With a total of 164 community supported agriculture programs (CSA), Vermont is leading the "locavore" movement in the United States, ranked number one in the country with the most CSAs and Food Hubs per capita. ("Locavore Index," 2013) CSAs have a large positive impact on reducing carbon emissions, advancing local economic growth, and promoting healthy lifestyles of consumers. The purpose of this study is to explore the overall experience of individuals in comparison to their current social norm, individual attitudes, identity, and intentions of change, and understand any change overtime in their individual attitude and behavior. Attitude change was measured by conducting pre and post surveys of the Intervale Food Hub UVM student members, as well as regression analysis to understand any possible indicators of chance. The data analysis provided understanding of the impact of the Intervale Food Hub's CSA membership on individuals' attitudes, norms, and identity. Survey questions, based on the theory of planned behavior, inquired about individuals' preferences, skills, and behavioral intentions. Because of the complexity of food and human relations, this data was be supplemented by collecting qualitative data to more richly understand the relationship between individuals and their Intervale Food Hub food shares. The conclusion of this study will advance understanding of one form of community supported-agriculture and its impact on human attitudes. Study findings will also aid the staff of the Intervale Food Hub in understanding their customers and implementing more efficient practices.

Master of Science / Department of Agricultural Economics / Timothy J. Dalton / Given the changing climate paradigm, food and poverty are likely to become more severe in Africa. Farmers can adapt to climate change, especially through conservation agriculture. This study relies on a minimum data approach developed by Antle and Valvidia (2006) to estimate the spatial distribution of opportunity cost for farmers in switching to conservation practices in Wa, Ghana. It assesses the economic feasibility of several scenarios that rely on production techniques currently studied by the CRSP SANREM project. We also explore the possibility that these practices can provide income from carbon sequestration payments implemented by the Kyoto protocol’s Clean Development Mechanisms. The methodology uses data from both a recent survey and information from secondary sources to assess simulated management practices. Results indicate that all the simulated management practices would theoretically benefit farmers. In fact, adoption rates for the four scenarios range from 52% to 65%, even without any carbon payment. Adding a proportional payment to the amount of carbon sequestered with these practices does not seem enough to influence farmers switch to switch to alternative scenarios. The analysis shows that these results hold even when additional fixed costs to adopt these practices are included. This case study demonstrates the usefulness of the minimum data approach in estimating the economic potential of conservation practices in Ghana. These production techniques may represent environmentally-friendly alternatives that are more profitable for farmers than current practices. The next step in assessing implementation of such practices would require studying farmers’ willingness to adopt these production systems, given their ex-ante economic returns.

A key challenge of the Anthropocene is to advance human development without undermining critical ecosystem services. Central to this challenge is a better understanding of the interactions and feedbacks between biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being, which interact in dynamic and complex social-ecological systems. These relationships have been the focus of much work in the past decades, however more remains to be done to comprehensively identify and quantify them, especially at larger scales. In this thesis, a social-ecological systems approach is adopted to investigate connections between biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being in South Africa. The country’s high levels of biological and socio-economic diversity, as well as its emerging economy make South Africa an interesting case for exploring these connections. Using data from a variety of public sources, and at different sub-national scales, the thesis first identifies and analyses a variety of bundles of ecosystem service use. Based on these bundles, three social-ecological system archetypes were identified and mapped in South Africa, namely the green-loop (high overall use of local ecosystem services), transition, and red-loop (low overall use of local ecosystem services) systems. Further analysis explored the social and ecological drivers of these patterns, and found the distribution of systems mainly influenced by social factors including household income, gender of the household head, and land tenure. Second, this thesis uses human well-being indicators to construct, analyse and map multi-dimensional human well-being bundles. These bundles were found to spatially cluster across the landscape, and were analysed for congruence with the ecosystem service use bundles. Discrepancies in the expected overlap of ecosystem service use and human well-being were highlighted and concur with findings elsewhere and the ongoing debate in the literature on the impacts of time-lags, indicator choice