scholarly journals Culture, kastom and conservation in Melanesia: what happens when worldviews collide?

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stacy Jupiter
Keyword(s):  
Culturally Diverse ◽  
Resource Extraction ◽  
Natural Resource Extraction ◽  
Indigenous Worldviews ◽  
Marine Tenure ◽  
Planning Processes ◽  
Expected Benefits ◽  
Conservation Projects ◽  
Research Action ◽  
Future Project

Melanesia is one of the most biologically and culturally diverse regions on earth, yet its species and ecosystems are fundamentally threatened by rapidly growing and modernising populations that drive increased demands for natural resource extraction. Despite good intentions, many conservation projects in Melanesia have not succeeded, largely due to a failure on the part of researchers and practitioners to understand underlying differences between western and indigenous worldviews and issues surrounding land and marine tenure arrangements. Learning from these failures is critical in order to improve odds for future project effectiveness and sustainability. Here I present lessons from attempts across Melanesia at establishing protected areas, conservation agreements, ecotourism initiatives and research-action arenas. These showcase challenges and conflicts when worldviews collide and opportunities that arise when mutual expectations are clarified early on during planning processes. Factors that contribute to more successful outcomes include: respecting international protocols for free, prior and informed consent; co-creating research and management agendas with local communities; clearly articulating realistic expected benefits; and establishing locally perceived equitable and transparent benefits sharing mechanisms.

scholarly journals Arctic meltdown: A problematic property rights structure translates into poor resource management

SURG Journal ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-13
Author(s):  
Olivia Mancuso
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Resource Management ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Natural Resource ◽  
Tragedy Of The Commons ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Resource Extraction ◽  
Open Communication ◽  
Natural Resource Extraction ◽  
The Commons

As access to the Arctic region continues to grow, many land-use issues have become increasingly prominent. The exposure of shorter shipping routes, unresolved maritime boundaries between the bordering states, and most importantly, the plethora of renewable and non-renewable resources in the region have created a strain on international relations between the states bordering the Arctic. Rising global temperatures have created the promise and opportunity of better access to natural resources in the coming years, raising the likelihood of potentially substantial economic gains to the bordering states. However, the current property rights structure in the Arctic, as governed by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), dictates that the jurisdiction of each coastal nation state shall not exceed past 200 nautical miles beyond the coastline of each respective state. The goal of this report is to provide an assessment of the basic property rights that govern the Arctic territory in an attempt to illuminate how current and future inefficiencies in natural resource extraction and management can result from a poor property rights structure. The current property rights structure has led to a departure from an efficient allocation of rights and as a result currently operates under an anticommons scenario, while also setting the stage for a tragedy of the commons in the not so distant future. To move away from these sub-optimal outcomes and toward more efficient resource management, open communication, cooperation, and better defined property rights are important components needed to strengthen resource management among Arctic states. Keywords: Arctic land-use and property rights (assessment of); natural resource extraction and management (inefficiencies in); anticommons scenario; tragedy of the commons; Arctic Council; UNCLOS

Local Content

2020 ◽  
pp. 282-303
Author(s):  
Mia Ellis ◽  
Margaret McMillan
Keyword(s):  
Local Development ◽  
Local Economy ◽  
Foreign Firms ◽  
Resource Extraction ◽  
Mining Sector ◽  
Quantitative Evidence ◽  
Local Content ◽  
Natural Resource Extraction ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Existing Data

Tanzania is rich with natural resources, which have significant potential to contribute to the country’s economic development. Several laws recently passed in Tanzania are dedicated to establishing linkages between foreign firms in natural resource extraction and the local economy. This chapter documents this legislation and the institutions set up to enforce and monitor these laws. Effectiveness of local content legislation and the potential for firms in the mining sector to contribute to local development are then evaluated using a combination of qualitative and quantitative evidence. The chapter next uses existing data to explore trends in local content and the estimate the value of local content in the mining sector; this exercise highlights the need for improved data. We then examine other developing countries’ experiences with local content legislation, drawing lessons for Tanzania.

