Collaborative Natural Resource Management Research Articles

Optimizing sustainable development in arid river basins: A multi-objective approach to balancing water, energy, economy, carbon and ecology nexus

The ongoing water crisis poses significant threats to the socioeconomic sustainability and ecological security of arid and semi-arid river basins. Achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) within a complex socio-ecological nexus requires effective and balanced resource management. However, due to the intricate interactions between human societies and environmental systems, the tradeoffs and synergies of different SDGs remain unclear, posing a substantial challenge for collaborative management of natural resources. Here we introduce a gray fractional multi-objective optimization (GFMOP) model to balance multi-dimensional SDGs through a novel water–energy–economy–carbon–ecology nexus perspective. The model was applied to a typical arid river basin in Northwest China, where thirty-two scenarios were explored, considering factors such as shared socioeconomic pathways, carbon removal rates, water conveyance efficiencies, and ecological requirements. The results reveal a strong tradeoff between marginal benefit and carbon emission intensity, indicating that improving the economic efficiency of water use can simultaneously reduce emissions and protect the environment. Given the immense power generation potential, wind power development should be prioritized in the future, with its share in the energy structure projected to increase to 23.3% by 2060. Furthermore, promoting carbon capture technologies and expanding grassland coverage are recommended to achieve regional carbon neutrality, contributing 39.5% and 49.1% to carbon absorption during 2021–2060, respectively. Compared with traditional single-objective models, GFMOP demonstrates a superiority in uncovering interrelationships among multiple SDGs and identifying compromised alternatives within the compound socio-ecological nexus. The model also provides detailed strategies for resource allocation and pollutant control, offering valuable guidance to policymakers and stakeholders in pursuing sustainable and harmonious watershed management.

Forest Landowners and Advisor Relationships: Creating Collaborative Connections to Care Well for Forests

Northeastern U.S. forests are predominantly owned by people identifying as intrinsically linked to their land. Yet, with many privately-owned forests, management often occurs without the oversight of a trained forester. This disconnect is often due to landowners’ and foresters’ mismatched relational expectations within their interactions. Consequently, landowners turn to known others, less likely to have training in forestry, to share experience and knowledge situated in a connection forged by shared perspectives. To understand these communicative differences and landowner experiences, this study explored landowner-advisor interactions for elements that led to learning and collaborative connections. Interviews with landowners revealed their intense value for creating interpersonal relationships with advisors. These relationships were gateways to learning and action. Findings highlight the importance of intentional relationship cultivation as vital for natural resource management, detailing the value of peer networks and expansion of collaborative natural resource management discourse to the realm of private forests.

Dysfunctional information feedbacks cause the emergence of management panaceas in social-ecological systems: The case of fish stocking in inland recreational fisheries

