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

博士论文研究：重新调整保护规模：马拉维南部社区森林管理的政治生态

• 批准号: 0302636
• 负责人: Ezekiel Kalipeni
• 金额: $ 1.2万
• 依托单位: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2003
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2003-03-15 至 2004-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0302636&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Re; Scaling

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.

在过去十年中，通过以社区为基础的自然资源管理模式，将养护工作从国家一级调整到村庄一级，已成为非洲养护工作的趋势，但其相对效益和成本仍不清楚。虽然有强大的理论理由，在发展和共同池资源管理理论，预计保护和社会效益的模式，初步证据表明，预期的改善水平的地方参与，保护举措和资源管理，经济和行政效率，社会公平和发展往往未能实现。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进行评估，以解决森林砍伐造成的日益严重的环境“危机”;并找出什么“有效”，什么不有效，以及为什么。认识到人类/环境相互作用的复杂性，这项研究将综合南部非洲miombo生物群落景观变化的生物物理和社会空间因素。中心假设是，不匹配之间存在的生态规模的森林破碎化过程和社会规模的CBFM模型所施加的森林管理，这种标量不匹配破坏森林保护的努力。为了验证这一点，研究将结合联合收割机的方法，从景观生态学，土地利用/土地覆盖变化的研究，公共池资源理论，和政治生态学。将从以下方面收集数据：（1）卫星图像分析，以说明最近森林覆盖和景观格局变化的特点;（2）空间明确分析，将联合收割机统计回归与地理信息系统相结合，以提供与这种变化有关的可能的社会和生物物理因素的联系，和3）各种访谈和调查方法，以提供研究区域内森林获取和使用的社会空间和机构关系的背景信息，并将当地对森林变化过程的看法与遥感数据显示的模式进行比较。研究结果应有助于采用一种独特的空间-标量方法，在分析非洲森林砍伐和养护干预措施时结合社会和生物物理方面的考虑。研究结果将质疑CBFM模型和公共资源池理论的标准范式，并有助于调和CBFM的承诺和修辞与现实，建议改进CBFM的分析和实践，并提出政策和研究问题，允许在需要时寻找CBNRM的替代方案。这项研究还将增加土地利用和土地覆被变化文献中关于方法学挑战的现有知识，这些方法学挑战包括将社会科学和自然科学中的主导范式结合起来，以及将社会和生物物理数据结合起来解释这种变化，并具体展示地理政治生态学对这种文献的贡献。这项研究还将增加对南部非洲miombo生物群落发生的变化过程的了解。 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的研究生涯。