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Community-based management of natural resource (CBNRM) projects have commonly failed to deliver conservation and development benefits. This thesis examined how the theoretical assumptions of common pool resource (CPR) theory have contributed to the indifferent performance of CBNRM projects. Evidence was gathered from two CBNRM case studies in Zanzibar to show that CPR institutional design does not sufficiently acknowledge the politics or social relations of project sites. Moreover, these limitations reduce CPR theory's explanatory power and the functionality of CBNRM projects. This is because CPR theory's influence on CBNRM projects is to frame people with fixed identities and related interests as 'rational resource users', rather than people enrolled in multiple network relations with differentiated means of influence, interests and responsibilities. Actor-oriented theory is used to show that CBNRM would benefit from a shift in the correlation with institutional design factors to understanding the operation of power and conflict at project sites. These findings suggest that currently CBNRM projects are too mired in concern about regulating the 'direct' relationship between resource users and conservation objectives, with problematic implications. It is shown that actor-oriented theory is more sensitive to the different capacities, interests and strategies of actors in CBNRM institutional transformation processes. While actor-oriented theory does not offer a parsimonious or predictive theory to reform CPR theory or CBNRM policy, it can provide insights into pre-project conditions and emergent practice useful for explaining project interventions.

AbstractThere are ever‐growing demands on farmers to consider the wider environmental implications of production, not least in theBalticSeaRegion where concerns about agricultural‐related eutrophication are significant. InSweden, farmers are being nudged through voluntary agro‐environmental measures, enticed by the market and compelled to make the transition from a productivist agriculture to a multifunctional one. Drawing on the 'good farmer' concept, inspired by Bourdieu, this article studiesSwedish conventional and agro‐environmental organic farmers' views and reflections on the changing relationship between farming practices and the environment. The article finds that despite 25 years of agro‐environmental policy inSweden, some conventional farmers are still mired in a narrow productivist mindset. That said, the study concludes that we should be wary of conceiving the 'good farmer' too strictly in productivist terms, given that the 'rules of the agricultural game' inSweden are leading to a more divergent farmer habitus. Farmers are looking for opportunities within the multifunctional agricultural field, which increasingly demands and expects all farmers to embed social and environmental goals into production considerations.

Commons projects, such as community-based natural resource management, have widespread appeal, which has enabled them to shrug off a mixed performance in practice. This paper discusses how the theoretical assumptions of common pool resource (CPR) theory may have inadvertently contributed to the unfulfilled expectations of commons projects. The paper argues that the individual 'rational resource user', encapsulated in the CPR design principles, struggles to provide clear direction for meaningful consideration of local norms, values and interests in commons projects. The focus of CPR theory on efficiency and functionality results in a tendency in commons projects to overlook how local conditions are forged through relations at multiple scales. Commonly politically complex and changing relations are reduced to institutional design problems based on deriving the incentives and disincentives of 'rational resource users. The corollary is that CPR theory oversimplifies the project context that it is seeking to change because it offers little or no direction to deal with the social embeddedness of resource use or implications of different stratifications.

This article argues that conservation agendas need to be informed by a landscape aesthetics that embraces the cultural and material richness of people's relationship to place to better inform conservation agendas. Historical and contemporary views of landscape aesthetics and their relationship to nature conservation and notions of wilderness need to be included to complement a scientific expert assessment of conservation needs and approaches. Recent examples of conservation projects in Zanzibar are used to reveal how representations and symbols in nature are deeply embedded in biodiversity conservation aspirations and practices promoted by conservation experts. The article posits that an embodied and pluralistic approach to landscape aesthetics can more profoundly contextualize the specificity of interaction between people and between people and their environments and lead to more viable conservation and development outcomes. This would provide a contingent perspective that would to help elucidate nuanced understandings of social relations and place, thereby better serving both conservation and development agendas.

Linking conservation and development activities requires local institutional change that can deliver global conservation as well as local socioeconomic benefits. Participatory approaches are considered a key element to this end, although recent research demonstrates that they may reinforce existing inequitable governance systems. This article examines microinstitutional formations and development interventions in the Mount Cameroon National Park. The study found that blending new governance approaches with traditional institutions at Mount Cameroon National Park led to diminished participation of the project and a failure to listen to and deliver meaningful development opportunities to Bavenga villagers. The article concludes that while local participation and governance institutions constitute laudable additions to Integrated Conservation and Development Projects, the implications of reproducing traditional authority structures must be carefully considered, and locally grounded development opportunities need to be better embedded into these projects.