Social-ecological systems are characterized by interconnections between social (e.g., angler communities) and ecological systems (e.g., fish populations in lakes and rivers). One means by which human actions feedback on ecosystems is through management actions, some of which are controversial due to the possible downsides for biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. In complex systems, sub-optimal management strategies may become entrenched. In such cases, leverage points must be identified to escape undesirable stable states. Based on a review of published and grey literature about the management practice of fish stocking in German inland recreational fisheries, we describe key pathways characterizing social-ecological interactions and resulting outcomes. The pathways we review suggest that missing or dysfunctional information feedbacks predispose privately governed fisheries-management systems typical of Germany to develop stocking as a panacea in operational management. Similar outcomes are likely in open access recreational fisheries. Three key feedback cycles reinforce each other to maintain stocking in the manager's toolbox. The first is that the lack of dedicated monitoring in many fisheries and ignorance of research results breaks a feedback signal from the management measure of stocking to the evaluation of outcomes. The lack of ability of those involved in stocking to conclusively learn when stocking works and when it fails to deliver additive effects reinforces personal norms by managers and anglers that stocking may be necessary to sustain fisheries. A related second feedback is that stocking may increase catch rates in the short-term, which increases angler expectations for catch and stocking as a safeguard of the catch, in turn fostering linear cause-and-effect mental models and the emergence of a pro-stocking social norm among anglers. A third key feedback is among hatchery operators and fisheries managers in fishing clubs, where hatchery operators are often key informants about stocking practices while concurrently having commercial interests to sell fish for stocking. This creates economic incentives that perpetuate stocking. The amount of resource investments by angler communities through stocking is additionally fostered and maintained by monetary resource availability, size and type of ecosystem that is managed and governance processes as well as political inertia. Thus, the maintenance of stocking as a panacea is intimately linked to a range of psychological, social, economic and governance drivers. We use our case study to illustrate how information-related feedback loops can trap natural resource management strategies into a suboptimal basin of attraction, and provide recommendations on leverage points to possibly break these loops. Collaborative active adaptive management of natural resources and reducing the temptation to rely on economic incentives by hatcheries may be needed to introduce possibilities for learning and thereby avoid the entrenchment of stocking and related activities as a panacea. The lessons learned around stocking are applicable to a range of social-ecological issues in recreation and planning whenever feedback flows of information are critical to direct management and when these flows are either distorted by disinformation, wrong incentives or not present at all. The study has several implications for fisheries and natural resource management:-Establishment of regular monitoring systems that are trusted by stakeholder can be recommended and is key to break dysfunctional information feedbacks and move social-ecological systems, such as recreational fisheries, on more sustainable trajectories.-Changing fish stocking under private fishing right systems can happen either through bottom-up approaches based on co-production of knowledge and using principles of adaptive management or from the top-down by implementing hard constraints on the possibility for self-organized stocking policies.-The former strategy will be more time-consuming and may fail in some situations, but is likely to create less conflicts and more durable outcomes from a social perspective.-Alternative to fish stocking, such as improvement of habitats or harvest constraints, should be considered whenever feasible. Establishment of regular monitoring systems that are trusted by stakeholder can be recommended and is key to break dysfunctional information feedbacks and move social-ecological systems, such as recreational fisheries, on more sustainable trajectories. Changing fish stocking under private fishing right systems can happen either through bottom-up approaches based on co-production of knowledge and using principles of adaptive management or from the top-down by implementing hard constraints on the possibility for self-organized stocking policies. The former strategy will be more time-consuming and may fail in some situations, but is likely to create less conflicts and more durable outcomes from a social perspective. Alternative to fish stocking, such as improvement of habitats or harvest constraints, should be considered whenever feasible.

Arapaima co-management through the lens of the Protected Areas Assets Framework

An extensive network of Protected Areas (PA) has been established across the Brazilian Amazon, but this PA system still suffers from a shortage of funding resources and environmental managers. New conservation strategies that successfully align social aspirations with biodiversity conservation are therefore imperative. Although approaches exist that demonstrate the value of biodiversity conservation for society and the local/national economy, these do not always manage to capture intrinsic values or local perspectives on natural resource conservation, and this can generate limitations in the use of these approaches as conservation tools. Here, we assessed the case of arapaima (Arapaima spp.) co-management, a well-consolidated community-based conservation initiative, through the lens of the Protected Areas Asset Framework (PAAF) to investigate the material and immaterial value of PA assets. Arapaima was clearly recognized as a key biophysical natural asset by local communities, with a significant role in terms of food, cultural, economic and conservation importance, in addition to its status as an iconic and emblematic species. This study reinforces the potential of the PAAF to identify the diverse range of values associated with PAs. Our results also encourage wider support to strengthen collaborative sustainable natural resource management programmes such as arapaima co-management, which is achieving remarkable social and ecological outcomes in rural Amazonia.

Local communities’ preferences and economic values for ecosystem services from Mole National Park in Ghana: A choice experiment approach

Mole National Park (MNP) is one of Ghana’s largest protected areas recognized for its contribution to the provision of different ecosystem services including habitat for several plant and animal species and ecotourism. The demand for forest ecosystem services by fringing communities around protected areas continue to increase, yet there is still limited information on local preferences and values for ecosystem services derived from these areas. A discrete choice experiment (DCE) survey was conducted in five fringing communities of MNP to understand difference in preferences and willingness to pay (WTP) for improvement in ecosystem services derived from MNP. Data were analyzed using a random parameter logit model for attributes including water quality, wildlife habitat, ecotourism and hunting access for subsistence use. The results show positive willingness to pay for change from low to high levels of improvement for all attributes except hunting access. Preferences and willingness to pay for improvement in water quality services and hunting access were homogenous across respondents. Stated WTP for improved ecosystem attributes was associated with the proposed program cost to households and demographic factors including education, age, and family size. On average, respondents were willing to pay an aggregated amount of GH₵ 14.95 (US$ 2.65) and GH₵ 8.18 (US$ 1.45) per household per month for higher and moderate levels of improvement in the four selected attributes (water quality, habitat for wildlife, hunting access and ecotourism) respectively. Overall, the findings demonstrate support for improvement in management outcomes for enhanced ecosystem services. Preferences and values for ecosystem attributes by fringing communities should therefore be considered in park management decisions to ensure efficient and sustainable collaborative natural resource management initiatives.

