Strategic Natural Resources Research Articles

Complementary use of voting methods and interactive utility analysis in participatory strategic forest planning: experiences gained from western Finland

This paper introduces the concept of complementary use of voting methods and interactive utility analysis (IUA) in strategic natural resource planning in western Finland as organized by Metsähallitus. The voting and IUA methods were used by three working groups, the aim in using these methods being to support the working groups in formulating their decision proposals for Metsähallitus. Ordinal preference information was collected by using the voting methods, whereas the IUA method defined the participants’ preferences by using the interval scale. In all the three working groups, four out of seven alternatives shared the first place in ranking when applying the voting methods, and one alternative was priorized over the other alternatives when using the IUA method. The stakeholders’ feedback indicated that the methods used were not too difficult to use and understand. The IUA method was especially efficient in promoting the participants’ learning process, which as a consequence made formulation of the decision proposal easier for them. It was also noticed that the standard versions of the voting methods do not necessarily fulfill the needs of decision support in strategic natural resource planning as such. Instead, complementary use with more profound methods (e.g., IUA) may be needed.

Introduction to special section: Recent Advances in Oceanography and Marine Meteorology of the Adriatic Sea

[1] Owing to its strategic location, rich fisheries and natural resources, the Adriatic Sea possesses a long history of scientific exploration (Cushman-Roisin et al. [2001] provides a comprehensive review). The two volumes of this Adriatic Sea special section contribute to this rich literature by collecting results from a recent period of intense research activity. During 2002–2003, the combined efforts of several large, multi-disciplinary international programs brought an exceptional array of observational and numerical resources to bear on contemporary questions in Adriatic research. Supported by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, NATO, the Croatian Ministry of Science and Technology and the Italian Ministry of the Environment and Ministry of Universities and Research, scientists from several countries pursued interrelated collaborative research programs. Broad-ranging studies included investigations of circulation at kilometer to basin scales, physical and biological response to bora wind forcing, sediment transport and mucilage formation. Extensive numerical efforts contributed to the success of many of these programs, providing interpretation and understanding and, in some cases, extensions into short-term forecasting.

El plan puebla panamá ¿la recolonización de América Latina?

Este artículo es la síntesis de la tesis doctoral del autor y en ella se analiza el Plan Puebla Panamá (PPP), desde la Geopolítica, escudriñando las principales teorías al respecto y confrontándolas con la realidad actual2 . Son cuatro capítulos dedicados a la Geopolítica en toda su dimensión, en los cuales se trata el tema a partir del siglo XIX y los intereses de las potencias de esa época por apoderarse de un territorio considerado estratégico para los intereses hegemónicos. Publicitado como una estrategia de desarrollo e integración que solucionaría los problemas de 64 millones de personas de la región Mesoamericana, el PPP no ha contado con los recursos económicos ni con el capital político para su ejecución y por lo tanto, no ha pasado de ser el discurso de un gobierno de seis años que terminará en 2006. La biodiversidad y los recursos naturales estratégicos de la región están en peligro porque la nueva arista de la geopolítica ya no apunta sólo al dominio territorial, sino a la explotación de los mismos en condiciones favorables al sistema capitalista. De allí la relación del PPP con otros planes estratégicos regionales actualmente en desarrollo que combinan lo económico con lo militar y que en el fondo, persiguen el mismo objetivo: el control y administración de los recursos para confirmar la existencia de un imperio sin competencias. Estados unidos de América, fieles a la idea del Destino Manifiesto y al fundamentalismo basado en la supuesta designación de la Divina Providencia para dar la libertad a los oprimidos y mantener la democracia, están dispuestos a cambiar el mapa mundial y a comprobar que la geopolítica tiene caras más amables que la conquista territorial.

Youth Cultures & the Fetishization of Violence in Nigeria

In this paper I develop a conceptual framework for analysing youth cultures of resistance and violence in the context of customary and world religions in which old and new gods are important sources of ideological resistance. Condensing around points of intersection between capital and non-capitalist kin-based economies, I argue that militant youth cultures develop through a ‘double’ articulation between ‘parent’ cultures largely producing use values, and capitalist cultures pervaded by world religions (Christianity, Islam). The former construe social relations between groups struggling to establish rights over strategic natural resources (land, oil, water) in terms of spirit beings and their protective powers against attack; the latter preside today over production for sale and profit according to impersonal market forces that dissolve the social into relationships between ‘things’, the products of labour exchanged in the market place.