and scale of these interactions. Third, biodiversity in South Africa was analysed by employing an indicator of biodiversity intactness (BII) at the population level. The BII was found to have declined by 18.3% since pre-industrial times. Biodiversity loss was linked to the potential supply of ecosystem services, as well as human well-being patterns. A potential threshold at 40% biodiversity loss was detected, beyond which population abundances decline sharply. Finally, the thesis examines multiple perspectives on ecosystem services in sustainability research, including the social-ecological systems perspective, and discusses the complementarity of the different perspectives in furthering a deeper understanding of the connections between people and ecosystems. The social-ecological systems perspective employed throughout the empirical work presented in this thesis contributed towards cross-cutting insights, the testing of new kinds of data and the development of new approaches, all of which represent important steps towards unravelling the connections between biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being, and contributing to the key Anthropocene challenge of sustainable development. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 2: Submitted. Paper 3: Manuscript. Paper 4: Manuscript.</p>

A pesca no estuário da Lagoa dos Patos é uma atividade em disputa. De um lado, as comunidades de pesca produzem seus territórios de pesca através dos seus respectivos Conhecimentos Ecológicos Tradicionais (CET) que embasam os diferentes modos de usos dos recursos pesqueiros, os sistemas de manejo de recursos pesqueiros tradicionais (MT). A atividade pesqueira no estuário da Lagoa dos Patos é anterior à colonização portuguesa sendo os CETs que embasam os MTs resultado de um hibridismo cultural entre indígenas, afro e luso-descendentes. De outro, o Estado Moderno implementa políticas públicas de manejo de recursos pesqueiros, sobretudo a partir da segunda metade da década de 1970, que resultam na implementação de um sistema de manejo de recursos pesqueiros moderno (MM), característico de um projeto colonial de dominação. Como resultado da implementação do MM, a pesca entra em colapso na primeira metade da década de 1970 e as indústrias pesqueiras decretam falência na década de 1980. Para solucionar a crise no setor pesqueiro, na segunda metade da década de 1990 cria-se o Fórum da Lagoa dos Patos (FLP) onde se formula a atual legislação que regulamenta a pesca no estuário da Lagoa dos Patos, a Instrução Normativa Conjunta de 2004 (INC 2004). A INC 2004 implementa um MM através da imposição de um calendário de pesca que se torna institucionalizado e, por isso, oficializado. O objetivo desta tese é descrever o processo de des-re territorialização das comunidades de pesca do estuário da Lagoa dos Patos gerado pelo Estado Moderno na implementação da INC 2004. Para atingir tal objetivo, foram utilizadas basicamente duas técnicas de pesquisa para coleta de dados do CET, que produz os territórios tradicionais, e dos conhecimentos, verdades e valores mobilizados na formulação da INC 2004: entrevistas e levantamento bibliográfico. A partir dos dados obtidos, foi necessário o desenvolvimento de uma proposta própria que se enquadra na perspectiva integradora de território: território como conhecimento. Segundo esta proposta, território é um espaço epistêmico produzido a partir do espaço. Com a tentativa de implementação da INC 2004, emerge um conflito ambiental territorial na produção de um espaço através do controle do uso de recursos pesqueiros no estuário da Lagoa dos Patos. O Estado Moderno, que exibe caráter colonial, opera estrategicamente sobre o espaço tentando forçar o curso da modernidade às comunidades de pesca na produção de um espaço epistêmico disciplinar. O resultado, se o Estado Moderno fosse bem sucedido em seu projeto de colonialismo cultural, seria um epistemicídio: a eliminação dos multiterritórios operados pelo CET com uma dinâmica multicalendárica em cada uma das comunidades de pesca artesanal do estuário e a sua substituição por um território operado por uma racionalidade ocidental com um ritmo mecânico através da imposição do Calendário Oficializado da INC 2004. As comunidades de pesca, por sua vez, resistem silenciosa e abertamente operando taticamente via CET na produção de espaços de R-existência. Surpreendentemente, em movimentos diagramáticos infinitos, ambos, Estado Moderno e comunidades de pesca, des-re-territorializam um ao outro. / Fishing in the estuary of Patos Lagoon is an activity in dispute. On the one hand, fishing communities produce their fishing territories through their respective Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), which grounds the different use modes of fishery resources, the traditional resource management systems (TM). The fishing activity in Patos Lagoon estuary is prior to the Portuguese colonization and the TEKs which ground TMs are a result of a cultural hybridity among indigenous, African and Portuguese descendants. On the other hand, especially from the second half of the 1970s, the modern State has been implementing policies for fishery management which have led to the establishment of a modern sciencebased resource management (SM), characteristic of a colonial project of domination. As a result, fishery collapsed in the first half of the 1970s and fishing industries filed bankruptcy in the 1980s. To solve the crisis in the fishery