Saskia Vermeylen

Understanding human-fire interactions in tropical forest regions:a case for interdisciplinary research across the natural and social sciences

Fire in the forested tropics has profound environmental, economic, and social impacts at multiple geographical scales. Causes of tropical fires are widely documented, although research contributions are from many disciplines, and each tends to focus on specific facets of a research problem, which might limit understanding of fire as a complex social-ecological system. We conducted a systematic review to (1) examine geographic and methodological focus in tropical fire research; (2) identify which types of landholders are the focus of the research effort; (3) test for a research method effect on the variables, e.g., socio-political, economic, and climatic, identified as causes of and proposed management solutions to tropical fire; and (4) examine relationships between causal factors and proposed solutions. Results from 51 studies show distinct geographic and methodological tendencies in the literature. Few studies explicitly identify landholder types, and no social studies focused on large-landholders. Multiple drivers and potential solutions to preventing fire are identified and the research approach adopted had the strongest influence on the socioeconomic, direct fire management and landscape characteristics variables. There was an overall mismatch between identified cause and proposed management solution. These findings indicate that mixed method approaches are imperative to understanding the coupled human-nature system of fire and to improve rural development and management strategies to curtail tropical fire spread.

Contextualising 'fair' and 'equitable': the San's reflections on the Hoodia Benefit-Sharing Agreement

Abstract The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) demands equitable benefit-sharing from the use of biodiversity, but it falls short of defining fairness or equity. The Hoodia, a traditional medicinal plant of the San, has been patented without their prior consent, but belatedly a benefit-sharing agreement has been signed. This paper investigates the views and perceptions of the San communities on what embodies fairness and equity in relation to this agreement. This case study underlines a serious weakness of the CBD, as it demonstrates how significant inequities in knowledge and power between indigenous peoples and companies can result in definitions that are predominantly shaped by the latter.

Intellectual property, indigenous knowledge, and biodiversity

*We acknowledge Roland Clift and Walter Wehrmeyer for their comments.

Local Rights to Landscape in the Global Moral Economy of Carbon

Abstract Energy policy is an increasingly influential driver for landscape change in the Global North and in rapidly industrializing nations. The renewable energy industry and the large utilities installing wind farms are increasingly powerful actors in the global economy, and their activities are giving rise to a growing number of energy-landscape conflicts. Dependent on its characteristics with regards to the local landscape and the energy system it is part of, a renewable energy project can be portrayed as representing either development or conservation, and representing either globalization or localization. By interrogating landscape as a right, and carbon as a commodity, this paper reveals a number of tensions between abstract, aggregate and top-down narratives that are typical of a globalist discourse, and more localized, contextualized and individuated concerns. We draw attention to examples of reconciliation through customized entrepreneurial activities which manage to make sense of landscape, energy and climate issues at the local level, and which can be enacted and presented through both a globalist and a local narrative. These developments illustrate that hybridity of the local and the global is yielding differential rural energy geographies, consistent with Woodss (2007) concept of global countryside.

Intellectual Property Rights Systems and the Assemblage of Local Knowledge Systems

The mounting loss of the traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples presents environmental as well as ethical issues. Fundamental among these is the sustainability of indigenous societies and their ecosystems. Although the com- mercial expropriation of traditional knowledge grows, rooted in a global, corpo- rate application of intellectual property rights (IPRs), the survival of indigenous societies becomes more problematic. One reason for this is an unresolved con- flict between two perspectives. In the modernist view, traditional knowledge is a tool to use (or discard) for the development of indigenous society, and therefore it must be subordinated to Western science. Alternatively, in the postmodernist view, it is harmonious with nature, providing a new paradigm for human ecol- ogy, and must be preserved intact. We argue that this encumbering polarization can be allayed by shifting from a dualism of traditional and scientific knowledge to an assemblage of local knowledge, which is constituted by the interaction of both in a third space. We argue that IPR can be reconfigured to become the framework for creating such a third space.

