Doctoral Dissertation Research: Promoting Sustainable Communities: Community Forestry as a Conduit of Change

博士论文研究：促进可持续社区：社区林业作为变革的管道

• 批准号: 0902865
• 负责人: James McCarthy
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Pennsylvania State Univ University Park
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-09-01 至 2011-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0902865&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Promoting; Sustainable

Community forestry is designed to provide community-based groups with resource access, income generation, and greater social equity through localized forest management. Its implementation is representative of broader shifts in environmental governance away from centralized command-and-control regulation, and towards public/private partnerships and voluntary and decentralized approaches. Nepal is often cited as a success story for community forestry, with over 14,000 community forest user groups controlling over 1.1 million hectares of forest land, benefiting over 35% of Nepal's population. Building on their success in forest management, such groups have begun to promote other sustainability initiatives, including biogas technology. This study has two objectives. First, it explores whether and how participation in community forest programs promotes broader environmental awareness and values, including interest in other environmental sustainability programs, such as biogas. Second, the study explores whether and how national and global movements for environmental sustainability influence the form and content of community forestry and biogas technology programs in Nepal. The study will advance the field of political ecology by combining recent perspectives on how and why people internalize environmentalist views and put them into daily practice with political ecology's longer-term efforts to theorize the relationships among politics, discourse, and sustainability. This multi-sited case study explores the connections between community forestry and biogas initiatives in two locations in Nepal. In Jhapa district, multiple community forest groups are promoting biogas, with one receiving an 800,000 rupee government loan to continue its work, while in Gorkha district, such groups are participating in a new biogas promotion program. These sites represent a spectrum of conditions under which biogas can be promoted, with environmental conditions in Jhapa more favorable to biogas than those in Gorkha, and with farmers in Jhapa owning more land and cattle than their Gorkha counterparts. Given biogas' potential to improve quality of life, it is critical to understand if and how such projects can succeed under both ideal and challenging circumstances. Data collection methods include ethnographic fieldwork, participant observation, in-depth interviews, survey, participant mapping, focus groups, primary documents, and secondary literature. Content analysis of the collected data will explain why respondents do or do not participate in community forest groups and adopt biogas technology, as well as how they view these actions with respect to broader environmentalist views and agendas. This study seeks to understand the implications of using participation in decentralized, voluntary forms of environmental governance---here, community forestry---as a pathway towards a broader sense of environmental citizenship and participation in other sustainability initiatives. Understanding how groups design synergies between programs that advance sustainability on many fronts is thus relevant not only to community forestry in Nepal, but to efforts to promote and implement environmentally and socially sustainable practices worldwide. This award to support research in Nepal is cofunded by SBE/GSS and the Office of International Science and Engineering.

社区林业的目的是通过地方化的森林管理向社区群体提供资源、创收和更大的社会公平。它的实施代表了环境治理从中央指挥和控制监管转向公私伙伴关系以及自愿和分散的方法的广泛转变。尼泊尔经常被引用为社区林业的成功故事，有14，000多个社区森林用户团体控制着110多万公顷的林地，使尼泊尔35%以上的人口受益。这些团体在森林管理成功的基础上，开始推动其他可持续性倡议，包括沼气技术。本研究有两个目的。首先，它探讨了参与社区森林计划是否以及如何促进更广泛的环境意识和价值观，包括对其他环境可持续性计划的兴趣，如沼气。其次，本研究探讨了国家和全球环境可持续发展运动是否以及如何影响尼泊尔社区林业和沼气技术项目的形式和内容。这项研究将通过结合人们如何以及为什么内化环保主义观点的最新观点，并将其与政治生态学长期努力理论化政治，话语和可持续性之间的关系，并将其付诸日常实践，推进政治生态学领域。这个多地点的案例研究探讨了尼泊尔两个地方的社区林业和沼气倡议之间的联系。在Jhapa区，多个社区森林团体正在推广沼气，其中一个获得了80万卢比的政府贷款，以继续其工作，而在Gorkha区，这些团体正在参与一个新的沼气推广计划。这些地点代表了可以推广沼气的一系列条件，Jhapa的环境条件比Gorkha的环境条件更有利于沼气，Jhapa的农民比Gorkha的农民拥有更多的土地和牛。鉴于沼气在改善生活质量方面的潜力，了解这些项目在理想和具有挑战性的情况下是否以及如何取得成功至关重要。数据收集方法包括民族志田野调查、参与者观察、深入访谈、调查、参与者绘图、焦点小组、主要文件和次要文献。对所收集数据的内容分析将解释答卷人为什么参加或不参加社区森林团体和采用沼气技术，以及他们如何看待这些行动与更广泛的环保观点和议程的关系。本研究旨在了解利用参与分散的，自愿形式的环境治理-在这里，社区林业-作为一个更广泛的环境公民意识和参与其他可持续性倡议的途径的影响。因此，了解团体如何设计在许多方面促进可持续性的方案之间的协同作用，不仅与尼泊尔的社区林业有关，而且与在全世界促进和实施环境和社会可持续做法的努力有关。该奖项旨在支持尼泊尔的研究，由SBE/GSS和国际科学与工程办公室共同资助。