The Tapash Sustainable Forestry Collaborative

Collaborative planning is increasingly common in the context of natural resource management in the United States. However, there is no universal way to organize collaborative groups, and, subsequently, collaborative structures vary from collaborative group to collaborative group. In order to contribute to the growing knowledge base about the implications of different collaborative structures, we conducted a case study of the Tapash Sustainable Forestry Collaborative, a group located in Washington State that is focused on forest restoration. By analyzing interviews and archival data, we documented the organizational structure of the collaborative group and explored the outcomes of that structure in terms of trust and relationship. We illustrate how the structure of the Tapash Sustainable Forestry Collaborative led to both positive and negative outcomes and additionally describe the steps the group took to address the negative outcomes. Our findings will be useful for anyone considering how to structure their own collaborative group. It can also serve to as an example for scholars interested in the characteristics that support successful collaborative natural resource planning and management. Additionally, the case study provides readers with a background information about several content areas including public participation in forest plan and management, national-level legislation related to forest planning and management, trust and trust repair, adaptive governance, and adaptive management.

The role of local people for collaborative management of Korean village groves

Adaptive and collaborative natural resource management has been proposed as a means to navigate the social-ecological system dynamics of resilient systems. However, our understanding of how diverse stakeholders and local actors contribute to collaborative management processes and outcomes is limited, especially with regard to small-scale resource management. This study investigates the role of local people in Korean village grove restoration projects, focusing on bridging linkages and bridging organizations. From a network perspective, we analyze data collected from key informant interviews, document reviews, and field visits to four village groves, to identify key actors and actor groups and to examine their relationships in each restoration project. Along with the relational patterns of local people, the multiple functions of bridging organizations, including accessing critical resources, resolving conflict, enhancing mutual trust, and building local capacity, vary between the four villages. The findings provide insights into the potential of local civil society, through the bridging roles of village-based citizen organizations, to contribute to the emergence of collaborative and adaptive management networks and improved management outcomes.

“They’re Constantly Cycling Through”: Lessons about Turnover and Collaborative Forest Planning

AbstractWithin forest planning and management, collaboration has becoming increasingly widespread. Many collaborative projects take place over long time periods, and thus personnel turnover is inevitable within these groups. Scholars from the fields of business and organizational science have long studied strategies that organizations can use to prepare for and address turnover successfully. We draw from that literature and use it to examine the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP), a federal program aimed at bringing diverse stakeholders together to address the increasing costs, severity, and prevalence of wildfires in the United States. We conducted qualitative analysis of interviews, archival documents, and memos to explore what strategies are used within CFLRP groups to address turnover. We discuss our findings in light of the existing literature from business and organizational science and present insights about which strategies may be adaptable to collaborative natural resource management and which may require further research to assess their applicability to collaborative groups.

Constitutional Law, Ecosystems, and Indigenous Peoples in Colombia: Biocultural Rights and Legal Subjects

AbstractThe recognition of rivers and related ecosystems as legal persons or subjects is an emerging mechanism in transnational practice available to governments in seeking more effective and collaborative natural resource management, sometimes at the insistence of indigenous peoples. This approach is developing particularly quickly in Colombia, where legal rights for rivers and ecosystems are grasping onto, and evolving out of, constitutional human rights protections. This enables the development of a new type of constitutionalism of nature. Yet legal rights for rivers may obscure the rights of indigenous peoples and their role in resource ownership and governance. We argue that the Colombian river cases serve as a caution to courts and legislatures elsewhere to be mindful, in devising ecosystem rights, of the complex and interrelated rights, interests and tenures of indigenous peoples and local communities.

Hypothesis and Theory: Collaborative Governance, Natural Resource Management, and the Trust Environment

Many natural resources are managed collaboratively by government agencies and affected stakeholders. Collaborative management is intended to reduce conflict, facilitate learning, and increase consensus among stakeholders. Previous work highlights the role of trust in developing a shared understanding and theory of change for participants in collaborations, but defines trust broadly. The presented work builds on a framework outlining four dimensions of trust important for collaborative natural resource management and argues there is a need to consider not only multiple forms of trust but multiple trust referents. In particular, it is proposed that the effect of individual trust on collaborative outcomes depends on the overall trust environment; when group trust is low individual trust has a limited effect on collaborative outcomes compared to when group trust is high. Measures to examine the multiple dimensions of trust and the trust environment are proposed. Practical implications for considering trust across dimensions and multiple trust referents are discussed.

