One of the biggest meetings in Southeast Asia for managers, scientists and policymakers in biodiversity – The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Conference on Biodiversity – was held in Singapore from 21 to 23 October 2009. The main sponsors of the event were the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity and the National Parks Board of Singapore. The Southeast Asian region has one of the richest biodiversity resources in the world. Although it occupies just 3 per cent of the world’s total surface, 20 per cent of the all know species live in its mountains, jungles, rivers, lakes and seas. For example, its tropical forests harbor 10 per cent of the world’s floral diversity (Gitay et al., 2002). Three of the world’s 17 megadiverse countries are in the region, namely Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. Southeast Asia also has seven of the world’s 25 recognised biodiversity hotspots – areas that are known to be biologically rich areas but are under great threat of destruction. Biodiversity resources provide crucial goods and services for the people of the region and the world.
Tag: Decision-making
Resilience indicators
Resilience Diagnostic and Decision Support Tool Manual
Decision Analysis -Turkana County Case Study
Characterizing local adaptive capacity at various scales: A framework for adaptation planning
Agricultural intensification, deforestation and the environment: assessing tradeoffs in Sumatra, Indonesia
The conditions necessary for increased productivity of agroforestry and other land uses to jointly reduce poverty and deforestation are not well understood. The global Alternatives to Slash-and-Burn (ASB) Programme was founded to provide scientific insights and workable innovations for the simultaneous pursuit of precisely these two goals: poverty reduction and rain forest conservation in the tropics. This chapter summarizes results from study sites on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia, which were chosen to represent the lowland humid tropical forest zone in Asia for the global ASB project.
Towards improved natural resource management in African agriculture
This paper draws together lessons learned as to how governments and donors might stimulate necessary investment in improved natural resource management (NRM) in African agriculture. Policy interventions to support improved NRM are presented. These policy interventions are built on 5 points: investment, incentives, information, inputs, and institutions.
More than a meeting? The potential and limitations of invited multi-stakeholder spaces in the Brazilian and Peruvian Amazon
In the Amazon, invited multi-stakeholder forums (MSFs) have been organised by governments to engage civil society with policy and decision making. Given the unequal histories of access to resources in the region, in contexts where mainstream politics have failed to include local people and rights concerns in environmental decision-making, there is much optimism regarding the potential for collaboration in invited MSFs. Yet, questions remain on whether they are more than bureaucratic steps organised to legitimise pre-approved government decisions. The article presents comparative insight from interviews with 208 organisers, participants, and nonparticipant stakeholders to four invited MSFs that were legally required decision-making spaces for land and resource use planning in jurisdictions of the Brazilian and Peruvian Amazon. Although the same type of forum was selected in each country, research revealed different processes and outcomes based on how organisers framed their challenges and solutions. This impacted who was invited to participate, and under what terms, including the knowledge they were able to bring to the process. Examining their processes, the article examines challenges in the conception and implementation of forums and the possibility of refocusing MSF activities to better support the inclusion of civil society perspectives in policy and decision making.
Navigating power imbalances in landscape governance: a network and influence analysis in southern Zambia
Actors engaging in integrated landscape approaches to reconciling conservation and development represent multiple sectors and scales and actors with different powers, resource access, and influence on decision-making. Despite growing acknowledgement, limited evidence exists on the implications of power relations for landscape governance. Therefore, this paper asks why and how different forms of power unfold and affect the functioning of multi-stakeholder platforms in southern Zambia. Social network analysis and a power influence assessment reveal that all actors exercise some form of visible, hidden, or invisible power in different social spaces to influence decision-making or negotiate a new social order. The intersection of customary and state governance reveals that power imbalances are the product of actors’ social belongingness, situatedness, and settlement histories. We conclude that integrated landscape approaches are potentially suited to balance power by triggering new dynamic social spaces for different power holders to engage in landscape decision-making. However, a power analysis before implementing a landscape approach helps better recognise power differentials and create a basis for marginalised actors to participate in decision-making equally. The paper bears relevance beyond the case, as the methods used to unravel power dynamics in contested landscapes are applicable across the tropics where mixed statutory and customary governance arrangements prevail.
Farmer land-use decision-making from an instrumental and relational perspective
Farmer decisions shape land-use systems, with consequences for a landscape’s economy, ecology, and the well-being of its inhabitants. These decisions are central in the management of natural resources as they may contribute to the tragedy of the commons, or ways to avoid it. Farmer decisions have been explained by several concepts and theories, including sociodemographic factors, expected utility theory, prospect theory, bounded rationality, and the theory of planned behavior as variations on goal-oriented (instrumental) decision-making. This review provides an analysis of each theory, in comparison with Kemper’s theory on status, power, and reference groups as a primarily social relation lens through which to understand decision-making. Combining relational and instrumental perspectives on decision-making may be key to understanding the emergence of collective action and avoidance of tragedy of the commons.