Nathan Vogt

Integrating Analytical and Participatory Techniques for Planning the Sustainable Use of Land Resources and Landscapes

Planning the sustainable use of land resources and landscapes must be a process in which stakeholders and the public work together to establish common guidelines for understanding the options of, and the implications for, future land uses. Key aspects of this process are the establishment of meaningful knowledge bases and tools, and methodologies based on the enhanced involvement of stakeholders in making decisions, and their subsequent implementation. The gradation of power or control in public participation proposed by Arnstein (1969), extending from ‘citizen control’ to ‘manipulation’, provides a conceptual basis for considering the evolution in political thinking about participation in areas such landscape planning. This chapter discusses the integration of analytical and participatory techniques for planning the sustainable use of land resources and landscapes using two examples, one from South America and the second from Europe. The first example considers land use in the Amazon, and the second, the socio-economic, ecological and visual aspects of land-use changes in a European landscape. Each example involved active participation of stakeholders and the public in the process of decision making. A framework is presented for the Amazonian example, which comprises methodologies and survey instruments for multi-level, integrated assessments of landuse and land-cover change. The framework was developed in collaboration between Indiana University and several Brazilian institutions. It adopts an historical ecological approach (Brondizio 2006) and applies a range of tools from the social, ecological and geographic sciences in fieldwork and laboratory analysis (Moran and Ostrom 2005). The framework and methodologies are being used by scientists in the Amazon Initiative (AI)—Land Degradation Assessment (LDA) thematic network as a tool for responding to land degradation problems occurring at farm to regional Chapter 16 Integrating Analytical and Participatory Techniques for Planning the Sustainable Use of Land Resources and Landscapes

A conceptual framework for analyzing deltas as coupled social–ecological systems: an example from the Amazon River Delta

Abstract At the nexus of watersheds, land, coastal areas, oceans, and human settlements, river delta regions pose specific challenges to environmental governance and sustainability. Using the Amazon Estuary-Delta region (AD) as our focus, we reflect on the challenges created by the high degree of functional interdependencies shaping social–ecological dynamics of delta regions. The article introduces the initial design of a conceptual framework to analyze delta regions as coupled social–ecological systems (SES). The first part of the framework is used to define a delta SES according to a problem and/or collective action dilemma. Five components can be used to define a delta SES: social–economic systems, governance systems, ecosystems-resource systems, topographic-hydrological systems, and oceanic-climate systems. These components are used in association with six types of telecoupling conditions: socio-demographic, economic, governance, ecological, material, and climatic-hydrological. The second part of the framework presents a strategy for the analysis of collective action problems in delta regions, from sub-delta/local to delta to basin levels. This framework is intended to support both case studies and comparative analysis. The article provides illustrative applications of the framework to the AD. First, we apply the framework to define and characterize the AD as coupled SES. We then utilize the framework to diagnose an example of collective action problem related to the impacts of urban growth, and urban and industrial pollution on small-scale fishing resources. We argue that the functional interdependencies characteristic of delta regions require new approaches to understand, diagnose, and evaluate the current and future impacts of social–ecological changes and potential solutions to the sustainability dilemmas of delta regions.

Forest Transitions in Mosaic Landscapes: Smallholder's Flexibility in Land-Resource Use Decisions and Livelihood Strategies From World War II to the Present in the Amazon Estuary

The question of how smallholders of the Amazon estuary, locally known as cabolcos, have adapted their land use systems to produce resources during booms and busts is analyzed in this article. We draw upon more than 50 years of census data and more than 30 years of remotely sensed land-cover data to reconstruct these dynamics from World War II to the present. We found that smallholders are highly flexible in their land use decisions and livelihood strategies and that such flexibility has helped them to adapt their land-use systems to produce resources in demand during market booms and conserve forests. Smallholder mosaic landscapes contain forest fragments that enhance socioecological resilience to floods and other events produced by changes in the local hydro-climatic regimes due to sea-level rise and other climate-related changes. We argue that flexibility is a tool to reduce livelihood vulnerability by facilitating adaptation to global market and climate driven changes over the long term.