Beyond the lens of conservation Keller, Eva
Studies in environmental anthropology and ethnobiology ; v. 20,
2015, 2015., 20150115, 2015-03-03, Volume:
20
eBook, Book
The global agenda of Nature conservation has led to the creation of the Masoala National Park in Madagascar and to an exhibit in its support at a Swiss zoo, the centerpiece of which is a ...mini-rainforest replica. Does such a cooperation also trigger a connection between ordinary people in these two far-flung places? The study investigates how the Malagasy farmers living at the edge of the park perceive the conservation enterprise and what people in Switzerland see when looking towards Madagascar through the lens of the zoo exhibit. It crystallizes that the stories told in either place have almost nothing in common: one focuses on power and history, the other on morality and progress. Thus, instead of building a bridge, Nature conservation widens the gap between people in the North and the South.
The Oak Ridges Moraine battles Sandberg, L. Anders; Wekerle, Gerda R; Gilbert, Liette
The Oak Ridges Moraine battles,
c2013, 2013, 2013-06-17
eBook
"The Oak Ridges Moraine is a unique landform that generated heated battles over the future of nature conservation, sprawl, and development in the Toronto region at the turn of the twenty-first ...century. This book provides a careful, multi-faceted history and policy analysis of planning issues and citizen activism on the Moraine's future in the face of rapid urban expansion. The Oak Ridges Moraine Battles captures the hidden aspects of a story that received a great deal of attention in the local and national news, and that ultimately led to provincial legislation aimed at protecting the Moraine and Ontario's Greenbelt. By giving voice to a range of actors - residents, activists, civil servants, scientists, developers and aggregate and other resource users, the book demonstrates how space on the urban periphery was reshaped in the Toronto region. The authors ask hard questions about who is included and excluded when the preservation of nature challenges the relentless process of urbanization." --pub. desc.
Nature crime Duffy, Rosaleen
2010, 20100831, 2010-08-31
eBook, Book
In this impressively researched, alarming book, Rosaleen Duffy investigates the world of nature conservation, arguing that the West's attitude to endangered wildlife is shallow, self-contradictory, ...and ultimately very damaging. Analyzing the workings of the black-market wildlife industry, Duffy points out that illegal trading is often the direct result of Western consumer desires, from coltan for cellular phones to exotic meats sold in London street markets. She looks at the role of ecotourism, showing how Western travelers contribute-often unwittingly-to the destruction of natural environments. Most strikingly, she argues that the imperatives of Western-style conservation often result in serious injustice to local people, who are branded as "problems" and subject to severe restrictions on their way of life and even extrajudicial killings.
Nearly 90 percent of the earth's land surface is directly affected by human infrastructure and activities, yet less than 5 percent is legally "protected" for biodiversity conservation--and even most ...large protected areas have people living inside their boundaries. In all but a small fraction of the earth's land area, then, conservation and people must coexist. Conservation is a resource for all those who aim to reconcile biodiversity with human livelihoods. It traces the historical roots of modern conservation thought and practice, and explores current perspectives from evolutionary and community ecology, conservation biology, anthropology, political ecology, economics, and policy. The authors examine a suite of conservation strategies and perspectives from around the world, highlighting the most innovative and promising avenues for future efforts. Exploring, highlighting, and bridging gaps between the social and natural sciences as applied in the practice of conservation, this book provides a broad, practically oriented view. It is essential reading for anyone involved in the conservation process--from academic conservation biology to the management of protected areas, rural livelihood development to poverty alleviation, and from community-based natural resource management to national and global policymaking.
Naturschutzprojekte der Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung in Korea? Wer an Südkorea denkt, denkt wohl hauptsächlich an moderne Handys und Autos. Und bei Nordkorea? An Armut und Atombomben. Kaum einer würde bei ...Korea zuerst an Naturschutz denken. Und dennoch haben sich hier Möglichkeiten ergeben, die auch helfen können, das geteilte Land einmal wieder auszusöhnen.
