Suchergebnisse

This chapter uses an assemblage approach to evaluate the development of 'payments for ecosystem services' in Wales, via transformations of agri-environmental governance over the last ten years. Whilst the adoption of PES has led to a shift in governance style and State responsibilities that echoes broader trends in neoliberalisation, we reject readings of hybrid neoliberalism following, instead, Tanya Murray Li's (2006) practices of assemblage to unpick the complex institutional arrangements emerging. Using an assemblage approach enables us to assess how different actors are mobilising and aligning around the PES approach to advance their own agendas. Following the practices used to authorise and render their concerns technical then shows us how and why some actors are being marginalised in this process, particularly as failures emerge and re-assembling is undertaken. Finally, we offer insights on how the State continues to maintain power whilst entering into new relations with other actors, advancing a more experimental mode of governance. The empirical material is based on three qualitative case studies, including pan-Wales agri-environment schemes as well as the 'Pumlumon Project' in Mid-Wales and the 'Ecosystem Enterprise Partnership - Ecobank' in South-Wales.

This paper considers the potential for beekeepers' knowledges to be incorporated into participatory policy processes addressing current challenges to pollinator health. Pollinator decline is a serious issue for future food security and wider environmental resilience, with important implications for rural land use governance. The precipitous decline in global pollinator populations over recent years has resulted in a range of government initiatives to tackle the causes identified. In the UK this includes a National Pollinator Strategy in England and Pollinator Action Plan in Wales. These plans are notable for their introduction of a more participatory approach, incorporating 'lay-knowledge' and citizen science from beekeeping practitioners alongside scientific data. This paper presents evidence from interviews and participant observation with key stakeholders within the beekeeping community in the UK, alongside archival material from the Bee Farmers' Association, to assess the knowledge controversies arising from this strategy. Specifically, the paper considers the distinction of beekeepers' knowledges from typically acknowledged expert sources, whilst also reflecting upon aspects of plurality and tension within the beekeeping community. The paper concludes by outlining some areas of contestation between beekeepers and the wider policy and scientific community, which could impact on the future success of more participatory forums. This includes, firstly, evidence of hierarchies and exclusions in the forms of knowledge considered, when insights from professional scientists are privileged above those from beekeepers and when some beekeepers knowledges are given more credit than others. Secondly, we consider limitations resulting from policy makers' evidence requirements for peer-reviewed science, which can further exacerbate the exclusion of beekeepers' insights and lead to scenarios whereby policy only engages with a narrow set of criteria that may not be beneficial when advanced in isolation from the broader system changes. Finally, aspects of policy clash are outlined between pollinator conservation and wider agricultural strategies that seek to maintain a productivist agenda.

Decentralised forest management approaches are ostensibly designed to increase community involvement in forest management, yet have had mixed success in practice. We present a comparative study across multiple countries in Eastern Africa of how far decentralised forest policies are designed to achieve devolution. We adopt the decentralisation framework developed by Agrawal and Ribot to explore whether, and how, devolution is specified in Tanzanian, Kenyan, Ugandan, Malawian and Ethiopian forest policies. We also compare them to the commitments of the Rio Declaration. In all five countries, the policies lack at least some of the critical elements required to achieve meaningful devolution, such as democratically elected, downwardly accountable local actors and equitable benefit sharing. Calling an approach 'community' or 'participatory', does not mean that it involves all residents: in Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia, policies allow a small group of people in the community to manage the forest reserve, potentially excluding marginalised groups, and hence limiting devolution. This may lead to elite capture, and effective privatisation of forests, enclosing previously de facto common pool resources. Therefore, even without flaws in implementation, these decentralisation policies are unlikely to achieve true devolution in the study countries.

This paper is about rewilding and the tensions it involves. Rewilding is a relatively novel approach to nature conservation, which seeks to be proactive and ambitious in the face of continuing environmental decline. Whilst definitions of rewilding place a strong emphasis on non-human agency, it is an inescapably human aspiration resulting in a range of social conflicts. The paper focuses on the case study of the Cambrian Wildwood project in Mid-Wales (UK), evaluating the ways in which debate and strategic action to advance rewilding is proceeding, assessing the extent to which compromise and learning has occurred amongst advocates. As such, we provide an important addition to the field, by detailing how conflicts play out over time and how actors' positioning and approach shifts, and why. In this case, tempers have flared around the threat that rewilding is seen to pose to resident farming communities. Tensions discussed include the differing social constructions of landscape and nature involved; the distribution of impacts on different stakeholders; and the relative power of different actors to make decisions and gain representation. Responding to these, the paper outlines how rewilding advocates have sought to advance a more peopled and culturally responsive vision, which seeks to champion sustainable livelihood strategies. The changes in approach detailed demonstrate a reflexive stance from rewilders, which suggests that learning and adaptation can occur. Nonetheless, caution is expressed regarding the extent to which rewilding can truly advance inclusive opportunities for rural change, given a continued return amongst stakeholders to exclusionary narratives of belonging and authenticity, suggesting substantive difficulty in moving beyond longstanding concerns over identity and the re-imagination of place. Rewilding, it would seem, is about who we think we are and how we co-constitute our sense of self. We, therefore, close by arguing that tactics and politicking can only have so much bearing, tensions over rewilding are unavoidably emotional.