sector in the second half of the 1990s, Forum of Patos Lagoon (FLP) was created. It was at the Forum that the 2004 Normative Instruction (INC 2004), the current legislation which regulates fishing in the estuary of Patos Lagoon, was formulated. INC 2004 implements an SM by imposing a fishing calendar that becomes institutionalized and, therefore, officialized. The objective of this thesis is to describe the process of de-reterritorialization in the fishing communities of the estuary of the Patos Lagoon which was generated by the Modern State when it implemented INC 2004. To achieve this goal, data on TEK were obtained through open and semi-structured interviews and ethnoscientific bibliographic review. Data on knowledge, truths and values that support the formulation of INC 2004 were collected through open interviews held with researchers, who played a key role in mobilizing such intellectual resources and through bibliographic research on the four fisheries whose fishing periods are regulated by INC 2004. From the data obtained, it was necessary to develop our own proposal that fits the integrative perspective of territory: territory as knowledge. Under this proposal, the territory is an epistemic space originating from space. With the attempted implementation of INC 2004, an environmental territorial conflict has emerged in the production of space through the control of the use of fishery resources in the Patos Lagoon estuary. The Modern State, in a display of its colonial character, strategically operates upon space by trying to force the course of modernity on the fishing communities in the production of a disciplined epistemic space. The result, if the Modern State were successful in its project of cultural colonialism would be an epistemicide: the elimination of multi-territories operated by TEK with a multicalendaric dynamics in each of the artisanal fishing communities of the estuary and its replacement by a territory operated by Western rationality, with a mechanical rhythm through the imposition of the official calendar of INC 2004. Fishing communities, in turn, resist quietly and openly by operating tactically via TEK in the production of spaces of R-existence. Surprisingly, in diagrammatic infinite movements, both the Modern State and fishing communities de-reterritorialize one another.

The policy of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) has been promoted at the global level as an innovative approach to reduce forest loss that contributes to about one-fifth of global climate change. My dissertation brings together theories of policy processes and political ecology to examine REDD+ at three levels: global, national and local. It focuses on how this global climate policy is translated from one geographical scale to another and from policy into practice. The analysis of how REDD+ is transformed through this process provides insights into the extent to which REDD+ is likely to achieve its aims of reducing forest loss and mitigating global climate change. The national and local cases are drawn from Ghana, West Africa. The study is mainly qualitative, and employs semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, key informant interviews, oral histories, participatory activities, and document analysis, as methodologies. At the global scale, I explore how REDD+ became a global climate policy and the range of global expectations that supported its rise to prominence. I argue that REDD+ became prominent because of three main strategies employed by its proponents: first, the re-introduction of the role of forest-sector emissions to climate change negotiations; second, the setting-up of financial schemes to attract and mobilise support for REDD+; and third, the establishment of safeguards mechanisms to address criticisms raised by stakeholders that opposed REDD+. At the national level, I examine how the policy processes related to REDD+ were translated from the global scale to the national context of Ghana. I critically examine the narratives around how deforestation was understood and the range of actions that were subsequently identified as options for achieving REDD+ outcomes. I show that REDD+ has created opportunities for promising reforms and structures on forest management in Ghana; yet it is unlikely to achieve its intended objectives because of (i) problems with the way the narrative has framed the causes of deforestation; (ii) a failure to fully address long-standing problems with tenure and benefit-sharing frameworks; and (iii) the centralisation of revenue generation that is limiting local-level implementation of plans. At the local levels, I focus on how two REDD+ pilot projects were unfolding. Similar to the national level, my analysis reveals that the projects have employed questionable narratives about the ways deforestation is produced in both cases. In addition, the solutions designed to address deforestation were found to contain misplaced assumptions that undermine the prospects of both projects to achieve their intended objectives. The research highlights the messy processes of translation of global climate policies such as REDD+ as they move from one scale to another, and from policy to practice. The study contributes to understanding how problematic narratives, misguided assumptions, and diverse interests, create gaps between the policy ideas and their implementation as global climate policy is translated from one geographical scale to another.

