Thesis (M. P. A.)--Texas State University-San Marcos, 2006. / "Spring 2006." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 103-108).

Thesis (Ph.D. (Population and Development))--National Institute of Development Administration, 2003.

Thesis (Ph.D. (Public administration))-University of Pretoria, 2004. / Abstract and summary in English. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A. (Environmental Science))--Rhodes University, 2006.

Thesis (MSc)--Stellenbosch University, 2003. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The Peace Parks Foundation (PPF) was established in 1997 to facilitate Transfrontier Conservation (TFCA) initiatives in the SADC region and thereby support economic development, conservation of biodiversity, as well as the promotion of regional peace and stability. To this effect, their regional planners require a thorough knowledge of the condition of areas in which the estimated actions will be carried out. To date, the PPF have used base datasets, such as land cover and population densities, in their GIS projects to support their decision making processes. However, they have realised the importance of developing rigorous methods for the extraction and generalization of biodiversity information for informed conservation decisions. The main aim of this study was, therefore, to develop a spatial framework for the generalisation and integration of data to become meaningful information that may be readily interpreted. The resultant framework represents a methodology for, firstly, identifying and, secondly, prioritizing core natural areas or units (CNU). CNUs were modelled to represent large blocks (minimum 100 km') of contiguous natural vegetation that are far from major roads and densely populated places. They were, then, ranked into three classes of importance (low, medium and high) according to an ecological value derived for each. This made the framework comprehensive in its considerations of regional biodiversity and robust enough to be used for planning at the SADC scale. By organising data and quantitative approaches logically in a robust, but rigorous, way, spatial frameworks provide the structure for combining specialized knowledge as well as scientific analysis and pragmatic politics in an effective planning process. This could guide plans which are proactive instead of reactive, visionary as well as pragmatic and well founded in research and understanding. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die Peace Parks Foundation (PPF) was gestig in 1997 om oorgrens bewarings-initiatiewe in die SADC streek te fasiliteer en daardeur steun te verleen aan ekonomiese ontwikkeling, die bewaring van biodiversiteit asook die bevordering van vrede en stabiliteit in die streek. Om dit te behaal benodig die betrokke streeksbeplanners 'n grondige kennis van die toestand van die areas waarin die beoogdede aksies uitgevoer sal word. Tot op hede het die PPF basis datastelle, van byvoorbeeld landgebruik en populasie-digtheid, ingespan m hul GIS projekte om besluitnemingsprossese te ondersteun. Daar is egter besef dat dit van hoogste belang is om deeglike metodes te onwikkel vir die onttrekking van biodiversiteits-informasie sodat ingeligte besluitneming moontlik gemaak kan word. Gevolglik was die hoof oogmerk van hierdie studie om 'n ruimtelike verwysingsraamwerk te ontwikkel wat data kan veralgemeen en integreer tot betekenisvolle inligting wat geredelik interpreteerbaar is. Die daaruit-vloeiende raamwerk stel 'n metodologie voor wat Kern Natuurlike Areas (KNA) eerstens kan identifiseer en tweedens kan prioritiseer. Hierdie KNA is gemodelleer om groot blokke (minstens 100km2 ) van aaneenlopende natuurlike plantegroei, ver van hoofpaaie en dig bevolkte gebiede, voor te stel. Hulle is hieropvolgend gesorteer in drie range van belangrikheid (laag, medium en hoog) na gelang van 'n ekologiese waarde wat vir elk afgelei is. Hierdeur is die raamwerk, in terme van voldoende oorwegings teenoor streeks-biodiversiteit, omvattend gemaak en terselfdertyd robuus vir beplanning op die SADC skaal. Deur data en kwalitatiewe benaderings logies en in 'n deeglike en robuuste wyse te organiseer, bied ruimtelike verwysingsraamwerke die struktuur om gespesialiseerde kennis met wetenskaplike analise en pragmatiese politiek te kombineer in 'n effektiewe beplanningsproses. Hierdeur kan planne geformuleer word wat proaktief is instede van reaktief, visionêr sowel as pragmaties, en terselfdertyd goed gefundeer bly op navorsing en begrip.

State energy plans are created at the request of a sitting governor or State Legislature in order to provide guidance set goals for the state’s energy sector. These plans will be critical indicators of energy trends such as the future market share of coal, natural gas, and renewables. If the future of energy in the United States is to be remotely sustainable, low-carbon policies must headline state plans. The strength of a state’s energy plan in terms of sustainability is directly related to that state’s willingness to prioritize and commit to incorporating energy sources that produce negligible carbon emissions. Questions about the role of efficiency can be answered by the political need for short-run payoffs that do not necessarily align with the long-term goals of sustainability (Kern & Smith, 2008). The nature of the American political system is that representatives want to be able to bring immediate results to their constituents, results that are usually shown in the short-run by efficiency programs. While the state energy plans in question (California, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Iowa, South Carolina, and Virginia) engage with sustainability at varying levels of strength, they deal mostly in weak sustainability by failing to commit to renewables. Historical reliance on energy efficiency and its accompanying theories of growth has created a climate in which state energy plans do not generally realize their enormous potential to lead the national transition away from fossil fuels.