The search for a root economics spectrum (RES) has been sparked by recent interest in trait-based plant ecology. By analogy with the one-dimensional leaf economics spectrum (LES), fine-root traits ...are hypothesised to match leaf traits which are coordinated along one axis from resource acquisitive to conservative traits. However, our literature review and meta-level analysis reveal no consistent evidence of an RES mirroring an LES. Instead the RES appears to be multidimensional. We discuss three fundamental differences contributing to the discrepancy between these spectra. First, root traits are simultaneously constrained by various environmental drivers not necessarily related to resource uptake. Second, above- and belowground traits cannot be considered analogues, because they function differently and might not be related to resource uptake in a similar manner. Third, mycorrhizal interactions may offset selection for an RES. Understanding and explaining the belowground mechanisms and trade-offs that drive variation in root traits, resource acquisition and plant performance across species, thus requires a fundamentally different approach than applied aboveground. We therefore call for studies that can functionally incorporate the root traits involved in resource uptake, the complex soil environment and the various soil resource uptake mechanisms – particularly the mycorrhizal pathway – in a multidimensional root trait framework.
Plant diversity has been shown to determine the composition and functioning of soil biota. Although root-derived organic inputs are discussed as the main drivers of soil communities, experimental ...evidence is scarce. While there is some evidence that higher root biomass at high plant diversity increases substrate availability for soil biota, several studies have speculated that the quantity and diversity of root inputs into the soil, i.e. though root exudates, drive plant diversity effects on soil biota. Here we used a microcosm experiment to study the role of plant species richness on the biomass of soil bacteria and fungi as well as fungal-to-bacterial ratio via root biomass and root exudates. Plant diversity significantly increased shoot biomass, root biomass, the amount of root exudates, bacterial biomass, and fungal biomass. Fungal biomass increased most with increasing plant diversity resulting in a significant shift in the fungal-to-bacterial biomass ratio at high plant diversity. Fungal biomass increased significantly with plant diversity-induced increases in root biomass and the amount of root exudates. These results suggest that plant diversity enhances soil microbial biomass, particularly soil fungi, by increasing root-derived organic inputs.
The biodiversity crisis demands greater engagement in pro‐nature conservation behaviours. Research has examined factors which account for general pro‐environmental behaviour; that is, behaviour ...geared to minimizing one's impact on the environment. Yet, a dearth of research exists examining factors that account for pro‐nature conservation behaviour specifically—behaviour that directly and actively supports conservation of biodiversity.
This study is the first of its kind to use a validated scale of pro‐nature conservation behaviour. Using online data from a United Kingdom population survey of 1,298 adults (16+ years), we examined factors (composed of nine variable‐blocks of items) that accounted for pro‐nature conservation behaviour.
These were: individual characteristics (demographics, nature connectedness), nature experiences (time spent in nature, engaging with nature through simple activities, indirect engagement with nature), knowledge and attitudes (knowledge/study of nature, valuing and concern for nature) and pro‐environmental behaviour.
Together, these explained 70% of the variation in people's actions for nature.
Importantly, in a linear regression examining the relative importance of these variables to the prediction of pro‐nature conservation behaviour, time in nature did not emerge as significant.
Engaging in simple nature activities (which is related to nature connectedness) emerged as the largest significant contributor to pro‐nature conservation behaviour. Commonality analysis revealed that variables worked together, with nature connectedness and engagement in simple activities being involved in the largest portion of explained variance.
Overall, findings from the current study reinforce the critical role that having a close relationship with nature through simple everyday engagement plays in pro‐nature conservation behaviour. Policy recommendations are made.
A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.
A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.
It remains unclear whether biodiversity buffers ecosystems against climate extremes, which are becoming increasingly frequent worldwide. Early results suggested that the ecosystem productivity of ...diverse grassland plant communities was more resistant, changing less during drought, and more resilient, recovering more quickly after drought, than that of depauperate communities. However, subsequent experimental tests produced mixed results. Here we use data from 46 experiments that manipulated grassland plant diversity to test whether biodiversity provides resistance during and resilience after climate events. We show that biodiversity increased ecosystem resistance for a broad range of climate events, including wet or dry, moderate or extreme, and brief or prolonged events. Across all studies and climate events, the productivity of low-diversity communities with one or two species changed by approximately 50% during climate events, whereas that of high-diversity communities with 16-32 species was more resistant, changing by only approximately 25%. By a year after each climate event, ecosystem productivity had often fully recovered, or overshot, normal levels of productivity in both high- and low-diversity communities, leading to no detectable dependence of ecosystem resilience on biodiversity. Our results suggest that biodiversity mainly stabilizes ecosystem productivity, and productivity-dependent ecosystem services, by increasing resistance to climate events. Anthropogenic environmental changes that drive biodiversity loss thus seem likely to decrease ecosystem stability, and restoration of biodiversity to increase it, mainly by changing the resistance of ecosystem productivity to climate events.
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