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Private wildlife ranches are considered a mechanism to conserve biodiversity and support livelihoods. Now, a study examines the relative resilience of South African wildlife ranches during the disruptive times of COVID-19.

Contains fulltext : 203231.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) In attempts to reconcile conservation and development for poverty alleviation by establishing protected areas, economic values of nature and compensation for loss of access to resources are often prioritized over cultural and personal values. Additionally, conservation interventions in local communities are often hindered by contested visions of sustainability. We explore the utility of place meanings to unpack diverse local interests by examining an intervention that proposed to establish a fenced protected area in a community on the Wild Coast, South Africa. We describe the narratives that argue for or against the project and how they make use of the place meanings attributed to parts of the landscape, including forest, communal grazing land and plantations. We then examine the coalitions behind narratives: groups of actors who share the meanings and constructs of the problem and who employ these for a particular strategy. This allows us to map the negotiation process, and understand how community dissent influences the project. We find that a focus on economic benefits from protected areas neglects alternative meanings, e.g. cultural and spiritual value of forests as well as potential alternative pathways for development such as investing in small-scale agriculture. Our analysis reveals the tension that exists in the 'win-win' discourse of conservation between the rhetoric of sustainable resource use and co-management as well as a trend back towards 'fortress conservation'. A community counter-narrative is successful in stalling the project which illustrates the importance of considering the plurality of meanings for interventions to be sustainable in the long term. 16 p.

Contains fulltext : 216744pub.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) Contains fulltext : 216744pos.pdf (Author’s version postprint ) (Open Access) This is the first special issue of any organisation studies journal on food labour. Why is this a big deal? In this Introduction, we argue that the field should pay much more attention to the agri-food system and the work that goes into producing, distributing and consuming foodstuff. Food is such an all-important, basic ingredient to human existence, incorporating a vast web of organisational processes that are constantly changing, being contested at all scales. Whether subsistence peasants, new-age community foodies, massive food logistics companies, Deliveroo dark kitchens or Uber Eats cyclists – there is a huge amount of labour everywhere in the agri-food system. Food labour is so vast, this special issue can only begin lifting the lid. In this Introduction, we provide an overview of the current scholarly work on food labour. We identify some of the historical contexts and struggles that have led to the agri-food system in existence today. We identify food labour types, particularly focusing on those that are vanishing or emerging, crucially asking why these transitions are taking place. We also engage with the various resistances expressed by people against the ever globalising agri-food system, outlining logics for the emergence of alternative food movements. Finally, we introduce each of the seven papers collated in this Special Issue, all of which, we hope, will provide food for thought to all of us who tend to have three meals a day without thinking too much about the labour that goes into our grub. 18 p.

Item does not contain fulltext Research practice, funding agencies and global science organizations suggest that research aimed at addressing sustainability challenges is most effective when ‘co-produced’ by academics and non-academics. Co-production promises to address the complex nature of contemporary sustainability challenges better than more traditional scientific approaches. But definitions of knowledge co-production are diverse and often contradictory. We propose a set of four general principles that underlie high-quality knowledge co-production for sustainability research. Using these principles, we offer practical guidance on how to engage in meaningful co-productive practices, and how to evaluate their quality and success. 9 p.

The promise of co-production to address complex sustainability challenges is compelling. Yet, co-production, the collaborative weaving of research and practice, encompasses diverse aims, terminologies and practices, with poor clarity over their implications. To explore this diversity, we systematically mapped differences in how 32 initiatives from 6 continents co-produce diverse outcomes for the sustainable development of ecosystems at local to global scales. We found variation in their purpose for utilizing co-production, understanding of power, approach to politics and pathways to impact. A cluster analysis identified six modes of co-production: (1) researching solutions; (2) empowering voices; (3) brokering power; (4) reframing power; (5) navigating differences and (6) reframing agency. No mode is ideal; each holds unique potential to achieve particular outcomes, but also poses unique challenges and risks. Our analysis provides a heuristic tool for researchers and societal actors to critically explore this diversity and effectively navigate trade-offs when co-producing sustainability. Co-production includes diverse aims, terminologies and practices. This study explores such diversity by mapping differences in how 32 initiatives from 6 continents co-produce diverse outcomes for the sustainable development of ecosystems at local to global scales.

