Cameras to the people:Reclaiming local histories and restoring environmental justice in community based forest management through participatory video

We discuss how “participatory video” (PV) can help with indigenous peoples’ needs for cultural reassertion as well as with creating opportunities for restoring environmental justice in their territories when community-based natural resource management and autonomous development themselves have become issues of local contention.The story we share is the one of the Monkox people of Lomerio, Bolivia, who recently started using video cameras to reconstruct the struggle for land rights in their territory and to document tensions around community forestry management as part of a participatory research project with the Universidad NUR from Santa Cruz, Bolivia, and the School of International Development (DEV) from the University of East Anglia (UEA). As we will see, participatory videos can have great power as part of an activist and practise based approach for environmental justice research

Seed bank of native species from Monte and Payunia for ecological restoration

La desertificación y sus consecuencias en las tierras áridas y semiáridas llevan a la necesidadde emprender estrategias de conservación y restauración. En este trabajo se presentan los objetivos y composición de la colección de semillas del Banco del Árido perteneciente a la Universidad Nacional del Comahue. Actualmente se cuenta con accesiones de más de 50 especies de Monte y Payunia colectadas con participación de pobladores locales.Desertifiation and its consequences on arid and semiarid lands make it necessary to implement conservation and restoration procedures. This paper presents the objectives and composition of the seed collection of the Banco del Árido belonging to the Universidad Nacional del Comahue. We currently count with accessions of more than fit (50) species of seeds from Monte y Payunia collected with participation of local residents.Fil: Rodriguez Araujo, María Emilia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Comahue. Facultad de Ciencias del Ambiente y la Salud. Laboratorio de Rehabilitación y Restauración Ecológica de Ecosistemas Áridos y Semiáridos; ArgentinaFil: Turuelo, Natalia Mirna. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Comahue. Facultad de Ciencias del Ambiente y la Salud. Laboratorio de Rehabilitación y Restauración Ecológica de Ecosistemas Áridos y Semiáridos; ArgentinaFil: Pérez, Daniel Roberto. Universidad Nacional del Comahue. Facultad de Ciencias del Ambiente y la Salud. Laboratorio de Rehabilitación y Restauración Ecológica de Ecosistemas Áridos y Semiáridos; Argentin

The type of land we want:Exploring the Limits of Community Forestry in Tanzania and Bolivia

We explore local people’s perspectives of community forest (CF) on their land in Tanzania and Bolivia. Community forest management is known to improve ecological conditions of forests, but is more variable in its social outcomes. Understanding communities’ experience of community forestry and the potential benefits and burdens its formation may place on a community will likely help in predicting its sustainability as a forest and land management model. Six villages, two in Tanzania and four in Bolivia, were selected based on the presence of community forestry in varying stages. We found that communities were generally supportive of existing community forests but cautious of their expansion. Deeper explorations of this response using ethnographic research methods reveal that an increase in community forest area is associated with increasing opportunity costs and constraints on agricultural land use, but not an increase in benefits. Furthermore, community forests give rise to a series of intra- and inter-community conflicts, often pertaining to the financial benefits stemming from the forests (distribution issues), perceived unfairness and weakness in decision–making processes (procedure/participation), and also tensions over cultural identity issues (recognition). Our findings suggest that communities’ willingness to accept community forests requires a broader consideration of the multifunctional landscape in which it is embedded, as well as an engagement with the justice tensions such an intervention inevitably creates

Fair ways to share benefits from community forests? How commodification is associated with reduced preference for equality and poverty alleviation

