Society & Natural Resources

The effective response to managing wildlife-associated diseases, such as chronic wasting disease (CWD), requires meaningful cooperation between managers and affected groups. According to self-determination theory (SDT), a broad theory of motivation, communication efforts supportive of the basic psychological needs of autonomy , competence, and relatedness are more likely to motivate voluntary cooperation among affected groups than efforts centered on control. In this study, we applied a conceptual framework based on SDT to analyze state agency communication strategies. We surveyed key state agency personnel about their approach to CWD communication and conducted a content analysis of communication materials. We then conducted a qualitative analysis of open-ended responses from state agency personnel to identify patterns in appeals to autonomous motivation compared to more controlled forms of individual motivation. Our analysis suggests that agency communications provide variable support for individual basic psychological needs, and we suggest guidelines that may improve future communication efforts.

Some residents of Mount Amiata in Tuscany, Italy, are experiencing emotional distress and solastalgia due to changes in their beloved land. Mount Amiata is witnessing protests by citizens’ associations and activists who criticize the alleged social, economic, and environmental sustainability of geothermal energy. The analysis of the environmental conflict around geothermal energy on Mount Amiata contributes to the empirical use of the concept of "solastalgia” as affective rupture of biocultural relationships and identities. In the area surrounding Mount Amiata, the production of geothermal energy is experienced as an attack on the biodiversity of the "Mother Mountain," as a loss of the sense of home, and as part of a "predatory philosophy" employed by ENEL (Ente Nazionale per l’Energia Elettrica, National Electricity Board). This ethnographic study aims to analyze how the transformation of places influences the affective and biocultural identity of their inhabitants.

ABSTRACT Environmentalists, ranchers, and Indigenous nations are increasingly coming together on environmental issues in what have been called "unlikely alliances, " offering important insights into the role of collaboration and collective action in environmental governance. We examine two cases of unlikely alliances that formed in response to large rural-to-urban water transfer projects in the western United States, drawing on narrative analysis of interviews and focus groups with diverse participants. We highlight several key insights about unlikely alliances in action, finding that they 1) can take many different forms, often shifting over time; 2) require a delicate balance between alignment and autonomy, particularly when involving sovereign Indigenous nations; 3) can involve divergent understandings and expectations in regard to what it means to ally, with a notable distinction between issue-oriented and relationship-oriented approaches, and 4) are valued by participants even as they grapple with these challenges, particularly in the context of growing political polarization.

This study explored mining-induced challenges, experiences of psychological distress, and coping strategies among farmers in mining communities in Ghana. Using a qualitative research approach, in-depth interviews were conducted with 30 crop farmers in two mining communities in the Ellembelle District in the Western Region of Ghana. Thematic analysis of the data suggests that psychological distress is a common experience among farmers in mining communities. Farmers’ experiences of psychological distress emanate from various mining-induced challenges, including deprivation of vital resources, constraints on farming activities, economic hardship, and adjustment difficulties associated with displacement and resettlement. Faced with limited formal support services, farmers in mining communities employ religious faith, avoidance, and adaptation as mechanisms for coping with the adverse impacts of mining. The findings of this study suggest the need to address issues related to psychological well-being before and after the onset of mining activities in communities.

Free access: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/JVVR6RCZKAPWDXCD2DY8/full?target=10.1080/08941920.2024.2349877

The Belo Monte Hydroelectric Plant in the Brazilian Amazon caused an 80% reduction in the flow of the Xingu River downstream of the main dam. Affected riverine people claim losses and the precarization of living conditions and are engaged in a dispute over water and the permanence of their territories. Based on documentary research, observations, and dialogues with riverine people, we highlight the cosmopolitical dimension of resistance to dispossession, which involves human and non-human agency. From this perspective, the struggle for recognition as a traditional people is not only a strategy for defending rights but a way to politicize the nonhierarchical, intertwined relationship between the riverines and nature. We argue that the cosmopolitical perspective captures the onto-epistemic dimension, which is crucial in both dispossession and people’s resistance. Such conflicts highlight violent dimensions of dispossession and, at the same time, make visible the politicization of the relationship between humans and non-humans.

