The Sustainable Wildlife Management (SWM) Programme in Guyana is encouraging coordinated community-driven initiatives that support food security and traditional livelihoods. These will contribute to maintaining healthy fish and terrestrial wildlife populations. It is being implemented by the Guyana Wildlife Conservation and Management Commission in coordination with the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). The SWM Programme is the first international initiative to tackle the wild meat challenge by addressing both wildlife conservation and food security. Between 2018 and 2024, the SWM Programme implements field projects across 3 continents. The aim is to improve how wildlife hunting is regulated; increase the supply of sustainably produced meat products and farmed fish; strengthen the management capacities of indigenous and rural communities; reduce demand for wild meat, particularly in towns and cities. The SWM Programme is an Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States initiative, which is being funded by the European Union with co-funding from the French Global Environment Facility and the French Development Agency. The SWM Programme is being implemented by a dynamic consortium of partners which includes FAO, the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD), the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).
Tag: fisheries
Linking forest tenure rights to environmental impacts in forests, fisheries and rangelands
Debate over the effects of different property regimes on natural resource systems has long been controversial, incited by Hardin’s (Hardin 1968) thesis that common pool resources will inevitably suffer from overexploitation and degradation. A large, diverse, and rapidly growing body of literature has investigated the links between different property rights regimes and environmental outcomes and shown that common, government, and private property rights regimes are each capable of yielding sustainable environmental outcomes. However, the existing evidence base is highly fragmented. There also exists a large body of literature reviews assessing the evidence base, but these reviews have been limited in scope, focusing on specific resource systems and specific regime comparisons without examining the links between property rights regimes and environmental outcomes across these resource systems. Also, few studies compare impacts across geographical regions. This paper addresses this knowledge gap through a systematic review that assesses current knowledge of the impacts of property rights regimes on environmental outcomes in forests, fisheries, and rangelands in developing countries. We use a bundle of rights approach to assess environmental impacts across the three main property rights regimes-state, private, and community-as well as mixed property rights regimes that involve some combination of these three. This on going review makes several conclusions. First, community forestry is performing better than state forestry in Asia while communities are performing worse than the state in Africa and Latin America. While under Forestry and rangelands presence of any type of property rights arrangement is performing better than open access, under fisheries particularly in Latin America, state fishery yields similar environmental outcomes to open access situations
What are the environmental impacts of property rights regimes in forests, fisheries and rangelands?
Background
Property rights to natural resources comprise a major policy instrument in efforts to advance sustainable resource use and conservation. Debate over the relative effectiveness of different property rights regimes in reaching these goals remains controversial. A large, diverse, and rapidly growing body of literature investigates the links between property rights regimes and environmental outcomes, but has not synthesized theoretical and policy insights within specific resource systems and especially across resource systems.
Methods
We conducted a systematic review following CEE Guidelines in which we collected empirical evidence from the past two decades on the environmental impacts of property rights regimes in fisheries, forests and rangelands in developing countries. We used a bundle of rights approach to assess the impacts of state, private, and community property regimes, as well as mixed regimes and open access conditions. Outcomes were classified as positive, negative, neutral or undetermined. We also collected information on contextual and other factors thought to influence effect of property rights regimes on environmental outcomes. The search covered 90 online databases and three languages, resulting in a total of 34,984 screened titles.
Results
This review identified 103 articles consisting of 374 property regime studies: 55% of the studies related to forestry, 31% to fisheries, and 14% to rangelands. The majority of the studies comprised case–control studies but presented limited information on the baseline condition of the resource system. Only 26 studies used before-after-control-impact (BACI) design. We found that property regime comparisons differed across resource domains with, for example, the majority of fisheries studies using comparison to an open access situation while forest and rangeland studies were more mixed in regime comparisons. After critical appraisal of included studies, only 80 studies were accepted for the narrative synthesis. The key contextual factors largely associated with reported positive environmental outcomes across the three resource systems included monitoring and enforcement systems, resource use pressure, and the presence or absence of clear, stable and legitimate rights (i.e. ‘positive regime characteristics’).
Conclusions
A key overall finding was that the evidence base was insufficiently robust to draw consistent conclusions about the environmental impacts of different property rights regimes within or across resource systems. The majority of studies reported that any regime is likely to perform better than an open access regime, whereas the performance of state, community, private and mixed regimes was much more ambiguous. Future research on property rights regimes would benefit from more rigorous study designs and more cohesive multidisciplinary research methods. In particular, studies emphasizing a natural science approach could better describe property rights regime characteristics and contextual factors while contributions by teams with a stronger social science emphasis should take care to provide more rigorous empirical data on environmental outcomes.
Does the gender composition of forest and fishery management groups affect resource governance and conservation outcomes: a systematic map protocol
In the fields of environmental governance and biodiversity conservation, there is a growing awareness that gender has an influence on resource use and management. Several studies argue that empowering women in resource governance can lead to beneficial outcomes for resource sustainability and biodiversity conservation. Yet how robust is the evidence to support this claim? Here we focus on the forestry and fisheries sectors to answer the primary question: What is the evidence that the gender composition of forest and fishery management groups affects resource governance and conservation outcomes? Our objective is to produce a systematic map of the evidence highlighting, inter alia, the geographic distribution and quality of the evidence, the consistency and robustness of the findings, and where further research is needed.
