Rebecca Hardin

Changing Governance of the World's Forests

Major features of contemporary forest governance include decentralization of forest management, logging concessions in publicly owned commercially valuable forests, and timber certification, primarily in temperate forests. Although a majority of forests continue to be owned formally by governments, the effectiveness of forest governance is increasingly independent of formal ownership. Growing and competing demands for food, biofuels, timber, and environmental services will pose severe challenges to effective forest governance in the future, especially in conjunction with the direct and indirect impacts of climate change. A greater role for community and market actors in forest governance and deeper attention to the factors that lead to effective governance, beyond ownership patterns, is necessary to address future forest governance challenges.

Sustainable Control of Water-Related Infectious Diseases: A Review and Proposal for Interdisciplinary Health-Based Systems Research

Objective Even when initially successful, many interventions aimed at reducing the toll of water-related infectious disease have not been sustainable over longer periods of time. Here we review historical practices in water-related infectious disease research and propose an interdisciplinary public health oriented systems approach to research and intervention design. Data sources On the basis of the literature and the authors’ experiences, we summarize contributions from key disciplines and identify common problems and trends. Practices in developing countries, where the disease burden is the most severe, are emphasized. Data extraction We define waterborne and water-associated vectorborne diseases and identify disciplinary themes and conceptual needs by drawing from ecologic, anthropologic, engineering, political/economic, and public health fields. A case study examines one of the classes of water-related infectious disease. Data synthesis The limited success in designing sustainable interventions is attributable to factors that include the complexity and interactions among the social, ecologic, engineering, political/economic, and public health domains; incomplete data; a lack of relevant indicators; and most important, an inadequate understanding of the proximal and distal factors that cause water-related infectious disease. Fundamental change is needed for research on water-related infectious diseases, and we advocate a systems approach framework using an ongoing evidence-based health outcomes focus with an extended time horizon. The examples and case study in the review show many opportunities for interdisciplinary collaborations, data fusion techniques, and other advances. Conclusions The proposed framework will facilitate research by addressing the complexity and divergent scales of problems and by engaging scientists in the disciplines needed to tackle these difficult problems. Such research can enhance the prevention and control of water-related infectious diseases in a manner that is sustainable and focused on public health outcomes.

Corporate Lives: New Perspectives on the Social Life of the Corporate Form An Introduction to Supplement 3

The introduction to this special issue of Current Anthropology calls for more anthropological attention to how the corporate form shapes and is shaped by daily life. It also traces anthropologists’ engagements with corporations over time. We present transformations in traditionally corporate arenas, such as mining and textile production, alongside parallel developments in transnational cooperatives, organic production systems, and ethnic deployments of the corporate form. We consider corporate influence in unexpected sectors, from conservation to poverty alleviation to cancer survival. Furthermore, we analyze corporate norms and practices in relation to broader governance trends, from fair-trade dynamics to shareholder activism and from corporate social responsibility initiatives to the spread of accountability measures and the impact of corporate sovereignty. This issue brings together the voices of anthropologists, social activists, NGO managers, corporate executives, financial planners, and entrepreneurs. It is the product of a 5-day international symposium held in August 2008 at the School for Advanced Research (SAR) campus in Santa Fe, sponsored by both SAR and the Wenner-Gren Foundation.

Transvalued Species in an African Forest

We combined ethnographic investigations with repeated ecological transect surveys in the Dzanga-Sangha Dense Forest Reserve (RDS), Central African Republic, to elucidate consequences of intensifying mixed use of forests. We devised a framework for transvaluation of wildlife species, which means the valuing of species on the basis of their ecological, economic, and symbolic roles in human lives. We measured responses to hunting, tourism, and conservation of two transvalued species in RDS: elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) and gorillas (Gorilla gorilla). Our methods included collecting data on encounter rates and habitat use on line transects. We recorded cross-cultural variation in ideas about and interactions with these species during participant observation of hunting and tourism encounters and ethnographic interviews with hunters, conservation staff, researchers, and tourists. Ecologically, gorillas used human-modified landscapes successfully, and elephants were more vulnerable than gorillas to hunting. Economically, tourism and encounters with elephants and gorillas generated revenues and other benefits for local participants. Symbolically, transvaluation of species seemed to undergird competing institutions of forest management that could prove unsustainable. Nevertheless, transvaluation may also offer alternatives to existing social hierarchies, thereby integrating local and transnational support for conservation measures. The study of transvaluation requires attention to transnational flows of ideas and resources because they influence transspecies interactions. Cross-disciplinary in nature, transvalution of species addresses the political and economic challenges to conservation because it recognizes the varied human communities that shape the survival of wildlife in a given site. Transvaluation of species could foster more socially inclusive management and monitoring approaches attuned to competing economic demands, specific species behaviors, and human practices at local scales.

