Recent uciaspubs_articles items

Communal Approaches to Natural Resource Management in Africa: Whence and to Where?

Wed, 9 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Communal approaches to natural resource management have developed since the 1980s from a relatively untested set of conceptual stances to achieve the status of conventional wisdom in much development discourse. However, communal approaches have also come under attack, both from donor agencies impatient with the lack of evidence of immediate and positive results, and from scholarship in the narrative-counternarrative mode. The topic also has broader significance for the evolution of governance in Africa. What is happening in communal approaches to natural resource management provides in large measure a surrogate picture of elements of this evolution.

This article offers a brief and selective survey of the origins, objectives, and limitations of communal approaches to natural resource management, and it offers five characteristics deemed essential for the future development of this body of work. It also functions as a commentary on other essays in the UCIAS Digital Collection...

Communities, Conservation, and Tourism-Based Development: Can Community-Based Nature Tourism Live Up to Its Promise?

Fri, 9 Jun 2006 00:00:00 +0000

This paper analyzes the opportunities and tensions generated by efforts to use conservation-based tourism as a catalyst for economic development. By exploring how historical legacies position actors and influence relationships between them, characterizing the nature tourism sector and its logic, and examining how liberalizing states are likely to engage with community-based tourism. I situate community-based nature tourism ventures in a broader political economic context. The paper draws from research on the Makuleke Region of Kruger National Park, South Africa to illustrate how these factors influence prospects for community benefit from protected area tourism. Like many other protected areas in Africa, contemporary dynamics in the Makuleke Region are a product of dispossession, forced removal, and conservation. The Makuleke, who consider the land their ancestral home, were forcibly removed in the late 1960s so that the land could be incorporated into Kruger National Park....

Local Responses to Marine Conservation in Zanzibar, Tanzania

Tue, 23 May 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Although terrestrial parks and reserves have existed in Tanzania since colonial times, marine protected areas are a much newer endeavor in natural resource conservation. As the importance of marine conservation came to the international forefront in the 1990s, Tanzania experienced a rapid establishment and expansion of marine parks and protected areas. These efforts were crucial to protecting the country’s marine resource base, but they also had significant implications for the lives and fishing patterns of local artisanal fishermen. Terrestrial protected areas in Tanzania have historically been riddled with conflict and local contestation, bringing about numerous debates on the best ways to involve rural residents in conservation planning efforts to establish new “community-based conservation” initiatives. Because marine protected areas do not have the same conflict-ridden history as terrestrial conservation in Tanzania, marine conservation programs present a new opportunity...

Linking Farmer, Forest and Watershed: Agricultural Systems and Natural Resources Management Along the Upper Njoro River, Kenya

Fri, 3 Mar 2006 00:00:00 +0000

This paper describes subsistence farmers’ agricultural and natural resource management techniques and perceptions in the upper catchment of the River Njoro, Kenya and explores their implications for further research and action by watershed managers and policy makers. In East Africa and elsewhere in developing countries, small-scale poor farming households often form a critical group in the link between upland natural resource conditions and watershed services. A small-scale pilot study of a sample of 15 hillside farmers located within 200 meters (m) of first order streams or springs in the upper catchment of the River Njoro (UCRN) was designed to explore in-depth farmers’ behavior, knowledge, and perceptions in the larger context of emerging watershed management issues. Blending qualitative social science approaches and quantitative biophysical and economic assessment, the research sought to answer the following questions: How do farmers in the UCRN view and manage soil...

The Dynamics and Direction of American and French Industrial Societies: From the Late Nineteenth Century to the Early 2000s

Tue, 8 Nov 2005 00:00:00 +0000

This article is part of a forthcoming volume The Origins and Evolution of American and French Industrial Societies, by Monique J. Borrel. The other chapters will be posted on this site as they are completed.

Industrial Conflict, Mass Demonstrations, and Economic and Political Change in Postwar France: An Econometric Model

Tue, 12 Oct 2004 00:00:00 +0000