Community Based Natural Resource Management - Science topic

Yes, I include CITI training in an ethnographic methods course and have found it works well. I have done it with and without inviting a representative from Research Compliance (IRB office) to speak to the class. In both cases all students successfully completed the online training and received the certificate for the course titled Group 2: social and behavioral investigators and key personnel.

Some of the immigrants are moving away from their homes because of war (Afghanistan towards Europe) others because of poverty (Africans towards Europe) and still others because of flooding and climate change effects.

In all these cases, they suffer due to lack of proper health conditions on their way until they settle in a new country.

If the newcomers settle in Canada for instance, they will be looked after and have no ill effects.

A good example of sufferers from climate change effects are the people in Honduras and Nicaragua after they were hit twice by damaging hurricanes. The countries are poor and couldn't look after their health needs even before the hurricanes. Now they have a good reason to immigrate.

You may have a look on this attached paper.

Listening is the most important thing outsiders can do. Then, ask clarifying questions-- people on the ground know a great deal.   

Ah, Emmanuel, one of the challenges of our age. If we want to conserve natural resources, or manage them in such a way that most if not all are conserved, the simplest solution is to find a Doug Tompkins who acquired enough Chilean rainforest between the Pacific and Argentine border to divide the country (in more ways than one) and buy the lot. Have you called on Mo Ibrahim?

More seriously and as you have concluded, in most cases one needs to reconcile both community and state interests, striving to involve each side as partner in a team effort. Such collaboration can be essential both to garner enough political will and public funding at first to get an idea off the ground and, afterwards, to ensure its sustainability.

A few of us face a similar challenge in Portugal where we hope to create a major reserve. While individual donors and companies are certainly in our sights, most support is likely to come from Brussels which will require not just some endorsement from national and local authorities but also community and other stakeholder participation.

Our task, probably unlike yours, is simplified by the decline of small-scale agriculture and migration from the land, an increasingly common phenomenon here and elsewhere. Nevertheless, we aim to win over a government indifferent to conservation and opposed to incurring any such costs, a largely apathetic community and, perhaps, even persuade some hostile eucalyptus plantations by proposing various strategies. Among them:

- employ the unemployed, much as a visionary Theodore Roosevelt did during the Great Depression, in restoration work;

- promote the area's considerable ecotourism potential;

- make a compelling case for the region as a climate change refuge;

- document and stress its outstanding surviving biodiversity;

- encourage extraction of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) such as cork;

- offer an opportunity to cellulose companies to improve their reputations.

You might also want to consider the strategy used in Guatemala's Petén, a situation which may be closer to yours: http://www.cifor.org/acm/download/pub/grassroot/Peten%20guatemala_eng%20All.pdf

Finally, several NGOs - CI for example (http://www.conservation.org/where/pages/sub-saharan-africa.aspx) - have undertaken similar initiatives in various parts of the world.  And UNEP in Nairobi (http://web.unep.org/regions/roa/) should also provide ideas and case studies.

The Sarstoon Temash Institute of Indigenous Management (www.sattim.org.bz) have done excellent work in the southern wetlands of Belize. In addition, the Belize Audubon Society have done pioneering work in wetland studies and NRM throughout Belize. 

Try Stephen Kesler's recent article on Lithium Resources for the 21st Century, here on ResearchGate

Your question is extremely general, so I'll start with a general answer. Yes, it is possible to manage protected forests and to use the timber in them. It depends on the reason, why they are protected. E.g. in Switzerland we have a lot of protection forests (against natural hazards). These are managed in a way that they provide the best protection, so focus is on structure, contuinuous forest cover, minimal stem density, sustainable regeneration etc. But the wood which comes out of the forest through these management operations is used and sold.

If the protection reason is to protect the forest itself (so that it is not plundered), then a sustainable management regime could be applied (as is done in many parts of Europe and elswhere). In Switzerland, e.g. it is not allowed to chop more wood than the forest is able to grow. So one calculates growth and yield of a forest plot for, lets say, 10yrs and that is the amount of wood you are allowed to take out every decade (you only use the "overhead", so to say). This wood usually is a result of management practices that at the same time treat the stand, initiate regeneration etc. In Switzerland it is not allowed to do clearcuts, so forest management is pretty small scale, but thanks to that very sustainable in terms of continuous forest cover etc. So it really depends on the protection goal - if you can keep the goal (or even enhance it) through timber harvesting, than you can use the timber AND have a protected forest.

If this is the direction your question is going, there is a lot of literature on sustainable forest management and the management of protection forests from Switzerland, Germany and France. However, as soon as you let people manage "protected forests", you have to have a good control regime (especially in the beginning), making sure that the management guidelines and harvest plans are strictly followed...

Hope, this helps. Cheers, Caroline

Dear Babu,

in Turkey, regarding our coastal and marine protected areas, we have made some zonation and spatial plans. Unfortunately, almost all of these remain as recommendations. There has been no legal declaration of core and buffer zones, and related activity planning, which avoids people to realize buffering effects.

In the last few years, some no-take fisheries zones were declared in Turkey, which increased the catch quality around these zones (which can be considered as buffer zones). This was a way to realize the fishermen how a protected zone enhances ecological and economical sustainability.

Hi Choen,

There is also a political contribution because a good community-based enterprise (see experiences in Latin America and Africa) may empower local communities. Community empowerment provides an opportunity for the community to claim and enforce rights against the interests of non-local actors.Community-based enterprise may enhance local capabilities to manage resources, bargain with other actors, and achieve better livelihoods. See my paper on ecotourism and development of indigenous communities.

Enrique

I don't know of any frameworks for assessment of cultural dimension (what ISN'T a cultural dimension?), as such, but would propose that frameworks for *engagement* would be more important. Lots of work from the Arctic along these lines (see Fikret Berkes and many others). I suspect that for many, the "participatory" label implies, rightly or wrongly, that cultural dimensions will be threaded throughout the activity.