The broad scope and intent of this thesis is to contribute to the body of research and writing about the loss of agricultural land due to development and the transformation of rural agricultural communities. At the more specific level, through interviews and secondary research, this thesis considers municipal land use planning in Alberta under the revised 1995 Municipal Government Act in the Municipal District (MD) of Pincher Creek No. 9, where cattle ranching, wildlife, and now, acreages vie for land resources. The critical questions addressed are: What are the conflicts between ranching and habitat conservation, and conversely, what opportunities do they share? What role can and does a municipality play in promoting sustainable ranching and conservation through its land use policy and jurisdiction? Set in southwest corner of Alberta, the MD of Pincher Creek is endowed with a remarkable history of ranching, ample resource wealth, and a unique climate and topography that supports a spectacular, rich, diverse ecosystem. Within the past few years, private agricultural land near Waterton Lakes National Park and the Castle River wilderness in the MD has come under speculative and development pressure predominantly for country residences, often retirement homes, and for tourism interests. Recent Municipal Act amendments have delegated substantially more land use control to rural municipalities, as a result the MD of Pincher Creek has more authority to make decisions that shape its future community profile, to mediate between competing land use interests, and to impact local ranching and habitat. The thesis analysis explores how the best practices of ranching or "sustainable ranching" can help to conserve and enhance habitat and how ranchers' attitudes can evolve to be more tolerant of wildlife. This thesis also explores and supports the efforts of a budding local land trust, SALTS, which plans to protect local agricultural land and habitat through conservation easements. Finally, the thesis concludes by envisioning ways the MD government can encourage habitat preservation, conservation easements, sustainable and economically viable ranching, as well as the control and direction of country residential development, all with a view to ensuring that future economic development opportunities remain available for local residents. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

This study investigates the strategies and policy impacts of the environmental, family farm, and sustainable agriculture groups in the 1990 farm bill legislation. In spite of "genuine" interest in a fundamental policy reform, and in spite of a common agenda, the three different types of interest groups mostly opted for parochial, incremental policy demands. This self-restrictive interest group behavior and the groups' limited impacts on policy outcomes is explained by organizational limitations and self-interests of the challenging interest groups as well as by institutional protection of the American political system. This protection specifically applies to the agricultural domain with its distinctive farm bill construction. <u>New and potentially challenging farm bill interest groups have not been agents for fundamental policy change</u>, as the policy status quo (old policies as well as governmental inaction) is structurally protected. / Master of Arts

This dissertation examines the cultural politics of conservation efforts in Mexico City, where in 2000, the city legislated a soil and water conservation plan in its rural areas. During 12-months of field work in the village of San Luis Tlaxialternalco 1 focused on how the conservation plan was to be established in the wetlands with chinampa agriculture, directly above one of the city's fresh water reservoirs. Political ecology research of conservation suggests that ecosystemic processes are intricately linked to economic and social processes on many scales. Post-structuralist analysis has complicated homogeneous and generalizing descriptions of social categories, politics of power, and the causality between socio-economic, political, cultural, and ecological factors. Research in political ecology emphasizes the diversity of actors and their subject positions and seeks to locate and understand the dynamics of power and agency within and outside formal institutions. I examined the negotiations of the conservation plan on three social scales and I looked at the intersecting axes of power and the knowledge of various actors, and how they inform conservation. On the scale of the state, a discursive analysis of the 'coloniality of power' of the conservation plan uncovers the city government's underlying assumptions about how the fanners' land use practices and social organization contribute to the conservation effort. I ask how do those assumptions define and condition chinampa farmers as 'Indian'? I conclude that in the conservation plan, colonially-based discourses constitute rural communities and agriculturalists in ways that subject them to the city's needs and interests, and exclude them from equal livelihood opportunities. In San Luis Tlaxialternalco I examined ideas of 'community' by documenting how the conservation plan affected local power relations. Analyzing the dynamics among chinampero farmers in their meetings, I exarnined the alliances in and the 'voice' of the village. I conclude that 'community' is a fluid and contested entity shaped by class, knowledge, and cultural values in unpredictable constellations. The tjaird scale of analysis concerns women's knowledge and voice, and examines ideas of silence as agency. In semi-structured interviews and participant observation in farmer women's everyday lives in San Luis I explored how they make decisions that affect the environment. The research shows that multiple constraints and opportunities, such as economic responsibilities, class, prestige, and patriarchy shape women's daily lives and direct their decisions to advance goals consistent with their values even when their decisions may undermine the long-term health of the environment they depend on. By looking at the micropolitics of conservation, my research provides cultural understanding of how at different scales decisions that affect ecology are made and how they are articulated through cultural idioms in the charged context of the conservation plan. The dissertation de-mystifies predominant representations of chinampas and chinamperos. It also complicates ideas of 'cornmirnity' and suggests that the analysis has to go beyond class and include values and knowledge. Further, I show that relevant ecological knowledge does not automatically lead to 'appropriate' action, and that silence can be a powerful tool that resists impositions and firrthers individual and community interests. Finally, the thesis suggests that political ecologists need to move away from equating power with action and activism within "progressive movements", and that conservation efforts need to have multiple goals and follow diverse strategies. / Arts, Faculty of / Geography, Department of / Graduate

