Developing an interdisciplinary and cross‐sectoral community of practice in the domain of forests and livelihoods

Although significant resources are being spent researching and fostering the relationship between forests and livelihoods to promote mutually beneficial outcomes, critical gaps in understanding persist. A core reason for such gaps is that researchers, practitioners, and policy makers lack the structured space to interact and collaborate, which is essential for effective, interdisciplinary research, practice, and evaluation. Thus, scientific findings, policy recommendations, and measured outcomes have not always been synthesized into deep, systemic understanding; learning from practice and implementation does not easily find its way into scientific analyses, and science often fails to influence policy. Communities of practice (CofPs) are dynamic sociocultural systems that bring people together to share and create knowledge around a common topic of interest. They offer participants a space and structure within which to develop new, systemic approaches to multidimensional problems on a common theme. Uniquely informed by a systems‐thinking perspective and drawing from the scientific and gray literatures and in‐depth interviews with representatives of established CofPs in the natural resource management and development domain, we argue that a well‐designed and adequately funded CofP can facilitate interdisciplinary and cross‐sectoral relationships and knowledge exchange. Well‐designed CofPs integrate a set of core features and processes to enhance individual, collective, and domain outcomes; they set out an initial but evolving purpose, encourage diverse leadership, and promote collective‐identity development. Funding facilitates effective communication strategies (e.g., in person meetings). We urge our colleagues across sectors and disciplines to take advantage of CofPs to advance the domain of forests and livelihoods.El Desarrollo de una Comunidad de Práctica Interdisciplinaria y Trans‐Sectorial bajo el Dominio de los Bosques y los Medios de SubsistenciaResumenAunque se gastan recursos importantes en la investigación y el fomento de la relación entre los bosques y los medios de subsistencia para promover resultados mutuamente beneficiosos, aún existen vacíos críticos en el entendimiento. Una razón nuclear de dichos vacíos es que los investigadores, practicantes y legisladores carecen de espacio para interactuar y colaborar, lo cual es esencial para que la investigación, la práctica y la evaluación sean efectivas e interdisciplinarias. Por esto, los hallazgos científicos, las recomendaciones políticas y los resultados medidos no siempre se han sintetizado en un entendimiento profundo y sistémico; aprender a partir de la práctica y la implementación no encuentra fácilmente su camino dentro de los análisis científicos, y la ciencia comúnmente falla en influenciar a la política. Las comunidades de práctica (CofPs, en inglés) son sistemas socioculturales dinámicas que juntan a las personas para compartir y crear conocimiento en torno a un tema de interés común. Ofrecen a los participantes un espacio y una estructura dentro de la cual pueden desarrollar estrategias novedosas y sistémicas para problemas multidimensionales de un tema común. Informados de manera única por una perspectiva de pensamiento de sistemas y partiendo de la literatura científica y gris y entrevistas profundas con representativos de CofP establecidas bajo el dominio de desarrollo y manejo de recursos, argumentamos que una CofPs bien diseñada y propiamente financiada puede facilitar las relaciones trans‐sectoriales e interdisciplinarias y el intercambio del conocimiento. Las CofPs bien diseñadas integran un conjunto de características y procesos nucleares que aumentan los resultados individuales, colectivos y del dominio; exponen un propósito inicial pero cambiante, promueven el liderazgo diverso, y fomentan el desarrollo de la identidad colectiva. El financiamiento facilita las estrategias efectivas de comunicación (p. ej.: en reuniones de personas). Instamos a nuestros colegas en todos los sectores y disciplinas a sacar provecho de las CofPs para avanzar en el dominio de los bosques y los medios de subsistencia.Article impact statement: Developing a community of practice with a systems lens can drive collaboration and close knowledge gaps in the forest and livelihoods field.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141155/1/cobi12982.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141155/2/cobi12982_am.pd

Forest-linked livelihoods in a globalized world.

Forests have re-taken centre stage in global conversations about sustainability, climate and biodiversity. Here, we use a horizon scanning approach to identify five large-scale trends that are likely to have substantial medium- and long-term effects on forests and forest livelihoods: forest megadisturbances; changing rural demographics; the rise of the middle-class in low- and middle-income countries; increased availability, access and use of digital technologies; and large-scale infrastructure development. These trends represent human and environmental processes that are exceptionally large in geographical extent and magnitude, and difficult to reverse. They are creating new agricultural and urban frontiers, changing existing rural landscapes and practices, opening spaces for novel conservation priorities and facilitating an unprecedented development of monitoring and evaluation platforms that can be used by local communities, civil society organizations, governments and international donors. Understanding these larger-scale dynamics is key to support not only the critical role of forests in meeting livelihood aspirations locally, but also a range of other sustainability challenges more globally. We argue that a better understanding of these trends and the identification of levers for change requires that the research community not only continue to build on case studies that have dominated research efforts so far, but place a greater emphasis on causality and causal mechanisms, and generate a deeper understanding of how local, national and international geographical scales interact.This work was funded by the UK’s Department for International Development (grant number 203516-102) and governed by the University of Michigan’s Institutional Review Board (HUM00092191). JAO acknowledges the 520 support of a European Union FP7 Marie Curie international outgoing fellowship (FORCONEPAL). LVR was funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (Grant agreement No. 853222 FORESTDIET). AJB acknowledges the support of an Australian Research Council Australia Laureate Fellowship (grant number 525 FL160100072). LBF acknowledges support from the European Union Marie Curie global fellowship (CONRICONF). PM was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant agreement No 677140 MIDLAND)

Natural Resource Use in a Forest-Adjacent Village in Western Uganda: Attitudes, Behaviors and the Links in Between.

