Protecting Nature and Displacing People

We usually think that national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, and other areas reserved for the protection of nature are good things but the displacement effects of protected areas have made them highly controversial in many parts of the world. However, many environmental groups see an expanded protected areas system as central to the preservation of both biodiversity and the "charismatic megafauna" which are the basis of their funding drives. Based on a discussion of the historical roots of protected areas, the globalization of nature protection and local people in conservation, this article offers alternatives to the displacement of rural populations in the name of nature conservation.On se représente généralement les parcs naturels, les sanctuaires de vie sauvage et autres zones orientées vers la protection de la nature comme étant une bonne chose. Il s'avère cependant que l'impact sur le déplacement des populations du à ce type de zones protégées a fait de ces dernières des objets de virulentes controverses dans plusieurs régions du monde. Mais malgré tout, de nombreux groupes environnementaux considèrent qu'un système élargi de zones protégées est crucial pour la préservation de la biodiversité et de la "mégafaune charismatique", qui sont les deux motifs majeurs de leur financement. En s'appuyant sur une discussion des fondements historiques de la mise en place des zones protégées, et de la mise en commun des priorités de protection de la nature et de préseroation des populations locales, le présent article suggère des solutions alternatives au déplacement des populations rurales au nom de la Conservation de la Nature

Shrimp Farmers in Thailand Need to Be Involved in Regulating Their Industry

In Southern Thailand, certification efforts would be more effective if they worked with local residents, communities, and governments who are currently the most effective regulators of shrimp farming.York's Knowledge Mobilization Unit provides services and funding for faculty, graduate students, and community organizations seeking to maximize the impact of academic research and expertise on public policy, social programming, and professional practice. It is supported by SSHRC and CIHR grants, and by the Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation. [email protected] www.researchimpact.c

Assets and domestic units: methodological challenges for longitudinal studies of poverty dynamics

Tracking change in assets access and ownership in longitudinal research is difficult. Assets are rarely assigned to individuals. Their benefit and management are spread across domestic units which morph over time. We review the challenges of using assets to understand poverty dynamics, and tracking the domestic units that own and manage assets. Using case studies from longitudinal research we demonstrate that assets can afford useful insights into important change

New Directions in Environmental Governance in Southeast Asia

This work examines neoliberalizing changes in environmental governance and argues that the implications for local resource users cannot be simply read off of how these projects are designed, but need to be understood in relation to local actions as well

Ontological Politics and Conservation in Thailand: Communities Making Rivers and Fish Matter

The lens of ontological politics explains the persistence of conflicts between upland ethnic minorities such as Karen peoples and state forest conservation agencies in Thailand. As can be seen with Karen communities in areas managed as national parks, such as the Ngao River basin, the environmental management practices employed by state agencies and ethnic minority communities enact different ontologies of conservation. We argue that shifting the focus of conservation discourse from forests to inland fish could present opportunities for both recognition of and government support for community-based conservation. We demonstrate how state forest conservation agencies foreclose other ontologies, thus precluding community-based conservation. Such ontological dominance, however, is more contested in the case of state agencies with jurisdiction over inland waters. By examining river management and conservation in the Ngao River basin, we consider how these communities make visible the agency of fish and other aquatic life through their knowledges and practices. We argue that Ngao Karen communities have demonstrated that they can account for and conserve aquatic life in inland waters in ways that the Thai state has been unable to do, thus legitimising otherwise marginalised ontologies for 'resource' management and conservation throughout Thailand. Abstract in Thai: rb.gy/j0if

Assembling sustainable territories : space, subjects, objects, and expertise in seafood certification

The authors show how certification assembles ‘sustainable’ territories through a complex layering of regulatory authority in which both government and nongovernment entities claim rule-making authority, sometimes working together, sometimes in parallel, sometimes competitively. It is argued that territorialisation is accomplished not just through (re)defining bounded space, but more broadly through the assembling of four elements: space, subjects, objects, and expertise. Four case studies of sustainability certification in seafood are analyzed to show that ‘green gabbing’ is not necessarily the central dynamic in assembling sustainable territories, and that certification always involves state agencies in determining how the key elements that comprise it are defined. Whereas some state agencies have been suspicious of sustainability certification, others have embraced it or even used it to extend their sovereignty.The authors call for more nuanced understandings of sustainability certification as made up of multiple logics beyond the market.</p