This research is concerned with the trend towards commodification of forestry, in the context of community forest governance for sustainable development in the tropics. In these contexts, commodification takes different forms, including sales of certified timbers and sales of carbon credits. In addition to the general aim to enhance income, these market-based forestry interventions typically aim to align with sustainable development agendas, including a) safeguarding ecological integrity and b) promoting poverty alleviation. Our concern here is that the process of forest commodification might lead to a shift in local norms of benefit-sharing, in ways that can hinder these key components of sustainable development goals. We report the results of a survey (N=519) conducted across sites in Bolivia, China and Tanzania that shows that switching from non-monetary to monetary benefits is associated with changes in preferences for distributional fairness in ways that may be detrimental to the poor. In particular, we show that forest commodification is associated with a lower likelihood of of selecting pro-poor or egalitarian approaches to benefit sharing and higher likelihood of selecting to distribute benefits in a way that rewards individual contributions or compensates losses

Examinig the mediating role of coping and emotion regularion in stress models in adolescents

The aim of this research was to analyze the relationship between stressful events, coping, and emotion regulation in adolescents from marginalized settings. A cross-sectional study was conducted with 523 adolescents aged 13 to 15 years. The Global Scale of Perceived Stress for Adolescents, the Coping Scale for Adolescents, and the Multidimensional Scale of Emotion Regulation for Adolescents, were used. Several mediation models were tested considering whether coping mediated the relationship between stressful events and emotion regulation responses, or, on contrary, emotion regulation assumes a mediating role between stressful events and coping. Data indicate significant direct and indirect effects in all models, with the highest explained variance in the models which included emotion regulation as a mediating variable. Results are discussed considering the role of coping and emotion regulation as mediating variables, and their relationship with diverse stressful events. In this research, emotion regulation strategies lead to adolescent coping

Modelo de evaluación en proyectos de inversión riesgosos en el sector de energías renovables

Resumen de lo que trata la tesis: El Trabajo de grado está conformado por cinco capítulos, los cuales se detallan a continuación: CAPITULO I: presenta las generalidades del estudio realizado sobre energías renovables divididas en marco conceptual, contextual y legal bajo los cuales se desarrolla el proyecto. CAPITULO II: Contiene el desarrollo del diagnóstico y presenta los resultados obtenidos acerca de las diferentes tecnologías de energías renovables en El Salvador, identificando así la problemática existente y realizando la propuesta de solución para la misma. CAPITULO III: Contiene el desarrollo del modelo evaluador de inversión riesgosos, desarrollándolo en un ámbito cualitativo y cuantitativo. CAPITULO IV: Por último, se presentan las evaluaciones necesarias para determinar la factibilidad del proyecto mediante la identificación de los diferentes costos y beneficios que se genera

Abordando la Justicia Ambiental desde la Transformación de Conflictos: experiencias en América Latina con Pueblos Indígenas

A pesar de que la justicia ambiental y la transformación de conflictos tienen muchos objetivos comunes, poco hablan la una con la otra. En este artículo tratamos de acercar a ambas ramas del conocimiento un través de una discusión del potencial que ofrece la teoría y práctica de la transformación de conflictos para el campo de la justicia ambiental. Para ello se basa en el marco de Transformación de Conflictos Socio-ambientales desarrollado por el Grupo Confluencias, un grupo de profesionales de América Latina que ha venido trabajando desde el 2005 como plataforma de deliberación, investigación conjunta y de desarrollo de capacidades en este tema. Un aspecto central de este marco es la atención prestada a la comprensión del papel que las dinámicas del poder y la cultura juegan en los conflictos ambientales y su transformación. Discutimos este marco e ilustramos su utilidad práctica a la luz de experiencias en marcha con pueblos indígenas en América Latina, donde el Grupo Confluencias ha venido desarrollando experiencias de transformación de conflictos socio-ambientales desde diferentes tipos de intervenciones que buscan impactar en el poder hegemónico, para ayudar a reducir las asimetrías e injusticias sociales que dan origen a los conflictos socio ambientales.Mostramos, en particular, la necesidad y la eficacia de impactar, simultáneamente o no, en tres diferentes esferas: las personas y redes, las instituciones y el poder cultural. Se demuestra que, a través del fortalecimiento del poder estratégico de actores vulnerables, es posible generar cambios sociales que redunden en mayor justiciaambiental y social en territorios indígenas

