| 1. |
- Kehoe, Laura, et al.
(author)
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Make EU trade with Brazil sustainable
- 2019
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In: Science. - : American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). - 0036-8075 .- 1095-9203. ; 364:6438, s. 341-
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Journal article (other academic/artistic)
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| 2. |
- Mubai, Marlino Eugénio, et al.
(author)
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The sacred and climate change : Local perceptions from KaNyaka island in Mozambique
- 2023
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In: Climate Risk Management. - 2212-0963. ; 42
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Small islands are highly dependent on their natural endowments. Because of this dependency, they are more vulnerable to climate change. This paper builds on the assumption that a better understanding of the meaning of climate change in specific local contexts (from localized perspectives) opens up possibilities for climate change adaptations. Based on literature reviews, semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions and forum theatre performances, the paper provides various perceptions of climate change effects from KaNyaka Island in Mozambique. It endeavors to further build the case for the integration of everyday-life experiences and observations of environmental processes in developing collective responses to climate change. The study does so by looking at the way island inhabitants, who are particularly vulnerable to climate change, perceive this phenomenon. The paper argues that the KaNyaka residents are part of local ecologies in which physical and spiritual worlds are entangled in everyday life. It also avers that for a better understanding and response to the adverse effects of climate change on the island, scientists at large must approach local communities as co-producers of knowledge. This relational approach allows the incorporation of worldviews that have been key in sustaining enfolding relationships between people and local ecology. It concludes that this approach opens the possibility of adaptation to climate change as an embedded socio-environmental phenomenon.
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| 3. |
- Sonetti-González, Taís, et al.
(author)
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Foregrounding Amazonian women through decolonial and process-relational perspectives for transdisciplinary transformation
- 2023
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In: Ecosystems and People. - 2639-5908 .- 2639-5916. ; 19:1
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The vulnerability of the Amazon has widely increased with the COVID-19 global pandemic and with the dismantlement of environmental protection policies in Brazil during the Bolsonaro administration. By contrast, local initiatives focusing on sustainable production, conservation, enhancing local people’s quality of life, and supporting a more inclusive economy have emerged throughout the region and are building resilience in face of these disruptions. They represent seeds for transformation towards more sustainable trajectories from the ground up. In this context, women play a significant role, but their actions and voices are poorly understood, studied, or even considered. In this article, we use a novel approach to engage and highlight women’s experiences by connecting decolonial and process-relational perspectives. Decolonial and process-relational thinking are closely linked in many ways, including in that they embrace difference as a mode of experiencing social-ecological relations. One particular aspect of this link is the shared focus on liminal thinking or thinking from the borders, what we call ‘betweenness’. In our decolonial praxis, we highlight women’s perspectives on their particular and diverse ways of life in the Amazon as they confront diverse pressures. To this end, we collaborated with 39 women from Santarém and neighboring towns in western Pará through participant observation, semi-structured interviews and facilitated dialogues. We discuss their perspectives on regional transformation, particularly the expansion of large-scale agribusiness around rural communities, and their understanding and responses to these changes. We reflect on the mutual learning experience resulting from the transdisciplinary engagement between researchers and collaborators.
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| 4. |
- Ahlström, Hanna, et al.
(author)
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An Earth system law perspective on governing social-hydrological systems in the Anthropocene
- 2021
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In: Earth System Governance. - : Elsevier BV. - 2589-8116. ; 10
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The global hydrological cycle is characterized by complex interdependencies and self-regulating feedbacks that keep water in an ever-evolving state of flux at local, regional, and global levels. Increasingly, the scale of human impacts in the Anthropocene is altering the dynamics of this cycle, which presents additional challenges for water governance. Earth system law provides an important approach for addressing gaps in governance that arise from the mismatch between the global hydrological cycle and dispersed regulatory architecture across institutions and geographic regions. In this article, we articulate the potential for Earth system law to account for core hydrological problems that complicate water governance, including delay, redistribution, intertwinements, permanence, and scale. Through merging concepts from Earth system law with existing policy and legal principles, we frame an approach for addressing hydrological problems in the Anthropocene and strengthening institutional fit between established governance systems and the global hydrological cycle. We discuss how such an approach can be applied, and the challenges and implications for governing water as a cycle and complex social-hydrological system, both in research and practice.
