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With an emphasis on the challenges of sustaining the commons across local to global scales, Making Commons Dynamic examines the empirical basis of theorising the concepts of commonisation and decommonisation as a way to understand commons as a process and offers analytical directions for policy and practice that can potentially help maintain commons as commons in the future. Focusing on commonisation–decommonisation as an analytical framework useful to examine and respond to changes in the commons, the chapter contributions explore how natural resources are commonised and decommonised through the influence of multi-level internal and external drivers, and their implications for commons gov...
For small-scale fisheries around the world, the Blue Growth and Blue Economy initiatives may provide sustainable development, but only insofar as they align with the global consensus enshrined in the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in the context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication. If states do nothing to fulfill the promises they made when they endorsed these guidelines in 2014, the Blue Economy will come at a loss for small-scale fisheries and further their marginalization in the ocean economy. Under the umbrella of Blue Justice, this book demonstrates that these risks are real and must be considered as states implement their sustainable ocean deve...
This book will inspire and spark grassroots action to address the inequitable impacts of climate change, by showing how this can be tackled and the many benefits of doing so. With contributions from climate activists and engaged young authors, this volume explores the many ways in which people are proactively working to advance climate justice. The book pays special attention to Canada and the Great Lakes watershed, showing how the effects of climate change span local, regional, and global scales through the impact of extreme weather events such as floods and droughts, with related economic and social effects that cross political jurisdictions. Examining examples of local-level activism that...
Global Change in Marine Systems analyses and appraises societal and governing responses to change affecting marine social and ecological systems around the world. Acknowledging the stakes – local societies that depend on marine systems for food, livelihoods and wellbeing can suffer great hardship – this book highlights and explains similarities and distinctions between successful and unsuccessful responses. The book presents an analytical framework (‘I-ADApT’) that enables decision-makers to consider possible responses to global change based on experiences elsewhere. Here an international group of researchers from the natural and social sciences apply the ‘I-ADApT’ framework to twenty enlightening case studies, covering a wide range of marine systems challenged by critical global change issues around the world. The innovative research presented here guides marine system researchers, policymakers, decision-makers and practitioners in responding to global change in a timely and appropriate manner. It will appeal to students and researchers interested in environmental studies, natural resources, marine resources, environmental sociology, sustainability, and climate change.
Conflicts over natural resources abound in India, where much of the population is dependent on these resources for their livelihoods. Issues of governance and management are complicated by the competing claims of parallel legal systems, including state, customary, religious, project and local laws. Whereas much has been written about property rights, this unique collection takes a legal anthropological perspective to explore how the coexistence and interaction between multiple legal orders provide bases for claiming property rights. It examines how hybrid legal institutions have developed over time in India and how these impact on justice in the governance and distribution of natural resourc...
In June 2014, FAO member-states endorsed the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries (SSF Guidelines). These Guidelines are one of the most significant landmarks for small-scale fisheries around the world. They are comprehensive in terms of topics covered, and progressive, with their foundations based on human rights and other key principles. It can be anticipated that implementing the SSF Guidelines, whether at local, national, or regional levels, will be challenging. This book contains in-depth case studies where authors discuss the extent to which the Guidelines can help improve the realities of small-scale fishing men and women globally and make their liveliho...
Adaptive management is an approach to managing social-ecological systems that fosters learning about the systems being managed and remains at the forefront of environmental management nearly 40 years after its original conception. Adaptive management persists because it allows action despite uncertainty, and uncertainty is reduced when learning occurs during the management process. Often termed “learning by doing”, the allure of this management approach has entrenched the concept widely in agency direction and statutory mandates across the globe. This exceptional volume is a collection of essays on the past, present and future of adaptive management written by prominent authors with long experience in developing, implementing, and assessing adaptive management. Moving forward, the book provides policymakers, managers and scientists a powerful tool for managing for resilience in the face of uncertainty.
At a time when we have all lived through profound and unexpected disruptions to our shared spaces, routines, economies, societies, and work-lives, this book considers the nature and implications of rupture, the commons, and their conjoining. Addressing rupture and disruption through the lens of literary and cultural studies, this volume traverses genres — film, fiction, theatre, poetry, and the graphic novel — and continents, and addresses histories and identities as ecologies. The focus is resolutely contemporary, with nearly all of the texts being analyzed produced within the last decade. Beginning with the history of, and debates about, Garrett Hardin’s famous “tragedy of the commons,” Ruptured Commons engages with texts and cultures of disaster wherein artistic expression becomes a form of protest and a path to change. This collection both critically examines our arrival at and understanding of this moment, and explores diverse, and hopeful, visions for the future embedded within contemporary culture.
Since the year 2000, millions of hectares of land in the Global South have been acquired by foreign investors for large-scale agricultural projects, displacing and disrupting rural communities. Women are especially disadvantaged by the global land grab: they are less likely to inherit, control, or make decisions over land, but often need land to support themselves, their families, and their communities. While international organizations have developed global guidelines to improve land governance, tensions still run high as the current policies fall short. Gender and the Global Land Grab introduces a feminist conceptual framework to analyze land governance policy around the world. Andrea Coll...