Discussing natural resource extraction in cultural landscapes as a cultural value

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia O'Donnell ◽  
Christophe Rivet
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resource ◽  
Cultural Landscapes ◽  
World Heritage ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
Resource Extraction ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Natural Resource Extraction ◽  
World Heritage List ◽  
The World ◽  
Practical Implications

PurposeNatural resource extraction is perceived as a destructive aspect of human culture. This characterization is widespread, despite the activity having shaped relationships between communities and their environment to create entire sets of cultural values and expressions through settlement patterns, traditional skills and practices, innovation and technology, intangible cultural expressions, local economies and more. The cultural dimensions of natural resource extraction landscapes were discussed at the ICOMOS ADCOM Annual Symposium in La Plata, Argentina, in December 2018. The workshop included experts in cultural landscapes, sustainability, industrial archaeology and industrial heritage. This paper reports on these issues and deliberations focusing on World Heritage cultural landscapes of extraction.Design/methodology/approachThe report considers a broad survey of the World Heritage List and sites on national Tentative Lists to identify those related to natural extraction sites and distinguishing between categories of relict vs. living, and between the types of natural resources being extracted.FindingsThe conclusion is that the World Heritage Committee has yet to address the living value of natural resource extraction. Furthermore, the workshop attendants concluded that there is a pressing need to do so in light of the type, nature and sustainability of these sites. As the source of materials for many outstanding sites on the World Heritage List and the decreasing availability of some resources, the question requires consideration to ensure the sustainable use and livelihood of communities.Research limitations/implicationsThe limitations are set by the general terms of the survey and the limited engagement of knowledgeable individuals.Practical implicationsThe practical implications are related to guidance to review and analyse potential living cultural landscapes related to natural resource extraction.Originality/valueThere is no general discussion on this topic yet amongst professionals. The initiative of the workshop identified that gap and its related necessity to provide guidance.

scholarly journals Women’s organizing against extractivism: towards a decolonial multi-sited analysis

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martina Angela Caretta ◽  
Sofia Zaragocin ◽  
Bethani Turley ◽  
Kamila Torres Orellana
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
The Body ◽  
Resource Extraction ◽  
Geographical Knowledge ◽  
Extractive Industry ◽  
Natural Resource Extraction ◽  
The North ◽  
Embodied Water

In Anglophone geography, proposals have called for the decolonization of geographical knowledge production to be focused on tangible and material manifestations of how dialogue is initiated and mediated among different ontologies and epistemologies. We strive to respond to this call by empirically cutting across the American continent to highlight the embodied and transnational dimensions of natural resource extraction. Across the Americas, extractive industries’ water usage often brings corporations into prolonged conflicts with local communities, who mobilize to resist the initiation and/or expansion of extractive activities that they view as threatening to their health, way of life, and their families and communities’ territories. Through two case studies from West Virginia (WV), USA, and Cuenca, Ecuador, we propose an analytical framework capturing how women organize against the extractive industry as a result of embodied water pollution. We do this with the aim of decolonizing geographical knowledge production, as we propose a decolonial, multi-sited analytical approach, which serves to rethink the scale of effects of extractive industry. By showing how resource extraction affects women’s bodies and water while also effectively allowing us to compare and contrast embodied water relations in WV and Ecuador, we better understand how extractivism works across scales—the body, the environment, and transnationally. We contend that a multi-sited approach disrupts the North–South geographical discursive divide and furthers a decolonial geographical approach in making apparent the embodied production and lived experience of territory across various scales. In this piece, we promote debates on decoloniality within Anglophone geography by proposing that we must not only consider epistemologies and spatial ontologies outside the western canon, but engage with practices and theories occurring in different parts of the globe in a simultaneous fashion as well. We call on fellow geographers to do the same.

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