Thesis (M.Sc. (Geography)) -- University of Limpopo, 2020 / This work aimed at assessing the implications of involving local communities in biodiversity conservation in Blouberg Nature Reserve (BNR) in Limpopo Province, South Africa. To achieve this objective, firstly biodiversity status before and after involving local communities in conservation initiatives was assessed using multi-temporal medium-resolution Landsat series data and species diversity indices. The results showed that there were significant variations (α = 0.05) in tree species diversity in BNR for before and after involving local communities. For example, tree species diversity was low after involving communities particularly for the years 1996 and 2019. Secondly, benefits and costs of involving local communities in biodiversity conservation as well as their investigate views, perceptions and attitudes BNR management were assessed. The study demonstrated local communities do not obtain sufficient benefits or incur numerous costs from the nature reserve. Despite this, there was considerable support for biodiversity conservation (84.2%) since household respondents still held positive attitudes towards biodiversity conservation in the reserve. For, example most of them indicated that they would report illegal activities to the authorities. However, despite lack of participation by the majority of the household respondents (89.6%) in biodiversity conservation, they demonstrated understanding of the relevance of nature conservation. In contrary, the BNR Manager stated that the local communities received benefits in the form of fuel-wood for special occasions such as funerals and bush meat sold at treasury approved tariffs during culling. However, illegal activities like poaching are still experienced in the nature reserve. Thus, the study underscores the relevance the integrating satellite data and qualitative information in assessing the ecological condition of PAs. Such information can help in biodiversity monitoring and decision-making on conservation of biodiversity. Keywords: biodiversity conservation; community-based natural resource management approach; ecological status; mapping; satellite data; spatial characterisation; species diversity; statistical analysis.

MENVSC / Department of Geography and Geo-Information Science / See the atttached abstract below

No description available.

A variety of conservation trends have gained and lost favor throughout the years in agriculture, with U.S. Farm Bills often influencing what conservation practices are implemented by farming communities throughout the U.S. This dissertation focuses on the unintended consequences of conservation management practices in the Fifteenmile Watershed of Wasco County, Oregon. Specifically, I seek to address how farmer enrollment in various conservation techniques, loosely defined as no-till agriculture, has affected soil and water quality through the increased use of herbicide, and subsequently rendered ecological and human health vulnerable. Using a critical physical geography framework, I address both the biophysical factors and social structures that have co-produced changes in soil and water quality in the study area of this research through intensive physical field data collection, spatial analysis, social surveys, and interviews. I also demonstrate how three neoliberal sets of processes: market-friendly reregulation; state rollback and deregulation; and the creation of self-sufficient individuals and communities, have transformed the human socio-environmental relationship to agriculture. These processes have had significant effects on the policies governing how soil and water quality are managed on both a state and national level, and have created a dependence on enrollment in conservation practices that may ultimately prove counterproductive for long term goals of environmental protection and sustainability.

