The Hidden Side Of Group Behaviour: A Gender Analysis Of Community Forestry Groups

Communities managing common pool resources, such as forests, constitute a significant example of group unctioning. In recent years community forestry groups have mushroomed in South Asia. But how participative, equitable and efficient are they? In the short term, many have done well in regenerating degraded lands. Are they, however, performing at their best potential, and will they sustain? Equally, are the benefits and costs being shared equitably between rich and poor households and between women and men? The paper demonstrates that seemingly successful groups can cloak significant gender exclusions, inequities and inefficiencies. It argues that these outcomes can be traced especially to rules, norms, perceptions, and the personal and household endowments and attributes of those participating. Reducing the gender bias embedded in these factors would depend on women's bargaining power with the State, the community and the family. The paper outlines the likely determinants of women's bargaining power in these arenas, and analyses ground experience in terms of progress made and dilemmas encountered

"We Are Prisoners in Our Own Homes": Connecting the Environment, Gender-Based Violence and Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights to Sport for Development and Peace in Nicaragua

York University Librarie

Fragile Social Norms: (Un) Sustainable Exploration of Forest Products

The exhaustion of natural resources is a central problem in the international agenda. The particular case of Amazon forest is at the top on the international environmental debate. Two related problems are keys to be considered in the discussion of sustainable development in this region. First the predatory use of the natural resources of the forest mainly timber and genetic resources. Second the recognition of the existence of a population of around 20 million inhabitants in the region defined as “Legal Amazon Area”, aiming the improvement on the living conditions, enhancement of income level and acceleration of development. How to match both objectives is a puzzle faced by the present generation. The region is populated by initiatives of international non‐governmental‐organizations, most of them carrying good intentions but lacking the necessary knowledge on local formal and informal institutions to find ways to reach sustainable development. The result is the accelerated process of natural resources depletion, and social disorganization. The case of the production of Brazilian Nuts stands as a corollary of the lack of an institutional structure of property rights that does not provide incentives for sustainable development. The opposite effect is being observed as a result of the fragility of observable institutional arrangements. The case provides the counterfactual for the analysis of Ostrom (1990; 2008), where she presents virtuous cases of sustainable exploration of natural resources, mostly based on informal but solid institutions.sustainable exploration of forest resources, social norms and sustainability, common pool resources, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

An essay on msic-systems

A theory of many-sorted implicative conceptual systems (abbreviated msic-systems) is outlined. Examples of msic-systems include legal systems, normative systems, systems of rules and instructions, and systems expressing policies and various kinds of scientific theories. In computer science, msic-systems can be used in, for instance, legal information systems, decision support systems, and multi-agent systems. In this essay, msic-systems are approached from a logical and algebraic perspective aiming at clarifying their structure and developing effective methods for representing them. Of special interest are the most narrow links or joinings between different strata in a system, that is between subsystems of different sorts of concepts, and the intermediate concepts intervening between such strata. Special emphasis is put on normative systems, and the role that intermediate concepts play in such systems, with an eye on knowledge representation issues. In this essay, normative concepts are constructed out of descriptive concepts using operators based on the Kanger-Lindahl theory of normative positions. An abstract architecture for a norm-regulated multi-agent system is suggested, containing a scheme for how normative positions will restrict the set of actions that the agents are permitted to choose from

Gender and innovation processes in wheat-based systems

This WHEAT report is based on 43 village case studies from eight countries set in diverse wheat-based farming regions of the Global South

Forest fires: Evaluation of government intervention measures

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relation between government measures, volunteer participation, climate variables and forest fires. A number of studies have related forest fires to causes of ignition, to fire history in one area, to the type of vegetation and weather characteristics or to community institutions, but there is little research on the relation between fire production and government prevention and extinction measures from a policy evaluation perspective. An observational approach is first applied to select forest fires in the north east of Spain. Taking a selection of fires with a certain size, a multiple regression analysis is conducted to find significant relations between policy instruments under the control of the government and the number of hectares burn in each case, controlling at the same time the effect of weather conditions and other context variables. The paper brings evidence on the effects of simultaneity and the relevance of recurring to army soldiers in specific days with extraordinary high simultaneity. The analysis also brings light on the effectiveness of two preventive policies and of helicopters for extinction tasks.Forest fires, policy evaluation

Responding to land degradation in the highlands of Tigray, Northern Ethiopia:

Improving the long-term sustainability and resilience of smallholder agriculture in Africa is highly dependent on conserving or improving the quality of the natural resource. Conservation agriculture is conceived around more integrated and effective management strategies for provisioning both food and other ecosystem services. If unattended to, land degradation would reduce agricultural productivity and increase pressure on marginal environments in the Tigray highlands of Ethiopia, adversely affecting food security and livelihoods of smallholder farmers. This paper answers some pertinent questions about mass mobilization of free compulsory labor for ecological restoration in Tigray. It details perception of changes in climate; the process of collective decisionmaking; resistance, documentation, and enforcement of rules; methods of conflict resolution; knowledge and information networks; arrangements for benefit sharing of communal resources; and the role of gender in mass mobilization for communal work. We analyzed data collected from 20 villages in 3 districts in the Tigray region through a household survey using a structured questionnaire, focus group discussions, and personal observations. The results reveal that the people are motivated to provide their free labor to restore the ecology to increase agricultural productivity and production to avoid food insecurity and improve their general livelihood. Availability of institutions in terms of grassroots organizations and rules and regulations was a major factor in the positive response to the call for action. The commitment of the government at both the national and local levels (through sensitization and mobilization for group formation and provision of tools and construction materials); the ethnic homogeneity of the population; and the existence of the Orthodox Church, where most of the people were members, were major factors for the success of the community mobilization for collective action in Tigray. Social networking with neighbors, the clergy, and leaders of grassroots organizations provided the knowledge and information on climate variability and solutions required to conserve the ecology and improve human livelihood. We also observed that there were no differences in gender division of labor except that women worked half the workload of men in a day; the women also did the cooking and cleaned up the surroundings after eating at the site. Both men and women played active roles in leadership with regard to mobilization of people, communal work planning and scheduling, conflict resolution, and sharing of community products. An impact assessment of the ecological conservation in Tigray on agricultural productivity and production and food security would be useful. It will be interesting to replicate the study in other areas in Ethiopia and other countries where the societies may not be homogenous to find out the level of commitment of the people to communal work.Collective action, ecological restoration, free labor, Land degradation,