Community, Forest Carbon & Indigeneity: A Case Study of the Loru Project in Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu

<p>Forest carbon farming offers customary landowners an alternative livelihood to socially and environmentally unsustainable logging, through the sale of carbon offset credits. REDD+, the global forest carbon scheme to address deforestation in developing countries, has attracted scholarly criticism for the risks it poses to communities. Critics warn that REDD+: (1) benefits may be captured by elites, (2) threatens forest-dependent livelihoods, (3) reduces local forest governance, and (4) a results-based payments mechanism can undermine conservation. Community-owned forest carbon farming may mitigate these risks by empowering communities to manage forest resources locally. The Loru project in Vanuatu is the first of its kind, and Indigenous landowners legally own the carbon rights and manage the carbon project. This thesis examines the community ownership and the social impact of the Loru project on its Indigenous project owners, the ni-Vanuatu Ser clan. The thesis uses a ‘semi’-mixed-methods approach, based primarily on interviews conducted in in Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu with Indigenous landowners and supplemented with quantitative data from a monitoring exercise conducted by the author. Grounded in social constructivism, the thesis makes a genuine attempt to decolonize the research process, adopting a self-reflexive approach. The research finds that the project is leading to positive social and economic impacts at the community level. Further, the Loru project is legitimately community-owned and driven, meaning it adapts effectively to the local context. Overall, the findings suggest that implementing REDD+ through a multi-scalar institutional network and building local capacity could mitigate the risks of REDD+ to forest communities.</p>

Community, Forest Carbon & Indigeneity: A Case Study of the Loru Project in Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu

<p>Forest carbon farming offers customary landowners an alternative livelihood to socially and environmentally unsustainable logging, through the sale of carbon offset credits. REDD+, the global forest carbon scheme to address deforestation in developing countries, has attracted scholarly criticism for the risks it poses to communities. Critics warn that REDD+: (1) benefits may be captured by elites, (2) threatens forest-dependent livelihoods, (3) reduces local forest governance, and (4) a results-based payments mechanism can undermine conservation. Community-owned forest carbon farming may mitigate these risks by empowering communities to manage forest resources locally. The Loru project in Vanuatu is the first of its kind, and Indigenous landowners legally own the carbon rights and manage the carbon project. This thesis examines the community ownership and the social impact of the Loru project on its Indigenous project owners, the ni-Vanuatu Ser clan. The thesis uses a ‘semi’-mixed-methods approach, based primarily on interviews conducted in in Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu with Indigenous landowners and supplemented with quantitative data from a monitoring exercise conducted by the author. Grounded in social constructivism, the thesis makes a genuine attempt to decolonize the research process, adopting a self-reflexive approach. The research finds that the project is leading to positive social and economic impacts at the community level. Further, the Loru project is legitimately community-owned and driven, meaning it adapts effectively to the local context. Overall, the findings suggest that implementing REDD+ through a multi-scalar institutional network and building local capacity could mitigate the risks of REDD+ to forest communities.</p>

Enabling Community-Owned Platforms: A Proposal for a Tech New Deal

At a time when regulators are seeking new responses to the dilemmas of world-spanning digital platforms, forms of community ownership such as cooperatives and trusts offer attractive benefits for workers and other users. Yet if economic democracy is to provide a counterweight to investor ownership in the online economy, it will require an appropriate policy framework. This paper argues that such a framework can come from radically generalizing and expanding on pre-digital successes in local and industry-specific policies from various countries and contexts—including policies for incorporation, financing, and coordination. Policy should use community ownership not just to solve specific problems but as a universal means of organizing innovation. It should also seek to repair past injustices to communities marginalized through under-investment. Community ownership could thereby become at least as available to the online economy as investor ownership has been.

Local Clubs and Sports Culture in Kerala

S.Mohammed Irshad’s essay describes the crumbling of a local sports club in Kerala that was once the heart of a vibrant sports culture and deliberates upon the reasons for the decay. Being a symbol of community ownership and sustaining political mobilization, the local sports club promoted a civic culture within the community through local training and competition. However, the newly-emerging stadium-based sports and emergent cultures of party politics have slowly replaced the community-based sports clubs of old representing sports commons in nurturing talent to new institutions like the gymnasium and sports associations.

Disaster Recovery (After Catastrophes)

This chapter examines approaches to disaster response critically. It compares ‘owner-driven’ and ‘community-ownership’ approaches to recovery policy taken by two different cities in the Indian state of Gujarat following the devastating 2001 Gujarat earthquake. Each model recognizes a different compositional context of agents, temporalities, and effects, thus producing different outcomes in the lives of individuals and communities.