Thesis (MSc (Geography and Environmental Studies))--University of Stellenbosch, 2005. / In the past, development was allowed in agricultural areas which would not be acceptable under current planning policy. There is a growing need to develop and maintain highly productive and ecologically stable agricultural systems. One approach to encourage better land management and utilisation is the international certification of a farm’s production practices.

This thesis studies the role accounting plays in the monitoring and reporting of soil quality in one sector of the agricultural industry, broadacre farming. A survey was conducted with broadacre farmers in the Loddon Catchment, Victoria, Australia. The primary aim was to determine the effectiveness accounting plays in providing information to decision makers relative to the productive capacity in soil quality and not just on profits. The capital asset in this study was defined as soil quality. Soils and soil quality in particular, are major elements in determining land value. The concern is decisions are being made by potential buyers and other decision makers, particularly policy makers, with regards to soil quality on the basis of incomplete and often misleading information. It is proposed that a major reason is due to the fact that different participants in the agricultural and accounting industries require and use different information. The accounting systems used by farmers are those that have been developed for the manufacturing sector which may not be appropriate for managing long-term, complex resources such as soil. The farmers themselves did not find formal accounting reports useful for decision making because these reports are based on uniform standards and market prices. The topic of soil quality and land degradation is viewed from two perspectives. In one perspective, the proprietary view; the accounting emphasis is on the ownership of assets and the change, both in income and capital, in these assets over time. In this case the accounting equation is seen as assets - liabilities = equities. The proprietor takes all the risk. A more recent perspective in accounting, the entity view, emphasises the assets whether financed from equity or debt and where the accounting equation is seen as assets = equities. The emphasis changes to the income flow from these assets and more interest is shown in current market prices as a reflection of the future value of these assets Profit is not necessarily a good indicator of what farmers are doing for their capital asset. There needs to be greater emphasis on costs undertaken for the conservation of soil. Those costs should be considered an investment and put into the balance sheet and not the profit and loss statement. The major finding of study demonstrates that decision making groups have different

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Land use alterations have been major drivers for modifying hydrologic cycles in many watersheds nationwide. Imbalances in this cycle have led to unexpected or extreme changes in flood and drought patterns and intensities, severe impairment of rivers and streams due to pollutants, and extensive economic losses to affected communities. Eagle Creek Watershed (ECW) is a typical Midwestern agricultural watershed with a growing urban land-use that has been affected by these problems. Structural solutions, such as ditches and tiles, have helped in the past to reduce the flooding problem in the upland agricultural area. But these structures have led to extensive flooding and water quality problems downstream and loss of moisture storage in the soil upstream. It has been suggested that re-naturalization of watershed hydrology via a spatially-distributed implementation of non-structural and structural conservation practices, such as cover crops, wetlands, riparian buffers, grassed waterways, etc. will help to reduce these problems by improving the upland runoff (storing water temporally as moisture in the soil or in depression storages). However, spatial implementation of these upland storage practices poses hurdles not only due to the large number of possible alternatives offered by physical models, but also by the effect of tenure, social attitudes, and behaviors of landowners that could further add complexities on whether and how these practices are adopted and effectively implemented for benefits. This study investigates (a) how landowner tenure and attitudes can be used to identify promising conservation practices in an agricultural watershed, (b) how the different attitudes and preferences of stakeholders can modify the effectiveness of solutions obtained via classic optimization approaches that do not include the influence of social attitudes in a watershed, and (c) how spatial distribution of landowner tenure affects the spatial optimization of conservation practices on a watershed scale. Results showed two main preferred practices, one for an economic evaluation (filter strips) and one for an environmental perspective (wetlands). A land tenure comparison showed differences in spatial distribution of systems considering all the conservation practices. It also was observed that cash renters selected practices will provide a better cost-revenue relation than the selected optimal solution.