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Category V protected areas – Protected Landscapes and Seascapes – are defined by IUCN as areas “of land, with coasts and seas as appropriate, where the interaction of people and nature over time has produced an area of distinct character with significant aesthetic, ecological and/or cultural value, and often with high biological diversity
. Safeguarding the integrity of this traditional interaction is vital to the protection, maintenance and evolution of such areas” (IUCN 1994).
Since they are lived-in, working landscapes, this category of protected areas would appear to provide a potential mechanism for conserving agrobiodiversity. This is the thesis that this volume sets out to test through the use of case studies. In particular, this volume seeks to determine the value of Category V protected areas in the conservation of agrobiodiversity, and what lessons can be learnt from experience in this regard.
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In 2001, the Foundation for Ecological Security (FES) started its work in Chitravas, the southern Aravalli ranges in India
. They were involved in helping the local village committee come up with plans to manage the forest through organising meetings to understand the traditional forest use patterns in the area, so real forest users could be included. Based on the evidence gathered in these meetings, the communities jointly prepared a customary user rights list. This helped in deciding the voting rights for the Village Forest Committee.
Organising in this way led to various improvements. The community has been able to establish a true form of local self governance. Now, the villagers have started accessing other programmes available from the local government, such as agricultural services.
In dense forest, soil losses are six times less than in open land. Women have been able to take part in the community decision-making process and have even assumed leadership. Lastly, the plot now provides water. The number of wells has increased from ten to forty. Flash floods used to happen regularly in the monsoon and the banks of the stream were eroded year after year. Now the plot stores water.
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Learning ‘using’ technologies has become a global phenomenon
. The Internet is often seen as a value-neutral tool that potentially allows individuals to overcome the constraints of traditional elitist spaces and gain unhindered access to learning. It is widely suggested that online technologies can help address issues of educational equity and social exclusion, and open up democratic and accessible educational opportunities. The national governments and non-governmental agencies who fund educational endeavours in developing countries have advocated the use of new technologies to reduce the cost of reaching and educating large numbers of children and adults who are currently missing out on education. This paper presents an overview of the educational developments in open, distance, and technology-facilitated learning that aim to reach the educationally deprived populations of the world. It reveals the challenges encountered by children and adults in developing countries as they attempt to access available educational opportunities. The discussion questions whether, in face of these challenges, developing nations should continue to invest money, time, and effort into e-learning developments.
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Over the last 40 years, the Yucatan Peninsula has experienced the implementation and promotion of development programs that have economically and ecologically shaped this region of Mexico
. Nowadays, tourist development has become the principal catalyst of social, economic, and ecological changes in the region. All these programs, which are based on a specialization rationale, have historically clashed with traditional Yucatec Maya management of natural resources. Using participant observation, informal and semi-structured interviews, and life-history interviews, we carried out an assessment of a Yucatec Maya natural resources management system implemented by three indigenous communities located within a natural protected area. The assessment, intended as an examination of the land-use practices and productive strategies currently implemented by households, was framed within an ecological–economic approach to ecosystems appropriation. To examine the influence of tourism on the multiple-use strategy, we contrasted productive activities among households engaged primarily in ecotourism with those more oriented toward traditional agriculture. Results show that households from these communities allocated an annual average of 586 work days to implement a total of 15 activities in five different land-use units, and that those figures vary significantly in accordance with households’ productive strategy (agriculture oriented or service oriented). As the region is quickly becoming an important tourist destination and ecotourism is replacing many traditional activities, we discuss the need for a balance between traditional and alternative economic activities that will allow Yucatec Maya communities to diversify their economic options without compromising existing local management practices.
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In Nepal, social inclusion, ethnic identity, positive discrimination and proportional representation being burning issues now
. Ethnic identity is a vital element of discussion for social inclusion, positive discrimination and proportional representation. Assertion on ethnic identity, seeks recognition from concerned institutions, practices traditions and advocates their ethnic right on socio-economic and political power. These issues are intrinsically linked to national integration. To be sure, very little attention is paid toward ancestral monuments of the past. Monuments vary by their size, pattern, investment, management, and range of dissemination. Local level monuments have little possibility to attract the attention of people of various places and interest, unless they have becomes extraordinary significance. In order to understand monumentality in wider social context, it is very important to look at the village level society. Monument building in Nepal has been linked to culture, history, religion, ethnic identity as well as social system. Argal VDC of Baglung district of Nepal represent with multi-ethnic/caste setting that has high influence over the nature of monument and the rituals performed. In multiethnic setting economic, social, and political activities co-exist, each nourishing the other
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Smallholder maize farmers in Ileje, Tanzania, became the focus of attention of an international soil fertility improvement project
. The project recommended a new way of cultivation that included moving from ridges to flat beds, and extended loans for external inputs. Although yields had improved, farmers preferred to go back to their traditional system once the project had ended. This Field Note looks into the reasons behind this decision
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It is often assumed that forests can contribute to poverty reduction
. To achieve this objective, different approaches to improve the governance and management of forests have been explored, including community forestry and other participatory arrangements for forest management. Sometimes conflicting approaches to land classification and land use by state forest authorities and local people can undermine the potential for forests to meet local needs and contribute to livelihoods and poverty reduction. In Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), parks, reserves, and protected forests are considered as national natural patrimony (heritage) to be conserved. Their management seldom involves the local communities who live around or inside them in a participatory approach. In the case of Monogaga, Sodefor (Société de Développement des Forêts), the official manager, decided to co-manage the forest with the Wanne people who live in the forest. After a period of conflict, the official manager, Sodefor, intended to apply a new management plan. But before doing this, the manager wished to understand why the Wanne people do not consider the forest as a heritage to conserve and transfer to their children. The present study addressed this question.
