Wolfram Dressler

From hope to crisis and back again? A critical history of the global CBNRM narrative.

Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) has been on the ascendancy for several decades and plays a leading role in conservation strategies worldwide. Arriving out of a desire to rectify the human costs associated with coercive conservation, CBNRM sought to return the stewardship of biodiversity and natural resources to local communities through participation, empowerment and decentralization. Today, however, scholars and practitioners suggest that CBNRM is experiencing a crisis of identity and purpose, with even the most positive examples experiencing only fleeting success due to major deficiencies. Six case studies from around the world offer a history of how and why the global CBNRM narrative has unfolded over time and space. While CBNRM emerged with promise and hope, it often ended in less than ideal outcomes when institutionalized and reconfigured in design and practice. Nevertheless, despite the current crisis, there is scope for refocusing on the original ideals of CBNRM: ensuring social justice, material well-being and environmental integrity.

Carbon outcomes of major land‐cover transitions in SE Asia: great uncertainties and REDD+ policy implications

Policy makers across the tropics propose that carbon finance could provide incentives for forest frontier communities to transition away from swidden agriculture (slash-and-burn or shifting cultivation) to other systems that potentially reduce emissions and/or increase carbon sequestration. However, there is little certainty regarding the carbon outcomes of many key land-use transitions at the center of current policy debates. Our meta-analysis of over 250 studies reporting above- and below-ground carbon estimates for different land-use types indicates great uncertainty in the net total ecosystem carbon changes that can be expected from many transitions, including the replacement of various types of swidden agriculture with oil palm, rubber, or some other types of agroforestry systems. These transitions are underway throughout Southeast Asia, and are at the heart of REDD+ debates. Exceptions of unambiguous carbon outcomes are the abandonment of any type of agriculture to allow forest regeneration (a certain positive carbon outcome) and expansion of agriculture into mature forest (a certain negative carbon outcome). With respect to swiddening, our meta-analysis supports a reassessment of policies that encourage land-cover conversion away from these [especially long-fallow] systems to other more cash-crop-oriented systems producing ambiguous carbon stock changes - including oil palm and rubber. In some instances, lengthening fallow periods of an existing swidden system may produce substantial carbon benefits, as would conversion from intensely cultivated lands to high-biomass plantations and some other types of agroforestry. More field studies are needed to provide better data of above- and below-ground carbon stocks before informed recommendations or policy decisions can be made regarding which land-use regimes optimize or increase carbon sequestration. As some transitions may negatively impact other ecosystem services, food security, and local livelihoods, the entire carbon and noncarbon benefit stream should also be taken into account before prescribing transitions with ambiguous carbon benefits.

The Prospects for Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) in Vietnam: A Look at Three Payment Schemes.

Global conservation discourses and practices increasingly rely on market-based solutions to fulfill the dual objective of forest conservation and economic development. Although varied, these interventions are premised on the assumption that natural resources are most effectively managed and preserved while benefiting livelihoods if the market-incentives of a liberalised economy are correctly in place. By examining three nationally supported payment for ecosystem service (PES) schemes in Vietnam we show how insecure land tenure, high transaction costs and high opportunity costs can undermine the long-term benefits of PES programmes for local households and, hence, potentially threaten their livelihood viability. In many cases, the income from PES programmes does not reach the poor because of political and economic constraints. Local elite capture of PES benefits through the monopolization of access to forestland and existing state forestry management are identified as key problems. We argue that as PES schemes create a market for ecosystem services, such markets must be understood not simply as bald economic exchanges between ‘rational actors’ but rather as exchanges embedded in particular socio-political and historical contexts to support the sustainable use of forest resources and local livelihoods in Vietnam.

Questioning REDD+ and the future of market-based conservation.

Robert Fletcher,∗ ¶ Wolfram Dressler,† Bram Büscher,∗ and Zachary R. Anderson‡ ∗Sociology of Development and Change, Wageningen University, De Leeuwenborch, Hollandseweg 1, 6707 KN Wageningen, Netherlands †School of Geography, The University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Melbourne, Australia ‡Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto, 100 St. George Street, Room 5047, Toronto, ON M55 3G3, Canada

People, power and timber: The politics of community-based forest management

The potential of devolved conservation to empower people, reduce poverty and protect forest resources has yet to be realized in much of the developing world. This is particularly evident in the Philippines where the central state paradoxically recentralizes political power through devolution at the policy, program and project level in forest management. We investigate how centralized state power emanates through devolved networks to affect the success of local timber utilization involving community-based forest management (CBFM) on Mindanao Island, the southern Philippines. By examining broader shifts from centralized to devolved forest management, results suggest that centralized political power continues to control and adversely affect local uses of timber through CBFM. We discuss how in the process of state authorities recentralizing devolved rights and responsibility over timber management, community-based logging operations were threatened but sustained by members relying on community-based structures and their own capabilities. The conclusion asserts that broader state processes of devolving power over timber management remains constrained by political motives and interests and so largely fails to fulfill the objectives of community-based forest management.

