Peter J. Balint

CAMPFIRE During Zimbabwe's National Crisis: Local Impacts and Broader Implications for Community-Based Wildlife Management

Zimbabwes CAMPFIRE program was an influential early effort to implement community-based wildlife management on a national scale. From its inception in 1989 through 2000, international donors provided substantial support, and researchers studied outcomes closely. In 2000, local CAMPFIRE projects began to feel the impact of two powerful external shocks: the end of international funding, and the beginning of Zimbabwes severe political and economic crisis. These shocks created natural experiments in which hypotheses regarding variables affecting project outcomes can be tested. This article reports the results of case studies conducted in 2004 and 2006 of two previously highly regarded local projects. We found, in line with expectations, that quality of governance and community benefits in both sites have declined sharply. We also found, contrary to expectations, that project revenues and conservation benefits have been largely sustained. We discuss the implications of these results for theory and practice in community-based wildlife management.

A Proposed General Model for Southern African Community-Based Wildlife Management

Case studies of community-based wildlife management projects in southern Africa suggest that several key variables are important in determining outcomes: quality of governance, fit to context, integration across scales, and strength of reciprocal learning among diverse stakeholders. This article proposes a general model to serve as a framework for future research that would encourage progress toward defining and measuring these variables more consistently. Although acknowledging that improved analysis will not make the profound structural obstacles facing community-based wildlife management in the region more tractable, the article argues that a systematic research program following the proposed model will provide useful additional input into the adaptive, participatory project management practices now favored.

Generational views of information privacy

This article investigates whether there are different attitudes about information and communication technologies and information privacy among members of different generations. Specifically we consider: do different generations experience information and communication technology-mediated environments in the same way or not? Are there disjunctures or continuities in the experience of privacy across one generation? Do different generations have dissimilar attitudes about what constitutes a privacy invasion and different levels of concern about such invasions? Or is privacy a concern that develops as one ages through her life cycle and becomes more invested in the social and economic world? In other words, is information privacy, instead, something of a middle-age concern? To answer these questions, we first review the literature on generational differences, as well as the literature on privacy attitudes and introduce a number of hypotheses. We then analyze responses to two survey questions that have been asked periodically over the last 30 years to determine whether there are age cohort and/or generational differences. From the data examined, it is difficult to speak with any authority on the question of whether familiarity with technology means that younger generations or age cohorts are less concerned about technology or whether as all generations and age groups become familiar with technology privacy concerns decrease over time. However we do identify some interesting patterns.

CAMPFIRE through the Lens of the ‘Commons’ Literature: Nyaminyami Rural District in Post-2000 Zimbabwe

During its early years, Zimbabwes CAMPFIRE programme was a highly regarded and influential national effort to promote community-based natural resource management. Despite the programmes early promise, however, outcomes in the field over the longer term have often been disappointing. Researchers offer various explanations for the uneven results. In this article we explore the idea that CAMPFIRE could benefit from emulating more closely the spontaneously emerging, community-level collective actions described in the ‘commons’ literature. Scholars of the commons identify several conditions necessary for successful community self-organisation for natural resource management. We examine discrepancies between the conditions identified as critical in the commons literature and the underlying conditions found in CAMPFIRE communities. These discrepancies both clarify the obstacles local CAMPFIRE projects face and suggest that the successful community efforts described in the literature are unlikely to provide a useful model in the CAMPFIRE context. We illustrate the discussion with references to findings from our recent case study of the CAMPFIRE project in Nyaminyami Rural District.

Managing Wicked Environmental Problems

In chapter 1, we briefly mentioned some historical factors that may contribute to the transformation of complicated problems into wicked problems. These include broad, structural socioeconomic and demographic changes and also more immediate triggering events that polarize public debate and shift the political dynamics of environmental management dilemmas. Here we explore these themes in more detail. We also present and discuss three take-home lessons for public managers. We suggest that a public manager facing a wicked problem should (1) stop looking for the perfect solution; (2) seek instead a satisficingresponse; and (3) consider applying the iterative, analytic, adaptive, participatory process described in this book (particularly in chapters 6– 9).

How ethics shape the policy preferences of environmental scientists: What we can learn from Lomborg and his critics

Some environmental ethicists have proposed that different environmental values lead in principle to different environmental policy preferences. The controversy provoked by Bjørn Lomborgs book, The Skeptical Environmentalist (2001), has provided an opportunity to test this hypothesis in practice for scientists and other technical experts. In analyzing the language of the argument between Lomborg and his critics, I find that environmental scientists participating prominently in the debate fall into one of two camps according to whether their valuations of nature tend to be anthropocentric or nonanthropocentric. I find further that for these scientists moral philosophies correlate both with policy preferences and with interpretations of data. I conclude that unexplored differences in environmental values make important and underappreciated contributions to the politicization of science and to polarization among scientists and other technical experts involved in environmental disputes.

The Environmental Protection Agency's Budget from 1970 to 2010: A Lifecycle Analysis

Using three approaches, we attempt to explain changes in the Environmental Protection Agencys operating budget from 1970 to 2010. First, we compare qualitative predictions from two general types of agency lifecycle theories to the actual path of the EPAs budget. Second, we test empirically several hypotheses regarding the effects of political, economic, and other variables on the agencys budget. Third, we conduct detailed historical case studies of selected years. The results offer hints of support for theories predicting incremental change but do not support the hypothesized effects of external factors. We also uncover some historical anomalies that warrant further research.

Risk and Uncertainty in Environmental Management

When it comes to environmental conflict, what makes some decisions more difficult than others? For example, the state of California routinely experiences thousands of wildfires each year, hundreds of which are the natural result of lightning strikes. If these naturally occurring phenomena are so common, what makes decisions related to the management of these situations so challenging?

ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEWS AND CASE STUDIES: The Council on Environmental Quality at 40: A Life-Cycle Analysis

Like most other United States (US) governmental agencies, the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) was established and its purposes defined in US statutory law. Specifically, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) gave the CEQ responsibility for pursuing the development and implementation of policies that support and encourage environmental stewardship and sustainability. In this article, we examine what has happened to CEQ over the 40 years from its birth on January 1, 1970, to January 1, 2010. Among the key findings of the study is that the CEQ energetically and effectively pursued its assigned statutory goals during the 1970s, the first decade of its existence, but its capacity to do so was dramatically reduced during most of its second decade, the 1980s. The CEQs capacity improved somewhat at the end of the second decade. Then the CEQs fortunes declined again in the early years of the 1990s, its third decade, before recovering modestly in the middle of the decade. During most of its fourth decade, 2000–2008, the CEQs energy level was elevated, but its presidentially assigned task seemed to be an inversion of its statutory purposes. These findings illustrate the malleability of statutory law in the American political context, and they illuminate gaps that exist in two prominent agency life-cycle theories.

The Precautionary Principle

Wicked environmental problems are characterized by scientific uncertainty, deep public disagreement over desired states and preferred outcomes, the impossibility of finding an optimal solution, and the requirement that despite these unknowns and conflicts the responsible decision maker must act (Allen and Gould 1986). In these conditions, public managers—whether or not they recognize that they face a wicked problem—often respond by applying such strategies as the precautionary principle, adaptive management, or public participation.