scholarly journals Community engagement in pastoralist areas: Lessons from the public dialogue process for a new refugee settlement in Turkana, Kenya

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cory Rodgers

AbstractLarge-scale development interventions have long failed to accommodate the needs and preferences of pastoralists or the systems of resource governance and land tenure upon which they rely. However, advocates of rights-based approaches to development emphasise the importance of community participation in planning and agenda-setting, and in Kenya, public participation is a formal constitutional requirement for government decision-making processes. In 2015, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees concluded negotiations with local stakeholders about the use of 15 km2 of communal rangelands to build a new refugee settlement in Turkana County, Kenya. Negotiations entailed a community dialogue process involving local people living in the vicinity of the proposed settlement. This paper retrospectively examines the inclusivity of the dialogue process, with particular attention to the involvement of pastoralists and the representation of their interests. Interviews and focus groups conducted with a range of key informants and community stakeholders highlighted two key problems. First, negotiations relied upon a simplistic approach to communal land tenure that overlooked the complexity of overlapping and often contested access rights. Second, there was an over-reliance on urban professionals and politicians as intermediaries between rural communities and development actors. Even where elite intermediaries act in good faith, they may introduce an ‘oppidan bias’ into development policies, thereby marginalising the viewpoints of non-urban, non-sedentary demographics, such as pastoralists. I conclude with recommendations for the UNHCR to develop a more explicit strategy for direct engagement with host community stakeholders in Turkana and with increased attention to the interests of livestock producers and the nuances of pastoralist land use.

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (21) ◽  
pp. 5881 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beauchamp ◽  
Clements ◽  
Milner-Gulland

Land governance highly affects rural communities’ well-being in landscapes where land and its access are contested. This includes sites with high land pressures from development, but also from conservation interventions. In fact, local people’s motivations for sustainably managing their resources is highly tied to their perceptions of security, trust and participation in land management regimes. Understanding these perceptions is essential to ensure the internal legitimacy and sustainability of conservation interventions, especially in areas where development changes are fast paced. This paper presents an analysis of household perceptions of land issues in 20 villages across different conservation and development contexts in Northern Cambodia. We assess whether conservation and development interventions, as economic land concessions, influence perceptions of land issues in control and treatment sites by modelling five key perception indicators. We find that household characteristics rather than village contexts are the main factors influencing the perceptions of land issues. Interventions also affect perceptions, especially with regards to the negative effect of development pressures and population growth. While large-scale protected areas do not calm insecurity about land issues, some village-based payment for environmental services projects do. Ultimately, evidence from perception studies can help address current concerns and shape future conservation activities sustainably.


2021 ◽  
pp. 239965442198970
Author(s):  
Maissaa Almustafa

The end of 2015 witnessed a global record in the number of forcibly displaced people fleeing because of wars and persecution. The unprecedented total of 65.3 million displaced individuals, out of which 21.3 million were refugees, was the highest number that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has recorded since its establishment in 1950. During the same year and in the face of this large-scale crisis, only 107,100 refugees were admitted for resettlement through official resettlement programs, whereas 3.2 million people applied for asylum globally. And in spite of the fact that the majority of the world refugees are hosted in ten developing regions, the dominant narrative in the global media was about the “unauthorized” arrival of more than one million asylum seekers in Europe by sea during 2015. This paper argues that the unexpected nature of refugees’ arrivals has proven that refugees were supposed to be contained in their camps in the Global South, deterred from reaching the territories of the Global North, represented here by Europe. Thus, the paper proposes that these arrivals are rather reflections of a crisis of protection that developed in the Global South where containment and deterrence strategies against refugees from the Global South exacerbate their inhumane displacement conditions in home regions. In the same context, the paper discusses how international protection structures have been reconstructed to serve the same goals of containment and deterrence, with the ultimate aim of putting people ‘back in place’ with minimal access to protection and rights.


2008 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 71-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.A. Woolliams ◽  
O. Matika ◽  
J. Pattison

SummaryLivestock production faces major challenges through the coincidence of major drivers of change, some with conflicting directions. These are:1. An unprecedented global change in demands for traditional livestock products such as meat, milk and eggs.2. Large changes in the demographic and regional distribution of these demands.3. The need to reduce poverty in rural communities by providing sustainable livelihoods.4. The possible emergence of new agricultural outputs such as bio-fuels making a significant impact upon traditional production systems.5. A growing awareness of the need to reduce the environmental impact of livestock production.6. The uncertainty in the scale and impact of climate change. This paper explores these challenges from a scientific perspective in the face of the large-scale and selective erosion of our animal genetic resources, and concludes thai there is a stronger and more urgent need than ever before to secure the livestock genetic resources available to humankind through a comprehensive global conservation programme.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Jason Doyle ◽  
Kevin Filo ◽  
Alana Thomson ◽  
Thilo Kunkel

Delivering community-based benefits is oftentimes cited to justify the high costs associated with hosting large-scale events. The current research is embedded in positive psychology to examine how an event impacts host community members’ PERMA domains, reflected through positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment. Adopting a longitudinal approach, the authors interviewed 15 host community members before and after a large-scale sport event to determine if and how the event impacted their well-being. The findings uncovered evidence that the event activated positive emotions, relationships, and meaning across both phases, and evidence of accomplishment within the postevent phase. The findings contribute to the knowledge by examining the links between large-scale sport events and well-being throughout the event lifecycle. This research forwards implications for event bidding committees, event organizers, and host community officials to maximize community well-being through hosting large-scale events and to help justify associated expenses from a social–psychological perspective.


