Ismael Vaccaro

Consuming space, nature and culture: patrimonial discussions in the hyper-modern era.

Abstract This paper reflects on what is called the process of ‘patrimonialization’ of culture and nature currently taking place in the Western mountainous inlands of the Spanish Eastern Pyrenees. Landscapes, as cultural and historical formations, are presently being commodified and connected to global networks of consumption dominated by urban and ‘postmaterialistic’ values. Conservation policies, ski resorts and cultural museums are mushrooming in previously ‘abandoned’ agricultural fields or vacated factories. This shift from agriculture, ranching and industry, to conservation and services marks the connection of the Pyrenean valleys to global modernity and to the hyper-modern era. These processes of transformation have been depicted generally as structural processes of unilateral redefinition of the urban–rural divide: redefinition that results in direct urban appropriation. Rural populations, however, are far from passive subjects of external influences. The analysis of local agency suggests a more complicated picture in which local economic and cultural choices are included as explanatory variables. The story of the connection of these spaces to regional and global networks is not only a story about local dispossession, but also about local ingenuity. The globalization of the economy in the early 1970s disempowered and relegated these areas to the periphery of the economic system. The consolidation of a global modernity articulated around the need to provide leisure has opened a venue for these areas to reconnect themselves to the central networks and to attract large amounts of resources from these urban-dominated economic systems.

Integrating Landscapes that have Experienced Rural Depopulation and Ecological Homogenization into Tropical Conservation Planning

If current trends of declining fertility rates and increasing abandonment of rural land as a result of urbanization continue, this will signal a globally significant transformation with important consequences for policy makers interested in conservation planning. This transformation is presently evident in a number of countries and projections suggest it may occur in the future in many developing countries. We use rates of population growth and urbanization to project population trends in rural areas for 25 example countries. Our projections indicate a general decline in population density that has either occurred already (e.g., Mexico) or may occur in the future if current trends continue (e.g., Uganda). Using both temperate and tropical examples we present evidence that this process will lead to ecological homogenization as a dominant habitat (e.g., forest replaces a mosaic of human-maintained landscapes), resulting in declines in biodiversity at the local scale. Building on this information, we consider research programs that need to be conducted so that policy makers are prepared to effectively manage depopulated rural areas.

Can Perceptions of Environmental and Climate Change in Island Communities Assist in Adaptation Planning Locally

Abstract Local perceptions of environmental and climate change, as well as associated adaptations made by local populations, are fundamental for designing comprehensive and inclusive mitigation and adaptation plans both locally and nationally. In this paper, we analyze people’s perceptions of environmental and climate-related transformations in communities across the Western Solomon Islands through ethnographic and geospatial methods. Specifically, we documented people’s observed changes over the past decades across various environmental domains, and for each change, we asked respondents to identify the causes, timing, and people’s adaptive responses. We also incorporated this information into a geographical information system database to produce broad-scale base maps of local perceptions of environmental change. Results suggest that people detected changes that tended to be acute (e.g., water clarity, logging intensity, and agricultural diseases). We inferred from these results that most local observations of and adaptations to change were related to parts of environment/ecosystem that are most directly or indirectly related to harvesting strategies. On the other hand, people were less aware of slower insidious/chronic changes identified by scientific studies. For the Solomon Islands and similar contexts in the insular tropics, a broader anticipatory adaptation planning strategy to climate change should include a mix of local scientific studies and local observations of ongoing ecological changes.

Livestock versus "Wild Beasts": Contradictions in the Natural Patrimonialization of the Pyrenees

ABSTRACT. The Pyrenees are becoming an environmental reservoir. The acute human depopulation experienced during the twentieth century and the progressive appropriation of large parts of the mountainous territory by the state in order to implement conservation policies have resulted in the return, via reintroduction or natural regeneration, of bears, wolves, beavers, river otters, marmots, mouflon, feral goats, and deer, among other species. This development, however, has not occurred without social and scientific controversy and leads to questions about territorialization and governmentality. Herders perceive wild animals as unregulated public property subsidized by the work of the local populace. Agriculturalists see their fields trespassed on a daily basis by animals they cannot kill because of their protected status. Ranchers, under extremely strict sanitation regulations, see their animals coming into contact with these unchecked wild populations. The work and living space of the mountain communities has fallen under the jurisdiction of external institutions and constituencies that value conservation and ecotourism above local subsistence.

Changing Ruralities: Between Abandonment and Redefinition in the Catalan Pyrenees

In this article we discuss the process by which the upper areas of the Alt Urgell, in Northern Spain, are redefining themselves in order to survive in the new postindustrial order. These communities, during the twentieth century, witnessed a steady demographic and economic collapse that resulted in a progressive decline of agricultural activities and the abandonment of mid-mountain villages. In the sixties, the area deepened its milk production specialisation that offered, for a while, a path towards economic sustainability via connections to national networks of consumption. This solution was severed by the entry of Spain into the European Union. The new European regulations obliterated the industrial production of milk and disconnected the area, once again, from national markets. The early nineties saw these valleys fully engage in a postindustrial economy based on leisure and heritage. This case study allows us to examine how macroeconomic changes that affect rural communities in the Western world redefine the ways in which rural areas engage with larger economic frameworks that, at the end of the day, redefine their identities even as they ensure their viability.