Moving forwards from an extensive literature on farmers' cooperatives, this Special Issue aims to explore the interaction and interdependence of multiple material and immaterial benefits associated with cooperation. The eight papers gathered here address a range of contexts to explore the inseparability of a set of 'more-than-economic' benefits of cooperation and consider the wider implications of doing so. Responding to their insights, this editorial reflects upon the ontological ambiguity of concepts of economy and the political potentiality of cooperative activities. In addition, we highlight three key themes raised by the papers, which emphasize the complexity of processes and values included in cooperation: Relatedness and Embeddedness; Institutions and Formalisation; Histories and Futures. Reflecting on the transformative capacities of cooperation described in this collection, we argue that valuing cooperation as a process rather than a means to fixed-ends can carry its own emancipatory potential, given the ways in which this can work to counter the compartmentalising tendencies of capitalism. However, we conclude by cautioning that the addressing of more pervasive structural impediments needs to be integrated into cooperative endeavours if such potential is to be fully realised.

Adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2015, the 2030 Agenda pledges to leave no one behind through the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets were ratified by the international community to address the global challenges of our time. This framework and universal action plan articulate the inclusion of the indigenous peoples in the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. Nonetheless, the world's largest populations of indigenous peoples are in Asia. However, despite the affirmation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the concept of indigeneity is still controversial, politically contested, and considered immaterial by many states in the Asian region. With limited rights and inadequate access to social services, indigenous knowledge systems and practices have evolved through time to provide solutions to local problems that marginalized many communities. This article revisits the sociopolitical notion of indigeneity in the region and its implications for the indigenous community. It also explores the diversity of indigenous knowledge systems and traditional practices and its relevance to the SDGs, particularly on food security, community livelihoods, human well-being, natural resources management, and biodiversity conservation. The conclusion reflects the need for legitimate recognition and political enablement of indigenous peoples in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda by forging collaborations between academic researchers, policy-makers, and indigenous organizations in the Asian community.

In recent years, the profile of rewilding, a conservation approach emphasising reduced human interventions in ecosystems, restored ecosystem processes and autonomous nature, has increased. This has prompted critiques of how wildness, nature, and non-human co-existence with humans, are conceptualised within rewilding. Yet so far, there have been no detailed empirical exploration of the views held by rewilding advocates on what rewilding is, and how it should be done. Here we present an analysis of the views of rewilding practitioners and advocates across Europe, using Q-methodology. We identify two distinct visions, one focusing on extensive radical transformation of rural landscapes towards wilder states, and another focused on pragmatism, embracing different forms of rewilding in different places. Divisions over pragmatism versus radical transformation have not previously been identified in studies of rewilding but have critical implications for how rewilding is enacted. These differences also map onto distinct positions in whether rewilding compliments or challenges existing conservation practice. Beyond these distinctions, we find important areas of consensus, such as seeing humans as part of nature, which challenges arguments that rewilding strives for people-free wildernesses or facsimiles of past ecosystems. Overall, our analyses suggest greater coherence within rewilding than has previously been identified.

AbstractSustainable Intensification (SI) has been popularised in recent years as an approach seeking to balance the potentially conflicting demands of enhancing agricultural outputs with reducing the negative impacts arising from the current food system. Proponents have argued that SI can benefit from collaboration between farmers, but understanding is limited by a lack of data on current collaborative practices. Questions have also been raised as to whether the SI agenda pays sufficient attention to social sustainability as part of a fully integrated conception of SI. Tackling these issues, this paper reports on mixed methods data collection from seven case areas across the UK, with a particular focus on the experience of upland livestock farmers in north Wales. We evidence: (1) The extent, forms and preferences associated with farmers' collaboration; with findings demonstrating higher levels of collaboration than anticipated and a preference for informal forms of co‐working. (2) The underpinning and mutually reinforcing role of social interconnectedness in the delivery of diverse outcomes from collaboration. (3) How SI is perceived to threaten social sustainability, and thus work against a more integrated model of delivery. The paper concludes by arguing for a genuinely integrative model of SI to secure collaborations going forwards.

On the 23rd June 2016, the UK referendum on European Union (EU) membership resulted in a vote to leave the EU. This departure, should it occur, would see the implementation of a new agricultural policy within the UK which will most likely see the removal of direct financial support to farmers. In this study, we use combined agricultural survey and rural payments data to evaluate the extent of reliance upon Pillar 1 payments, based on a sample of 24,492 (i.e. 70%) of farm holdings in Wales. This approach eliminates some of the variation found in the Farm Business Survey through the delivery of a more comprehensive picture on the numbers and types of farm holding potentially facing economic hardship and the quantities of land and livestock associated with those holdings. We estimate ˜34% of our sampled Welsh farm holdings face serious financial difficulties and show ˜44% of agricultural land on sampled farm holdings in Wales being vulnerable to land use change or abandonment. Based on our results, we consider the potential social and ecological impacts that the removal of direct payments may have on land use in Wales. We also discuss the use of a more balanced approach to land management that could support governmental visions to keep farmers on the land, improve productivity and deliver high quality 'Public Goods'.