Complex Communities and Relational Webs

Summaries Poststructural applications of actor?network theory and complexity theory promise a means to encompass uncertainty, diversity and surprise in changing communities and complex human ecologies. Local organisations and social movements mediate relations within and between households, groups and communities based on gender, class, age, occupation and political affiliation. Community groups tend toward multiple membership, complex identities and flexible webs of affinity between disparate groups. Coalitions gel, melt, collide and coalesce according to need and do not follow narrowly circumscribed economic or ideological lines. An example from Machakos Distinct, Kenya draws upon a landscape and a community dramatically shaped in the last hundred years by global empires, international economies and militaries, foreign and civil wars, local innovation and resistance, and changing gender and class relations. The case study focuses on the changing nature of community groups, their representation of multiple local constituencies and the shifting and pivotal roles of various groups in interactions between people, their lands and external forces (state, market and civil society)

Beyond forest cover: Land use and biodiversity in rubber trail forests of the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve

Among the strategies to promote sustainable tropical forest development around the world, the Federal Extractive Reserve System of Brazil is widely cited as an exemplary model. It is designed to protect rubber tapper communities, their forests, and their livelihoods while preventing deforestation and conserving biodiversity. In response to changing markets and policies, rubber tappers in the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve have recently diversified production to include market agriculture and cattle production, precipitating deforestation in the reserve, with the implication of increased ecological degradation compared to the extraction of nontimber forest products (NTFPs). Our remote sensing and forest inventory analyses yield different insights about the environmental consequences of distinct land-use mixes in two extractive communities, one of which emphasizes cattle and the other, NTFPs. Remote sensing results show a predictably greater impact on forest cover in the cattle-oriented community. This preliminary study is based on nested household- and community-level forest inventory and biodiversity analyses in two communities. Surprisingly, we found higher tree biodiversity in the rubber trail forests of the cattle-oriented community, and significantly lower tree species richness, tree density, total basal area, and number of trees of commercial size in the same land-use unit in the NTFP-focused community. Land-use surveys indicate lower levels of game consumption and hunting in the cattle-oriented community, and strong support for the development of sustainable timber extraction in both communities. The distinct type and degree of forest impact in the two communities exposes the problem of single-impact assessment as the sole means of performance and categorical land-use prohibitions as an effective mode of regulation in conservation areas.Peer reviewedGeograph

Women, men and trees: gender, power and property in forest and agrarian landscapes

PRISI; IFPRI3; MP-17FCN

Cultures of Peace: Women in the Rural Federation of Zambrana-Chacuey

Inspired by Florinda Soriano Munoz, known as ‘Mama Tingo’, a charismatic woman farmer and leader in the Dominican Republic assassinated by gunmen in 1974, the article looks at the complex relationship between gender, justice, peace, place and environment. The land struggle movement in the Dominican Republic is examined through the experience of one of the rural federations spawned in the 1970s and 1980s, with a focus on the women's groups. The Women's Groups (Juntas de Mujeres) of the Rural Federation of Zambrana-Chacuey illustrate how people are creating peace and justice in everyday life, by building on existing webs of relationship, and by combining the formation of new political organizations and coalitions with the re-shaping of landscapes and livelihoods. Development (2005) 48, 93–100. doi:10.1057/palgrave.development.1100172

Essential Connections: Linking Gender to Effective Natural Resource Management and Sustainable Development

The gender variable is central to positioning both men and women vis-a-vis institutions that determine access to land, to other resources, and to the wider economy. Analysts must conceptualize gender for the purpose of desegregating and interpreting information about the functioning of individuals, households and community organizations in managing their natural resources. This paper situates such analysis in the literature from political and cultural ecology and from institutional and community organization. It identifies issues and themes relevant to understanding the role of gender in managing natural resources and argues that a new integrative approach must emerge to conceptualize the ecological and organization complexity. It also argues that attention to gender is central to increasing the equity and effectiveness of local-level management of natural resources. -from Author

Research Frontiers at the Nexus of Gender, Environment, and Development: Linking Household, Community, and Ecosystem

The growing linkages among poverty, resource decline, and ecological degradation constitute a formidable challenge to development policy and practice. Poverty forces families to cultivate increasingly fragile, marginally productive lands, addressing short-term needs for survival while putting off concerns about tomorrow. Conceptualizing gender is essential in order to disaggregate and interpret information about the function of households and community organizations in natural resource management. The chapter identifies issues which are relevant to increasing our understanding of gender as a key variable affecting institutional responses to sustainable natural resource management. Cultural ecology and institutional analysis both provide frameworks for investigating multiple uses and multiple users of resources, which are central to understanding the role of gender in resource management. Sara Berry has explored relationships between social institutions, informal networks, and access to resources. A feminist political ecology could simply add gender to class and ethnicity as axes of power in the investigation of the political dimensions of resource use, allocation, and management

Environmental Social Movements and the Politics of Place

Arturo Escobar, Dianne Rocheleau and Smitu Kothari examine the growing relevance of environmental movements in the world today, and their importance for a women-centred politics of place. They argue that many of today's environmental movements are largely struggles for the defence of place, and that for historical reasons women are often located at the forefront of these struggles and are hence central to any politics of place. The authors suggest that there is a mutually beneficial convergence between women's and environmental movements, a synergy and enrichment that finds a meeting ground in place. Development (2002) 45, 28–36. doi:10.1057/palgrave.development.1110314