Kolinjivadi demonstrates that focus groups and surveys produce different outputs with respect to ecosystem values and management preferences despite all individuals required to complete the open-ended survey eliciting the same set of questions prior to the focus group session. Results from this research will guide a steering group into investigating specific issues and adopting a suitable mix of engagement styles. As suggested, individuals should be subjected to social processes when asked to express their perceptions of the importance of ecosystem service values because these by their nature are public in orientation rather than private. Adapted from the source document.
Incentive-based mechanisms, such as payments for ecosystem services (PES) are increasingly being employed to encourage adoption of biodiversity conservation practices in agriculture. Farmers' participation in a PES depends – amongst other factors – on their interactions with previous programs and schemes. This research analyses how the institutional characteristics and interactions of incentive-based mechanisms shape the type of farmers' participation and the achievement of desired socio-ecological outcomes. This research focusses on the institutional frameworks of two programs in the Province of Quebec, Canada: the 'Prime-Vert' Program (public agri-environment scheme) and the 'Alternative Land Use Services' (ALUS) initiative (a privately-funded "PES" scheme). The institutional prescriptions of these two programs were examined and compared through the lenses of the Institutional Analysis and Development framework. We reveal the impact of the institutional framework on farmers' participation by assessing the degree of farmers' engagement in the implementation and management of schemes. Our results showed a strong dependence of the private PES on the public scheme, rendering both programs ultimately managed under the remit of the provincial government. While the complementarity of both programs diversifies sources of funding for farmers, the presence of rigid rules governing these incentives tend to treat farmers as passive beneficiaries of a network of centralized subsidies which they have little control over. This compromises farmers' autonomy as the rigidity of rules impedes any attempt to achieve active participation in the design and implementation of agri-environmental practices.
Governing ecosystem services entails the recognition of mutual and interdependent relations between different actors (i.e. beneficiaries, providers and intermediaries) in relation to each other and the living world. Appreciating these social interdependencies requires understanding ecosystem services as commons, generated at the entanglement of social and biophysical relationships and requiring collective action mechanisms. The objective of this article is to study the processes by which social interdependencies are recognized, and how these processes shape the emergence of collective action in three agri-environmental initiatives in Quebec (Canada). These concern a local program of payment for ecosystem service, an integrated watershed management project, and a political coordination process among 16 rural municipalities. Through a qualitative analysis of observations, semi-structured interviews, and field visits with relevant stakeholders, this study outlines the processes involved in the recognition of social interdependencies beyond already established actions, and sometimes at the margins of the formalized agri-environmental initiative. While the three examples do not appear to be collective actions yet, they result in an increase in social capital, which serves as a crucial intermediary step towards achieving cooperation. Our results show that this emergent cooperation is based on constant (re)negotiation and adaptation, whereby intermediaries (e.g. agronomists, environmental coordinators, NGOs) play a key role by reinforcing existing social networks or opening opportunities for new social linkages. Finally, our results show that the social links and the institutions that encourage the collective recognition of social interdependencies are continuously co-constructed by actors and influenced by existing power asymmetries through processes of institutional bricolage.
The green economy is proposed as a solution to address growing and potentially irreversible ecological crises. But what happens when environmental solutions are premised on the same logics of brutal simplification and dehumanization that sustain and reinforce systems of oppression and ecological breakdown? In this article, we describe the transformation of the biophysical landscape of the planet into replicable blueprints of the plantation plot. The plantation as a colonial-era organizational template is an ongoing ecological process premised on disciplining bodies and landscapes into efficient, predictable, calculable, and controllable plots to optimize commodity production and is dependent on racialized and gendered processes of dehumanization. The visible cultural, physical, aesthetic, and political singularity of the plot, under the guise of objectivity and neutrality, permits a tangible depiction of the way ecological breakdown takes place. We interrogate the notion of "greening" as a strategy to combat the unintended impacts of colonial plantation ecology, arguing that such tactics further reinforce the template of plantation ecology rather than dismantle it. We first conceptualize the historical plantation and its biophysical, cognitive, and corporeal organizational principles. We then offer examples of "greening" as new, more inclusive (but equally detrimental) forms of plantation logics, and crucially identify how these extensions of plantation logic get co-opted by resistance agents, from social movements to disease and pestilence. We consider sustainability certifications of palm oil through the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) in Colombia and compensatory afforestation programs designed to offset forest destruction through monoculture plantations in India. We conclude by highlighting how abolition ecologies can serve as an antidote to plantation logic and highlight necessary relationships of self-reflexivity, repair and collective solidarity required to disinvest in plantation ecology.
In: Political geography: an interdisciplinary journal for all students of political studies with an interest in the geographical and spatial aspects, Band 105, S. 102925