As market economies develop, traditional social norms regarding common pool natural resource utilization can change. This study estimates how social norms of nomadic herders’ communities, trust among the community’s members, and individual social preferences (i.e., other-regarding behavior), such as altruism and willingness to pay for conservation, change with market integration and urbanization in Mongolia. This study reveals that market integration is positively correlated with altruism in communities. Urbanization, measured by proximity to an urban area, is negatively correlated with trust and willingness to pay for grassland use fees. These social preferences and trust are positively correlated with social norms regarding sustainable grassland utilization. This suggests that market integration indirectly contributes to natural resource conservation, while urbanization has a negative impact. Sustainable development requires policy programs that build mutual cooperation and improve individual awareness of grassland conservation.

Litter is a global issue that pollutes water, air, and land, and has esthetic and environmental repercussions. Therefore, this study utilized the value-belief-norm (VBN) theory to analyze residents' preventing littering behavior in Ghana. This study employed a random sampling approach and used an online survey to gather quantitative data from 511 participants. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to analyze the data. The results show that the "biospheric value," "altruistic value," and "egoistic value" had substantial beneficial effects on the new environmental paradigm. The findings revealed that the new environmental paradigm increased awareness of consequences, which strongly enabled the ascription of responsibility to address environmental concerns. Personal norms influenced residents' preventing littering behavior. The study also discovered that the ascription of responsibility and new environmental paradigms promote residents' preventing littering behavior indirectly through personal norms and awareness of consequences. The study found that awareness of consequences moderates the association between personal norms and residents' preventing littering behavior. These findings provide new insights for litter prevention policymakers.

The poaching of marine resources has been defined as the conscious breaking of fishery regulations, a situation that occurs at serious levels and high frequencies in many socio-ecological contexts around the world. Poaching as a representation of illegal unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU fishing) impacts the management of marine resources and represents one of the main threats to the conservation of marine biodiversity, especially in in small scale fisheries (SSF). A classification of poachers is thus fundamental to defining the actors and the scale of poaching. This will contribute to the development of conservation policies that are best suited to management needs and to guiding specific actions against poaching. Proper classification of poachers has yet to be designed, hindering the development of management approaches that seek to recognise and reduce poaching. This paper provides a theoretical typology of four general types of poachers that can be applied in different contexts of fisheries resources appropriation governed by co-management systems (1. Members of Regulated Activities from the Community; 2. Members of Regulated Activities from outside the community; 3. Non-Members of Regulated Activities from the Community; 4. Non-Members of Regulated Activities from outside the community). The characteristics of the four categories of poachers were derived from analysis of the property rights at stake. This classification may help outline better compliance and enforcement strategies, including the active involvement of fisheries users and the consequent improvement of the legitimacy of fishing regulations. Additionally, we recommend a set of measures to assist in the fight against poaching associated with each of the four types of poacher.

Water-based recreation areas provide many benefits to society and the ecosystem services they provide are increasingly being considered in land planning and conservation decisions. We examine the value of the Wekiva River in central Florida using a hedonic valuation model of residential property values. We analyze how structural characteristics of single-family homes and recreation area characteristics, such as fee systems, size of the area, and activities provided, impact property values. We find that publicly owned recreation areas with both land and water-based recreation activities increased property values within 5 miles of the Wekiva River. Proximity to recreation areas marginally increased housing values, and the size of the recreation areas and ecosystem type had no impact on property values. We recommend that recreation managers and land use planners focus efforts on conserving more publicly owned conservation lands that increase recreation access to residents to promote contiguous natural areas.