Beyond Aid: Sustainable Community-Owned Cooperative Business

<p>This thesis seeks to answer the question as to how the Colville Cooperative Society has withstood social and economic change where many other rural businesses offering similar services, in similar rural communities have failed. Joint entrepreneurship is a demanding form of entrepreneurship. Democracy is manage and difficult to sustain. What role does the organisation's cooperative principles and community ownership play in its sustainability? The research seeks to expand the knowledge of community-owned cooperative business as a viable alternative for community economic development; expand the New Zealand research on cooperative models; provide insight for cooperative member's to reflect on past successes and challenges in order to improve practice; and share knowledge about what makes a community-owned business work. The study found that the sustainability of the Colville Cooperative was dependant on several key factors. First amongst these is that the enterprise provides what the community needs. This is the basis of support for the enterprise and can overcome structural disadvantages. Vision and leadership that cleaves to the cooperative's principles, aims and objectives was just as important. To bring to expression and sustain these there had also had to be adequate business skills, and business continuity. It is the thesis of this research that the sustainability of the cooperative rests partly in the core beliefs and organising skills of the people who started it, partly in the resilience of cooperative forms of enterprise, and partly in the willingness and capacity of the community to sustain it. It is argued this type of community owned cooperative, where assets and shares are effectively held in trust on behalf of the community, can create a common wealth which frees communities from unsustainable sources of income, and creates viable enterprises that are independent of changing government policy fashions.</p>

Beyond Aid: Sustainable Community-Owned Cooperative Business

<p>This thesis seeks to answer the question as to how the Colville Cooperative Society has withstood social and economic change where many other rural businesses offering similar services, in similar rural communities have failed. Joint entrepreneurship is a demanding form of entrepreneurship. Democracy is manage and difficult to sustain. What role does the organisation's cooperative principles and community ownership play in its sustainability? The research seeks to expand the knowledge of community-owned cooperative business as a viable alternative for community economic development; expand the New Zealand research on cooperative models; provide insight for cooperative member's to reflect on past successes and challenges in order to improve practice; and share knowledge about what makes a community-owned business work. The study found that the sustainability of the Colville Cooperative was dependant on several key factors. First amongst these is that the enterprise provides what the community needs. This is the basis of support for the enterprise and can overcome structural disadvantages. Vision and leadership that cleaves to the cooperative's principles, aims and objectives was just as important. To bring to expression and sustain these there had also had to be adequate business skills, and business continuity. It is the thesis of this research that the sustainability of the cooperative rests partly in the core beliefs and organising skills of the people who started it, partly in the resilience of cooperative forms of enterprise, and partly in the willingness and capacity of the community to sustain it. It is argued this type of community owned cooperative, where assets and shares are effectively held in trust on behalf of the community, can create a common wealth which frees communities from unsustainable sources of income, and creates viable enterprises that are independent of changing government policy fashions.</p>

Re-making the energy profile of (Irish) market towns: as if science matters

Reduction of building-related carbon emissions within Ireland is predicated on the implementation of an EU mandated nZEB energy standard which defaults to ‘cost optimality’ generic solutions such as an A3 rating for new builds, and a B2 rating for renovations. It is estimated that 500,000 existing buildings will need to be refurbished in this way, within 10 years and that 60% of these are urban in nature. Despite such extensive resource use, the nZEB standard is not set to significantly reduce operational energy which will, in conjunction with 950,000 new electric cars being operational by 2030, place a significant burden on our increasingly decarbonised electrical power grid. Such challenges present opportunities. One opportunity is to significantly expand the renewable capacity of the grid and strengthen its European interconnectivity, while another is to remake our rural market towns and villages with energy considerations and fabric at the centre of the process. Doing both offers an optimal solution. We can amplify societal benefits, community empowerment with grid resilience and community ownership of utilities, efficient local use of energy and low carbon transport. It so doing we ensure buildings and power grid, capable of effectively serving our 2050 energy needs.

Community governance with habitus in bonding to prevent SARS-CoV-2 pandemic transmission

Many areas at lowest level like kampong and village have initiatives in community governance terminology to prevent the SARS-CoV-2 transmission in their neighborhood formerly constituting green zone. Community governance will be followed by bonding containing habitus inherent to society structure. This research was conducted in some villages throughout Surakarta Ex-Residency, involving observation and documentattion in Gatak, Banaran, Mojolaban Sub District of Sukoharjo Regency, Karangpandan Sub District of Karanganyar Regency and Kranggan Village of Polanharjo Sub District of Klaten Regency. Data was collected through interview, observation, and documentation. The result of study showed that innovation and productivity arose in community governance in Kranggan Village of Klaten Regency, as indicated with the presence of Karantani program. It is the planting or farming program for Persons under Surveillance or nomads (wanderers) going back to their village. Community leadership, community empowerment and community ownership arise in community governance in Kranggan Village. Furthermore, people should rekindle habitus related to embung (water reservoir), lumbung (communal rice barn), and saung (hut) post-pandemic considered as important in this Covid-19 pandemic period.