Suchergebnisse

The rhetoric of a 'win-win-win' situation – which represents simultaneous achievement of economic growth, environmental protection and social development – is central to the emergence of community-based wildlife protection efforts that involve new partnerships between actors such as local communities, businesses and government agencies. The win-win rhetoric furthers the logic that the more partners, the more wins – yet the current knowledge base lacks clear criteria for evaluating partnerships. This working paper uses political ecology as a conceptual lens to propose such criteria. We suggest examining partnerships not only based on their complexity, but also how they are formed and gain legitimacy in different contexts and how various partnership configurations engender particular kinds of ecological and socio-economic outcomes. Based on a review of the literature about partnerships and their impacts, and drawing on insights from Tanzania's wildlife sector, we establish three groups of literature that emphasize the benefits of partnerships: one focusing on landscape conservation, another on governance reforms and the last on tourism related businesses. In these three groups of literature, partnerships are claimed to improve the effectiveness of biodiversity governance by securing land, facilitating local developments and by creating business links. Building on critiques from political ecology we conclude by questioning this win-win-win rhetoric arguing that partnerships only lead to wins for specific actors thereby indirectly aggravating local power struggles. They do so by supporting rent seeking and the rise of local elites while simultaneously concealing the marginalization of other actors and thereby effectively contributing to the continued loss of local land rights. ; The rhetoric of a 'win-win-win' situation – which represents simultaneous achievement of economic growth, environmental protection and social development – is central to the emergence of community-based wildlife protection efforts that involve new partnerships between actors such as local communities, businesses and government agencies. The win-win rhetoric furthers the logic that the more partners, the more wins – yet the current knowledge base lacks clear criteria for evaluating partnerships. This working paper uses political ecology as a conceptual lens to propose such criteria. We suggest examining partnerships not only based on their complexity, but also how they are formed and gain legitimacy in different contexts and how various partnership configurations engender particular kinds of ecological and socio-economic outcomes. Based on a review of the literature about partnerships and their impacts, and drawing on insights from Tanzania's wildlife sector, we establish three groups of literature that emphasize the benefits of partnerships: one focusing on landscape conservation, another on governance reforms and the last on tourism related businesses. In these three groups of literature, partnerships are claimed to improve the effectiveness of biodiversity governance by securing land, facilitating local developments and by creating business links. Building on critiques from political ecology we conclude by questioning this win-win-win rhetoric arguing that partnerships only lead to wins for specific actors thereby indirectly aggravating local power struggles. They do so by supporting rent seeking and the rise of local elites while simultaneously concealing the marginalization of other actors and thereby effectively contributing to the continued loss of local land rights.

Emerging narratives call for recognising and engaging constructively with small-scale farmers who have a leading role in shaping the current irrigation dynamics in sub-Saharan Africa. This paper explores whether new irrigation data can usefully inform these narratives. It argues that, for a variety of reasons, official irrigation data in sub-Saharan Africa fail to capture the full extent and diverse nature of irrigation and its rapid distributed growth over the last two decades. The paper investigates recent trends in the use of remote sensing methods to generate irrigation data; it examines the associated expectation that these techniques enable a better understanding of current irrigation developments and small-scale farmers' roles. It reports on a pilot study that uses radar-based imagery and analysis to provide new insights into the extent of rice irrigated agriculture in three regions of Tanzania. We further stress that such mapping exercises remain grounded in a binary logic that separates 'irrigation' from other 'non-irrigated' landscape features. They can stem from, and reinforce, a conventional understanding of irrigation that is still influenced by colonial legacies of engineering design and agricultural modernisation. As farmers' initiatives question this dominant view of irrigation, and in a policy context that is dominated by narratives of water scarcity, this means that new data may improve the visibility of water use by small-scale irrigators but may † Jean-Philippe Venot and Sam Bowers are joint first authors. General comments and other correspondence should be addressed to Jean-Philippe Venot. Correspondence on remote sensing radar analysis should be addressed to Sam Bowers. Water Alternatives-2021 Volume 14 | Issue 2 Venot et al.: The politics of irrigation data in Sub-Saharan Africa 547 also leave them more exposed to restrictions favouring more powerful water users. The paper thus calls for moving away from a narrow debate on irrigation data and monitoring, and towards a holistic discussion ...

Emerging narratives call for recognising and engaging constructively with small-scale farmers who have a leading role in shaping the current irrigation dynamics in sub-Saharan Africa. This paper explores whether new irrigation data can usefully inform these narratives. It argues that, for a variety of reasons, official irrigation data in sub-Saharan Africa fail to capture the full extent and diverse nature of irrigation and its rapid distributed growth over the last two decades. The paper investigates recent trends in the use of remote sensing methods to generate irrigation data; it examines the associated expectation that these techniques enable a better understanding of current irrigation developments and small-scale farmers' roles. It reports on a pilot study that uses radar-based imagery and analysis to provide new insights into the extent of rice irrigated agriculture in three regions of Tanzania. We further stress that such mapping exercises remain grounded in a binary logic that separates 'irrigation' from other 'non-irrigated' landscape features. They can stem from, and reinforce, a conventional understanding of irrigation that is still influenced by colonial legacies of engineering design and agricultural modernisation. As farmers' initiatives question this dominant view of irrigation, and in a policy context that is dominated by narratives of water scarcity, this means that new data may improve the visibility of water use by small-scale irrigators but may † Jean-Philippe Venot and Sam Bowers are joint first authors. General comments and other correspondence should be addressed to Jean-Philippe Venot. Correspondence on remote sensing radar analysis should be addressed to Sam Bowers. Water Alternatives-2021 Volume 14 | Issue 2 Venot et al.: The politics of irrigation data in Sub-Saharan Africa 547 also leave them more exposed to restrictions favouring more powerful water users. The paper thus calls for moving away from a narrow debate on irrigation data and monitoring, and towards a holistic discussion ...

New and more complex partnerships are emerging to address the sustainability of natural resource use in developing countries. These partnerships variously link donors, governments, community-based organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), business, certification agencies and other intermediaries. High expectations and many resources have been invested in these initiatives. Yet, we still do not know whether more sophisticated organizational structures, more stakeholders involved, and more advanced participatory processes have delivered better sustainability outcomes, and if so, in what sectors and under what circumstances. To fill this knowledge gap and build capacity in this area, the NEPSUS research and capacity building project assembles a multidisciplinary team to analyze sustainability partnerships in three key natural resource sectors in Tanzania: forestry, wildlife and coastal resources. In each of these sectors, we assess whether co-management with local communities and private and civil society actors, and putatively more participatory processes in the governance of renewable resources, result in more equitable and sustainable livelihoods and environmental outcomes. We compare 'more complex' partnerships to relatively 'simpler', more traditional top-down and centralized management systems, and to instances where sustainability partnerships are not in place. This working paper tackles the main conceptual, methodological and research design issues arising in this effort.