Does the gender composition of forest and fishery management groups affect resource governance and conservation outcomes?: a systematic map
Background
Women often use natural resources differently than men yet frequently have minimal influence on how local resources are managed. An emerging hypothesis is that empowering more women in local resource decision-making may lead to better resource governance and conservation. Here we focus on the forestry and fisheries sectors to answer the question: What is the evidence that the gender composition of forest and fisheries management groups affects resource governance and conservation outcomes? We present a systematic map detailing the geographic and thematic extent of the evidence base and assessing the quality of the evidence, as per a published a priori protocol.
Methods
We screened 11,000+ English-language records in Scopus, CAB abstracts, AGRIS, AGRICOLA, Google Scholar, and Google. The websites of 24 international conservation and development organisations, references of included articles, and relevant systematic reviews were also searched for possible documents. A number of groups and individuals were invited to submit documents through email ‘call outs’. The inclusion criteria were that an article refers to women or gender, forests or fisheries, and a resource management group comparison in a non-OECD country plus Mexico and Chile.
Results
Seventeen studies met the inclusion criteria. Four were qualitative and 13 were quantitative. Forest studies outnumbered fisheries studies 14–3. The majority of the studies came from India and Nepal and focused on forest management. All 17 studies identified improvements in local natural resource governance, and three identified conservation improvements when women participated in the management of the resources. Only two studies, however, were rated as high quality based on study design.
Conclusions
For India and Nepal, there is strong and clear evidence of the importance of including women in forest management groups for better resource governance and conservation outcomes. Outside of India and Nepal, there are substantial gaps in the evidence base, but the South Asian evidence presents a compelling case for extending the research to other geographies to see if similar outcomes exist elsewhere and supports a theory of change linking the participation of women in forestry and fisheries management groups with better resource governance and conservation outcomes.
Toward Resilient Rivers: Insights from the Kafue, Magdalena and Atrato River Basins in Zambia and Colombia
Key messages
- Forests and fisheries are interconnected, and both are impacted by changes in land use within watersheds.
- Watershed functions are affected by climate, land-use change, overfishing, deforestation and forest degradation.
- Riparian communities value watersheds but lack political structures for effective integrated management.
- Community-based governance of natural resources within watersheds can protect ecosystem services and support livelihoods of riparian communities.
- Even where there is little data now, actions can be taken to enhance monitoring and management of watersheds.
Water and aquatic foods in revised principles of agroecology can accelerate food systems transformation
The interaction between climate change and agricultural intensification contributes to biodiversity loss, while widespread degradation of land and water undermine food system productivity. Agroecological principles aim to guide food systems transformation but rarely refer to water or aquatic foods, which are critical elements of nutritious, sustainable and equitable food systems. Here we examine the principles and frameworks presented in agroecological literature and suggest rephrasing of six of the principles to incorporate water, aquatic foods and land- to seascapes. We recommend three cross-sectoral actions that leverage aquatic features in agroecosystems to facilitate more effective transition pathways towards sustainable food systems.
Water and aquatic foods in the 13 agroecological principles
Agroecology is a holistic approach that aims to influence not just food production but food systems in their entirety. Water and aquatic foods are crucial for food security and nutrition and are key elements within agricultural and food systems. In 2019, the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS), High Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) on Food Security and Nutrition identified 13 agroecological principles, while in 2014 it had issued a report on sustainable fisheries and aquaculture for food security and nutrition. We bring perspectives from these two HLPE reports together, and bring them up to date, in this evidence note that explores the role of water and aquatic foods in the transformation of food systems through agroecology.
Wild animal attacks and other occupational risks perceived by Indigenous hunters and fishers in the Yangambi landscape
Hunting and fishing support diverse food systems in tropical forest areas, but carry serious occupational risks. Health and safety at work is important to human wellbeing and constitutes an element of Indigenous rights. This issue has received attention in the regulated sector, but needs additional focus in subsistence and informal economies. We draw on semi-structured interviews with Turumbo hunters and fishers in the Yangambi Biosphere Reserve region (DRC) to assess perceptions of occupational risk, especially attacks from wild animals. Fishers were concerned about drowning and cuts, while hunters cited bad weather and injuries from faulty equipment. There was gender-specific perception of risk from wild animals that reflected different roles: women noted snake bites and wasps, while men feared larger animals. Retaliatory behaviors among respondents included killing various species. The risks associated with fishing and hunting in tropical forests should be addressed in policies that consider the wellbeing of the poor.
Community-based monitoring, assessment and management of data-limited inland fish stocks in North Rupununi, Guyana
Inland fisheries are important for food security in communities around the world, especially in developing countries. In North Rupununi, Guyana, the state of exploited stocks is poorly understood, and fishery monitoring and assessment are challenging because diverse fishing gears and target species are distributed across a heterogeneous landscape. This complexity created an opportunity for community-based monitoring (CBM) to support data-limited assessment. Standardised CBM was established for the North Rupununi as part of a new inland fisheries management plan initiated by indigenous community groups with support from the government. Quantitative length-based assessments undertaken for target stocks suggested moderate levels of exploitation consistent with local perception. Our study highlights that local experts and community participants with different levels of training can collect accurate biodiversity data. Further development of CBM is important in North Rupununi. We recommend using local ecological knowledge indicators to track spatial and temporal patterns in exploitation and fish stock status.