Doctoral Dissertation Research: Re-Scaling Conservation: The Political Ecology of Community-Based Forest Management in Southern Malawi

在过去的十年中，通过以社区为基础的自然资源管理模式，将保护规模从国家规模重新调整到村庄规模已成为非洲保护的趋势，但其相对效益和成本尚不清楚。虽然在发展和公共池资源管理理论中有充分的理论理由期望从该模式中获得保护和社会效益，但初步证据表明，预期的地方参与水平、保护倡议和资源管理、经济和行政效率、社会公平和发展的改善往往无法实现。这项研究的目的是对马拉维南部以社区为基础的森林管理（CBFM）进行评估，以解决因毁林而引起的日益严重的环境“危机”；并找出什么是“有效的”，什么是无效的，以及为什么。认识到人类/环境相互作用的复杂性，该研究将整合非洲南部苗生生物群落景观变化的生物物理和社会空间因素。研究的核心假设是，森林破碎化过程的生态规模与CBFM模型所施加的森林经营的社会规模之间存在不匹配，这种不匹配破坏了森林保护工作。为了验证这一点，该研究将结合景观生态学、土地利用/土地覆盖变化研究、公共资源理论和政治生态学的方法。将从以下方面收集数据：(1)卫星图像分析，以确定最近森林覆盖和景观格局变化的特征；(2)空间明确分析，将统计回归与地理信息系统（GIS）结合起来，以提供与该变化有关的可能的社会和生物物理因素的联系；3)采用多种访谈和调查方法，为研究区森林获取和利用的社会空间和制度权力关系提供背景信息，并将当地对森林变化过程的认知与遥感数据揭示的模式进行比较。研究结果应有助于提供一种独特的空间-标量方法，将社会和生物物理因素结合起来，分析非洲的森林砍伐和保护干预措施。研究结果将质疑围绕CBFM模型和公共资源池理论的标准范式，并有助于将CBFM的承诺和修辞与现实相协调，提出改进CBFM分析和实践的建议，并提出政策和研究问题，以便在需要时寻找CBNRM的替代方案。该研究还将增加土地利用和土地覆盖变化文献中关于整合社会科学和自然科学的主导范式、整合社会和生物物理数据来解释这种变化的方法论挑战的现有知识，并具体展示地理政治生态学对这些文献的贡献。这项研究还将增加对非洲南部生物群落发生变化过程的认识。作为博士论文研究改进奖，该奖项还将提供支持，使有前途的学生建立一个强大的独立研究生涯。

Over the past decade, the re-scaling of conservation from the national to the village scale through the community-based natural resources management model has become the trend in African conservation, yet its relative benefits and costs remain unclear. While there are strong theoretical reasons in development and common-pool resource management theory to expect both conservation and social benefits from the model, initial evidence suggests that expected improvements in levels of local participation, conservation initiatives and resource management, economic and administrative efficiency, social equity, and development often fail to materialize. The objective of this research is to conduct an assessment of community-based forest management (CBFM) in southern Malawi as a solution to the escalating environmental "crisis" arising from deforestation; and to find out what "works" and does not, and why. Cognizant of the complexity of human/environment interactions, the study will integrate biophysical and socio-spatial factors of landscape change in the miombo biome of southern Africa. The central hypothesis is that a mismatch exists between the ecological scale of forest fragmentation processes and the social scale of forest management imposed by the CBFM model, and that this scalar mismatch undermines forest conservation efforts. To test this, the study will combine approaches from landscape ecology, land use/land cover change studies, common-pool resource theory, and political ecology. Data will be gathered from (1) satellite image analyses to give a characterization of recent forest cover and landscape pattern changes, (2) spatially explicit analyses that combine statistical regression with geographic information systems (GIS) to provide a linkage to possible social and biophysical factors associated with that change, and 3) various interview and survey methods to provide contextual information on the sociospatial and institutional relations of power surrounding forest access and use in the study area, and to compare local perceptions of forest change processes with patterns revealed by remotely sensed data. The results should contribute a unique spatio-scalar approach that combines social and biophysical considerations in the analysis of deforestation and conservation interventions in Africa. The results will questions standard paradigms surrounding the CBFM model and common-pool resources theory, and help to reconcile the promise and rhetoric of CBFM to reality, suggest improvements in the analysis and practice of CBFM, and raise policy and research questions that allow the search for alternatives to CBNRM where needed. The study will also increase the current knowledge in the land use and land cover change literature on the methodological challenges for integrating dominant paradigms in the social and natural sciences, and integrating social and biophysical data in explaining such change, and specifically demonstrate contributions of geographic political ecology to such literature. The study will also add to knowledge on the change processes taking place in the miombo biome of southern Africa. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.