Marine resource management and conservation in the Anthropocene

Because the Anthropocene by definition is an epoch during which environmental change is largely anthropogenic and driven by social, economic, psychological and political forces, environmental social scientists can effectively analyse human behaviour and knowledge systems in this context. In this subject review, we summarize key ways in which the environmental social sciences can better inform fisheries management policy and practice and marine conservation in the Anthropocene. We argue that environmental social scientists are particularly well positioned to synergize research to fill the gaps between: (1) local behaviours/needs/worldviews and marine resource management and biological conservation concerns; and (2) large-scale drivers of planetary environmental change (globalization, affluence, technological change, etc.) and local cognitive, socioeconomic, cultural and historical processes that shape human behaviour in the marine environment. To illustrate this, we synthesize the roles of various environmental social science disciplines in better understanding the interaction between humans and tropical marine ecosystems in developing nations where issues arising from human–coastal interactions are particularly pronounced. We focus on: (1) the application of the environmental social sciences in marine resource management and conservation; (2) the development of ‘new’ socially equitable marine conservation; (3) repopulating the seascape; (4) incorporating multi-scale dynamics of marine social–ecological systems; and (5) envisioning the future of marine resource management and conservation for producing policies and projects for comprehensive and successful resource management and conservation in the Anthropocene.

Sovereignty, Collective Ingenuity and Moral Economies: The Confluence of Transnational Trends, States and Local Strategies in the Pyrenees

The expansion and consolidation of the stateʼs sovereignty and the market economy in the Pyrenees, in northeast Spain, took place through the implementation of a series of territorialisation policies designed to reorganise the territory, its natural resources and its population. This process was supposed to introduce state-driven modernity into these valleys. These governmental technologies also specifically targeted common property. The explicit goal of such political schemes was to dismantle these putatively outdated managerial institutions. In this paper, however, I focus on three examples of commons endurance. Two collective institutions showing high degrees of ingenuity survived the pressure of market and state, and reformulated modernity from a local perspective while preserving or gaining access to natural resources for local communities. These institutions and the social agency that built them were clearly informed by the sets of values that constitute local moral economies. This paper thus examines local responses to the expansion of state-driven modernity as a hegemonic ideological framework, and sovereignty as its jurisdictional scaffold. These answers are analysed as institutional transformations, discursive elaborations, and as political conflicts.

Microeconomic relationships between and among fishers and traders influence the ability to respond to social-ecological changes in a small-scale fishery

Understanding the cross-scale nature of how natural resource trading links to local extraction patterns remains a topic of great relevance to stewardship and sustainable use of ecological systems. Microeconomic influences on a society’s pattern of small-scale natural resources utilization can exacerbate resource overuse, especially under increased population pressure. In many rural communities that are based on a limited diversity of resource industries, quantifying the response of extractors and traders to market and environmental fluctuations is critical to understanding management constraints. We examine the fishing practices of a small lake in Uganda, East Africa, from the dual perspectives of the traders and the fishers using a Bayesian Belief Network approach based on detailed interview surveys. Fishers in this small lake target Nile perch (Lates niloticus) and Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus), two fish species of high commercial and food security significance in East Africa. We combined data on financial, social, and ecological systems to understand how aspects of trading quantitatively relate to fish extraction patterns in Lake Nabugabo Uganda. Importantly, we find that the patron-client type relationships generate incentives to extract specific fish, whereas “freelancer” independent fishers are able to create responsive and flexible extraction practices that match market and environmental fluctuations. Management of fishing administered by local Beach Management Units will likely have a higher probability of success when in synchrony with trading relationships and ecological dynamics. We use this study in Uganda to reflect on methodological challenges and opportunities of combining multiple types of data sets for cross-scale analysis of social-ecological system dynamics.

Challenges in Building Insect Ethnobiological Classifications in Roviana, Solomon Islands

Abstract Under-differentiating classificatory systems pose methodological problems for cultural domain analysis in particular, and ethnobiology in general. Our analysis suggests the Roviana people from the Western Solomon Islands do not have a word for the category “insects” and their classification scheme for little terrestrial animals is rather generic and undifferentiated in comparison to scientific taxonomy. In most cases the accuracy of cultural domain methods depends on the identification of homonymous categories between local and Western classificatory systems. This, as the case study illustrates, is not always possible due to under-differentiation, and analytical alternatives need to be considered for building and understanding indigenous biological classificatory systems.

Variation in perception of environmental change in nine Solomon Islands communities: implications for securing fairness in community-based adaptation

Community-based approaches are pursued in recognition of the need for place-based responses to environmental change that integrate local understandings of risk and vulnerability. Yet the potential for fair adaptation is intimately linked to how variations in perceptions of environmental change and risk are treated. There is, however, little empirical evidence of the extent and nature of variations in risk perception in and between multiple community settings. Here, we rely on data from 231 semi-structured interviews conducted in nine communities in Western Province, Solomon Islands, to statistically model different perceptions of risk and change within and between communities. Overall, people were found to be less likely to perceive environmental changes in the marine environment than they were for terrestrial systems. The distance to the nearest market town (which may be a proxy for exposure to commercial logging and degree of involvement with the market economy), and gender had the greatest overall statistical effects on perceptions of risk. Yet, we also find that significant environmental change is underreported in communities, while variations in perception are not always easily related to commonly assumed fault lines of vulnerability. The findings suggest that there is an urgent need for methods that engage with the drivers of perceptions as part of community-based approaches. In particular, it is important to explicitly account for place, complexity and diversity of environmental risk perceptions, and we reinforce calls to engage seriously with underlying questions of power, culture, identity and practice that influence adaptive capacity and risk perception.