This thesis seeks to understand and improve the effectiveness of partnerships formed by industry, community and government members of natural resource management (NRM) groups. The increasing popularity of partnership-based approaches to NRM is reflected in the rise of landcare, catchment management and other social mobilisation approaches throughout Australia and overseas. This thesis uses critical ethnographic methods to identify the characteristics of effective NRM partnerships and the factors influencing their effectiveness. This research also investigates appropriate methods for evaluating the effectiveness of such relationships and for determining when working in partnership with others may be the most appropriate response to a given NRM problem and context. The critical intent of the study means that it sought not only to understand the nature of such issues but also sought to enlighten and empower participants to improve the practice of partnerships in natural resource management. These characteristics and factors are analysed from three perspectives: the coordinators employed to broker and facilitate community-based NRM groups, the groups themselves and individual group members. This was done in order to reflect the importance of the continuous (re)negotiation of power that characterises long-term group relationships. It also enabled theories of power, cultural transformation, citizen participation, social capital and social learning to be used in the analysis of the NRM partnerships investigated in this study. These concepts were used to develop three tools for analysing NRM partnerships: a pendulum of citizen participation, an NRM citizen participation decision tree, and an NRM partnership typology. The study is based upon the analysis of nineteen cases, predominantly in South East Queensland, which were selected as examples of successful and effective NRM partnerships on the basis of referrals from regional managers and coordinators from State and Local Government. The research design was 'T' shaped, with Phase 1 of the study providing breadth through the analysis of fifteen partnerships. Depth was achieved in Phases 2 and 3. Phase 2 was a long-term ethnographic case study of one catchment management group while Phase 3 comprised a detailed analysis of three issue-specific partnerships formed by this group. These three phases concentrated on the viewpoint of coordinators, NRM groups and participants, respectively. Data on each of the nineteen cases were collected through interviews, field observations, workshops, document analyses and a short questionnaire. Data were analysed qualitatively. All data records were systematically coded to reveal themes and concepts relating to the research objectives from the viewpoints of coordinators, NRM groups and participants. Coding also revealed implications for governments seeking to enter into or to facilitate partnerships with others. The coding and interpretation of this data revealed a suite of twelve characteristics typical of effective natural resource management partnerships. These fell into five groups: (i) definitional characteristics (relating to effectiveness and shared power and responsibility) (ii) relationship characteristics (focusing on social capital building processes; communication; processes for knowledge acquisition and social learning; shared values, intent, action and risk-taking) (iii) participant characteristics (high levels of motivation and realistic expectations); (iv) a context characteristic (that the context is appropriate for a partnership) and (v) an 'outsider' perception characteristic (that the partnership is perceive positively by outsiders). A comparative analysis of cases reveals that only one of the nineteen cases exhibited all twelve characteristics. Importantly, three of these characteristics are not mentioned in the literature reviewed for this thesis. Two of these, share values and shared intent are relationship characteristics. Study findings emphasise that effective NRM partnerships are built on good personal relationships, based on shared values and intent. The third new characteristic is that people outside the partnership should perceive the relationship favourably. Since funds and other resources may be under the control of people outside a partnership, it is important that participants are able to effectively communicate their shared values and intent to others. Five factors were found to be significant in the development of effective partnerships (i) the need for participants and those brokering partnerships to realize that effective partnerships are built on positive personal relationships in which (ii) participants have high levels of motivation for being involved, particularly early in the relationship. The study further revealed that such relationships: (iii) need to be supported by a continuity of adequate funding and resources and (iv) the services of skilled, enthusiastic coordinators who (v) enjoy and are skilled at working in 'grey areas', the constantly changing social and organizational environment that is typical of NRM groups. These findings of the study are synthesized through a critical ethnography which depicts three years in the life of a typical, yet hypothetical, NRM group, the Armstrong Narrows-Yarooba Catchment Management Group (ANY Group). Based on the literature review and the analysis of results from this study, this composite story protects the anonymity of those who have participated in this research. Each of the three vignettes that make up this story contains two sections -As it was and As it could be. This 'double take approach' highlights the critical nature of the ethnography, emphasising how the development of collaborations and partnerships among members of NRM groups may be improved and evaluated. Coordinators, NRM group members and agencies supporting their efforts may use this ethnography as a basis for reflection and deliberation on the development of effective partnerships in natural resource management. Recommendations for how different stakeholders in NRM partnerships may develop the effectiveness of the partnerships they form are provided.