Social capital: An investment towards community resilience in the collaborative natural resources management of community-based tourism schemes

Community-based tourism projects appear to be the most favoured option for enhancing community livelihoods through the collaborative management of communal natural resources in land reformed areas in South Africa. A case study approach was adopted to establish the role of social capital in building community resilience through the management of common pool natural resources. Using the assemblages and systemic-resilience theories, this paper establishes which relationships between social capital and community resilience are best for pursuing successful community-based tourism schemes. Lessons were drawn from Somkhanda Community Game Reserve in the Gumbi community, KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. The paper identifies three main community resilience shocks: governance, financial and skills. It notes that strong social capital can promote the realisation of community resilience in communal natural resources management. It further points to the need for avoiding environmental romanticisation, as there is a need to focus on the complexities involved in managing communal natural resources in land reformed communities.

Application of intervention design concepts to project planning for collaborative adaptive management of natural resources

Beratan, K. K. 2020. Application of intervention design concepts to project planning for collaborative adaptive management of natural resources. Ecology and Society 25(1):11. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-11324-250111

Understanding the context of multifaceted collaborations for social-ecological sustainability: a methodology for cross-case analysis

There are limited approaches available that enable researchers and practitioners to conduct multiple case study comparisons of complex cases of collaboration in natural resource management and conservation. The absence of such tools is felt despite the fact that over the past several years a great deal of literature has reviewed the state of the science regarding collaboration. Much of this work is based on case studies of collaboration and highlights the importance of contextual variables, further complicating efforts to compare outcomes across case-study areas and the likely failure of approaches based on one size fits all generalizations. We expand on the standard overview of the field by identifying some of the challenges associated with managing complex systems with multiple resources, multiple stakeholder groups with diverse knowledges/understandings, and multiple objectives across multiple scales, i.e., multifaceted collaborative initiatives. We then elucidate how a realist methodology, within a critical realist framing, can support efforts to compare multiple case studies of such multifaceted initiatives. The methodology we propose considers the importance and impact of context for the origins, purpose, and success of multifaceted collaborative natural resource management and conservation initiatives in social-ecological systems.

Evaluating the Process and Outcomes of Collaborative Conservation: Tools, Techniques, and Strategies

Collaborative conservation has been touted as a viable option for addressing contentious natural resource stewardship issues in a way that represents the diverse voices impacted by, and involved in, conservation decisions. Engaging meaningfully in collaborative conservation involves overcoming a unique set of challenges while also realizing opportunities. In this special issue, we use the term collaborative conservation evaluation to encompass research and evaluation related to collaborative governance and collaborative natural resource management projects, programs, or decision-making processes that leverage a participatory approach, involve multiple stakeholders, and incorporate a range of contemporary evaluation approaches. Here, we provide a series of articles and tools intended to highlight different approaches to evaluation that utilize a variety of methodologies adapted for different contexts. We intend for these articles to spark further conversation and inspire future directions in evaluating collaborative conservation for researchers and practitioners.

An Indigenous-Led Approach for Regional Knowledge Partnerships in the Kimberley Region of Australia

Scientists, Indigenous peoples, and local communities are increasingly seeking to combine their expertise to support sustainable management of social-ecological systems for diverse values, from local to global scales. In this paper we present an Indigenous-led approach to enable multiple evidence-based research, monitoring, and evaluation of the health of ‘Saltwater Country.’ This highlights the need to ensure knowledge can be shared, used, and co-developed to care for coastal and marine social-ecological systems within and across the Kimberley region of north-western Australia in an ethical and equitable manner. Structured yet fluid knowledge networks need to be negotiated and supported to enable Indigenous communities to implement this approach, which also requires coordinated institutional support and resourcing to produce useable knowledge that is easily translated into programs of action. We here present a process for regional-scale collaboration between Indigenous and local knowledge systems, western science, and other knowledge systems for the purpose of collaborative natural and cultural resource management and sustainable Indigenous futures.