The American marten (Martes americana) is an endangered species in Vermont and a Regional Species of Greatest Conservation Need in the northeastern United States. Though historically widespread in northeastern forests, their range presumably contracted to northern Maine and the High Peaks region of the Adirondacks by the early 1900s. Regionally, populations appear to be in recovery. Natural recolonization is believed to have occurred in New Hampshire, northeastern Vermont and the western Adirondacks. A reintroduction effort in southern Vermont that was originally declared unsuccessful is now believed to be the source of a recently detected population in the area. However, our current knowledge of distribution, population history and population connectivity relies primarily on occurrence data from harvest records, which are limited in scope and resolution. In Vermont, where population size is estimated to be extremely low, more robust estimates of population status may be critical to continued recovery. I genotyped individuals from Maine, New York, New Hampshire, northeastern Vermont and southern Vermont at ten microsatellite loci and amplified a 320 base pair segment of the control region of mtDNA to estimate the source(s) of the two Vermont populations using statistical tests of genetic differentiation. I also used Bayesian and stochastic genetic clustering methods to estimate population genetic structure in the northeastern United States. Genetic structure exists at multiple scales in the region as a result of natural barriers to gene flow, human-mediated gene flow, and lineage sorting in relic populations. My results suggest that New Hampshire is a major source of colonization of northeastern Vermont and the population in southern Vermont is either a remnant of the reintroduction or a pre-reintroduction relic that has experienced introgression from the reintroduction stock. I identified three regions where relic populations perceived to be extirpated in the 1900s may have persisted. I also developed an occupancy model for American marten in the northeastern United States using mixed-effects logistic regression based on expert opinion data. Eighteen experts from Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York with backgrounds in trapping, wildlife management, and wildlife science participated in the survey. Experts were asked to estimate the probability of marten occupancy at 30 sites in the northeastern United States. Three top models described the data. Habitat covariates in those models were 1) percent canopy cover, 2) percent spruce-fir forest cover, 3) winter temperature, 4) elevation, and 5) road density. An AIC-weighted average of these three models had significant predictive ability (area under an ROC curve = 0.88) with respect to occurrence records in the northeastern United States. In addition, the model predicted that high quality habitat existed patchily along the central and northern Green Mountain spine in Vermont – where no occurrence records exist for at least a century. Top-scoring movement corridors between southern Vermont and nearby populations in northeastern Vermont/New Hampshire and New York occurred in the northern and central Green Mountains and across high resistance movement barriers in the Champlain valley. Corridors to New York were considered strong movement barriers and are unlikely to facilitate gene flow.

The Mceula Commonage Land in the Hewu district lies due northwest of Whittle sea and west of Queenstown in the Eastern Cape. This thesis has two main objectives. Firstly, to survey and analyse the condition of the natural resource. base in the Hewu district with particular reference to water, soil, vegetation and land use. Secondly, to investigate the relationship between scientific approaches to assessing land use degradation and to compare these to the results obtained using a participatory approach of the rural environment of the Hewu district of the Eastern Cape. Random quadrats (4m2) were sampled and corresponding line transects were done with increasing distances from the villages. The Braun-Blanquet method was used to find the cover and abundance of the various species of plants. Data obtained from point sampling along 100 metre line transects was used to assess the condition of the veld using Trollope's technique. Six communities were defined using TWINSP AN, and grazing capacities and veld condition scores of the respective sites were calculated. It was concluded that the six communities were distributed along a gradient of palatable to non palatable grass and grasslike species. Rangelands close to the villages had low veld condition scores and percentage plant cover as opposed to those farther away from the villages. The null hypothesis of no significant difference between the percentage plant cover and condition of the veld close to the villages and farther away from the villages was rejected. Whilst it is urgent to resolve political disputes around land through land distribution, a key issue for the future is sustainability of the natural resource base of South Africa. To attain this, the old traditional methods of research must be supplemented with the participatory method, where the local community becomes fully involved. The central theme of the participatory approach was to investigate the possibility of promoting local management of the natural resources. Workshops were conducted to involve the local community in the project. The community formed six discussion groups that met regularly to discuss environmental issues. The six groups that were formed were: Firewood or woodlot collectors, shepherds / livestock raisers, crop fanners / agriculturists, water collectors, building material / soil collectors and medicinal plant users. The results obtained from the meeting of the discussion groups were used to compare the scientific results obtained from Braun-Blanquet method. Perceptions about their environment, which came out of the results of the discussion groups showed that the local knowledge of the rural community of Mceula was sufficient to train them to manage their environment sustainably.