Concessionary Politics Property, Patronage, and Political Rivalry in Central African Forest Management

The origin of concessionary politics that shape forest use and management in equatorial Africa can be traced to precolonial and colonial practices. Yet these political processes are constantly being reinvented, and their consequences for ecological and social systems reach far into the future. Gleaned from fieldwork among residents of a protected area and logging zone in Central African Republic (CAR), this concept relates village-level analysis of traditional governance to national and international adoptions of legal concessions of land for the management of natural resources. Constituted through specific phases of prospecting, delimiting, and negotiating control over labor and territory, concessions can be characterized by particular cultural practices: negotiation at local or regional levels of concessionary rights that have been formally ceded at a national level; patron-client relationships involving expatriates and/or traditional authorities that mediate or even replace governance by the nation-state; and fields of territorialized identity politics that tend toward relationships of rivalry and alliance across groups for redistribution of wealth through services, gifts, and performances of collective contestation or celebration. Through interpretive analysis of a national holiday celebration in CAR, I explore the legacies and transformations in concessionary politics shaping conservation and logging in that region more broadly and consider their implications for changing environmental governance in equatorial Africa.

Q Fever Risk Across a Dynamic, Heterogeneous Landscape in Laikipia County, Kenya

Two hundred fourteen serosamples were collected from four livestock species across five ranches in Laikipia County, Kenya. Serological analysis for Coxiella burnetii (the causative agent for Q fever) showed a distinct seroprevalence gradient: the lowest in cattle, higher in sheep and goats, and the highest in camels. Laikipia-wide aerial counts show a recent increase in the camel population. One hundred fifty-five stakeholder interviews revealed concern among veterinary, medical, ranching, and conservation professionals about Q fever. Local pastoralists and persons employed as livestock keepers, in contrast, revealed no knowledge of the disease. This work raises questions about emerging Q fever risk in Laikipia County and offers a framework for further integrative disease research in East African mixed-use systems.

Mercury Levels in Human Hair and Farmed Fish near Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining Communities in the Madre de Dios River Basin, Peru

Artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) has been an important source of income for communities in the Madre de Dios River Basin in Peru for hundreds of years. However, in recent decades, the scale of ASGM activities in the region has increased dramatically, and exposures to a variety of occupational and environmental hazards related to ASGM, including mercury, are becoming more widespread. The aims of our study were to: (1) examine patterns in the total hair mercury level of human participants in several communities in the region and compare these results to the 2.2 µg/g total hair mercury level equivalent to the World Health Organization (WHO) Expert Committee of Food Additives (JECFA)’s Provisional Tolerable Weekly Intake (PTWI); and (2), to measure the mercury levels of paco (Piaractus brachypomus) fish raised in local aquaculture ponds, in order to compare these levels to the EPA Fish Tissue Residue Criterion of 0.3 µg Hg/g fish (wet weight). We collected hair samples from 80 participants in four communities (one control and three where ASGM activities occurred) in the region, and collected 111 samples from fish raised in 24 local aquaculture farms. We then analyzed the samples for total mercury. Total mercury levels in hair were statistically significantly higher in the mining communities than in the control community, and increased with increasing geodesic distance from the Madre de Dios headwaters, did not differ by sex, and frequently exceeded the reference level. Regression analyses indicated that higher hair mercury levels were associated with residence in ASGM communities. The analysis of paco fish samples found no samples that exceeded the EPA tissue residue criterion. Collectively, these results align with other recent studies showing that ASGM activities are associated with elevated human mercury exposure. The fish farmed through the relatively new process of aquaculture in ASGM areas appeared to have little potential to contribute to human mercury exposure. More research is needed on human health risks associated with ASGM to discern occupational, residential, and nutritional exposure, especially through tracking temporal changes in mercury levels as fish ponds age, and assessing levels in different farmed fish species. Additionally, research is needed to definitively determine that elevated mercury levels in humans and fish result from the elemental mercury from mining, rather than from a different source, such as the mercury released from soil erosion during deforestation events from mining or other activities.