Ownership claims, valuation practices, and the unpacking of energy-landscape conflicts

There is now a substantive body of academic literature which focuses on protests against local infrastructural developments. This literature is often characterised by the key words ‘NIMBY’ or (facility-) ‘siting controversies’. The rapid development of renewable energy technologies – which are largely sited in rural areas – has created a new version of this controversy; energy-landscape conflicts. In many countries, large infrastructural developments are regulated through spatial planning legislation, often causing various tensions between new technologies, an evolving policy agenda, and a legislative framework which was largely conceived in a different era and which is slow to adapt. Alternatively, and in line with neo-liberal thinking, the logic of development can be subjected to cost-benefit analysis, whereby the value of the wind farm can be compared with the value of the ‘unspoiled’ landscape. This paper takes a more holistic approach to energy-landscape conflicts, by examining claims of ownership and notions and measures of value inherent in different claims and value systems which (seek to) influence decision-making. We examine both the logic of monetary valuation and the implicit value statements in various policy intervention options to point at the need for a more heterogeneous and multidisciplinary approach to policy evaluation. We then look at notions of ownership, rights and duties in relation to landscape and to our energy future, and we highlight the potential for using an analytical property rights framework which cuts across various levels of claims and value statements, from the national and ideological to the personal and practice-based.

The hedgification of maizescapes? Scalability and multifunctionality of Jatropha curcas hedges in a mixed farming landscape in Zambia

We argue that reading the local agricultural landscape is a prerequisite to understanding the plausible local impacts of external drivers for change, such as the introduction of new crops and technologies. Initially driven by a desire to understand the potential for small-scale farmers to produce jatropha biodiesel in a sustainable way, we started to examine how farmers related to trees in different parts of the agricultural landscape. This provided us with insights into small-scale processes of land enclosure and conversion, which indicate that agricultural intensification is taking place. We learned that although the landscape could in theory accommodate a lot of jatropha hedges around existing (maize dominated) arable land, farmers were only creating hedges around new fields, carved out in the grazing commons. Already well established within the settlement, jatropha can produce a range of different ecosystem services. However, our case study suggests that scalability is problematic: cultural ecosystem services can be provided at very limited levels of production; supporting ecosystem services require a certain scaling up of production; and provisioning ecosystem services, like biofuels, would require production to be increased well beyond any synergies with ongoing tree plantings or land conversion processes.

Sharing Benefits Fairly: Decision-Making and Governance

Understanding how decisions were made by the San in the Hoodia case and how decision-making and governance structures vary between bioprospectors and indigenous communities is essential for the implementation of effective benefit sharing.

The Struggle for Indigenous Peoples' Land Rights: The Case of Namibia

The enclosure of commons is a historical event not limited to homelands of developed nations. Instead it also characterized their colonialization of other nations. Obtaining additional land was one of the motives of colonialism, but – for indigenous peoples – it meant more than the loss of tangible resources. This chapter, based on fieldwork with the Namibian San, indicates that the enclosure of land led to a loss of social relations that had sustained their culture and identity. Despite the fact that most San live in circumstances far different from their hunter-gatherer days, they are compelled to choose between identities defined by others, in which they are seen as either ‘backward’ or living ‘in harmony with nature’. In order to reclaim land rights from states, the San are obligated to portray themselves as an essentialized, cohesive indigenous group.

Trading Traditional Knowledge: San Perspectives from South Africa, Namibia and Botswana

One of the most controversial aspects of the access and benefit-sharing debate is the way in which traditional knowledge is used and commercialized. Many critics have pointed out the inherent contradictions between traditional knowledge systems, which are typically collective, based on sharing and of a non-barter nature, and Western approaches to knowledge protection such as patenting, which by contrast are monopolistic and individualistic. Few, if any, empirical studies have documented the relationship between these systems and community perceptions of the so-called commodification of traditional knowledge. Based on fieldwork conducted in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana, this chapter examines how these issues are perceived by San communities.