2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Crystal Lupo

Reduced demand for wood and wood products resulting from the economic crisis in the first decade of the 2000s severely impacted the forest industry throughout the world, causing large forest-based organizations to close (CBC News, 2008; Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2009; Pepke, 2009). The result was a dramatic increase in unemployment and worker displacement among forest product workers between 2011 and 2013 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2014). Forested rural communities often depended on the large-scale forest industry for their livelihood, and as a result, decreased reliance on large-scale industry became increasingly important (Lupo, 2015). This article explores portable-sawmill-based entrepreneurship as an opportunity to promote social change in the local community. Results indicated that portable-sawmill-based small businesses created community development opportunities, which promoted social change in the larger community through farm business expansion, conservation efforts to improve local community development, and niche market creation in the local or larger community.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Lili Song

<p>This thesis systematically considers the law and policy on refugee status in the People’s Republic of China. It considers relevant Chinese legal provisions, applicable bilateral and multinational treaties, as well as China’s refugee policy and practice. It also presents and analyses first-hand information collected through interviews with refugees and aid workers.  China is an emerging destination of refugees and other displaced foreigners. Although China is a party to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol, Chinese law contains no provisions governing the definition of a refugee or the determination of refugee status. Further, there is a gap between the criteria for asylum in the 1982 Chinese Constitution and the criteria for refugee status in the 1951 Convention.  In practice, although the Chinese government has generally allowed the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to process individual applications for refugee status, the Chinese government has practically performed the function of refugee status determination in large-scale influx situations through policy decisions. In these situations, the security, political, and strategic interests of China have often overshadowed China’s commitment under the 1951 Convention.  China has been cautious about recognising refugees on its territory. However, the Chinese government has clearly demonstrated a growing interest in addressing the issue of refugee recognition within a more formalised framework.  In conclusion, this thesis recommends that China adopt a legal refugee definition in line with the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and develop a predictable and fair national RSD mechanism.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Lili Song

<p>This thesis systematically considers the law and policy on refugee status in the People’s Republic of China. It considers relevant Chinese legal provisions, applicable bilateral and multinational treaties, as well as China’s refugee policy and practice. It also presents and analyses first-hand information collected through interviews with refugees and aid workers.  China is an emerging destination of refugees and other displaced foreigners. Although China is a party to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol, Chinese law contains no provisions governing the definition of a refugee or the determination of refugee status. Further, there is a gap between the criteria for asylum in the 1982 Chinese Constitution and the criteria for refugee status in the 1951 Convention.  In practice, although the Chinese government has generally allowed the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to process individual applications for refugee status, the Chinese government has practically performed the function of refugee status determination in large-scale influx situations through policy decisions. In these situations, the security, political, and strategic interests of China have often overshadowed China’s commitment under the 1951 Convention.  China has been cautious about recognising refugees on its territory. However, the Chinese government has clearly demonstrated a growing interest in addressing the issue of refugee recognition within a more formalised framework.  In conclusion, this thesis recommends that China adopt a legal refugee definition in line with the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and develop a predictable and fair national RSD mechanism.</p>


2015 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 71-94
Author(s):  
Greg Castillo

Aboriginal Australian contemporary artists create works that express indigenous traditions as well as the unprecedented conditions of global modernity. This is especially true for the founders of the Spinifex Arts Project, a collective established in 1997 to create so-called “government paintings”: the large-scale canvases produced as documents of land tenure used in negotiations with the government of Western Australia to reclaim expropriated desert homelands. British and Australian nuclear testing in the 1950s displaced the Anangu juta pila nguru, now known to us as the Spinifex people, from their nomadic lifeworld. Exodus and the subsequent struggle to regain lost homelands through paintings created as corroborating evidence for native title claims make Spinifex canvases not simply expressions of Tjukurpa, or “Dreamings,” but also artifacts of the atomic age and its impact on a culture seemingly far from the front lines of cold war conflict.


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-48
Author(s):  
Quynh Anh Le Thi ◽  
◽  
Yasuharu Shimamura ◽  
Hiroyuki Yamada ◽  
◽  
...  

Soil fertility conservation has become an increasing concern in Vietnamese agriculture owing to excessive use of agrochemicals. The use of organic fertilizers is considered an environment-friendly practice for sustainable agriculture. Although environmental awareness has emerged and production technologies of organic fertilizers have been introduced in recent years, their adoption remains limited among farming households. This study focuses on the causal effects of information acquisition on the use of organic fertilizers from agricultural extension services and from peers of farming households. The estimation results show that land size, land tenure, educational level, family labor endowment, and household wealth are significantly associated with the likelihood of using organic fertilizers. Information acquisition through both information sources positively affects the use of organic fertilizers. However, information acquisition from agricultural extension services has a greater marginal impact than that from peers. Despite its lower influence, information acquisition from peers plays a supplemental role in incentivizing farming households to use organic fertilizers as an environmentfriendly agricultural practice among rural communities in Vietnam.


Author(s):  
Victoria C. Stead

Although it diverges markedly from the vision of the Melanesian Way elaborated in the 1975 constitution, large-scale resource extraction has in recent decades been championed as the key mechanism for development in Papua New Guinea. In this context, forms of “middle-way” land reform are advocated as means of rendering customary land tenure commensurable with the requirements of modern, capitalist practices of production and economic activity. Principal amongst these are Incorporated Land Groups (ILGs) and lease-lease-back arrangements. Ethnographic exploration of communities affected by the tuna industry in Madang Province shows how these land reforms transform structures and cartographies of power, privileging the agents of the state and global capital at the same time that they transform relations of power within communities. At the same time, however, forms of codification and the assertion of landowner identities allow communities to make claims against outside agents involved in resource extractive activity on their lands.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document