Contains fulltext : 216034.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) This contribution analyses the impacts of conversions of commercial - mainly white-owned - farms to wildlife-based production on access to land for farm workers and dwellers in South Africa. They depended on informal arrangements with landowners for access, hence the notions of 'abilities to access' and 'bundles of power' are more appropriate concepts to analyze their access than bundles of rights. In post-apartheid South Africa, the state attempted to formalize farm dwellers' land rights, but simultaneously deregulated the agricultural sector, which stimulated land concentration and land investments, and changed social relations on commercial farms. These contradictory interventions impact negatively on farm dwellers' abilities to access to land on commercial farms. The paper furthermore demonstrates that conversions to wildlife-based production constitute one response by landowners to the changes in the agricultural sector, but also play a role in struggles about identity and belonging in post-apartheid South Africa. 20 p.

Contains fulltext : 194652.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) Here, we discuss tensions inherent in multistakeholder approaches addressing conflicts over natural resources as well as the involvement of stakeholders in research. Our discussion is built on knowledge generated by extensive research on the impacts of private farm conversions to game farms in South Africa, where significant increases in farm conversions have been observed since the 1990s. The studies had a particular focus on the consequences for farm dwellers, one of the most marginalized groups in the South African countryside. The research findings challenge the dominant narrative that game farming offers a win-win situation for nature conservation and rural development. Based on data from the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces, we extended the narrow technical and economic framing of the narrative to include the socio-political meanings of the conversions. We reflect on a series of multistakeholder workshops that we organized, partly as a requirement of the funding agency. The workshop aims were to disseminate our research findings among the stakeholder groups and explore ways to mitigate the negative impacts of conversions. We discuss how we organized the engagement process in ways that sought to address the power differences between game farmers, the State, and farm dwellers. The main challenge appeared to be that farm dwellers were not recognized as stakeholders. This "invisibility" has multiple reasons, in particular, the historical and current trajectories of land dispossession. It is also linked to specific institutional and personal relations in the two provinces, resulting in different uses of the workshop spaces. By considering the complexities of stakeholder relations in the farm conversion context, we gained a deeper understanding of the politics of land and belonging in the still unequal post-apartheid rural landscape. Based on experiences from the research as well as the workshops, we take a critical stance regarding mainstream notions of stakeholder engagement and resilience building. We argue that if we fail to consider power relations and politics explicitly in these processes, we risk neglecting important conflicts and reproducing the invisibility of marginalized stakeholders. 14 p.

Contains fulltext : 174239.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) The EuroMAB Network includes all European and North-American member states which participate in UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme and its World Network of Biosphere Reserves (WNBR). EuroMAB is the largest and oldest of the nine regional and inter-regional MAB Networks. It is made up of 36 countries, including Canada and the USA, and includes 302 biosphere reserves (BRs). Bringing together almost half of the total WNBR sites, the EuroMAB Network is a platform for sharing knowledge, know-how and experience of sustainable development, as well as a collective tool for supporting sustainable development practices among BR coordinators, scientists and MAB National Committees. Since the first meeting in 1986 in Ceské Budejovice, Czech Republic, the MAB National Committees and BR coordinators of EuroMAB have met nearly every two years. EuroMAB conferences have been held in Minsk, Belarus (1997), Cambridge, UK (2000), Rome, Italy (2002), Hernstein, Austria (2005), Antalya, Turkey (2007), Stará Lesná, Slovakia (2009), Lundsbrunn, Sweden (2011), Brockeville, Canada (2013), and Haapsalu, Estonia (2015). EuroMAB meetings are dedicated to bringing together BR managers, coordinators, scientists and representatives of UNESCO's MAB Secretariat, MAB National Committees and partner institutions / associations. 3 p.

Nature conservation in southern Africa has always been characterised by an interplay between Capital, specific understandings of Morality, and forms of Militarism, that are all dependent upon the shared subservience and marginalization of animals and certain groups of people in society. Although the subjectivity of people has been rendered visible in earlier publications on histories of conservation in southern Africa, the subjectivity of animals is hardly ever seriously considered or explicitly dealt with. In this edited volume the subjectivity and sentience of animals is explicitly included. The contributors argue that the shared human and animal marginalisation and agency in nature conservation in southern Africa (and beyond) could and should be further explored under the label of `sentient conservation'. Contributors are Malcolm Draper, Vupenyu Dzingirai, Jan-Bart Gewald, Michael Glover, Paul Hebinck, Tarito Kamuti, Lindiwe Mangwanya, Albert Manhamo, Dhoya Snijders, Marja Spierenburg, Sandra Swart, Harry Wels.