From the Michigan Coalition to transnational collaboration: interactive research methods for the future of environmental justice research

This article identifies the top 40 most influential environmental conflict cases in the US while also showcasing innovative mixed methods for more rigorous participatory collaborative work on environmental conflicts. University of Michigan students and faculty collaborated with Environmental Justice Organizations, Liabilities and Trade (EJOLT), a European Union mapping initiative, to identify US cases for their wider study. We began with an intensive scholarly and media literature review, combined with results from 31 semi-structured interviews with informants from a broad database of US environmental justice (EJ) departments, initiatives, and symposia. We then wrote short descriptions of 90 EJ conflict cases in US history, incorporating them into a detailed participatory online survey to garner expert and public input on which of them have been the most influential in shaping US popular opinion, policy, and political will on EJ issues. Seeking to provide a rigorous basis for the EJOLT mapping exercise, but also to instill an ethic of knowledge co-creation within the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s mechanisms for assessing EJ issues, we distributed the survey widely and posted it on the EPAs EJ Blog. It received over 1000 hits in the first two weeks. Our surveys remained active for about three weeks, for a total of 350 responses (101 from respondents who self-identified as EJ experts, and 249 from those identifying as members of the wider public). After eliminating incomplete or duplicate responses, we weighted to correct for that imbalance in the numbers, considering a total of 165 in our analysis. These responses comprise the list of 40 cases (unranked) we launched on the atlas in March 2014, and describe in this paper; the top five including multiple oil- or petroleum-based cases, one clean water case, one climate change case, and one confined animal feeding operation case.

Competing Cultures of Conservation

In the last quarter century, environmental conservation efforts by nongovernmental organizations, private companies, or nation states have most prominently featured expansion of formally protected areas and the integration of elements of biological and social sciences in their monitoring and management. For most involved in such efforts, culture has been either an obstacle to wider adoption of practices intended to achieve conservation or a characteristic of societies who protect nature through their management practices and belief systems. The next quarter century would benefit from a broader awareness of conservation culture, which I define as a series of distinct aesthetic, technical, and ideological positions. Conservation cultures pertain not only to small societies, but also to the institutions and initiatives that characterize conservation as a complex transnational field of experts, policy makers, private and public sector leaders, and community members. I write of my own experiences in Appalachia and equatorial Africa and of popular novels and films to show how a reflexive idea of culture, or awareness of symbols and meanings in one’s own self and society, is a key to future conservation success. Contrast and Conflict in Conservation Cultures I grew up in Tennessee, along the perimeter of the U.S. Great Smoky Mountains National Park, a suburban youth whose family often went backpacking in the park on weekends. Oblivious to the history of the park’s designation, I relished that landscape’s contrasts with my ordinary routines. After time in the mountains, my sister and I basked in the hour-long return drive to our home, our bodies salty and streaked with the loamy black soil of southern Appalachia. We would ride out of the park through valleys dotted with shacks, where pickup trucks almost all sported gun racks. As we crossed the Tennessee River into Knoxville we saw emblems of a suburban landscape. The first was the groomed lawn of a graceful yet dilapidated old mansion that housed the Teen Board of Knoxville, a social club that invited us to attend both cotillions and meetings to organize volunteer projects. From that mansion onward we looked out at a parade of carefully mulched dogwood trees and azalea plants nestled around splashing stone fountains. In my residential neighborhood, named Sequoyah Hills after the famous Cherokee leader, such fountains were designed in the 1920s to emulate Native American symbols and designs. They are interspersed with an actual Indian mound, badly eroded but affixed with plaques provided by a neighborhood preservation association that offer a terse history of Cherokee settlement in the region. As an adolescent, I was vaguely conscious of ways of life that had been displaced in favor of the settlements that matured into today’s suburban riverbanks. Not until my early twenties, after working at conservation sites in the Congo Basin as a Peace Corps volunteer and researcher, did I find myself avidly reading reprinted works from the early 1900s such as James Mooney’s ethnography (Mooney & Ellison 1992) of Cherokee culture and Horace Kephart’s (1976) accounts of his time with white farmers and hunters in the southern Appalachians. These books were early attempts to debunk stereotypes about so-called rural or primitive peoples, yet each unwittingly established new stereotypes. In trying to translate alterity, or otherness, in relation to dominant cultural norms, these books also marked cultural difference in ways that inadvertently reinforced boundaries among contemporary land uses. Suburbia and wilderness are distinct, yet both preclude the kind of local subsistence use of resources that Mooney or Kephart chronicled.