New rural dynamics and challenges in the Global South

Dealing with rural areas in the Global South must be a central concern of geographical development research in the 21st century. Major challenges for the global community, such as the unsolved energy and food questions, the migration of people and increasing natural hazards as a result of climate change processes, are fundamentally linked with rural areas. Most natural resources - biotic and abiotic - are located in the rural environment, which provides land for the production of energy, raw materials and foods, as well as for various constructions, communication lines and production units. The rural environment is also the main source area for people migrating to cities or abroad to improve their living conditions or ensure survival, and it is closely linked with processes of climate change both as an amplifying and mitigating factor and as susceptible to its effects. To underestimate the relevance of the rural in academia or politics is dangerous and irresponsible

First experiences with adaptive co-management in Para, Brazilian Amazon

Adaptive Co-Management (ACM) is an integrative approach for implementing sustainable forest management. An ACM team started working on ACM in Para State in year 2000. Its pilot activities in Para were carried out in three sites, each representing different realities of communities established in the Eastern Amazon region. The research focused on the concept of Collaborative Diagnostic Studies (CDS) as an opportunity to replace extenally-driven background studies, which are important for documentation and impact monitoring, with a collaborative evaluation of an expert-defined set of criteria and indicators for assessing sustainability (C&I). The defined set of C&I was structured in three categories: collaboration, adaptive management of natural resources and impacts/conditions. A variety of participatory methods were tested, described and evaluated in relation to their contribution to ACM. Pilot studies showed that CDS are not suitable as a substitute for background studies. Special efforts have to be undertaken so as to diminish the danger of external dominance and to ensure the participation of local actors. The pilot studies also confirmed the need for a systematic and well structured documentation of the complex and dynamic processes related to ACM. Due to the promising results obtained so far, it is recommended to focus ACM research in Brazil on work shared with local researcher teams and existing community projects

Adaptive collaborative management: criteria and indicators for assessing sustainability

Adaptive Collaborative Management (ACM) is an integrative approach for implementing sustainable management of natural resources, based on a main hypothesis, that is: if there is a high degree of collaboration between stakeholders combined with a high adaptiveness of management systems, the result will be a higher degree of human well being and ecological sustainability. A worldwide network under the umbrella of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) is engaged in researching the potential and methodological aspects related to ACM. Communication is fundamental for facilitating the collaboration between the stakeholders. To support this communication and to enable a transparent and efficient discussion about sustainable forest management by rural communities, we developed an ACM set of criteria and indicators (C&I), which is presented here