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| 5. |
- Bodin, Örjan, et al.
(author)
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Improving network approaches to the study of complex social–ecological interdependencies
- 2019
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In: Nature Sustainability. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2398-9629. ; 2:7, s. 551-559
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Achieving effective, sustainable environmental governance requires a better understanding of the causes and consequences of the complex patterns of interdependencies connecting people and ecosystems within and across scales. Network approaches for conceptualizing and analysing these interdependencies offer one promising solution. Here, we present two advances we argue are needed to further this area of research: (i) a typology of causal assumptions explicating the causal aims of any given network-centric study of social–ecological interdependencies; (ii) unifying research design considerations that facilitate conceptualizing exactly what is interdependent, through what types of relationships and in relation to what kinds of environmental problems. The latter builds on the appreciation that many environmental problems draw from a set of core challenges that re-occur across contexts. We demonstrate how these advances combine into a comparative heuristic that facilitates leveraging case-specific findings of social–ecological interdependencies to generalizable, yet context-sensitive, theories based on explicit assumptions of causal relationships.
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| 6. |
- Burgos-Ayala, Aracely, et al.
(author)
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Mapping ecosystem services in Colombia : Analysis of synergies, trade-offs and bundles in environmental management
- 2024
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In: Ecosystem Services. - 2212-0416. ; 66
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Ecosystem services (ES) have gained significant attention in recent years from the global environmental initiatives that involve science and policy. Multiple scholars have analyzed how ES are integrated with environmental policies, plans, and strategic assessments. However, there is a lack of information on how countries translate these policies, plans and assessments into concrete environmental management actions that integrate an explicit ES approach. To help fill this gap, we analyze how the Colombian Regional Autonomous Corporations (CARs) have used the ES approach in their environmental management projects implemented between 2004 and 2015. This study aims to analyze the type and diversity of ES managed by the CARs, as well as the synergies, trade-offs, and bundles of ES prioritized by them. We used content analysis of the CARs reports and statistical analysis to explore whether CARs explicitly use the ES concept. Our results showed that provisioning, regulating, and cultural ES were similarly prioritized by the CARs, however, explicit mention of ES was limited. Regulating services showed remarkable potential for synergies, and there was a pattern of trade-offs between cultural and some regulating and provisioning services. We found three bundles of ES: Restoration and conservation of agrosystems, Mosaic of services and Farming and fibers occupying, respectively, 9, 36 and 55% of the total area of Colombia. Our findings show that multiple ES are targeted and affected by environmental management actions. The contribution of this study has the potential to inform adequately policy decisions to be used in environmental management and planning practices to prioritize areas for maximizing ES provision.
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| 7. |
- Garcia, Maria Mancilla
(author)
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Explicit Arguments, Hidden Biases : Uncovering the Role of Institutional Relationships in a Dispute Over Scientific Data in Lake Titicaca (Bolivia)
- 2016
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In: Society & Natural Resources. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0894-1920 .- 1521-0723. ; 29:9, s. 1110-1123
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The bay of Cohana, on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca (between Bolivia and Peru), has suffered from eutrophication for the last 30 years. Heavy metals from mining activities in the basin have also entered the bay. While data on eutrophication are abundant, data on mining are scarce and public interventions have focused on the former. However, one of these interventions has been criticized for not taking into account the links between eutrophication and heavy metals. This article argues that the arguments underpinning what at first sight appears to be a scientific controversy are intermingled with a competition for the institutional space. It calls attention to the impact that power struggles between public agencies have on scientific controversies, an aspect to which political ecology has not devoted sufficient attention. However, paying attention to these issues is crucial if we are to craft management systems that address conflicts between organizations.
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| 8. |
- García, María Mancilla, et al.
