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Confronting the Consequences of Climate Change

Tim R. McClanahan and Joshua E. Cinner

in Adapting to a Changing Environment: Confronting the Consequences of Climate Change

This chapter summarizes the tool box of options for confronting the consequences of climate change through building local-scale adaptive capacity in societies and improving the condition of the ... More

This chapter summarizes the tool box of options for confronting the consequences of climate change through building local-scale adaptive capacity in societies and improving the condition of the natural resources on which people depend for their livelihoods. Building adaptive capacity will require strengthening appropriate aspects of a society’s flexibility, assets, learning and social organizations. The ways of doing this are diverse and will, of course, depend on existing local capacities and needs. Improving the condition of resources tends to require restricting or limiting society’s actions. For coral reef fisheries, options include restricting specific fishing grounds, the time that people can fish, the gear they can use, and the species they can capture. These two broad concepts, of building social capacities and limiting certain types of resource use, interact in complicated ways. Consequently, there is often a need for coupled actions that simultaneously govern resource use and build capacity in society.Less

What Do We Need from Agriculture?

R. Ford Denison

in Darwinian Agriculture: How Understanding Evolution Can Improve Agriculture

This chapter considers some of the challenges that agriculture is facing now or will face in the near future, including resource-use efficiency and food security. It begins with a discussion of the ... More

This chapter considers some of the challenges that agriculture is facing now or will face in the near future, including resource-use efficiency and food security. It begins with a discussion of the goals of agriculture, such as improving productivity (yield per acre, to use no more land than necessary), efficiency in the use of scarce resources (to use no more water than necessary, for example), stability over years (to prevent even occasional famines), and sustainability (to maintain all of these benefits over the long term). It then examines the effects of agriculture on everyone, not just farmers, as well as agriculture's underlying long-term problems such as those relating to food supply, food production, and transportation. It also looks at threats to sustainability, particularly those farming practices that lead to long-term decreases in crop yield. Finally, it offers suggestions for limiting the negative environmental impact of agriculture.Less

What Won’t Work: Tradeof-Blind Biotechnology

R. Ford Denison

in Darwinian Agriculture: How Understanding Evolution Can Improve Agriculture

This chapter considers the challenge of improving crop resource-use efficiency using biotechnology or traditional plant breeding. It argues that some of biotechnology's stated goals, such as more ... More

This chapter considers the challenge of improving crop resource-use efficiency using biotechnology or traditional plant breeding. It argues that some of biotechnology's stated goals, such as more efficient use of water by crops, are unlikely to be achieved without tradeoffs. After providing an overview of crop genetic improvement via traditional plant breeding or biotechnology, the chapter discusses the importance of greater resource-use efficiency and increasing yield potential. It then explains how natural selection has improved the efficiency of photosynthesis as well as water-use efficiency and how tradeoffs limit biotechnology improvement of crop water use. It also assesses the potential of genetic engineering to improve nutrient-use efficiency and asserts that near-term benefits of biotechnology have been exaggerated. The chapter concludes with a review of biotechnology's possible benefits and risks.Less

Repaying Darwin’s Debt to Agriculture

R. Ford Denison

in Darwinian Agriculture: How Understanding Evolution Can Improve Agriculture

This book proposes new approaches to improving agriculture based on the principles of evolutionary biology and natural selection. It argues that two popular approaches to improving agriculture, ... More

This book proposes new approaches to improving agriculture based on the principles of evolutionary biology and natural selection. It argues that two popular approaches to improving agriculture, biotechnology and traditional plant breeding, have tended to ignore evolutionary tradeoffs—that is, cases where an evolutionary change that is positive in one context is negative in another—and that both of them would benefit from greater attention to evolution. Whether we focus on genetic improvement of crops or better management of agricultural ecosystems, the book emphasizes the need to identify (and sometimes accept) tradeoffs that constrained past evolution in order to find new solutions to agricultural problems. It also considers some of the challenges facing agriculture, such as resource-use efficiency and food security. This chapter provides an overview of the book.Less

The seven proposed analytical dimensions

Peter Knoepfel

in Public Policy Resources

This chapter proposes seven analytical dimensions for the academic analysis and practical management of public policy resources in the real world, which must include, first and foremost, an analysis ... More