Protected areas (PAs) are often seen as a solution to the biodiversity crisis, however, such conservation intervention can drive environmental change and conflict. Despite being presented as neutral and technically informed, PA establishment is highly political, often concealing social, economic, and political factors. Political ecology research examines how dominant narratives shape PA establishment, helping to better understand multi-layered conflicts involving often marginalized communities, conservation actors and wildlife in East Africa. This paper presents a meta-synthesis of PA expansion in the region, revealing the intricate relationship between conservation and conflict. The analysis identifies four key themes: 'commodification of wilderness', 'the war for biodiversity', 'community marginalization on the periphery', and 'conservation biopolitics'. By novel utilization of meta-synthesis methodology, this paper contributes twofold: themes provide nuanced regional understandings of the processes driving conservation conflicts while drawing theoretical insights from case study research which reveal the general applicability of findings from political ecology research. Free access: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/PX8U8C4KEK2B5HY3T9KX/full?target=10.1080/08941920.2023.2253744

In the northeastern U.S., climate change concerns are fueling public movements against forest harvesting, despite experts' assertion that harvesting is an important tool in climate adaptive forest management. Based on qualitative analysis of 32 interviews with urban and rural foresters (n ¼ 15 and n ¼ 17, respectively) across the region, this project examines how foresters in different professional contexts (e.g. urban or rural; public or private) perceive opposition to harvesting as a barrier to climate adaptive management; and how they are responding. We demonstrate that foresters use different strategies to increase public acceptance of management, including education, political advocacy, and public collaboration. While the use of these strategies appears critical to advancing adaptation of the Northeast's forests, foresters' professional contexts seem to guide their choice of and success with different strategies, calling for greater research into how different forester groups' behaviors impact the adaptive capacity of the region overall. ARTICLE HISTORY

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 6 aims to provide equitable access to safe and affordable water services. Yet, the lack of potable water in Bangladesh’s coastal region is a significant barrier to attaining this target. This study examines how socio-demographic factors influence water-fetching practices in coastal Bangladesh. Using a self-administered questionnaire, we surveyed 371 people from three vulnerable sub-districts, and the Chi-square test and a Multinomial Logistic Regression were utilized to explore significant factors affecting water-fetching practices. Findings show that water-fetching is typically considered a woman’s responsibility. Although three-quarters of the respondents stated that women usually collect water at home, most believe they should not be the only household member responsible for this task. Despite many initiatives, women are still left behind, resulting in inequities and gender injustices in their homes and society. Nonetheless, this study unfolds that water-fetching practices are biased and influenced by social and gender roles, where intensive attention is needed.

Emotions pervade human-wildlife relationships across social identities and cultures. Yet research on how emotions influence the cogni-tive processing of wildlife encounters remains sparse. In this study, we quantify the role of anticipated emotions in processing hypothetical encounters with white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus). In 2021, we surveyed Indiana residents about deer and deer management (n ¼ 1.806). Under four hypothetical deer encounters, we estimated the structural relationships among respondents' general attitudes toward deer, mutualism wildlife beliefs, scenario-specific emotions, and scenario-specific lethal control acceptability. Emotions mediated 14% of the effect of general attitudes on lethal control acceptability when encountering a fawn and completely mediated this effect when encountering a diseased deer. Our findings suggest that emotions work together with cognitions to process stimuli in a human-wildlife encounter and make a normative decision. Accounting for emotions in decision-making will help practitioners develop more effective and socially accepted approaches to wildlife conservation and management.

Sustainable resource management requires governance systems that facilitate effective collaboration among a variety of stakeholder interests , across jurisdictional scales and resource sectors. Yet, there is not widespread scholarly agreement on the key ingredients that need to be present to facilitate the effective collaborative governance of natural resources. To address this scholarly gap, we conducted a systematic literature review which revealed 17 publications that compiled essential lists of key factors for effective collaboration. From these studies across multiple disciplines, we identified 22 common factors associated with effective collaborative natural resource management, including near unanimous acceptance of the importance of nested governance structures and conflict resolution mechanisms. These 22 factors, along with additional contextual and outcome-oriented factors, could begin to form a core set of factors to comparatively test large numbers of case studies on collaborative governance of social-ecological systems around the world. ARTICLE HISTORY

Climate change is one major challenge that has brought substantial costs to the United States. To implement mitigation measures and gain public support, it is critical to understand Americans’ attitudes toward this issue. Our study investigates how carbon dependency, social capital, and political orientation influence public response to climate change by perceiving its threat, changing behaviors, and supporting policies. We first build an integrative paradigm to explore the theoretical connections. Next, we employ data from different sources to measure these key concepts at individual and state levels and then estimate the relationships empirically. Multilevel regression results show that carbon dependency inhibits public response while social capital enhances such response. Democrats and liberals are motivated to respond and residents of Democratic Party controlled states are also more likely to believe in climate change and perceive the risk than their counterparts. These factors can be leveraged to mobilize public engagement in climate activism.

