In this Special Section on the Green Economy in the South, Peter Howson reflects on the Sungai Lamandau REDD+ demonstration activity in Indonesia. He focuses on “intimate exclusions” – everyday processes of accumulation and dispossession among villagers and small-holders – to highlight the hazards of developing REDD+ projects structured with limited sympathy for marginalized actors.
In this Special Section on the Green Economy in the South, Stasja Koot and Walter van Beek argue that a Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) program in the Nyae Nyae Conservancy in Namibia, with a strong focus on tourism, has dominated and changed the environment of the Ju/’hoansi Bushmen.
In this Special Section on the Green Economy in the South, Brett Sylvester Matulis considers Costa Rica’s national “payments for ecosystems services” (PES) programme. He explores World Bank / Costa Rica relations and market-oriented interventions to the financing of ecosystem service payments and explains that (despite inherent contradictions inhibiting market formation) neoliberal actors within the state can still implement mechanisms designed to approximate markets.
In this Special Section on the Green Economy in the South, V. Corey Wright contributes to the debate about Tanzania’s Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) and the nature of decentralization. He argues that WMAs represent risk but also an opportunity for rural communities.
Susana Costa, Catarina Casanova, and Phyllis Lee present a study of the obstacles to women’s participation in conservation strategies associated with Cantanhez Forest National Park (CFNP), in Guinea-Bissau, West Africa. The findings revealed that the women felt the Park was responsible for malnutrition in the communities due to damage of crops by wildlife.
Carter et al. translate key themes from scenario narratives into spatial representations using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). They apply this technique to a Tasmanian case study exploring future scenarios for biodiversity in a predominantly privately-owned agricultural landscape, enabling land managers to explore outcomes from potential interventions and identify strategies that might mitigate the impact of future issues of environmental concern.
Kimberly R. Marion Suiseeya draws attention to the persistent justice debates in Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation plus the enhancement of carbon stocks (REDD+) and the role of norms in constraining and shaping policy designs and outcomes.
Alison Lullfitz, Joe Dortch, Stephen D. Hopper, Carol Pettersen, Ron (Doc) Reynolds, and David Guilfoyle use the lens of Human Niche Construction theory to examine Noongar (an indigenous people of southwestern Australia) relationships with southwestern Australian flora, and suggest influences of these relationships on contemporary botanical patterns in this global biodiversity hotspot.
El-Hajj Rita, Khater Carla, Tatoni Thierry, Ali Adam and Vela Errol present a review of ecological and socioeconomic indicators globally used to orient conservation planning on the global and national levels. Their paper suggests a set of suitable, relevant, and practical set of indicators, adapted to Mediterranean-type continental environments.
Amitangshu Acharya and Alison Ormsby explore devithans—Nepali sacred groves—in the eastern Himalayan state of Sikkim, India. Given that historically the Buddhist Lepcha-Bhutias’ cultural association with Sikkim’s sacred landscape has been celebrated, while that of Nepali ethnic groups has been largely invisibilized, they argue that devithans have emerged as a potential political instrument for the latter to validate political and cultural claims to Sikkim’s sacred landscape.