(author)
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Participatory Water Basin Councils in Peru and Brazil : Expert discourses as means and barriers to inclusion
- 2019
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In: Global Environmental Change. - : Elsevier BV. - 0959-3780 .- 1872-9495. ; 55, s. 139-148
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In the last twenty years, participatory forums have been increasingly used to manage water basins around the world. The implementation of participatory forums has sought to prevent and overcome conflicts by bringing together a multiplicity of stakeholders in joint efforts to deliberate, achieve mutually agreed upon decisions, and distribute limited water resources. Different literature streams have evaluated the benefits and challenges of participatory forums in practice, such as the difficulties some forums have had when confronting existing power structures. Separately, research on water governance has paid particular attention to the ways in which expert discourses are used by traditionally powerful actors to exclude less powerful others. This paper draws from the literatures on participation and discourses in environmental governance to empirically investigate how expert discourses may empower or disempower certain actors in four basin councils - two in Peru and two in Brazil. Through qualitative thematic analysis of 116 interviews and observation notes, we specifically investigate the extent to which expert discourses in these basin councils help empower previously excluded actors. Our findings indicate stakeholder interests that are not, or cannot, be expressed within the frame of expert discourses are often marginalized. This suggests participation has made it possible for some previously excluded actors to have a voice, yet their potential influence is seemingly confined to a restricted space beyond which their voices will have little effect.
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| 9. |
- Garcia, Maria Mancilla, et al.
(author)
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The unique role of municipalities in integrated watershed governance arrangements : a new research frontier
- 2019
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In: Ecology & Society. - 1708-3087. ; 24:1
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Local governments, or municipalities, play a key role in water governance around the world owing to the many administrative competencies they hold, ranging from water service delivery to urban planning. However, the ability of municipalities to carry out their competencies effectively depends in large part on the characteristics of the institutional arrangements in which they are embedded. In particular, the relationship between municipalities and watershed governance institutions has received little attention in the literature on polycentric and multilevel governance. Drawing on insights from diverse cases around the world, we argue that empirical research must pay closer attention to the links, or lack thereof, between municipalities and watershed governance institutions to improve the sustainability of water governance outcomes in practice. We identify a set of critical issues affecting municipalities' engagement in governance at the watershed scale that broadly apply across different contexts, and which we argue deserve more attention in future research: (1) disconnect and ambiguities of authority across hierarchical levels; (2) internal and external challenges to municipalities engaging in effective collaborations; (3) barriers to expanding the scope of traditional municipal affairs; and (4) misalignment of biophysical, institutional, and political timescales.
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| 10. |
- González-Mon, Blanca, 1993-, et al.
(author)
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The importance of cross-scale social relationships for dealing with social-ecological change in agricultural supply chains
- 2024
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In: Journal of Rural Studies. - 0743-0167 .- 1873-1392. ; 105
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Agricultural systems are important for the livelihoods and food security of millions of people. These systems are increasingly interconnected across scales and face challenges in responding to multiple, and coalescing types of environmental, social, and economic change. Most studies on how actors respond to change have focused on farmers and farming communities. In this study, we investigate the connectivity of farming systems to markets, to understand how social relationships across the supply chain influence how actors respond to multiple types of changes. We used a participatory network mapping method to interview actors across a fruit supply chain in the Western Cape, South Africa, that is connected to both global and national markets. We identified droughts, climatic variations, changes related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and other social shifts as the most important changes affecting the production and trade of fruit in this region. We also identified three types of responses to these changes: i) responses concerning the dynamics of trade relationships (e.g., changing or maintaining trade relationships); ii) responses based on changes at the individual level (e.g., changes in farm management); and iii) responses based on social relationships (categorized into four types, namely collaboration, knowledge transfer, financial assistance, and marketing coordination). Within these four types, we found that different types of social networks, that include actors operating at different scales and within and outside of supply chains, mediate responses to change. We also found that networks of collaboration, knowledge exchange and financial assistance show a positive correlation, where actors with an export orientation engage in multiple social relationships that enable responding to changes. However, we found limited participation of local market actors in most of these networks. Further investigating these social networks, and the actors participating in them, is essential to better understand and anticipate how and why agricultural systems respond to multiple types of changes, ultimately influencing their trajectory in an increasingly changing world.
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