Community forestry in Ontario

1994 ◽  
Vol 70 (6) ◽  
pp. 725-730 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Harvey ◽  
Brian Hillier

Policy-makers and resource managers are attempting to define more-effective mechanisms for involving the local community in forest land management for many years. In the past five years, renewed attention has been given to the opportunity for empowering local communities with decision-making and program delivery responsibilities. The community forestry project in Ontario is one example of policy-makers, resource managers and local communities trying to bridge the gap between community development and resource management. With the assistance of four pilot projects, a research project and public discussion, a community forestry strategy is under development in Ontario. While it may take years to produce indisputable results through trials at the local level, three years of work have already enriched our understanding of the interface between human settlements and natural resources and of alternative means for successful stewardship. Key words: community forestry, community forest, Ontario

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-34
Author(s):  
Prabin Bhusal ◽  
Naya Sharma Paudel ◽  
Anukram Adhikary ◽  
Jisan Karki ◽  
Kamal Bhandari

This paper highlights the lessons of using adaptive learning in community forestry that effectively help to resolve forest based conflicts in Terai region of Nepal. The paper is based on a three-year action research carried out in Terai. Qualitative methods including participatory rural appraisal tools and documentation of engaged action and reflections were used. Methods and tools that largely fall under adaptive learning were deployed. The field data was complemented by review of secondary data and literature on environmental history of Terai. We found that policies on land and forest in Terai for the last fifty years have induced and aggravated conflicts over access and control between state and communities and also within diverse groups of local communities. These conflicts have had serious negative impacts on sustainable management of forests and on local people’s livelihoods, particularly resource poor and landless people. Centralised and bureaucratic approaches to control forest and encroachment have largely failed. Despite investing millions of Rupees in maintaining law and order in forestlands, the problem continues to worsen often at the cost of forests and local communities. We found that transferring management rights to local communities like landless and land poor in the form of community forestry (CF) has induced strong local level collective action in forest management and supported local livelihoods. Moreover, adding adaptive learning, as a methodological tool to improve governance and enhance local level collective action significantly improves the benefit of CF. It implies that a major rethinking is needed in the current policies that have often led to hostile relationships with the local inhabitants- particularly the illegal settlers. Instead, transferring forest rights to local communities and supporting them through technical aspects of forest management will strengthen local initiatives towards sustainable management of forests.


Author(s):  
Justyna Chodkowska-Miszczuk

Abstract It is not only worth talking about the chances of survival in the fight against emerging environmental and socio-economic threats, but it is necessary to use all possible means to influence public awareness. It is awareness that shapes our attitudes and literacy. The core of these tools is cross-sectoral place-based education. This raises the question of the role of new energy actors in the education process. As ‘first movers’, they have enormous power in the local community. Are they therefore merely energy producers, or perhaps, using their position, are they actively involved in creating local energy behaviours? A combination of social research methods including qualitative studies helped respond to this question. As the study shows, an opportunity for effective education is contextualisation, embedding educators in the local social structure and including first movers – energy producers – in this process. Biogas entrepreneurs transpose the knowledge of renewable energy – a globally known issue – to the local level. The provision of comprehensive education requires institutional support focused on building partnerships between policy makers, teachers and practitioners, enabling not only trans-sectoral contact but also the exchange of experience.


2001 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Egbe Samuel Egbe

The participation of local communities in the management of Cameroon's huge forest resources appears to be one of the most imponderable and enigmatic issues confronting contemporary policy-makers. This is because forest resource access and tenure policies in Cameroon have, since the colonial period, generally been hegemonic in character. This situation was further accentuated with the advent of national governments. On the eve of independence and even beyond, African governments were so concerned with political rights that they did not give much thought to any other rightscertainly not to what has become known as the right of local communities to participate in natural resource management. It was quite easy for Africans to conceive of rights solely in terms of the political rights of individuals. There was thus an alleged incompatibility between riparian community rights to participate in forest management and respect for individual rights.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (23) ◽  
pp. 6839
Author(s):  
Sharada Prasanna Mohanty ◽  
Rajiv Ramaswamy ◽  
Anantha Kumar Duraiappah

In this paper, we propose a novel methodology and design to contribute towards the achievement of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by member states of the United Nations for a better and more sustainable future for all. We particularly focus on achieving SDG 4.7—using education to ensure all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development. We describe the design of a crowdsourced approach to monitor issues at a local level, and then use the insights gained to indicate how learning can be achieved by the entire community. We begin by encouraging local communities to identify issues that they are concerned about, with an assumption that any issue identified will fall within the purview of the 17 SDGs. Each issue is then tagged with a plurality of actions taken to address it. Finally, we tag the positive or negative changes in the issue as perceived by members of the local community. This data is used to broadly indicate quantitative measures of community learning when solving a societal problem, in turn telling us how SDG 4.7 is being achieved. The paper describes the design of a unique, youth-led, technology-based, bottom-up approach, applicable to communities across the globe, which can potentially ensure transgressive learning through participation of and monitoring by the local community leading to sustainable development.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 143
Author(s):  
Nur Athirah Bakeri ◽  
Dayang Affizzah Awang Marikan ◽  
Amin Mahir Abdullah

Terubok is one of the famous, important commercially fish in Malaysia and has high economic value which only can be found in Sarawak rivers. However, this species has been threatened in the past 15 years due to heavy exploitation. Hence, this study was done to examine the perceptions of local in conserving and sustaining the terubok population. An attitudinal study is increasingly being adopted as tools for evaluating public understanding, acceptance and the impact of conservation interventions. This study examines the perception and views of local community towards the dynamic resources, government intervention, unique features and livelihood sustainability which acts as a basis on conserving terubok. The findings of these studies show that almost all of the respondents show a highly positive attitude towards conserving terubok. Local community are really well aware with the importance of terubok. Hence, this study has proof that the local community has a positive attitude towards conserving terubok.


