In the past in Africa, State forest administration took nominal control of local forest management from rural populations. This control, based on a European concept of management, gradually deteriorated and the methods of classical forest management are no longer suited to existing conditions. This has led to a need for processes to accommodate multiple interests. Funding agencies, firms, NGOs and governments have tried different participatory approaches in their forest projects. In this evolution, social sciences have been absent or overshadowed by other disciplines. Too often, the coherence of social science has been replaced with anecdotal pragmatism. We therefore investigated the contributions of collective action theories. From this analysis, we propose a framework for analysing accommodation in forest management projects at different stages (objective setting, context identification, appraisal, implementation and evaluation). We applied the Multiple Interest Accommodation Assessment (MIAA) framework to forestry projects and environmental policies in nine African countries. Using this framework to compare these experiences, we identified key issues for the MIA processes in complex forest management situations.
Environmental problems, at local scale as well as global scale, are now considered as key issues and scientists are encouraged to be part of the process to address these issues. For the last decades, scholars have been focusing on the study of interactions between social dynamics and ecological processes and produced a set of concepts and scientific discourses aiming at framing the analysis of socio-ecological dynamics and eventually at orienting interventions. Scientific discourses are produced by scholars who belong to different groups (resilience, vulnerability, political ecology, commons, robustness …) which identity go beyond disciplines, methods, frameworks and concepts and include a collective history on the evolution of ideas and research organization. Different research units based in Montpellier (France) have been conducting research on socio-ecological systems (SES) to understand many types of relationships, including those between agriculture and biodiversity, policies and landscapes dynamics, watershed management, ecosystem management and health risk. A project named SETER (Socio-Ecological Theories and Empirical Research) was elaborated aiming at assessing the relevance and the complementarities of theoretical frameworks by applying and testing them on several empirical research case studies developed by the participating research units based in Montpellier. We have confronted different scholars, holding the flags of different schools of thought, to the same concrete issues. The purpose of this assessment was to clarify the respective potential of the different theoretical frameworks and to provide the basis for new conceptualizations of socio-ecological systems dynamics and management. Although some authors call for an integrated framework and some advocate for the diversity of explanations, both agree on the fact that there is a need for clarification for a better scientific debate and better interactions with the managers, stakeholders and interested people. The scientific debate remains obscure ...
Environmental problems, at local scale as well as global scale, are now considered as key issues and scientists are encouraged to be part of the process to address these issues. For the last decades, scholars have been focusing on the study of interactions between social dynamics and ecological processes and produced a set of concepts and scientific discourses aiming at framing the analysis of socio-ecological dynamics and eventually at orienting interventions. Scientific discourses are produced by scholars who belong to different groups (resilience, vulnerability, political ecology, commons, robustness …) which identity go beyond disciplines, methods, frameworks and concepts and include a collective history on the evolution of ideas and research organization. Different research units based in Montpellier (France) have been conducting research on socio-ecological systems (SES) to understand many types of relationships, including those between agriculture and biodiversity, policies and landscapes dynamics, watershed management, ecosystem management and health risk. A project named SETER (Socio-Ecological Theories and Empirical Research) was elaborated aiming at assessing the relevance and the complementarities of theoretical frameworks by applying and testing them on several empirical research case studies developed by the participating research units based in Montpellier. We have confronted different scholars, holding the flags of different schools of thought, to the same concrete issues. The purpose of this assessment was to clarify the respective potential of the different theoretical frameworks and to provide the basis for new conceptualizations of socio-ecological systems dynamics and management. Although some authors call for an integrated framework and some advocate for the diversity of explanations, both agree on the fact that there is a need for clarification for a better scientific debate and better interactions with the managers, stakeholders and interested people. The scientific debate remains obscure when it is based on abstract developments. This report presents the material of this experiment, the interaction process and the lessons on the schools of thought and methodologies. Firstly, we introduce briefly the different schools based on the literature and on the presentations given by the invited scholars. Then we introduce the four case studies which were analyzed by the invited scholars and report on the interactions and their results. Then we present a discussion proposing a classification of the different perception of change which crosses the different schools.
This 26th dossier d'Agropolis is devoted to research and partnerships in agroecology. The French Commission for International Agricultural Research (CRAI) and Agropolis International, on behalf of CIRAD, INRAE and IRD and in partnership with CGIAR, has produced this new issue in the 'Les dossiers d'Agropolis international' series devoted to agroecology. This publication has been produced within the framework of the Action Plan signed by CGIAR and the French government on February 4th 2021 to strengthen French collaboration with CGIAR, where agroecology is highlighted as one of the three key priorities (alongside climate change, nutrition and food systems).