The Impact of Tax Shocks and Oil Price Volatility on Risk - A Study of North Sea Oilfield Projects

We examine the impact of market volatility and increased fiscal take on risk in strategic natural resource projects. An increase in 2006 UK oilfield taxation is used as a natural experiment for assessing the impact of a fiscal increase on oilfield projects comprising 73% of UK reserves. Stochastic cash flow at risk models combine market volatility and tax-take at the oilfield level to extend earlier North Sea studies. We demonstrate that a 10% Secondary tax increase in a composite UKCS fiscal system with a-priori nonlinearity directly increases overall cost structures, resulting in a 14% decrease in project values, and significantly, a 67% risk increase for UK Oilfields. Risk effects are asymmetrical across the size varying sample, marginal prospects are most affected.

Environmental Technologies and International Trade

Environmental Technologies and International Trade Haroldo Mattos de Lemos (bio) Introduction Technology is critical to national development. And because the possibility of sustainable development is closely linked to the diffusion of environmental technologies to less developed countries, the market for such technologies is becoming increasingly relevant in the global economy. The purpose of this article is to explore, from the perspective of an environmental engineer, the relationships among economic development, environmental technologies and technology transfer by 1. outlining technology transfer's relationship to the development process; 2. defining and categorizing the technologies related to environ-mental protection; and 3. describing how international trade agreements expand and standardize environmental protection on a global basis. [End Page 56] The article's intended audience is scholars and practitioners interested in the role of environmental technologies in international trade. Hopefully, its insights will help create a context receptive to technological innovations indispensable for those countries seeking to reach new levels of development, and to international trade agreements designed to protect the environment. Technology and Its Importance in the Development Process technology and development Technology is information, knowledge, practical experience, and the ability to use equipment and processes in the production of needed goods and services (Working Group on Environmental Technology Transfer, 1991). Sustainable development has become a contemporary mantra because it supports multiple objectives, including economic growth and environmental protection, all of them desirable. Yet the possibility of achieving such a goal is closely linked to the diffusion of environmental technologies to less developed countries. The capacity to use, modify, retain, and constantly improve information and knowledge so as to produce goods and services more effectively depends on factors that are both explicit (e.g., factories, equipment, and infrastructure) and implicit (e.g., education, experience, training handbooks, organization structures, or management capacity; Wallender, 1979). Technology is in people's brains as well as in their machines. Technology is the most important factor in the development process. Whatever competitive advantages a country may have are less and less dependent on the availability of raw materials or cheap labor, and more and more on its ability to use new technologies and apply them to other productive processes (United Nations Centre for Trade and Development, 1990). Because new technologies are capital and knowledge intensive, it is easier for high-technology companies to raise funds and establish themselves in any country, with little regard to the availability of raw material or specialized labor in that region. The strategic importance of technology for national economic development guarantees that diffusion and adoption will occur by a range of methods, including legal purchase and licensing agreements, or illegal transfers (e.g., theft, forgery, copying, and smuggling) that do not respect intellectual property rights. Although these legal [End Page 57] and illegal methods apply to technology transfer in general, environmental technologies illustrate some unintended consequences of technology transfer in this area. the environmental impact of technologies: unanticipated consequences Technological choices determine the kind of impacts imposed over the environment and natural resources (United Nations Environment Programme [UNEP], 1988). Technologies may have great impacts—positive or negative—on a short-, medium-, or long-term basis. For example, refrigeration technology improved dramatically with the discovery of chlorofluo-rocarbons (CFCs) around 1930. Until then, the gas used for refrigeration was ammonia, which caused serious problems because of its strong smell, toxicity, and flammability. On the other hand, CFCs were odorless, colorless, nonpoisonous, nonflammable, and extremely stable in the lower atmosphere. Owing to these qualities, they were used not only in refrigerators, but also as propellants in perfumes and aerosol sprays. It was only after these compounds had been released into the atmosphere for over 40 years that we discovered their negative environmental impact—when subjected to ultraviolet radiation, they release chlorine atoms that destroy the earth's ozone layer, increasing the amount of ultraviolet radiation reaching the earth and causing a dramatic increase in skin cancers. Thus, our greatest continuing challenge is learning to use technology in ways that improve productivity without generating significant environmental problems or damaging the availability of strategic natural resources. issues in technology transfer and development Beyond the unexpected outcomes that can come from technology, even the movement and transfer of...