2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 731-748 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iztok Rakar ◽  
Bojan Tičar ◽  
Maja Klun

Local self-government has faced a number of challenges over the past decade. The financial crisis has revealed new dimensions of the eternal question of financing self-governing local communities, while distrust and a lack of interest in participation in local democracy among the people have led to considerations of different approaches to public decision-making concerning local issues. A comparative overview shows that the question of the “perfect size” of municipalities is currently very relevant and aimed at finding dimensions that would enable the municipality to ensure both local-level democracy and identity and economic efficiency in the delivery of public services. The most popular tool for achieving this goal is the merger of municipalities, although other approaches also exist, including various forms of inter-municipal cooperation. Some forms of inter-municipal cooperation have already taken firm hold in Slovenia, although the question of the potential impacts of alternative forms of inter-municipal cooperation on the democratic legitimacy of decision-making processes and the potential of these processes for the developmental breakthrough of Slovenian municipalities has yet to receive adequate attention.


2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hiromi Nakazato ◽  
Seunghoo Lim

Purpose Community currency (CC) is used as a tool for reviving local communities by promoting economic growth and facilitating the formation of social capital. Although the Japanese CC movement has stagnated since mid-2005, a new experiment, Fukkou Ouen Chiiki Tsuka (CC for supporting disaster recovery), was introduced across disaster-damaged areas after the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami of March 2011. Previous studies assessing the role of CC in these earthquake-damaged areas are rare; the purpose of this paper is to examine the micro processes of community rebuilding that underlie the transactional networks mediated by one of the experiments, Domo, in Kamaishi. Design/methodology/approach Using transactional records capturing residents’ CC activities during the five-month pilot period before actual implementation of Domo simultaneous investigation for empirical network analysis techniques identify the network configuration dynamics representing the multiple observed forms of social capital in this disaster-affected local community. Findings This study of the five-month pilot for the Domo system revealed: intensive dependence on the coordinating role of core members (i.e. the creation of weak ties), a lack of balanced support among members and the resulting uni-directional transactions (i.e. the avoidance of generalized exchanges), and the reinforcement of previous transactional ties via reciprocation or transitive triads (i.e. the formation of strong ties). Originality/value This study provides guidance for practitioners, researchers, and policy makers on how community residents’ engagement in CC activities could function as a potential tool for generating positive socio-economic effects for local communities in disaster areas.


2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-53
Author(s):  
Milica Bajic-Brkovic ◽  
Visnja Sretovic ◽  
Matija Brkovic

Development of low carbon urban environment stands among the highest priorities countries, cities and regions are faced with. Despite all the efforts, initiatives and concrete actions taken on the international, regional and national level, many countries experience very low or almost insignificant change on a local level. The situation in Serbia resembles these widely recognized dynamics. While on one hand, the responsible ministries and governmental bodies in Serbia have made a visible progress in meeting the challenge of developing low carbon environment over the past decade, it is a fact that actions on a local level aimed at redirecting the current trends and introducing a more responsible development into their cities and towns are very rare and rather sporadically taken. This paper focuses on a local level, and is concerned with the specific challenges and opportunities recognized there. The medium and small towns in Serbia are of primary interest, since their potential for change is least developed and recognized. The paper explores the challenges they deal with, namely, the perceptive, institutional, and legal constraints and goes on to investigate how these constraints could be overcome, or reduced. On the other hand, there are some opportunities that local communities have on hand. The paper takes to the light their strengths, and presents how they could be integrated into the development processes, and employed in order to further empower local communities in making their towns and places more carbon sensitive.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (18) ◽  
pp. 4861 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nhi Ba Ba Nguyen ◽  
Bryan Boruff ◽  
Matthew Tonts

This paper aims to identify the key components of a modern mining regulatory framework and examines the extent to which the Vietnamese context reflects these characteristics. Through detailed observation of two research locations in Vietnam—Phuoc Son and Bong Mieu—the paper investigates how national policy operates at a local level. Findings show that, over the past decade, the Vietnamese Government has initiated substantial reforms to the regulatory frameworks governing mining, with the central objective to attract foreign direct investment (FDI). However, it has become apparent that these reforms have numerous deficiencies and loopholes that have led to a range of unintended economic, social and environmental consequences. To cope with challenges such as rent-seeking, limited capacities and capabilities of government staff, failure of institutions and neglect of local communities, policy makers will need to think differently and strategically about the mining industry and how regulations are implemented. Only by addressing these weaknesses will the path be paved for the sustainable growth of Vietnam’s mining industry into the future.


2021 ◽  
Vol 885 (1) ◽  
pp. 012012
Author(s):  
E L Andreyanova

Abstract The transformation of rural economy is most acute at the local level among the native population. The goal of the article is to define possibilities for participation of local community in development of rural tourism. When applying the participatory approach, the following conclusions can be drawn: 1) when local communities are not actively involved in the development of rural areas and tourism within the local borders, it is almost impossible to speak of any promotion; 2) rural tourism is attractive to the local community, but its ability actively participate in its development is limited by objective and subjective reasons; 3) emphasis on the benefits of rural tourism for the consumers and producers can lead to increased employment and profits for the local community. The assessment of the local community’s capacity to develop rural tourism is a crucial point in its promotion. This in turn leads to further research into the experience of integrating rural tourism into local communities. The results of the article may help in the development of concept papers on rural tourism development and may be useful in some tourism projects.


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