Natural resource management programs often document attitudes; they are seen as predictors of actual resource use behavior. I critique this assumption and test several predictions about how demography, knowledge and use-value of a resource correlate with attitudes and behavior in a village in western Uganda. Primarily farmers, these villagers rely on locally-extracted water and wood for daily subsistence. I ask: what are the costs and benefits of using the forest for resources, versus collecting in non-forest areas, and how are these costs and benefits reflected in people’s attitudes, knowledge, self-reported use, and actual observed use of firewood and water? I conducted semi-structured interviews (n=201) and found that the majority of villagers perceived the forest as “very important” and expressed both need and worry for it. When I observed women, the primary household resource users (n=69), I found that they used the forest minimally. While there are demographic and socioeconomic correlations with expressed attitudes, there are very few correlations with actual behavior. I argue that, independent of each other, attitudes and behaviors are influenced by a third set of variables: historical governance patterns and institutions, and changes in these. Governance has vacillated between centralization and decentralization, and villagers have received conflicting and confusing information about what resources to use and how. People are allowed to enter the forest (Kasokwa Central Forest Reserve) to collect resources, but they are also encouraged, by multiple government and non-government information outlets, to grow and use their own trees for firewood. Today, villagers are fairly knowledgeable about how they should feel about the forest and its resources, but they are quite unsure about their actual ability to access and use the forest resources. Some even fear harassment from entering the forest. While I recognize the importance of attitudinal surveys as one method to measure perceived value and usage, and behavioral observations as one method to empirically measure resource consumption, we need to explore both historic and contemporary institutions as fundamental influences on the formation of attitudes and behavior.Ph.D.Natural Resources and EnvironmentUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/63778/1/watkinsc_1.pd

Understanding the Mechanisms of Collective Decision Making in Ecological Restoration: An Agent-Based Model of Actors and Organizations

Ecological restoration, particularly in urban contexts, is a complex collective decision-making process that involves a diversity of stakeholders and experts, each with their own perceptions and preferences about what landscapes should and can look like, how to get them to the desired state, and on what timeline. We investigate how structural and behavioral factors may influence collective decision making in the context of ecological restoration, with the purpose of establishing general relationships between management styles (defined by structural and behavioral factors of the organization) and decision outcomes. Informed by existing literature on collective decision making and by empirical data from the Chicago Wilderness region, we present a stylized agent-based model that maps out and simulates the processes by which individuals within restoration organizations communicate, discuss, and ultimately make a decision. Our study examines how structural and behavioral characteristics - including: (a) the number of actors and groups involved in decision making, (b) the frequency and type of interactions among actors, (c) the initial setup of positions and respect, (d) outside information, and (e) entrenchment and cost of dissent - lead to or prohibit group convergence in terms of collective position, variation in position across actors, and final decision strategies. We found that formal meetings and group leaders are important facilitators of convergence, especially when multiple groups are present, new information is introduced in the process, and participants are polarized around an issue. Also, intergroup interactions are particularly important for overall convergence. Position entrenchment slows the convergence process and increases the need for decision strategies involving outside intervention. Cost of dissent can reinforce these effects. Our study formalizes collective decision-making processes within the context of ecological restoration, establishes generalizable relationships between these processes and decision outcomes, and provides a foundation for further empirical and modeling research

Shared Principles of Restoration Practice in the Chicago Wilderness Region

We describe the rules, norms, and strategies (institutional statements) that characterize ecological restoration across 10 organizations in the Chicago Wilderness region. Our use of Ostrom’s IAD ADICO grammar tool is novel in both context (non-extractive resource management) and data type (qualitative interviews). Results suggest that, in contrast to a focus on rules in the literature, restoration is overwhelmingly guided by strategies (institutional statements void of tangible or emotional sanctions). Moreover, a small, but critical set of norms exist. From over 1,700 institutional statements extracted, we found a suite of rich principles that guide behavior in all of the organizations: (1) qualify, don’t quantify; (2) listen to the land; (3) practice follow-up; (4) do no harm; (5) respond to sanctions from the land; (6) balance diverse internal stakeholders; and (7) balance diverse external factors. These principles suggest that Chicago Wilderness restorationists have a strong shared understanding upon which collective action and adaptive management occurs