Engaging with environmental justice through conflict transformation: experiences in Latin America with Indigenous peoples

A pesar de que la justicia ambiental y la transformación de conflictos tienen muchos objetivos comunes, poco hablan la una con la otra. En este artículo tratamos de acercar a ambas ramas del conocimiento un través de una discusión del potencial que ofrece la teoría y práctica de la transformación de conflictos para el campo de la justicia ambiental. Para ello se basa en el marco de Transformación de Conflictos Socio-ambientales desarrollado por el Grupo Confluencias, un grupo de profesionales de América Latina que ha venido trabajando desde el 2005 como plataforma de deliberación, investigación conjunta y de desarrollo de capacidades en este tema. Un aspecto central de este marco es la atención prestada a la comprensión del papel que las dinámicas del poder y la cultura juegan en los conflictos ambientales y su transformación. Discutimos este marco e ilustramos su utilidad práctica a la luz de experiencias en marcha con pueblos indígenas en América Latina, donde el Grupo Confluencias ha venido desarrollando experiencias de transformación de conflictos socio-ambientales desde diferentes tipos de intervenciones que buscan impactar en el poder hegemónico, para ayudar a reducir las asimetrías e injusticias sociales que dan origen a los conflictos socio ambientales. Mostramos, en particular, la necesidad y la eficacia de impactar, simultáneamente o no, en tres diferentes esferas: las personas y redes, las instituciones y el poder cultural. Se demuestra que, a través del fortalecimiento del poder estratégico de actores vulnerables, es posible generar cambios sociales que redunden en mayor justicia ambiental y social en territorios indígenas. Although environmental justice and conflict transformation have many common goals, they rarely talk to each other. In this article we try to bring these two bodies of knowledge closer with a discussion of the contributions that the theory and practice of conflict transformation offer to the field of environmental justice. In order to do so, it draws on an Environmental Conflict Transformation framework developed by Grupo Confluencias, a consortium of professionals from Latin America, who have been working since 2005 as a platform for deliberation, joint research and capacity building on this topic. Central to this framework is the focus on understanding the role that power dynamics and culture play in environmental conflicts and their transformation. We discuss this framework and its practical use in the light of ongoing experiences with indigenous peoples in Latin America, where Grupo Confluencias has been developing conflict transformation processes that seek to impact on hegemonic powers, in order to reduce the asymmetries and injustices that give rise to environmental conflicts. We emphasize, in particular, both the need and efficacy to create impacts, simultaneously or not, in three different spheres: people and networks, institutions and cultural power. We show that, through strengthening the power of agency of vulnerable actors, it is possible to produce a change in favor of a greater social and environmental justice in indigenous peoples’ territories

Towards a Just Transformations Theory

As communities and peoples across the world struggle to challenge the forces ofinequality, exploitation and unsustainability, and achieve transformations towardsa more just world, it is important to understand the processes and dynamics ofsuch transformations. What motivates them, how are they achieved, what are thechallenges they face, and how are such challenges overcome?In this chapter, we share the results of the collective exercise carried out by theACKnowl-EJ project core-team members to synthesize the key learnings from theproject about how transformations to sustainability take place. This was combinedwith knowledge and understanding of other environmental justice initiatives thatteam members have been involved with in the past

Towards a Just Transformations Theory

As communities and peoples across the world struggle to challenge the forces ofinequality, exploitation and unsustainability, and achieve transformations towardsa more just world, it is important to understand the processes and dynamics ofsuch transformations. What motivates them, how are they achieved, what are thechallenges they face, and how are such challenges overcome?In this chapter, we share the results of the collective exercise carried out by theACKnowl-EJ project core-team members to synthesize the key learnings from theproject about how transformations to sustainability take place. This was combinedwith knowledge and understanding of other environmental justice initiatives thatteam members have been involved with in the past