications hereof for modelling of global environmental issues is discussed.
A simple ecological model underlies contemporary fire policy in many West African countries. The model holds that the timing (or seasonality) of annual savanna fires is a principal determinant of ...vegetation cover. The model's origin can be traced to the ideas held by influential colonial scientists who viewed anthropogenic fire as a prime force of regional environmental degradation. The main evidence in support of the model derives from the results of a series of long-term burning experiments carried out during last century. The experimental results have been repeatedly mapped onto fire policy often taking the form of a three-tiered model in which fire exclusion is considered the ultimate management objective, late dry-season fire is discouraged and early dry-season fire is allowed but only under specific, often state-controlled circumstances. This paper provides a critique of contemporary fire policy in the region and the fire ecology model on which it is based. Through an analysis of burn scars for the 2002-3 fire season generated from ETM+ imagery, the study documents the spatiotemporal pattern of burning for an area in southern Mali. It argues that current policy, which is informed by an a-spatial model, cannot adequately account for the critical pattern of burning that is characteristic of the region. A reinterpretation of the burning experiments is presented in light of four factors: empirical data; recent developments in patch-mosaic theory; historical evidence on the effects of fire suppression; and data on indigenous burning strategies, all of which suggest a need to reconsider current fire policy.
This paper uses an original integrated theoretical framework to reveal the mechanisms behind socio‐economic differentiation in the changing patterns of access to shea in western Burkina Faso, in the ...context of globalization of the shea nut trade and internal migrations from both the Mossi Plateau and the Sahelian zone. Based on more than 200 interviews, we unravel the complex dynamic mechanisms of changes in access to shea. We show that negotiations result in reduced access to shea for late comers as well as for people with a limited number of shea trees in their fields, since areas where shea is managed as a common‐pool resource are becoming less accessible. However, we also demonstrate that late comers are not powerless in the face of first comers’ claims to shea. Our results should help policy‐makers and project‐based activities concerning shea to focus more on issues related to access to this resource.
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