Natural resource managers are facing increasing challenges as environmental degradation accelerates and the need to integrate a broad spectrum of community experiences into management decisions is increasingly recognised. To help meet these novel challenges, this study explores how professional researchers and communities can combine their skills and learn to work in partnerships to achieve shared management goals. Community-based research involves people as citizen scientists, whereby citizens actively participate in research on local issues. The inclusive nature of community-based research has the ability to produce auxiliary benefits uncommon in conventional research. These include the development of social capital and social learning as the practice of citizen science empowers communities with new skills, knowledge and social networks, thus building capacity within communities to take an effective role in natural resource management. Community-based research also has the potential to enrich the range of management options available by increasing the breadth of accessible knowledge. However, despite much rhetoric about democratising science, little is known about the practice, value and problems of involving citizens as collaborators in natural resource management research projects. This thesis presents the findings from a comparative survey of the attitudes to community-based research held by 'citizen' scientists, on the one hand, and 'expert' scientists and natural resource managers, on the other. It also draws upon a multi-site case study, set in a diverse urban-rural catchment, where an integrated research program was established for different natural resource management agencies to work with each other and community groups to develop research protocols so that community groups could participate in assessing the health of catchment areas. This involved scientists, natural resource managers and community education/extension officers working with established community groups to develop and trial modified scientific methods for the environmental monitoring of catchment and estuarine areas. This inter-agency/community project was continued as a case study site into the second and third years of research and was augmented in the second and third years by focusing on two of the initial community groups as second and third case study sites in their own right. Synthesis of both survey and case study analysis reveals that, despite resource and attitudinal barriers, community-based research can ensure access to local knowledge and increased relevance of research. In addition, many participants most valued the increased feeling of connection towards their local environment and community. I argue that citizen/expert collaboration is key to successful community-based research and best achieved in an atmosphere of mutual respect where all participants are seen as co-researchers. However, participatory intentions are unlikely to be acted upon without sufficient opportunity. Thus, the process of research must be re-defined from that associated with positivist science to include a greater range of participants and activities in an adaptive manner. This more inclusive and reflective approach seems most likely to ensure the quality and utility of research data, the knowledge sharing and social learning, and the enjoyable atmosphere that underpin successful citizen/expert interactions. Certainly, the ability to draw upon and create social capital is vital. The integration of these findings enabled the development of guidelines for effective collaboration between citizens and experts when addressing catchment management issues and undertaking participatory research.