Global sustainability initiatives are gaining momentum and impact, and place-based research can provide complementary insights to strengthen them. Here, we explore the current and potential role of place-based research into informing global sustainability initiatives by assessing the strengths, challenges, and opportunities. We show that place-based research allows for a better understanding of global social-ecological dynamics, and that transformations towards sustainability are often triggered at the local scale through the co-construction of local solutions. We discuss that the very nature of place-based research can hinder its transferability because its global integration faces temporal, spatial and governance scale mismatches, and we identify some of the key challenges of scaling-up its findings. We highlight new opportunities to mainstream place-based research that are emerging from first, long-term networks of place-based research, second, new institutional research settings that contribute with conceptual comprehensive frameworks and capacity building tools, third, a global community of practice, and fourth, the concept of region as a bridge between local and global sustainability initiatives. We believe that the time is ripe to promote the role of place-based social-ecological research as a key contributor to achieve global sustainability goals. Fil: Balvanera, Patricia. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; México Fil: Calderón Contreras, Rafael. Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana; México Fil: Castro, Antonio J.. University of Idaho; Estados Unidos. Universidad de Almería; España Fil: Felipe Lucia, María R.. University of Berne; Suiza Fil: Geijzendorffer, Ilse R.. Tour du Valat. Research Institute for the Conservation of Mediterranean Wetlands; Francia Fil: Jacobs, Sander. Research Group Nature and Society. Research Institute for Nature and Forest; Países Bajos. Belgian Biodiversity Platform; Países Bajos Fil: Martín López, Berta. Leuphana University of Lüneburg. Faculty of Sustainability. Institute of Ethics and Transdisciplinary Sustainability Research; Alemania Fil: Arbieu, Ugo. Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre; Alemania Fil: Speranza, Chinwe Ifejika. University of Berne; Suiza Fil: Locatelli, Bruno. Agricultural Research for Development ; Francia. Center for International Forestry Research ; Perú Fil: Pérez Harguindeguy, Natalia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; Argentina Fil: Ruiz Mercado, Ilse. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; México Fil: Spierenburg, Marja J.. Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen; Países Bajos Fil: Vallet, Améline. Centre International de Recherche Sur L'environnement Et Le Developpement; Francia Fil: Lynes, Laura. The Rockies Institute; Canadá Fil: Gillson, Lindsey. African Climate And Development Initiative; Sudáfrica

Item does not contain fulltext International business scholars are increasingly calling for more awareness of the local context in which international entrepreneurs pursue business opportunities. In this paper, we respond to this call, arguing that an entrepreneur's business network engenders self-sustaining dynamics that bear upon the entrepreneurial opportunity itself. We conclude that the dynamics that we observe can be interpreted as 'multidimensional embeddedness'. Through a qualitative inquiry, we study how a Korean entrepreneur seeking to establish an agri-business venture in Cambodia embeds himself in the local business environment as a means to create an opportunity structure. We analyze how the international business venture initially thrived but ultimately failed, attributing these outcomes to the entrepreneur's multidimensional embeddedness in the wider business environment. In so doing, we contribute a critical perspective to entrepreneurship research, widening the prevailing individualistic focus on entrepreneurship by engaging with the societal context within which an opportunity structure develops. We also extend international business studies by explaining how the opportunity structure underlying international ventures impacts upon opportunity pursuit, beyond the entrepreneur's control. 1 p.

The concept of social-ecological systems is useful for understanding the interlinked dynamics of environmental and societal change. The concept has helped facilitate: (1) increased recognition of the dependence of humanity on ecosystems; (2) improved collaboration across disciplines, and between science and society; (3) increased methodological pluralism leading to improved systems understanding; and (4) major policy frameworks considering social-ecological interactions. Despite these advances, the potential of a social-ecological systems perspective to improve sustainability outcomes has not been fully realized. Key priorities are to: (1) better understand and govern social-ecological interactions between regions; (2) pay greater attention to long-term drivers; (3) better understand the interactions among power relations, justice, and ecosystem stewardship; and (4) develop a stronger science-society interface.

CITATION: Norstrom, A. V., et al. 2017. Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society : knowledge for sustainable stewardship of social-ecological systems. Ecology and Society, 22(1):47, doi:10.5751/ES-09010-220147.

