scholarly journals Governance, Community Resilience, and Indigenous Tourism in Nahá, Mexico

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (15) ◽  
pp. 5973
Author(s):  
Pilar Espeso-Molinero ◽  
María José Pastor-Alfonso
Keyword(s):  
Ecological System ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Governance System ◽  
Community Governance ◽  
Anthropological Study ◽  
Mexican Government ◽  
Indigenous Tourism ◽  
Lacandon Maya ◽  
Surrounding Areas

Employing resilience as the theoretical and methodological framework and focusing on governance, this long-term anthropological study analyzes the socio-ecological system of a small indigenous community, with community-based tourism development. After 10 years of ethnographic and participatory work with the Lacandon Maya of Nahá, Mexico, our anthropological research explores the complexities of community governance and its role in protecting the socio-ecological system. The processes of land restitution initiated by the Mexican government and the arrival of migrants from different ethnic groups in the surrounding areas have resulted in significant socio-ecological adjustments being made at the community level. A self-regulated governance system is evaluated to understand the drivers and variables that generated vulnerabilities in the system, as well as the factors that fostered resilience in the establishment of the Nahá’s Natural Protected Area of Flora and Fauna. Our results show that although the current Lacandon political organization is fairly recent, pressures from neighboring communities have fostered resilience responses. To protect their space from such pressures, the Lacandon, convinced of their ethnic legitimacy as guardians of the Lacandon Jungle, have internalized the official political-environmentalist discourse. This role has had critical implications for the birth and development of the Indigenous tourism system.

Interrelationships between municipal spatial policy strategy and airport operation and development. Lodz Airport case study

2018 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-79
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Nikorowicz-Zatorska
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Urban Planning ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
The Other ◽  
Local Authorities ◽  
Spatial Management ◽  
The One ◽  
Surrounding Areas

Abstract The present paper focuses on spatial management regulations in order to carry out investment in the field of airport facilities. The construction, upgrades, and maintenance of airports falls within the area of responsibility of local authorities. This task poses a great challenge in terms of organisation and finances. On the one hand, an active airport is a municipal landmark and drives local economic, social and cultural development, and on the other, the scale of investment often exceeds the capabilities of local authorities. The immediate environment of the airport determines its final use and prosperity. The objective of the paper is to review legislation that affects airports and the surrounding communities. The process of urban planning in Lodz and surrounding areas will be presented as a background to the problem of land use management in the vicinity of the airport. This paper seeks to address the following questions: if and how airports have affected urban planning in Lodz, does the land use around the airport prevent the development of Lodz Airport, and how has the situation changed over the time? It can be assumed that as a result of lack of experience, land resources and size of investments on one hand and legislative dissonance and peculiar practices on the other, aviation infrastructure in Lodz is designed to meet temporary needs and is characterised by achieving short-term goals. Cyclical problems are solved in an intermittent manner and involve all the municipal resources, so there’s little left to secure long-term investments.

Taken For A Ride

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matteo Rizzo
Keyword(s):  
Public Transport ◽  
Urban Poor ◽  
Dar Es Salaam ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Bus Rapid Transit ◽  
The Political ◽  
Urban Experience ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Informal Economies

The growth of cities and informal economies are two central manifestations of globalization in the developing world. Taken for a Ride addresses both, drawing on long-term fieldwork in Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) and charting its public transport system’s journey from public to private provision. The book investigates this shift alongside the increasing deregulation of the sector and the resulting chaotic modality of public transport. It reviews state attempts to regain control over public transport, the political motivations behind these, and their inability to address its problems. The analysis documents how informal wage relations prevailed in the sector, and how their salience explains many of the inefficiencies of public transport. The changing political attitude of workers towards employers and the state is investigated: from an initial incapacity to respond to exploitation, to political organization and unionization, which won workers concessions on labour rights. A longitudinal study of workers throws light on patterns of occupational mobility in the sector. The book ends with an analysis of the political and economic interests that shaped the introduction of Bus Rapid Transit in Dar es Salaam and local resistance to it. Taken for a Ride is an interdisciplinary political economy of public transport, exposing the limitations of market fundamentalist and postcolonial scholarship on economic informality and the urban experience in developing countries, and its failure to locate the agency of the urban poor within their economic and political structures. It is both a contribution to and a call for the contextualized study of ‘actually existing neoliberalism’.