This chapter proposes seven analytical dimensions for the academic analysis and practical management of public policy resources in the real world, which must include, first and foremost, an analysis of the strategic objectives of the actors that mobilize such resources and the objectives an actor pursues through the acquisition of rights of use to a set of resources. Only then should analysts move on to deal with the production and modalities of resource acquisition, the maintenance and modalities of resource use, the substitution and combination of resources, and the exchangeability and modalities of resource exchange. With regard to the latter, this chapter insists on the fact that resource exchanges are always structured in accordance with the principle of do ut des (“I give under the condition that you give me something”).Less

Concepts in Forest Property Rights

Anthony Scott

in The Evolution of Resource Property Rights

This brief chapter introduces the following chapters' discussion of property in the forest by surveying the six characteristics of any property right as they apply to the rights held by ... More

This brief chapter introduces the following chapters' discussion of property in the forest by surveying the six characteristics of any property right as they apply to the rights held by forest-resource holders. It prepares the following chapters' references to rights in multiple-owner and multiple-use forest resources. Less

Caste and Conservation

Madhav Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha

in This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India

Indian subcontinent experienced a major resource crunch between the fourth to tenth centuries of the Christian era. Caste society had developed an elaborate system of the diversified use of living ... More

Indian subcontinent experienced a major resource crunch between the fourth to tenth centuries of the Christian era. Caste society had developed an elaborate system of the diversified use of living resources that greatly decreased inter-caste competition, and frequently assured that a single caste group had monopoly over the use of any specific resource from a given locale. Different caste populations traditionally moderated or largely removed inter-caste competition through diversifications in resource use and territorial exclusion. The interpretation of the caste system as a form of ecological adaptation may be employed to show the two different paths by which conflicts between different modes of resource use are resolved: path of extermination and path of selective incorporation. The geographical diversity of the Indian subcontinent and the productivity of hilly and forested areas enabled the continuance of hunting-gathering and shifting agriculture in large expanses where the plough could not penetrate.Less

How and Why Population Matters: New Findings, New Issues

Nancy Birdsall and Steven W. Sinding

in Population Matters: Demographic Change, Economic Growth, and Poverty in the Developing World

This introductory chapter begins with a brief discussion on the effects of demographic change on economic growth in developing countries. It draws on the studies included in this volume to illustrate ... More

This introductory chapter begins with a brief discussion on the effects of demographic change on economic growth in developing countries. It draws on the studies included in this volume to illustrate the specific effects of demographic change: economic revisionism, population growth, fertility, poverty, family, and the use of natural resources. Finally, policy implications are discussed.Less

Forest and Fire

Madhav Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha

in This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India

Agricultural-pastoral people spread over the Indian subcontinent in many phases. Hunting-gathering, along with shifting cultivation, dominated all the moister tracts of this region. The pattern of ... More

Agricultural-pastoral people spread over the Indian subcontinent in many phases. Hunting-gathering, along with shifting cultivation, dominated all the moister tracts of this region. The pattern of resource use became grounded in a continual march of agriculture and pastoralism over territory held by food gatherers. The highest concentration of agricultural-pastoral populations was along the Gangetic plains. Buddhism and Jainism did not succeed in destroying the social hierarchy of Indian society then. The eight centuries from 500 bc to ad 300, which followed the colonization of the fertile lands of northern India, appear to have been characterized by the availability of large surpluses of agricultural production for activities outside food production. Elephant forests and hunting preserves brought in a new form of territorial control over living resources—control by the state. Protection to cattle has undoubtedly been significant in influencing the practices of mixed agriculture and animal husbandry, which are so characteristic of India.Less

Cultures in Conflict

Madhav Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha

in This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India

This chapter addresses the lessons that can be drawn from the two processes of eco-cultural change most extensively studied by historians—the European ‘miracle’ of successful industrialization and ... More

This chapter addresses the lessons that can be drawn from the two processes of eco-cultural change most extensively studied by historians—the European ‘miracle’ of successful industrialization and the imposition of Neo-Europes in the ‘New World’. While the British ruled India, they discouraged Indians from taking up resource-processing and transport on the basis of modern technology, and with access to fossil fuel and other modern energy sources. The on-going struggle between the peasant and industrial modes of resource use in India has come in two stages: colonial and postcolonial. The debate around the forest in India, and the environment debate more generally, are firmly rooted in questions of production and use. It is early to say whether these debates will lead in a new mode of resource use and a new belief system to hold the society together.Less

