African community-based conservation: a systematic review of social and ecological outcomes

Community-based conservation (CBC) institutions are widely regarded as transformative bodies that benefit social and ecological processes in coupled social-ecological systems. Yet, limited empirical evidence for this claim exists, especially on the African continent where community-based conservancies (CBCs) are being rapidly adopted in diverse institutional forms across multiple countries. We provide the first large-scale systematic review of CBC outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa. We review the literature on CBCs and develop a conceptual model that illustrates the nested scales of interaction in which CBCs are embedded, the institutional processes ("conditions") reported as important for success, and the outcomes of CBCs on social and ecological systems. The mixed-method approach consists of inductive/deductive textual analysis of cases, geospatial visualization, descriptive statistics, and correlational analysis. Results indicate that more often than not, establishment of CBCs in Africa has led to negative or a mixture of positive and negative social outcomes, whereas ecological outcomes have been largely positive. The research conducted on CBC institutions has overwhelmingly focused on social outcomes, using qualitative methods. Monetary and nonmonetary incentives seem to be important but not sufficient on their own for positive outcomes. Devolution of rights to the local community is significantly associated with CBC outcomes but was not present in many cases, despite this feature being a hallmark of CBCs. A number of conditions were not reported in the cases reviewed, including leadership, social learning, consideration of cultural worldviews, and diverse partnerships. We provide indepth examples of the types and diversity of outcomes and contexts underpinning the presence or absence of societal processes, highlight important gaps in the existing research, and offer guidelines for research and evaluation moving forward

Grounding simulation models with qualitative case studies: Toward a holistic framework to make climate science usable for US public land management

Policies directing agencies and public land managers to incorporate climate change into management face several barriers. These stem, in part, from a disconnect between the information that is produced and the information needs of local resource managers. A disproportionate focus on the natural and physical sciences in climate vulnerability and adaptation assessment obscure understandings of complex social systems and the interactions and feedbacks in social-ecological systems. We use a qualitative case study of bison management on Department of the Interior-managed and tribal lands to explore how a social-science driven Determinants and Analogue Vulnerability Assessment (DAVA) can inform ecological response models, specifically simulation models that account for multiple drivers of change. First, we illustrate how a DAVA approach can help to: 1) identify key processes, entities, and interactions across scales; 2) document local impacts, indicators, and monitoring efforts of drought and climate; and 3) identify major tradeoffs and uncertainties. We then demonstrate how qualitative narratives can inform simulation models by: 1) prioritizing model components included in modeling efforts; 2) framing joint management and climate scenarios; and 3) parameterizing and evaluating model performance. We do this by presenting a conceptual joint agent-based/state-and-transition simulation modeling framework. Simulation models can represent multiple interacting variables and can identify surprising, emergent outcomes that might not be evident from qualitative analysis alone, and we argue that qualitative case studies can ground simulation models in local contexts and help make them more structurally realistic and useful. Together, these can provide a step toward developing actionable climate change adaptation strategies. Keywords: Social-ecological systems, Vulnerability, Adaptation, Social science, Ecological drought, Actionable scienc

Anatomy of an interrupted irrigation season: Micro-drought at the Wind River Indian Reservation

Drought is a complex phenomenon manifested through interactions between biophysical and social factors. At the Wind River Indian Reservation (WRIR) in west-central Wyoming, water shortages have become increasingly common since the turn of the 21st century. Here we discuss the 2015 water year as an exemplar year, which was characterized by wetter-than-normal conditions across the reservation and, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, remained drought-free throughout the year. Yet parts of the reservation experienced harmful water shortages, or “microdrought” conditions, during the growing season in 2015. In this assessment of the 2015 water year at the WRIR we: (1) describe the hydroclimatic and social processes under way that contributed to the 2015 water year micro-drought in the Little Wind Basin; (2) compare water availability conditions within and between other basins at the WRIR to illustrate how microdroughts can result from social and environmental features unique to local systems; and (3) describe how a collaborative project is supporting drought preparedness at the WRIR. We combine a social science assessment with an analysis of the hydroclimate to deconstruct how shortages manifest at the WRIR. We provide insights from this study to help guide drought assessments at local scales

Searching for Culture in "Cultural Capital": The Case for a Mixed Methods Approach to Production Facility Siting

Site selection modeling receives much attention in the aviation biofuels literature to ensure sustainability of the aviation biofuel supply chain. These models seek to reflect the multitude of factors and conditions necessary for supply chain success. Social factors impacting that success have received increasingly greater attention but are often excluded due to difficulties in obtaining accurate and standard measures. Some of the most promising work in this arena utilizes a "community capitals approach" to create statistically grounded decision support tools (DSTs) intended to provide rapid assessment of the social characteristics of potential facility locations. Despite the value of the community capitals approach, this methodology is still marked by inconsistent predictivity due to an inability to reliably assess the cultural and historical nuances of local communities that are so vitally important to the long-term viability of these costly projects. This paper more fully examines the Community Assets and Attributes Model (CAAM) that has been developed and applied in the Pacific Northwest to incorporate social assets in site selection modeling. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Colorado and Wyoming dealing with biomass/bioenergy facility siting, we argue that cultural capital, a key component of the CAAM, is biased to urban locations due to the measurements incorporated. As a result of this bias, current site selection modeling based on the Community Capitals Framework (CCF) does not accurately reflect rural community assets. We assert that the CAAM does not actually measure cultural capital but a product of cultural capital, namely creativity, and innovation Our mixed methods approach that combines quantitative assessment with ethnographic research highlights the limits of the CAAM by revealing that local residents in largely rural counties showed willingness to innovate in some cases but in others referred to history with similar industries that may limit support. The quantitative cultural capital measurements of the CAAM for the four counties we examine, which range in scores from -0.53 to 2, do not capture these dynamics. These scores would generally suggest moderate to high levels of support for biomass/bioenergy facilities, but the ethnographic research provides nuance for or against support that are not reflected in the quantitative capital scores. This suggests that the quantitative CAAM scores could be misleading without added qualitative context. This work demonstrates that a mixed methods approach, combining ethnographic and historical methodologies with existing quantitative community capital approaches, will produce a more effective predictive methodology for facility siting due to its heightened ability to gather critical data on place-based values, beliefs, and historical legacies relating to natural resource development in general, and the timber industry specifically