scholarly journals Resilience, Reinvention and Transition during and after Quarantine

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 230-236
Author(s):  
Kristof Van Assche ◽  
Martijn Duineveld ◽  
S. Jeff Birchall ◽  
Leith Deacon ◽  
Raoul Beunen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Current System ◽  
New Governance ◽  
Governance System ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
Systemic Risks ◽  
The Social ◽  
Problems And Solutions ◽  
Governance Tools

Quarantine measures and the crises triggering them are never neutral in the sense that a return to the past is impossible. These measures are also a signal of other things like systemic risks and weaknesses. A period of quarantine is also a thing in and by itself. What happens after quarantine is thus shaped both by the state of the social-ecological system preceding quarantine and by what happened during quarantine. The selectivities introduced during quarantine span discursive, institutional and material realms. Old discourses can return with a new meaning. Social and economic relations can reappear seemingly unchanged, they can be more visibly altered and they can be dismantled. Ideologies, however, to be understood here as master discourses, read problems and solutions in their own way and do not necessarily come closer to each other or disappear. All this, offers food for thought regarding the possibilities and limits of resilience and transition. We argue that the current COVID- 19 pandemic casts doubt on the generic applicability of theories of resilience and transition, yet also sheds a new light on the value of both. We propose the concept of reinvention to describe what is happening and what could happen in a more coordinated fashion. We argue that the current crisis reveals mechanisms in systems dynamics that point at the existence of multiple pathways after dramatic system shocks. Some shocks and their system- specific responses (such as a particular kind of quarantine) are more amenable to resilience strategies afterwards, while others require a path of radical transition. They might also both be needed: a rather stark transition now might ensure future resilience. While the outline of the system after transition is not clear, some desirable features are clear as are the risks and damages of the current system. Also clear is the argument for transitional governance, a temporary governance system (beyond quarantine) which can enable the construction of new long term perspectives in governance and new governance tools meant to reduce chances of a crisis like this one reoccuring.

scholarly journals Research on Innovative Computing of Community Governance Capacity in Xiacheng District of Hangzhou

2021 ◽  
Vol 235 ◽  
pp. 02068
Author(s):  
Qiang Li ◽  
Kejin Liu
Keyword(s):  
Urban Communities ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Governance System ◽  
Governance Capacity ◽  
Related Services ◽  
Community Governance ◽  
Cultural Services ◽  
Cultural Service ◽  
The Government ◽  
Evaluation Mechanism

Deepening the reform of the cultural system and promoting the all-round prosperity of cultural undertakings and the rapid development of the cultural industry are vital to the realization of the goal of building a moderately prosperous society in an all-round way, to the overall layout of the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and to the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Public cultural services refer to the public cultural facilities, cultural products, cultural activities and other related services provided by the government with the participation of social forces for the main purpose of meeting the basic cultural needs of citizens. Hangzhou Xiacheng District is the first community public cultural service performance evaluation mechanism in China, which provides a sample for modern public cultural services in urban communities across the country, and also provides exemplary experience for promoting the modernization of community governance system and governance capacity. This study uses innovative evaluation methods to make an empirical analysis of community governance capacity in Xiacheng District of Hangzhou, and tries to find the reasonable calculation method

scholarly journals Impact of Student Interventions on Urban Greening Processes

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (13) ◽  
pp. 5451
Author(s):  
Derk Jan Stobbelaar
Keyword(s):  
Ecological System ◽  
Process Time ◽  
Urban Greening ◽  
Ecological Network ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
Political Empowerment ◽  
The Social ◽  
Mere Presence ◽  
Dutch Cities