The task of producing policies for the management of Earth’s natural resources is a problem of the gravest concern worldwide. Such policies must address both responsible use in the present and the sustainability of those finite resources in the future. Resources are showing the adverse results of generations of exploitation, and communities fail to see the outcomes of past policies that have produced, and continue to produce, these results. They have not learned from past policy failures, and consequently fail to produce natural resource management (NRM) policies that support sustainable development.¶ It will be argued that NRM policy makers fail to learn from the past because they do not have a good historical perspective and a clear understanding of the dynamics of the complex human-environment system that they manage. It will also be argued that historians have not shown an interest in collaborating with policy makers on these issues, even though they have much to offer. Therefore, a new approach is proposed, which brings the skills and understanding of the trained historian directly into the policy arena.¶ This approach is called Applied Environmental History (AEH). Its aims are to help establish an area of common conceptual ground between NRM practitioners, policy makers, historians and dynamicists; to provide a framework that can help NRM practitioners and policy makers to take account of the historical and dynamical issues that characterise human-environment relationships; and to help NRM practitioners and policy makers improve their capacity to learn from the past. Applied Environmental History captures the characteristics of public and applied history and environmental history. In order to include an understanding of feedback dynamics in human-environment systems, it draws on concepts from dynamical systems theory. Because learning from the past is a particular form of learning from experience, AEH also draws on theories of cognitive adaptation.¶ Principles for the application of AEH are developed and then tested in an exploratory study of irrigation development that is focused on the NRM issue of salinity. Since irrigation salinity has existed for centuries, and is a serious environmental problem in many parts of the world, it is a suitable NRM context in which to explore policy makers' failure to learn from the past. AEH principles guide this study, and are used, together with insights generated from the study, as the basis for the design of AEH Guidelines.

<p>This thesis employs a network perspective in studying ecosystems and natural resource management. It explores the structural characteristics of social and/or ecological networks and their implications on societies’ and ecosystems’ ability to adapt to change and to cope with disturbances while still maintaining essential functions and structures (i.e. resilience).</p><p>Paper I introduces terminology from the network sciences and puts these into the context of ecology and natural resource management. Paper II and III focus on habitat fragmentation and how it affects an agricultural landscape in southern Madagascar. Two ecosystem services were addressed: (1) crop pollination by bees, and (2) seed dispersal by ring-tailed lemurs. It is shown that the fraction of the studied landscape presently covered by both crop pollination and seed dispersal is surprisingly high, but that further removal of the smallest habitat patches in the study area could have a severe negative impact on the landscape’s capacity to support these ecosystem services.</p><p>In Papers IV and V, the network approach is used to study social networks and the impact they may have on the management of natural resources. In Paper IV it is found that social networks of low- to moderate link densities (among managers) significantly increase the probability for relatively high and stable utility returns whereas high link densities cause occasional large-scale ecological crises between periods of stable and excessively high utility returns. In Paper V, social networks of a rural fishing community in eastern Africa were analyzed. The results indicate that patterns of communication partly explain the distribution of ecological knowledge among villagers, and that gear type used by small-scale coastal fishermen strongly correlates with their patterns of communication. The results also show that groups most central in the network, and hence potentially most influential, are dominated by one type of fishermen.</p>

<p>This thesis is concerned with the efforts to bring about a greater degree of local community participation in the use and management of Sri Lanka's coastal land and natural resources. Through the application of the Special Area Management (SAM) strategy in geographically distinct areas along the coast, the aim is to create collaborative arrangements - partnerships - that will enable coastal communities and local governments to work together with the Sri Lankan state and share responsibility and authority over the management of coastal land and natural resources. </p><p>Using a political-geographical perspective that highlights the political and spatial dimensions of this shift in forms for governing the coast, the thesis seeks to identify and discuss factors that can have a bearing on the participatory dimension of collaborative coastal management in Sri Lanka. The thesis focuses particularly on factors influencing the role played by the local communities and the degree to which they actually come to share authority with respect to the use and management of coastal natural resources as envisioned in the SAM strategy. </p><p>The thesis illustrates that, despite an ambition to bring about a sharing of authority and control in costal management, this has not quite worked out in practice. Due to circumstances relating both to the SAM strategy itself and to the context in which it is implemented, the degree to which coastal communities have gained any degree of influence with respect to the management of coastal land and resources remains questionable. </p><p>The study is carried out prior to the tsunami that hit the Sri Lankan shores in December 2004. However, given the major reconstruction of Sri Lanka's coast that currently is ongoing and the controversy that surrounds it, the issues raised in this thesis are highly relevant.</p>