Local communities recognized several spatial units in the Monogaga Forest: gbadu (swamp areas), kporo (“black” forest), teteklwoa (old fallow), and piti (young fallow). Lineage heads control and guarantee respect of the access rules to these units. Sodefor divided the forest into two zones. Each of them corresponds to a precise designation: one for agriculture and another for conservation. Based on the access rules of both managers (the local people and Sodefor) to the different units and their resources, the study showed disagreement between the perceptions of Sodefor concerning the organisation of activities and those of Wanne farmers. For Sodefor, the forest ecosystems constitute a national heritage to conserve. For farmers land is inalienable and some of its resources constitute the heritage (or inheritance) of the lineage. In the latter case, the use of land and resources obeys complex access rules. These traditional access rules to land and resources are still used in Monogaga. In its new management plan, Sodefor should include the lineage heads, who play an important role in these systems, in the structures of negotiations. Sodefor should take into account local communities’ perceptions of forests
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The Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) framework, a programme for regional development by the Asian Development Bank, has brought about fast paced economic growth
. However, poor people's livelihoods, culture and environment have been seriously compromised:
- many of the region's ethnic minorities have suffered loss of control over their livelihoods, disempowerment and relegation to the bottom of an increasingly stratifying social pyramid - in fact, ethnicity is the single greatest determinant of vulnerability in the GMS;
- where there used to be widespread, localised control over natural resources (most importantly rivers and forests), there is now competition between local users and external commercial interests. This has shrunk the real economic base of rural livelihoods - the ability of natural resources to support poor people’s livelihoods in the GMS is at a crisis point;
- for many ethnic minority groups, especially shifting cultivators, the loss of traditional agriculture is a loss of culture - this is primary to the experience of poverty in the GMS.
There is therefore urgent need for:
- legal and administrative protection of the diverse forms of resource tenure used by ethnic minorities and subsistence agriculturalists;
- more nuanced thinking about the effects of infrastructure, markets and growth on poverty;
- a serious consideration of the value and role of culture in human wellbeing.
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The Hima is a traditional system of resource tenure that has been practiced for more than 1400 years in the Arabian Peninsular
. With the numerous deteriorations that came and halted advancement in the Arab world, and at times for different reasons, the Hima also declined. The progressive concepts of the Hima became hav been masked by the general regression suffered in the region and the recent advances accomplished by other countries, civilizations and people. This digital book brings back recognition for the positive contributions that traditional knowledge and ingenious approaches of this region had brought and can still give to development and conservation.
The book presents these traditional approaches as a tool that existed and can still exist to advance the conservation and poverty paradigms and to meet upcoming challenges related to conflicts and climate change, as the concept of Hima emphasises is closely linked to resilience. The authors outline how the most successful revival attempts to date have taken place in Lebanon where the Hima efforts aim to complement conservation efforts not to replace them. Various other regional advances are discussed in countries including Iran and Indonesia.
The authors highlight that to be Hima, a protected area should:
- be constituted by a legitimate authoritative body;
- be established in the Way of God, for purposes pertaining to public welfare;
- not cause undue hardship to local people and not deprive them of resources that are indispensable to their subsistence;
- realise greater actual benefits to society than detriments.
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This report outlines how public-private partnerships (PPPs) constitute a new mode of operation in many fields of development, including the development of innovation in developing country agriculture
. Capacities to identify opportunities, develop common interests, and negotiate commitments are prerequisites for successful public-private partnerships. Yet, many PPPs fail due to lack of both skills among the partnering agents and efforts to strengthen these skills. This paper examines seven cases of PPP building in which private sector companies, producer associations, and research organisations engage in collaboration for the purpose of developing innovations in agricultural production and value chains.
The paper concludes that facilitation of the partnering process in the seven cases studied prompts six main actions and recommendations:
- capacity strengthening in partnership building is specific to the value chains and actors it involves;
- capacity strengthening for partnership building goes beyond traditional training to include horizontal learning among the partners;
- determining when to enter into a partnership depends on the partners’ analytical skills and the information available on technological and market opportunities;
- the choice of appropriate capacity strengthening measures depends on the existing level of cohesion among the potential partners;
- strengthening partnership-building capacity should predominantly focus on identifying and exploring common interests among potential partners through a variety of tools that help clarify interests in terms of technology development, production, and sales;
- it is important to have at least one visionary leader among the partners, be it in the private sector or in the public research community. The leader supplies the capacity for sectoral analysis in the partnership and can help to clarify and communicate the advantages the partnership offers.
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