Introduction

Ting Xu and Alison Clarke

in Legal Strategies for the Development and Protection of Communal Property

This Introduction is divided into three sections. The first section sets out the context, significance and themes of this volume. The second section reviews the spread and potential reach of communal ... More

This Introduction is divided into three sections. The first section sets out the context, significance and themes of this volume. The second section reviews the spread and potential reach of communal property, exploring the eclectic mix of institutions, resources and patterns of resource use and management which can be brought under the ‘communal property’ banner. The third section emphasises the importance of examining the nature of communities and highlights the possibilities and challenges of vesting the power of governing communal resources in communities.Less

Competing Claims on the Commons

Madhav Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha

in This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India

This chapter reports a preliminary mapping of the conflicts over living resources in independent India. It starts by addressing the conflicts between the state and hunter-gatherers, shifting ... More

This chapter reports a preliminary mapping of the conflicts over living resources in independent India. It starts by addressing the conflicts between the state and hunter-gatherers, shifting cultivators, settled cultivators, and artisans. It then explores a conflict which is the consequence not of intensive forest use but its obverse. It refers to the massive network of wildlife sanctuaries, almost all of which have been established after 1947. The integration of tribals into a capitalist system of wage labour has generated its own set of conflicts. Despite successful struggles for wage increases, tribals continue to get only an infinitesimal share of the gains from commercial forestry. The pressures of demographic expansion and ecological decline have forced many forest-dependent communities to look for alternative modes of subsistence. With respect to both the hardware and software of forest resource use, the post-colonial period is marked by change and continuity.Less

“It Would Seem Necessary to Restrict Such People”

Tycho De Boer

in Nature, Business, and Community in North Carolina's Green Swamp

This chapter discusses the attempt to adopt the concept of conservation as a central tenet of land and resource use. This concept of conservation is broadly conceived as the sustained use and ... More

This chapter discusses the attempt to adopt the concept of conservation as a central tenet of land and resource use. This concept of conservation is broadly conceived as the sustained use and regeneration of natural resource through the efficient, scientific management of their protection, cultivation, and use. Environmental protection and regulation established conservation as an essentially economic proposition which was designed to establish game preserves and state parks for capitalist interests. Conservation therefore was not an environmentalist reproach of business, industry, or capitalism, rather it was a move to serve economic purposes. These conservation movements and programs showed neither an ecological appreciation for the ecosystem they affected nor the greater concern for communal solidarity. The conservation of forest and swamp through the purchase of these lands and the scientific management of these lands was a proposition devoid of sensitivity towards the complexity and diversity of natural and human community alike. Instead, these conservation movements reflected the endeavours of capitalists whose advocacy for capitalist conservation clashed with other local practices and beliefs, especially with those traditional methods of sustenance and land-clearing reform. The perceived need for resource conservation toward proper use in the face of intensified multiple uses and alleged abuses led to the legislation of laws and policies. These bodies of laws which local proponents and their allies advanced demonized traditional forest practices and restricted petty user's access to resources while diminishing the diversity of ecosystems and communities to legible and manageable grids of usefulness. Rather than achieving the progress they perceived, they inscribed their understanding of the local community on broader visions of environmental and economic development.Less

Ecology and Adaptive Radiation

Jonathan B. Losos

in Lizards in an Evolutionary Tree: Ecology and Adaptive Radiation of Anoles

Adaptive radiation is the evolutionary divergence of members of a clade to adapt to different ecological niches in a variety of ways. The theory of adaptive radiation in anoles suggests that this ... More

Adaptive radiation is the evolutionary divergence of members of a clade to adapt to different ecological niches in a variety of ways. The theory of adaptive radiation in anoles suggests that this diversity is the result of ecological interactions between initially similar species. Three predictions stem from this theory: (1) sympatric species interact ecologically, primarily by competing for resources; (2) as a result of these interactions, species alter their resource use; and (3) as a result of shifts in resource use, species evolve appropriate adaptations. This chapter documents evidence from anoles for the first two of these predictions, first reviewing the structure of anole communities and the ecological relationships among coexisting anole species. It then describes patterns of resource partitioning and niche complementarity in anoles, and finally discusses interspecific competition and different forms of anole interactions, including predation, parasitism, and mutualism.Less