The purpose of this thesis is to propose a model of integrated resources management which uses techniques of negotiation and agreements to involve all interested parties in the decision making process. The thesis is developed in two parts. Part I defines the model and principles which are applied in Part II to a case study of forestry planning in community watersheds. For some years now there have been calls for natural resources management on an ecological basis. To achieve this, the law must define legal rights and procedures which ensure that all affected human interests are taken into account in management decision-making. The decision-making is characterized as a bargaining process aimed at balancing the competing interests of all affected parties. Bargaining connotes a use of negotiation and agreement. However, the established legal uses of these techniques are restricted to situations involving few parties. Complex integrated resources management has been conducted primarily through expert discretionary administration. But bureaucratic administration of complex issues is now understood as an inherently political process fraught with scientific and values uncertainties and lacking legitimacy because it is not effectively accountable to the parties whose interests are affected. The recent experience with environmental alternative dispute resolution ("ADR") suggests techniques for all affected parties to be taken into account by representative negotiation and agreement. A review of examples of environmental ADR provides some principles about the use of negotiation and agreements to supplement the regulatory processes of integrated resources management. Those principles relate to the assertion of legal rights, the need to remedy dissatisfaction with judicial procedures and the adversary system as means to challenge regulatory decisions, the negotiation process itself, and the regulatory approval and implementation of negotiated agreements. The case study commences with an analysis of the legal context. It reveals an uncertain regime of legal rights and authority. The Ministries involved have great discretionary authority; the forest licensee's legal relations are principally of a contractual nature with the Crown; and the water licensees' rights are ill-defined. This uncertain legal regime does not facilitate bargaining between the affected resource licensees. The integrated resources management framework established under administrative authority does have the potential to facilitate bargaining. Whilst the new framework is innovative and establishes new institutions, rights and duties, it is difficult to determine authoritatively the elements of that framework because they are found only in a set of policy documents and are still subject to the uncertainty of administrative discretion. Negotiation and agreements may occur in a number of different contexts in the integrated resources management framework, especially in the context of the Technical Review Committee which is the main arena for negotiation between the interested parties. There is a commentary on the negotiation process, much of the material for which was gathered in interviews with representatives of the parties involved. Various reforms of the framework should be considered to facilitate bargaining and confine administrative discretion. Principal among these are the right of all parties to appeal to an administrative tribunal when the regulatory decision is made without the consensus of the negotiating committee, and clarification of the method of adjudicating compliance with regulatory conditions. In summary, the whole framework established by the policy documents should be revised and given a legislated base. In doing this, certain legal questions need to be considered. Ultimately, the utility of the model proposed depends upon the capacity of the law to define the various natural resource interests of all people in the community. / Law, Peter A. Allard School of / Graduate

Natural resource management models simplify reality for the purpose of planning or management. In much the same way, an uncertainty model simplifies the many uncertainties that pervade the natural resource management model. However, though a number of uncertainty models have been developed, there has been little work on verifying such models against the uncertainty they purport to represent. The central research question addressed by this work is 'can a natural resource management uncertainty model be verified in order to evaluate its utility in real-world management?' Methods to verity uncertainty models are developed in two areas: uncertainty data models, and uncertainty propagation through process models. General methods are developed, and then applied to a specific case study: slope stability uncertainty in the southern Queen Charlotte Islands. Verification of two typical uncertainty data models (of classified soils and continuous slope) demonstrates that (in this case) both expert opinion inputs and published error statistics underestimate the level of uncertainty that exists in reality. Methods are developed to recalibrate the data models, and the recalibrated data are used as input to an uncertainty propagation model. Exploratory analysis methods are then used to verify the output of this model, comparing it with a high-resolution mass wastage database—itself developed using a new set of tools incorporating uncertainty visualisation. Exploratory data analysis and statistical analysis of the verification shows that, given the nature of slope stability modelling, it is not possible to directly verify variability in the model outputs due to the existing distribution of slope variability (based on the nature of slope modelling). However, the verification work indicates that the information retained in uncertaintybased process models allows increased predictive accuracy—in this case of slope failure. It is noted that these verified models and their data increase real-world management and planning options at all levels of resource management. Operational utility is demonstrated throughout this work. Increased strategic planning utility is discussed, and a call is made for integrative studies of uncertainty model verification at this level. / Arts, Faculty of / Geography, Department of / Graduate