The aim of this study is to determine the contribution of student interventions to urban greening processes. In two Dutch cities action research was conducted, including reflexive interviews a year after the first intervention, to assess factors causing change in the socio-ecological system. Results show that students and network actors were mutually learning, causing the empowerment of actors in that network by adding contextualized knowledge, enlarging the social network, expanding the amount of interactions in the socio-ecological system and speeding up the process. Students brought unique qualities to the process: time, access to stakeholders who tend to distrust the municipality and a certain open-mindedness. Their mere presence made a difference and started a process of change. However, university staff needed to keep the focus on long-term effects and empowerment, because students did not oversee that. After a year, many new green elements had been developed or were in the planning phase. In Enschede, the municipality district managers were part of the learning network, which made it easier to cause changes in the main ecological network. In Haarlem however, no change took place in the main ecological network managed by the municipality, because no political empowerment of the civil society group had developed yet.

scholarly journals Ecosystem services and ecological degradation of communal wetlands in a South African biodiversity hotspot

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (6) ◽  
pp. 181770 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Owethu Pantshwa ◽  
Falko T. Buschke
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Rural Communities ◽  
Sustainable Use ◽  
Biodiversity Hotspot ◽  
Ecological System ◽  
Governance System ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Personal Benefit ◽  
Administrative Area ◽  
Gender Based

Wetlands provide important ecosystem services to rural communities. However, wetlands are often on communal land, so they may become degraded when individual users act to maximize their personal benefit from ecosystem services without bearing the full environmental costs of their actions. Although it is possible to manage communal resources sustainably, this depends on the dynamics of the socio-ecological system. In this study, we used a structured questionnaire to examine whether demographic characteristics of a rural community and the propensity for partaking in damage-causing activities affected the benefits obtained from the wetlands. Responses from 50 households in the rural Hlabathi administrative area within the Maputo-Albany-Pondoland Biodiversity Hotspot, South Africa, indicated that the entire community obtains some benefits from wetlands; most notably regulating ecosystem services. However, males were more likely to benefit from wetlands, which highlights a potential power imbalance. Respondents were more likely to blame others for wetland degradation, although there was no link between the damage-causing activities and benefits from wetlands. The high dependence on ecosystem services by community members, when combined with gender-based power imbalances and the propensity to blame others, could jeopardize the sustainable use of communal wetlands. Therefore, we describe how strong leadership could nurture a sustainable social–ecological system by integrating ecological information and social empowerment into a multi-level governance system.

scholarly journals Public Participation of the River Chief System in China: Current Trends, Problems, and Perspectives

Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 3496
Author(s):  
Chenhui Wu ◽  
Maosen Ju ◽  
Longfei Wang ◽  
Xiangyi Gu ◽  
Cuiling Jiang
Keyword(s):  
Public Participation ◽  
Water Governance ◽  
Water Security ◽  
Governance System ◽  
Effective Measure ◽  
Term Operation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Current Trends ◽  
Water Problems

The River Chief System (RCS) is an effective measure for China to solve complex water problems and maintain the health of rivers and lakes. It is an institutional innovation to improve the water governance system and ensure national water security. Guiding and encouraging the public to participate in the construction of the RCS can promote the improvement of the level of social governance. The RCS is an effective supplement and supervision to the performance of the river chief and related departments, which can effectively promote the transformation of the RCS from nominal to practical and efficient. This study summarizes the innovative models and practical effects of, and public participation in, the RCS, analyzes the prominent problems, and proposes some measures to maximize the influence of public participation. The study provides insights on how to ensure the long-term operation of the RCS, a reference for countries around the world as a suitable solution for the sustainable management of water environments.

scholarly journals Community governance and service delivery in Nepal: an assessment of influencing factors

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keshav K Acharya ◽  
Habib Zafarullah
Keyword(s):  
Service Delivery ◽  
Resource Constraints ◽  
Poor Performance ◽  
Governance System ◽  
Group Discussions ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Community Governance ◽  
Number Of Factors ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Effective Service

This paper analyses factors influencing effective service delivery at the grassroots level in Nepal, through a qualitative field study which includes in-depth interviews with 110 community-based organisations (CBOs) and five focus group discussions. The findings indicate that a wide range of governance arrangements have been deployed in the effort to achieve effective service delivery. However, many CBOs lack a solid governance system for their development undertakings, leading to poor performance and lack of accountability. A number of factors are identified as causing this weak practical application of community governance, notably institutional mechanisms, socio-economic structures, power politics and interests, capacity limitations and resource constraints.

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