Producer–Scrounger Models and Aspects of Natural Resource Use

Zoltán Barta

in Investors and Exploiters in Ecology and Economics: Principles and Applications

Humans are using natural resources at unprecedented rates, a situation that could lead to various global catastrophes. To mitigate eventual consequences, the processes involved must be better ... More

Humans are using natural resources at unprecedented rates, a situation that could lead to various global catastrophes. To mitigate eventual consequences, the processes involved must be better understood. Resource use frequently involves groups; thus free-riding behavior must be expected. Exploitation of others’ efforts can dramatically alter how resources are utilized. This chapter argues that exploitation of harvesting efforts can be analyzed as a producer–scrounger evolutionary game. The presence of scroungers (exploiters) in a group usually decreases overall use of resources by the group. Factors that increase the proportion of scroungers can further decrease resource use. By contrast, aggression and the compatibility of scrounger and producer strategies elevate resource use. Encouraging scrounging may lower resource use, but this raises a moral dilemma: individual scrounging is bad, reduced resource overuse by the population is good. The consequences of cheating in natural resource management demands attention in future research.Less

Sea Level Rise and Sustainability in Chesapeake Bay Coastal Archaeology

Leslie Reeder-Myers, Torben C. Rick, and Victor D. Thompson

Leslie Reeder-Myers, John A. Turck, and Torben C. Rick (eds)

in The Archaeology of Human-Environmental Dynamics on the North American Atlantic Coast

The productive woodlands, estuaries, and coastlines of the Middle Atlantic region of North America have been home to Native Americans from the Paleoindian period to the modern day. Inhabitants of ... More

The productive woodlands, estuaries, and coastlines of the Middle Atlantic region of North America have been home to Native Americans from the Paleoindian period to the modern day. Inhabitants of this region adapted to broad environmental changes, including the emergence of Chesapeake Bay when rising seas drowned the Susquehanna River valley around 8000 years ago. Estuarine conditions expanded throughout the Holocene, alongside the establishment of a rich and diverse forest environment. Much of the evidence for human harvesting of coastal resources has likely been obscured by sea level rise and modern development, but first appears around 5000 years BP. By the Middle Woodland (2500 to 1100 BP), people were harvesting oysters, clams, fish, and other bay resources as part of a broad foraging subsistence. When Europeans arrived, at least some of the people living around Chesapeake Bay were practicing agriculture while also harvesting oysters and other resources. Oyster harvesting was remarkably consistent and sustainable through time, with minimal impact on oyster populations or other environmental conditions. This long history of sustainable fishing practices in the face of persistent sea level rise and climate change suggests that reduced harvest pressure may be a key component to restoring modern Chesapeake ecosystems.Less

Shifting Paradigms in Conservation and Environmental Anthropology

Ben Campbell

in Living Between Juniper and Palm: Nature, Culture, and Power in the Himalayas

The chapter examines debates about the fragility of Himalayan ecology, and the theories that have been advanced to explain and remedy environmental degradation. It reviews accounts of the ... More

The chapter examines debates about the fragility of Himalayan ecology, and the theories that have been advanced to explain and remedy environmental degradation. It reviews accounts of the introduction of environmental protection in Nepal and the impact of regulations on local patterns of resource use, which have tended to make local people hostile to the institutions designed for nature protection. Phenomenological, discursive, and political–ecological developments in approaches to human–environmental relations are described that will be drawn upon in interpreting the ethnography of Tamang environmental relations.Less

Natural Resources in the Case Law of the International Court

Rosalyn Higgins

in International Law and Sustainable Development: Past Achievements and Future Challenges

This chapter is concerned with the work of the International Court of Justice, and of its predecessor, the Permanent Court, as it relates to the development of the law of natural resources. A review ... More

This chapter is concerned with the work of the International Court of Justice, and of its predecessor, the Permanent Court, as it relates to the development of the law of natural resources. A review of cases which have come before the International Court and its predecessor shows a change in focus from disputes about concessions and control of natural resources to disputes about sustainability and the limits of resources use. This development suggests the Court's continued importance in the evolution of general international law in this field, and in others.Less