Practicing Collaborative Natural Resource Management with Federal Agencies: Keys to Success across Partnership Structures

Practicing Collaborative Natural Resource Management with Federal Agencies: Keys to Success across Partnership Structures

Civic Recreation: Outdoor Recreationists as Advocates, Stewards, and Managers of Natural Resources

Recently, groups representing the human-powered outdoor recreation community are playing an important role in natural resource management and conservation. Such civic recreation-recreation-based stewardship and advocacy aimed at preserving, creating, and restoring recreational resources-offers promise in an era of limited capacity on the part of land managers and efforts to promote innovative, participatory, and collaborative civic environmentalism. Despite this growing trend, little research has looked at these civic recreation organizations or their role in natural resource management. Drawing from a mixed-method research design combining an exploratory case study of local civic recreation organizations with survey research, this article aims to describe civic recreation in practice and explores how it fits into natural resource management of the twenty-first century. Specifically, the goal is to understand why, how, and to what end these organizations emerge and function. The findings reveal that civic recreation organizations often emerge as grassroots initiatives to either address a threat to access or implement the vision of an innovative leader who seeks to create a recreational resource. These organizations primarily focus on direct stewardship, collaboration with land managers, and innovative private-public partnerships for the purposes of preserving or creating recreational resources. Outcomes and benefits span environmental, community, and management domains, offering promise to an era of collaborative and community-based natural resource management.

A Comparative Analysis of Collaborative Environmental Management of Natural Resources in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Study of Cameroon and South Africa

In Africa, rural communities thrive on social capital and tend to have a number of commonalities that force them to share natural, physical and social resources. It has been a trend in sub-Saharan Africa to have either formal or informal collaborative management agreements to manage common pool resources (CPRs) to accommodate different actors and interests. This paper draws lessons from past and contemporary collaborative schemes in Cameroon and South Africa to enhance the practice and governance processes of natural resources in sub-Saharan Africa in order to promote sustainable development. Using research methods inspired by the tradition of participatory research to collect field-based data and complemented by reflections on previous and existing studies, the paper highlights the importance and benefits of participatory democracy as opposed to representational democracy in co-management of natural resources in rural spaces. It further discusses the need to redefine the roles of national and local governments, the youths and women in ensuring effective participation and the essence of unifying the judicial and culture. To guarantee sustainability of collaborative community-based natural resources, the paper emphasises the role and importance of youth and women empowerment. These issues have been discussed within the broader sustainability discourse.

Using the systemic-resilience thinking approach to enhance participatory collaborative management of natural resources in tribal communities: Toward inclusive land reform-led outdoor tourism

Community participation is at the heart of environmental governance as it facilitates and promotes a sense of ownership in a society's decision making and social development issues. This paper, using both primary and secondary data collected through methods inspired by participatory research, set out to discuss a methodological approach aimed at understanding how common pool natural resources are managed by multi-actors and stakeholders in a developing country context in an effort to promote inclusive land reform-led outdoor tourism. It combines two ‘soft-systems’ schools of thought, systemic thinking and resilience thinking, to analyse the effectiveness and efficiency of collaborative management of natural resources in tribal communities established through land reform processes in South Africa. It is argued in the paper that the two schools of thought can play key roles in identifying and informing the development of appropriate intervening measures and strategies that can contribute towards the adoption of effective and sustainable systems of community natural resource management and bring about more meaningful community development through community-based tourism. These observations have been made within the broader and contemporary arguments of sustainable environmental management and community development. Management implications•The systemic-resilience approach appears to be critical for increasing stakeholder participation in conservation endeavours aimed at outdoor recreational activities and tourism.•The intervention approach in complex tribal communities is key for establishing accommodations that will enable developing action plans to enhance stakeholder participation in co-managing common pool natural resources earmarked for community-based ecotourism.•The systemic-resilience approach promotes strong and genuine grassroot-grown community participation in environmental management decision making, thereby promoting stakeholder participation of interested actors in outdoor recreation and tourism.•Systemic-resilience facilitates the attainment of social capital elements which are key to the successful co-management of natural resources, i.e. participation, transparency, reciprocity and effective communication.

Collaborative stewardship in multifunctional landscapes: toward relational, pluralistic approaches

Cockburn, J., G. Cundill, S. Shackleton, M. Rouget, M. Zwinkels, S. Cornelius, L. Metcalfe, and D. van den Broeck. 2019. Collaborative stewardship in multifunctional landscapes: toward relational, pluralistic approaches. Ecology and Society 24(4):32. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-11085-240432