Small-scale fisheries (SSF) in the Global South are increasingly subjected to the internationalisation of food systems. Guided by a feminist political ecology approach, we examine how gender relations and power structures within SSF are changing through policy interventions and market linkages. Chilean women working in SSF have traditionally been unregistered direct producers. Since the early 2000s, however, women have formally entered as fishers within this hitherto male-dominated space. Today, women constitute almost a quarter of artisanal fishers in Chile. While women have become more visible, among others, in their engagement in territorial use rights in fisheries (TURFs), little research attention has been paid to women's roles within SSF. We redress this shortfall by examining the struggle to obtain TURFs by an all-women seaweed gatherers union in Coliumo (Bio-Bio Region, Chile). Using participatory research tools, we describe key gendered interactions and events over a local struggle for resources. Our findings show how closely related episodes of cooperation and conflict were involved in realising TURFs, which included differently-gendered relationships. While the women implicated in formalising fishing entitlements accrued individual benefit and enhanced their collective standing, the conflict left a deep scar among women in the community.

How science and policy interact has been a major research focus in the International Relations (IR) tradition, using the epistemic community (EC) concept, as well as in the alternative perspective of Science and Technology Studies (STS). Should science be autonomous and as apolitical as possible in order to 'speak truth to power', as suggested by EC or should the inevitable entanglement of science and politics be accepted and embraced so as to make advice more conducive to negotiating the explicit travails of political decision-making as suggested by STS? With this point of departure, we compare similarities and differences between science–policy interactions in the issue areas of eutrophication and fisheries management of the Baltic Sea. To examine how knowledge is mobilised, the concepts of 'uncertainty' and 'coherence' are developed, drawing on both EC and STS thinking. We then reflect on the explanatory value of these approaches in both cases and discuss how a separation of science and policy-making in the pursuit of achieving scientific consensus leads to ineffectual policies. Drawing on STS thinking, we urge for a re-conceptualisation of coherence in order to accommodate a more reflexive practice of science–policy interactions.

Los niveles de pobreza que ha alcanzado Honduras en la última década han derivado un efecto colateral conocido como la pobreza infantil, misma que ha generado fuertes repercusiones en los niños y adolescentes menores de 18 años. Esto a pesar que han existido diversas transferencias dirigidas a la niñez, creadas con el fin único de reducir este efecto negativo y brindar mejores condiciones de vida a los infantes. Por consiguiente, el propósito de la siguiente investigación fue evaluar y analizar el efecto que han tenido las transferencias sociales dirigidas a la niñez en la reducción de la pobreza infantil. Los resultados revelaron que, la contribución de las mismas no ha representado un logro significativo en reducir el total de niños y adolescentes pobres en el país, de igual forma, su impacto es casi inexistente dado a la mala focalización y la falta de políticas públicas complementarias.Economía y Administración (E&A) Vol.5(2) 2014: 126-149

A number of commentators have argued that up until now marine/maritime spatial planning (MSP) research and practice have been dominated by blue economy and environmental concerns and have tended to neglect what might be regarded as social sustainability concerns. To gain more insight into the character and extent of such a gap, as well as how to address it, this article examines how social sustainability has been addressed in peer reviewed scientific articles on MSP between 2005 and 2020. Using search terms such as participation, democracy, social inclusion, social cohesion, equity we systematically identify and review 310 scientific articles that address diverse social sustainability concerns within MSP and marine governance. The review showed that very few papers systematically conceptualised or developed a coherent framework for engaging with social sustainability. Instead, they mostly addressed particular social concerns including participation and engagement, equity and social justice, socio-cultural values and preferences. Marine management and planning efficiency, as well as related instrumental framings of the merits of participation were the key arguments for including these dimensions of social sustainability in MSP. In terms of how to better include social sustainability in MSP, most attention was given to social-cultural mapping and ways to improve social inclusion/participation while also redressing exclusion and maldistribution of outcomes in MSP practice. We conclude that there is a need to deepen and diversify MSP inquiry with respect to social sustainability. In particular, scholars would do well to delve deeper and more broadly in social science literature to find inspiration on ways to understand and elucidate social issues. Here, the enormous body of relevant work on justice, power, critical institutionalism, political ecology and terrestrial planning literatures has hardly been tapped. It is also evident from this review that there is a need for both the academic and practice-based communities to more comprehensively address how the multidimensions of social sustainability interact with each other, as well as with economic and environmental aspects of marine planning and governance. Based on these observations, we highlight a set of suggestions on how to develop MSP research and practice on social sustainability. Most importantly, we argue that more in-depth co-production, linking scholars, practitioners and society actors, is needed.