The literature on land use conflicts has significantly increased in number in recent years, and keeping track has become challenging. Moreover, "land use conflict" is a rather fuzzy concept; a coherent understanding of what it encompasses is presently missing. Thus, the objective of this paper is to provide an overview of the current state of land use conflict research, with a special focus on different conceptual approaches. A systematic mapping of 306 scientific, peer-reviewed publications on land use conflicts was conducted, combined with an interpretive analysis of how the term "land use con-flict" is used. This revealed an extensive research field with several well-covered subfields but also some knowledge gaps. Moreover, four different conceptual approaches that have been applied in the literature were identified. The paper thus contributes to the formulation of an evidence-based research agenda and to an improved conceptual understanding of the term "land use conflict." ARTICLE HISTORY

Blue-green infrastructure (BGI) is an important source of ecosystem services (ES) for urban residents; however, the perception of ES varies throughout the population. An important factor in this regard is having a formal education, as this plays a key role in recognizing environmental benefits and understanding the value of less obvious services. In addition, the educational profile may also have an impact on ES assessment. The present study examines how students perceive BGI and its associated ecosystem services. Students of Social Work, Ecocity, Spatial Economy and Biology at the University of Lodz were surveyed to determine whether educational profile may influence their assessment of ES. Our findings indicate that educational profile can play a significant role in explaining the perception of ESs provided by urban BGI. The students of Biology have a better understanding of the importance of BGI for improving the ecological status and quality of life in urban areas.

Surrounded by four of the five Great Lakes, Michigan is characterized by water. Historically, much of the state's industry was situated along the water, often preventing public access to waterfronts and negatively impacting the quality of water resources. Economic shifts, paired with a growing interest in revitalizing waterfronts, have led many Michigan communities to invest in water-based restoration projects. This paper investigates the experiences and perceptions of key stakeholders in four waterfront towns where water restoration projects have been implemented as communities shift toward recreation and tourism-based economies. Twenty interviews were conducted with key stakeholders to explore the factors that lead to successful implementation of water restoration and in turn, how these projects impact community vibrancy. Results suggest that community vibrancy related to water restoration can be characterized by a series of reinforcing feedback loops between local leadership , access to water resources, socioeconomic and environmental opportunities, and relationships with water. ARTICLE HISTORY

Private engagement has always been central to biodiversity conservation. Recently, the role of private enterprises in (eco)tourism have increased, and private lands play a pivotal role in expanding protected areas within societies throughout the world. This paper contributes to discussions of private engagement in conservation and its relation to tourism (recreation generally), with novel insight on how the conservation-tourism nexus on private land is approached in different geographical contexts. We present a systematic literature review that results in five thematic clusters characterized by different conservation approaches to tourism in Global North and South. Research concerning Global South tends to emphasize (eco)tourism as a main inducement for conservation, while research concerning Global North emphasizes expansion of private protected areas where access for tourist-recreational use has to be compensated. We propose a future research agenda to exploring environmentally and socially just approaches to conservation and recreation in both Global North and South.

While many practitioners and scholars understand the risks associated with low urban tree diversity, they often lack the ability to rectify this challenge on their own. The complex system of tree production and procurement is shaped by market pressures, nursery and site constraints, local governance, and differing professional objectives among those who grow, specify, and plant trees. To understand constraints to and opportunities for increasing urban tree diversity, we conducted a series of focus groups comprised of nursery growers, landscape architects, and municipal tree managers. Our results highlight a significant list of considerations and constraints to diversity, with some issues shared among green industries and some specific to growers or purchasers. In light of our findings, we outline actionable strategies for increasing urban tree diversity. ARTICLE HISTORY