Suchergebnisse

Conservation Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) are crucial actors in global conservation governance. They shape resource flows, establish cross-sector and cross-scale networks, and influence conservation discourses and practices. While research on conservation NGOs is growing, less attention has been paid to how conservation NGOs structure their networks. In this article, we interrogate the interpersonal social relationships that underpin the organisational dynamics of conservation NGOs engaged in transnational activities. Drawing on 45 semi-structured interviews with conservation professionals at NGOs based in Cambridge (UK), Bangkok (Thailand), and Vientiane (Lao PDR), we sketch two parallel and interacting dimensions: (a) the bureaucratic and institutional infrastructures that condition conservation flows and actor interactions; and (b) the interpersonal social relationships that pattern conservation flows between distant places and actors. We illustrate how such relationships are important for managing activities, responding to unexpected and unforeseen events, capitalising on funding opportunities by quickly mobilising an existing network, integrating new actors into project activities, enhancing cross-sector dialogues to mainstream biodiversity conservation, and accessing and influencing funders. Social relationships serve a crucial function due to the uncertain conditions in which conservation NGOs operate. Our results point to an important dimension of exclusion in transnational conservation networks.

Growing demand for agricultural commodities like rubber or oil palm is causing rapid change in Southeast Asia's biodiversity-rich forested landscapes. This change is particularly pronounced in Myanmar, whose economy is developing at great speed after the end of decades-long economic and political isolation and armed conflicts. Interventions are needed to ensure that development is sustainable. Designing successful interventions requires spatially explicit knowledge of recent landscape changes. To provide such knowledge, we applied a landscape mosaic approach and analysed land system change in Tanintharyi Region in southern Myanmar between 2002 and 2016. Our findings show that nearly half of the study region experienced degradation of the vegetation cover, intensification of agricultural use, or a combination of both. Although intact forest was still the prevailing vegetation cover of land systems in Tanintharyi Region in 2016, it had suffered from degradation in wide parts of the region. Land systems without or with only extensive agricultural use in 2002 had become dominated by smallholders' shifting cultivation systems and permanent betel nut gardens and paddy rice fields by 2016. Elsewhere, smallholder dominated land systems were intensified through the expansion of oil palm and rubber plantations, pointing to potential displacement effects. The land system maps offer a sound basis for planning interventions to slow the degradation of biodiversity-rich forests and support smallholder farmers in coping with the fast-paced expansion of commercial cash crop plantations and its social and environmental impacts. Sustainable development in this global biodiversity hotspot requires careful land use planning to support nature and people, along with continued efforts for peace-building.

Large-scale agricultural investments (LAIs) transform land use systems worldwide. There is, however, limited understanding about how the common global drivers of land use change induce different forms of agricultural investment and produce different impacts on the ground. This article provides a cross-country comparative analysis of how differences in business models, land use changes, and governance systems explain differences in socio-economic, food security, and environmental impacts of LAIs in Kenya, Madagascar, and Mozambique. It brings together results on these aspects generated in the AFGROLAND project that collected data in a multi-method approach via household surveys, business model surveys, semi-structured household interviews, life-cycle assessments of farm production, analysis of remote-sensing data, key informant interviews, and document analysis. For the present project synthesis, we combined a collaborative expert workshop with a comparative analysis of 16 LAIs. The results show that the LAIs follow four distinctive impact patterns, ranging from widespread adverse impacts to moderate impacts. Results demonstrate how the following conditions influence how the global drivers of land use change translate into different LAIs and different impacts on the ground: labor intensity, prior land use, utilization of land, farm size, type of production, experience in local agriculture, land tenure security, accountability of state and local elites, the mobilization capacity of civil society, expansion of resource frontiers, agricultural intensification, and indirect land use change. The results indicate that commercial agriculture can be a component in sustainable development strategies under certain conditions, but that these strategies will fail without substantial, sustained increases in the economic viability and inclusiveness of smallholder agriculture, land tenure security, agro-ecological land management, and support for broader patterns of endogenous agrarian transformation.