Half-Earth or Whole Earth? Radical ideas for conservation, and their implications

We question whether the increasingly popular, radical idea of turning half the Earth into a network of protected areas is either feasible or just. We argue that this Half-Earth plan would have widespread negative consequences for human populations and would not meet its conservation objectives. It offers no agenda for managing biodiversity within a human half of Earth. We call instead for alternative radical action that is both more effective and more equitable, focused directly on the main drivers of biodiversity loss by shifting the global economy from its current foundation in growth while simultaneously redressing inequality.

The Role of “Hybrid” NGOs in the Conservation and Development of Palawan Island, The Philippines

The rapid rise of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the Philippines has reflected a regional trend toward the “democratization” of conservation and development on behalf of the rural poor when the state falls short. This article examines how this trend has manifested itself among the indigenous peoples of Palawan Island and how, despite best intentions, project delivery by “hybrid” NGOs—changing organizational forms with multiple objectives and functions—has often yielded unsustainable and culturally damaging outcomes. We draw on ethnographic research among the Tagbanua and Batak peoples to examine recent claims of broad NGO success in achieving community empowerment and forest conservation on Palawan. We support our argument by examining case studies in which NGOs and state failures to properly engage traditional livelihoods have reinforced outsider control over indigenous needs and aspirations.

First to third nature: the rise of capitalist conservation on Palawan Island, the Philippines

The social relations and agricultural lands that rural peoples in Southeast Asia hold in common are being commodified through the converging pressures of agrarian change, conservation and capitalist development. This paper examines how broader and local processes driving agrarian differentiation have been accelerated through the revaluing of people and nature in market terms to ostensibly finance conservation through development at the Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park – the flagship protected area of Palawan Island, the Philippines. Drawing on the notions of ‘first’ and ‘third nature’, I show how the pace and scale of agrarian change between rural peoples has gone ‘fast forward’ with the onset of resource partitioning, objectification, commodification and, ultimately, revaluing through translocal ‘capitalist conservation’, the rise of conservation as capitalist production. I examine how the national parks valuing as a ‘common’ World Heritage has drawn major private sector investments that objectify, commodify and rearticulate the value of nature as capital that finances and merges conservation and development according to the images and ideals of the modern Philippines. The conclusion asserts that while the processes of differentiation and capitalist conservation facilitate the revaluing of nature in market terms, the overall process remains recursive, partial and context dependent.

The Persistence of Social Differentiation in the Philippine Uplands

Abstract Certain drivers of social and economic differences facilitate the reification of ethnic identity between so-called uplanders and lowlanders on Palawan Island in the Philippines. Drawing on case studies, in this paper we examine how two seemingly distinct social groups – Christian migrants and indigenous Tagbanua – use their respective positions in society to mark differences in ethnic identity and livelihoods. We then argue that as non-governmental organisations build on notions of indigeneity as a means to facilitate their programmes, they further reinforce how each group articulates difference. We demonstrate that the tendency of NGOs to construct and reify notions of indigeneity in support of land claims and conservation has in fact polarised ethnic differences and, in turn, reinforced inequality between each group. We conclude that although non-governmental organisations have tried to remedy social and economic disparities between social groups, their simplification of local ways of life reinforces stereotypes of these people and their land uses.

Beluga hunters in a mixed economy: managing the impacts of nature-based tourism in the Canadian western Arctic

The Inuvialuit Region of the Canadian western Arctic continues to support a variety of land-based activities as part of the regional mixed economy. Tourism development, one of the newer elements of the mixed economy, has potential to conflict with beluga whale hunting, one of the traditional activities. The paper asks the question: can local employment be created through nature-based tourism development in Inuvik, Aklavik, and Tuktoyaktuk in the Inuvialuit Region in ways that support the local mixed economy and minimize conflict with the traditional sector? Results of interviews with Inuvialuit elders and tour operators indicate that both parties regard tourism as a desirable employment option and a creator of economic benefits, with relatively few economic drawbacks and relatively little environmental concern. The problem, however, is that tourism also brings with it social impacts and cultural drawbacks that are, in the Inuvialuit view, mostly related to (a) intrusiveness of tourists, especially in relation to the beluga hunt; (b) representation of the aboriginal hunt in a negative light; and (c) commodification of culture. On the balance, nature-based tourism development has the capability to support the local mixed economy, subject to resolving the conflict between beluga whaling activities and tourists. Fundamentally, however, the conflict is between Inuvialuit lifestyles and values versus the values and expectations of tourists.