Expanding vulnerability assessment for public lands: The social complement to ecological approaches

In recent years, federal land management agencies in the United States have been tasked to consider climate change vulnerability and adaptation in their planning. Ecological vulnerability approaches have been the dominant framework, but these approaches have significant limitations for fully understanding vulnerability in complex social-ecological systems in and around multiple-use public lands. In this paper, we describe the context of United States federal public lands management with an emphasis on the Bureau of Land Management to highlight this unique decision-making context. We then assess the strengths and weaknesses of an ecological vulnerability approach for informing decision-making. Next, we review social vulnerability methods in the context of public lands to demonstrate what these approaches can contribute to our understanding of vulnerability, as well as their strengths and weaknesses. Finally, we suggest some key design principles for integrated social-ecological vulnerability assessments considering the context of public lands management, the limits of ecological vulnerability assessment, and existing approaches to social vulnerability assessment. We argue for the necessity of including social vulnerability in a more integrated social-ecological approach in order to better inform climate change adaptation

Anatomy of an interrupted irrigation season: Micro-drought at the Wind River Indian Reservation

Drought is a complex phenomenon manifested through interactions between biophysical and social factors. At the Wind River Indian Reservation (WRIR) in west-central Wyoming, water shortages have become increasingly common since the turn of the 21st century. Here we discuss the 2015 water year as an exemplar year, which was characterized by wetter-than-normal conditions across the reservation and, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, remained drought-free throughout the year. Yet parts of the reservation experienced harmful water shortages, or “micro-drought” conditions, during the growing season in 2015. In this assessment of the 2015 water year at the WRIR we: (1) describe the hydroclimatic and social processes under way that contributed to the 2015 water year micro-drought in the Little Wind Basin; (2) compare water availability conditions within and between other basins at the WRIR to illustrate how micro-droughts can result from social and environmental features unique to local systems; and (3) describe how a collaborative project is supporting drought preparedness at the WRIR. We combine a social science assessment with an analysis of the hydroclimate to deconstruct how shortages manifest at the WRIR. We provide insights from this study to help guide drought assessments at local scales. Keywords: Drought, Climate vulnerability, Drought preparedness, Indigenous adaptation, Co-productio

Searching for Culture in \u201cCultural Capital\u201d: The Case for a Mixed Methods Approach to Production Facility Siting

13-C-AJFF-WaSU-013This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Please cite this article as: Boglioli M, Mueller DW, Strauss S, Hoard S, Beeton TA and Budowle R (2022) Searching for Culture in \u201cCultural Capital\u201d: The Case for a Mixed Methods Approach to Production Facility Siting. Front. Energy Res. 9:772316. doi: 10.3389/fenrg.2021.772316Site selection modeling receives much attention in the aviation biofuels literature to ensure sustainability of the aviation biofuel supply chain. These models seek to reflect the multitude of factors and conditions necessary for supply chain success. Social factors impacting that success have received increasingly greater attention but are often excluded due to difficulties in obtaining accurate and standard measures. Some of the most promising work in this arena utilizes a \u201ccommunity capitals approach\u201d to create statistically grounded decision support tools (DSTs) intended to provide rapid assessment of the social characteristics of potential facility locations. Despite the value of the community capitals approach, this methodology is still marked by inconsistent predictivity due to an inability to reliably assess the cultural and historical nuances of local communities that are so vitally important to the long-term viability of these costly projects. This paper more fully examines the Community Assets and Attributes Model (CAAM) that has been developed and applied in the Pacific Northwest to incorporate social assets in site selection modeling. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Colorado and Wyoming dealing with biomass/bioenergy facility siting, we argue that cultural capital, a key component of the CAAM, is biased to urban locations due to the measurements incorporated. As a result of this bias, current site selection modeling based on the Community Capitals Framework (CCF) does not accurately reflect rural community assets. We assert that the CAAM does not actually measure cultural capital but a product of cultural capital, namely creativity, and innovation Our mixed methods approach that combines quantitative assessment with ethnographic research highlights the limits of the CAAM by revealing that local residents in largely rural counties showed willingness to innovate in some cases but in others referred to history with similar industries that may limit support. The quantitative cultural capital measurements of the CAAM for the four counties we examine, which range in scores from 120.53 to 2, do not capture these dynamics. These scores would generally suggest moderate to high levels of support for biomass/bioenergy facilities, but the ethnographic research provides nuance for or against support that are not reflected in the quantitative capital scores. This suggests that the quantitative CAAM scores could be misleading without added qualitative context. This work demonstrates that a mixed methods approach, combining ethnographic and historical methodologies with existing quantitative community capital approaches, will produce a more effective predictive methodology for facility siting due to its heightened ability to gather critical data on place-based values, beliefs, and historical legacies relating to natural resource development in general, and the timber industry specifically