Contains fulltext : 178953.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) Despite a general awareness of the social-ecological complexities within which conservation interventions are embedded, approaches to understanding a diversity of local perspectives of heterogeneous landscapes and how they matter for the outcomes of these interventions are seldom demonstrated. We apply a social-ecological approach to exploring the multiple place meanings related to key landscape elements around a proposed community conservation intervention on the Wild Coast, South Africa, by identifying and analyzing three narratives about this impending change. These narratives mobilize competing meanings of the landscape to argue for or against the conservation project. By linking place meanings to locally defined landscape units (ecotopes), we engage multiple interpretations of the heterogeneous and changing landscape to gain a holistic and more inclusive picture of social-ecological landscape processes such as increasing woodlands and field abandonment. The obstruction of this particular intervention indicates the importance of engaging with multiple cultural values of nature. 16 p.

In this article, we discuss how farm conversions to wildlife habitats result in the reconfiguration of spatial and social relations on white-owned commercial farms in the Karoo region of the Eastern Cape in South Africa. Farmers and landowners justify such conversions stressing economic and ecological rationales. We illustrate how conversions are (also) a reaction to post-apartheid land reform and labour legislation policies, which white farmers and landowners perceive as a serious threat. They seek to legitimate their position in society and reassert their place on the land by claiming a new role as nature conservationists. We argue that game farms should be interpreted as economically and politically contested spaces for three reasons: (1) whereas landowners present the farm workers' displacement from game farms as the unintended by-product of a changing rural economy, the creation of pristine wilderness seems designed to empty the land of farm dwellers who may lay claim to the land; (2) game farms further disconnect the historically developed links between farm dwellers and farms, denying them a place of residence and a base for multiple livelihood strategies; (3) this way the conversion process deepens farm dwellers' experiences of dispossession and challenges their sense of belonging. Game fences effectively define farm workers and dwellers as people out of place. These dynamics contrast government reform policies aimed at addressing historical injustices and protecting farm dwellers' tenure security. © 2014 The Institute of Social and Economic Research.

This contribution analyses the difficulties of biodiversity policy-making and the role of science. It addresses biodiversity scientists' struggles to communicate the value of biodiversity to policy-makers, and the tensions between producing policyrelevant research and being perceived as too prescriptive. The author argues that it is important for biodiversity scientists to acknowledge and engage with the political aspects of biodiversity policies. A first step is to recognize the diversity of valuations and preferences among various stakeholders of different trade-offs, and the power relations between the stakeholders. A transparent presentation of a broad range of policy options, including an explic it description of the assumptions and models underpinning them, is a further requisite. Such presentations in turn require better understanding of the way institutions governing ecosystem (services) emerge and are established.

Land, memory, reconstruction, and justice. Perspectives on land claims in South Africa, edited by Cherryl Walker, Anna Bohlin, Ruth Hall and Thembela Kepe, Athens, Ohio University Press/KwaZula-Nat...

Bespreking van: I. Scoones,Zimbabwe's land reform: Myths & realities Woodbridge:James Currey ,2010 9781847010247 C. Walker,Land, memory, reconstruction, and justice: Perspectives on land claims in South Africa Athens, OH:Ohio University Press ,2010 9780821419274

The article investigates the increasingly important connections between the private sector and nature conservation agencies. It looks specifically at the connections between two important philanthropists, the late Anton Rupert, a South African business tycoon, and the late Prince Bernhard of The Netherlands. Both have been highly successful in raising funds for nature conservation, and marketing the idea of transfrontier conservation. This paper explores the networks they formed and were part of to try and explain how they were able to do so. It also attempts to analyse how their donations and fund raising have shaped thinking about nature conservation in (southern) Africa. © 2010 The Authors Journal compilation © 2010 Editorial Board of Antipode.

This article explores contemporary cultural geographies and underlying histories of change on private land in post-apartheid South Africa. Its focus is the expansion of wildlife-based tourism and related forms of commodified wilderness consumption in KwaZulu-Natal province. The article explores the social and economic processes occurring on game farms in a region known as the Midlands. Here nature is being culturally (re)constructed on former farmlands to create new landscapes shaped by the demands of wildlife-based tourism. In pursuit of these 'third nature' dreams, spaces often need to be physically changed as well as discursively repositioned through marketing. Yet this is not an unchallenged process: the presence of 'farm dwellers' living on privately owned land disrupts smooth progress to a refashioned wilderness landscape. The article identifies various strategies employed by landowners in order to minimise the presence of farm dwellers on their land. In the current context, the involvement of the state on private land adds a further layer of complexity. Land reform policies and programmes serve as a mesh through which these contestations are filtered. While their effects are often ambiguous, land claims in particular serve to challenge the 'third nature' dream of landowners.

