Incorporating Movements for Racial Justice into Planning and Management of U.S. National Parks

The National Park Service (NPS) is the federal land management agency responsible for 423 units across the United States. Many of these parks are considered iconic cultural and environmental landscapes. However, scholarship from a number of disciplinary approaches has positioned the national parks and their management as problematic, particularly from Indigenous and racial justice concerns. National parks, like many cultural landscapes in the U.S., are infused with racial relations, with unpleasant histories and contemporary experiences that have both subtle instances of marginalization and explicit episodes of material violence. Recent developments in racial justice movements raise fundamental questions for the social and political maintenance, stewardship, and sustainability of the NPS. In a critical approach that centers whiteness as a lens of institutional critique, we consider the ways that the NPS could more critically engage with racial justice approaches in its planning and management. After acknowledging that histories of U.S. national parks as spaces designed for White, upper class people led to the displacement and marginalization of Indigenous and people of color, we look to contemporary avenues for increased racial justice. Through both local, small-scale initiatives and agency-wide, national policies, we consider how racial justice movements are both expectant and galvanized in this moment, providing a setting for the NPS to redress and make amends for previous harms and missed opportunities. Specifically, we identify recent federal and institutional policy and legislation as promising mandates for progress. We identify specific place-based tactics used by individual NPS units, such as renaming parks and geographic features, or interpretation that is both more accurate and more inclusive of marginalized populations. Our research examines planning and management as potential strategic practices that can more fully highlight and progress racial justice. We offer a range of specific questions that might guide more inclusive planning and management work in the NPS. Finally, we encourage the NPS, as an institution, as well as individual park units, to support contemporary racial justice movements, while simultaneously adhering to the agency’s historical dual mandate.

Reimagining U.S. Federal Land Management through Decolonization and Indigenous Value Systems

U.S. Federal Land Management Areas (FLMAs) are grounded in settler colonialism, including Indigenous land dispossessions and violations of Tribal treaties. This critical thought-piece is written by Indigenous scholars to reimagine FLMAs (especially recreation areas) through decolonization and the Indigenous value systems embedded within the “four Rs”: relationship, responsibility, reciprocity, and redistribution. We reweave conceptions about parks and protected areas, reimagine park management, and reconfigure management foci to reflect Indigenous value systems shared by Indigenous peoples. We emphasize a need for Tribal comanagement of FLMAs, the inclusion of Tribal land management practices across ecosystems, and the restoration of Indigenous land use and management rights. Land and recreation managers can use this paper to 1) decolonize park management practices, 2) understand how Indigenous value systems can inform park management foci, and 3) build a decolonized and reciprocal relationship with Tribes and their ancestral landscapes.

Bold Moves for Visitor Use Management: Public Health, Public Engagement and Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

Public land management is inherently complex and requires a systems approach that integrates ecological, economic, and social values. Currently, there are few tools and examples available for federal land management planning that use a systems approach. Issues are often approached from a disciplinary perspective, and outdoor recreation problems, assumptions, and solutions often focus too narrowly on how to mitigate recreation impacts as opposed to understanding the broader role of visitor use and access, public engagement, and public health in sustainable land management. The Visitor Use Management Framework (the Framework), developed by the Interagency Visitor Use Management Council (IVUMC, 2016) provides interagency guidance for managing public use on federal lands and waters. The Framework uses a process that can be incorporated into existing agency planning and decision making. It follows all of the Council agencies’ (NPS, BLM, USFS, USFWS, ACoE, NOAA) planning principles and illustrates how to specifically address visitor experiences and resource protection with an integrated planning approach. This research note explores the evolving role of the Framework in sustainable recreation management and how public health, public engagement, and representation, inclusion, and access can be incorporated throughout the Framework to ensure planning decisions meet the needs, values, and preferences of diverse user groups. Further, this paper invites a broader discussion around next steps for boldly moving to integrate public health, public engagement, and representation, inclusion, and access more fully into all aspects of visitor use management, including the Framework. Collective effort and ongoing innovation is needed to ensure that the Framework is thoughtfully implemented in ways that provide opportunities to enhance outdoor recreation access and inclusion for a broader range of people.

Cornell Library FOLIO Case Study

Cornell University is a private university with a public mission. With a student body of about 25,000, Cornell is the federal land-grant institution of New York State, a private endowed university, a member of the Ivy League/Ancient Eight, and a partner of the State University of New York. Cornell Library supports the university’s mission with 20 different physical and digital libraries, a collection of 8.5 million volumes and 1.7 million e-books, and about 400 staff. After 20 years using the vended application Voyager by Ex Libris as the Library’s integrated library system (ILS), on July 1, 2021 Cornell Library completed our migration to the open-source platform, FOLIO.

Jointly acquired and heritage property in the context of FELDA's new model strategy

The Federal Land Development Authority (FELDA) began its innovative concept when FELDA's New Model Strategy which went through the evolutionary process in its distinctive niche was first launched in 2020. The New Model Strategy has a significant impact on the efforts to determine FELDA's vision and direction in changing the mentality of the settlers and rejuvenating FELDA thus driving the aspect of the integrated use of modern technology, mechanisation, automation and intelligent agriculture. Besides, the implementation of the diversity of crops on farms such as pineapple, young ginger, black turmeric and herbs. FELDA is a Malaysian government agency that addresses the relocation of poor rural people to newly developed areas to improve their economic status. FELDA's original main focus was the opening of smallholder farms for contemporary crops. FELDA settlers' husband works hand-in-hand in sustaining FELDA's aspiration to increase daily household income. Typically, conflicts appear when the death or divorce of FELDA settlers occurs and their wives or heirs made property claims. FELDA land issues were discussed based on the types of land titles in the National Land Code 1965 and legal restrictions in Section 14(2) of the Group Land Act 1960.