Impacts of Globalization, and the Circumpolar North in World Politics

One of the main themes of current international relations and geopolitics of the Circumpolar North is the relationship between the Arctic and the outside world. This relation has been shaped by the heightened strategic importance of the region, utilization of (and competition over) strategic natural resources, and impacts of global change and globalization upon the region. This paper investigates the character of this relationship over time and argues that, in addition to negative impacts (or side-effects) of globalization and climate change, positive developments also have emerged that make the Circumpolar North an interesting and relevant area in world politics. The latter include the growing geostrategic importance of the region, the scientific view of the North as a “laboratory for scientific research,” the diversity of nature and cultures found in circumpolar regions, the growing emphasis on innovations in governance and co-management, and finally the fact that the North might now be (or soon become) a model for good governance.

Socioecological landscape planning approach and multicriteria acceptability analysis in multiple-purpose forest management

In the socioecological landscape planning of natural resource management, sociocultural and ecological decision criteria are integrated with ‘traditional’ economic considerations in an analytic and systemic way. As the main phases, the approach involves (1) pinpointing the sites of foremost importance from the viewpoint of ecological and sociocultural management objectives; (2) elaborating different so-called ecological and sociocultural networks, the combinations of which determine alternative socioecological networks; (3) producing alternative timber production programmes for areas not included in different socioecological networks (resulting in different alternative management plans for the whole area under planning); (4) evaluating the relative worth of alternative plans with respect to each relevant objective; and, finally, (5) the holistic comparison of alternative management plans by applying multiple criteria decision aid methods. This article first discusses the principles and rationale of the approach. Then an illustrative application of the new planning approach is presented. In the application, recreational and ecological objectives were integrated into forest management planning of a landscape owned by the State. The criteria were measured on ordinal scale, and they were ranked according to their mutual importance. Stochastic multicriteria acceptability analysis with ordinal criteria (SMAA-O) was used in the holistic comparison of alternative landscape-level plans. The socioecological landscape planning approach was found practicable. The Finnish Forest and Park Service, governing the vast majority of State-owned lands in Finland, has already made the decision to apply the approach in strategic natural resource management.

Outranking methods as tools in strategic natural resources planning

Two outranking methods, ELECTRE III and PROMETHEE II, commonly used as decision-aid in various environmental problems, and their applications to decision support for natural resources management are presented. These methods represent ‘the European school’ of multi-criteria decision making (MCDM), as opposed to ‘the American school’, represented by, for instance, the AHP method. On the basis of a case study, outranking methods are compared to so far more usually applied techniques based on the ideas of multi attribute utility theory (MAUT). The outranking methods have been recommended for situations where there is a finite number of discrete alternatives to be chosen among. The number of decision criteria and decision makers may be large. An important advantage of outranking methods, when compared to decision support techniques most often applied in today’s natural resources management, is the ability to deal with ordinal and more or less descriptive information on the alternative plans to be evaluated. Furthermore, the uncertainty concerning the values of the criterion variables can be taken into account using fuzzy relations, determined by indifference and preference thresholds. The difficult interpretation of the results, on the other hand, is the main drawback of the outranking methods.

Industrialisation and the Sustainability of China’s Agriculture*

The paper argues that the sustainable development of Chinese agriculture is constrained by the continuing adverse effects of the policy of industrialisation. This has resulted principally in an excessive loss of capital from the agricultural to the industrial sector, a loss of strategic natural resources and infrastructure from agriculture and severe environmental degradation associated directly and indirectly with the development of industry. Quantitative links are established between changes in the growth of grain production and the progress of industrialisation in the pre and post reform eras. It is argued that a fundamental adjustment to the relationship between industry and agriculture is needed and that a more favourable socio-economic environment will be required if China is to develop a sustainable agricultural sector within the context of a national autarky objective in the grain sector.

Gezira Scheme between state and market: some remarks on the privatization of irrigation in Sudan

This paper is a study of so-called privatization of the great Sudanese Gezira Scheme, under the structural and budgetary problems of the country. Nothwithstanding the official declaration, in reality privatization affected the project just in nominal way. Indeed, two factors play against it: the resistance of the State, which wants to hold the management of the national strategic resources, and the resistance of the territory itself which — as autopoietic system — reacts against any attempt to change its own structure. The islamic renewal(tajdid) can be considered as a way to solve the dilemma between development and social consent, under these new conditions.