Palm Oil Industries in Malaysia and Possible Treatment Technologies for Palm Oil Mill Effluent: A Review

Palm oil industries have become the main sector to boost the economic revenue in tropical countries, especially in South East Asia. In the recent years, the global production of palm oil reached 72 million metric tons in 2018, increasing from about 68 million metric tons in 2017. During that period, Malaysia is currently the second world producer of palm oil after neighbouring country Indonesia. Both countries are the leading exporters of palm oil with 84 % of worldwide production. A detailed analysis of the palm oil business in Malaysia, the environmental issues that have arisen, and the treatment technology used to effectively treat palm oil mill wastewater are reviewed to gain an understanding of environmental sustainability. In Malaysia, most of the oil palm plantations are owned by private conglomerates (61 %), followed by the independent smallholders (16 %), the Federal Land Development Authority (13 %), state agencies (6 %), the Federal Land Consolidation and Rehabilitation Authority (3 %), and Rubber Industry Smallholders Development Authority (1 %). However, the rate of deforestation has increased due to the expansion of oil palm plantations in Malaysia. Palm oil mill effluent is also considered as one of the major environmental issues since it reduces the water quality index. Some techniques are implemented to treat palm oil mill effluent, such as anaerobic ponding systems, integrated anaerobic-aerobic bioreactors, coagulation and flocculation, thermochemical treatment, vermicomposting, membrane filtration, photocatalysis, moving bed biofilm reactors, and zero liquid discharge. Zero liquid discharge method is considered an appropriate method since this method provides a better waste recovery.

Ambiguity And Irreconcilability: A Critical Look At Reconciliation Discourse In Federal Land Claims And Self-Government Political Communications

<div>Can reconciliation be meaningful when it is at once a journey, a path, a milestone, a framework, a tool of economic development, a spirit, and a process? In this thesis, I use a multimethod approach to problematize how reconciliation discourse is employed ambiguously in both policy and practice in order to maintain settler colonial occupation of stolen Indigenous lands. I first conduct a policy review of federal land claims and self-government frameworks before turning to a Critical Discourse Analysis of public communications to illustrate the limitations of these state-led processes of reconciliation. My analysis elucidates the ways in which these processes are instantiations of settler governmentality that continue to exist as common sense (Rifkin, 2013) within a discursive framework of state-led reconciliation politics. As such, my work demonstrates that in order to work towards the bigger project of decolonization and resurgence, reconciliation must move from purely aspirational terms to substantive, treaty-based responsibilities with the repatriation of Indigenous land as its overarching, incommensurable purpose.</div><div><br></div><div>Keywords: reconciliation politics; settler colonialism; Crown-Indigenous relations; critical policy studies; critical discourse analysis.<br></div>

Ambiguity And Irreconcilability: A Critical Look At Reconciliation Discourse In Federal Land Claims And Self-Government Political Communications

<div>Can reconciliation be meaningful when it is at once a journey, a path, a milestone, a framework, a tool of economic development, a spirit, and a process? In this thesis, I use a multimethod approach to problematize how reconciliation discourse is employed ambiguously in both policy and practice in order to maintain settler colonial occupation of stolen Indigenous lands. I first conduct a policy review of federal land claims and self-government frameworks before turning to a Critical Discourse Analysis of public communications to illustrate the limitations of these state-led processes of reconciliation. My analysis elucidates the ways in which these processes are instantiations of settler governmentality that continue to exist as common sense (Rifkin, 2013) within a discursive framework of state-led reconciliation politics. As such, my work demonstrates that in order to work towards the bigger project of decolonization and resurgence, reconciliation must move from purely aspirational terms to substantive, treaty-based responsibilities with the repatriation of Indigenous land as its overarching, incommensurable purpose.</div><div><br></div><div>Keywords: reconciliation politics; settler colonialism; Crown-Indigenous relations; critical policy studies; critical discourse analysis.<br></div>

Agricultural Effects on Streams and Rivers: A Western USA Focus

Globally, croplands and rangelands are major land uses and they have altered lands and waters for millennia. This continues to be the case throughout the USA, despite substantial improvements in treating wastewaters from point sources—versus non-point (diffuse) sources. Poor macroinvertebrate assemblage condition occurs in 30% of conterminous USA streams and rivers; poor fish assemblage condition occurs in 26%. The risk of poor fish assemblage condition was most strongly associated with excess nutrients, salinity and sedimentation and impaired riparian woody vegetation. Although the Clean Water Act was passed to restore and maintain the integrity of USA waters, that will be impossible without controlling agricultural pollution. Likewise, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act was enacted to protect the natural condition of public lands and waters, including fish habitat, but it has failed to curtail the sacred cows of livestock grazing. Although progress has been slow and spotty, promising results have been obtained from basin and watershed planning and riparian zone protections.