Nature conservation in South(ern) Africa was for a long time dominated by white males and funded by a white elite. In postapartheid South Africa, government and conservation organisations have attempted to transform the sector by promoting the idea that local (black) residents—often previously evicted and excluded from nature conservation areas—should benefit economically from them. Concurrently, the old elite needed to legitimise its place in post-apartheid South Africa. One attempt was by promoting Peace Parks—transfrontier conservation areas stretching across national borders. These were intended to become monuments to celebrate peace in the region and a more inclusive approach to nature conservation. Referring to Victor Turner's ideas about ritual transformations and the concept of liminality, one could argue that transfrontier parks constitute liminal spaces where international borders no longer matter and which serve the ritual transformation of formerly hostile regional relations as well as the tra...

This article explores the early history of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park (GLTP). In 1927, a year after the Kruger National Park was created, authorities from the Union of South Africa approached their Portuguese counterparts to request that a similar reservation be created on the Mozambican side of the border contiguous to Kruger. Similar requests were made to and by Southern Rhodesian authorities. This article describes the tensions and conflicts surrounding these early proposals for transboundary conservation, highlighting differences in perceptions of the benefits and risks associated with transfrontier projects, and continuities with the conflicts characterising the GLTP today. In Southern Rhodesia, the plans were embraced by businessmen as a wildlife-based tourism initiative and conservation was justified through its revenue-generating potential. Yet influential players in Rhodesia and Mozambique undermined the proposals as they felt the plan was a risky gamble that could jeopardise cattle ranching. Fears of cattle disease spreading through the transboundary wilderness area put a stop to the initiative, until its revival in the late 1990s. The demise of the early plans was also influenced by Portuguese colonial authorities' interpretation of transboundary conservation as a guise for South African territorial expansion. © 2009 The Editorial Board of the Journal of Southern African Studies.

This article emanates from a joint research project aimed at documenting the history of transboundary wildlife policies in southern Africa. One of the issues that emerged from this project was the interplay between such policies and veterinary disease agents.

The Great Limpopo is one of the largest Transfrontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs) in the world, encompassing vast areas in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique. The TFCA concept is embraced by practically all (international) conservation agencies. The rationale for the support is that the boundaries of ecosystems generally do not overlap with those of the nation-state. Their protection requires transnational cooperation. By arguing that local communities living in or close to TFCAs will participate and benefit economically, TFCA proponents claim social legitimacy for the project. However, analysis shows that communities first have to live up to rigid standards and requirements set by the international conservation authorities, before they are considered ‘fit’ to participate. Communities attempt to resist this type of marginalization by forming alliances with (inter)national development and human rights NGOs, with mixed results.

In this paper we argue that there is a paradox in the managerial attempt of the South African Peace Park Foundation, to foster cohesion within the development of Trans Frontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs) in southern Africa by focusing on community participation and development. Cohesion is mainly found at the level of the elite – both European and African – promoting the idea of the TFCAs, which provides them with opportunities to develop ‘Super‐African’ identities, based on identifying with nature and the landscape rather than the nation‐state. The imagery about the African landscape on which this process is based has its roots in colonial and primitivist discourse on Africa and Africans which includes Africans in the concept of landscape, but only if apparently unadulterated by modernity. This ultimately presents a problem for the TFCA development and its aim to develop local communities: if local people would indeed economically develop, with all the material consequences, they would no longer belong i...

Spaces of privatised wildlife production, in the form of game farms, private nature reserves and other forms of wildlife-oriented land use, are an increasingly prominent feature of the South African countryside. Whilst there is a well-developed literature on the social impacts of state-run protected areas, the outcomes of privatised wildlife production have thus far received little attention. It is argued here that the socio-spatial dynamics of the wildlife industry, driven by capitalist imperatives related to the commodified production of nature and wilderness, warrant both in-depth investigation in their own right, and contextualisation in terms of broader processes of agrarian change locally as well as globally. The growing influence of trophy hunting and the wildlife industry on private land can be seen as a significant contributing factor to processes of deagrarianisation that are mirrored in other parts of the African continent and elsewhere. In South Africa, these developments and their impacts on the livelihoods of farm dwellers take on an added dimension in the context of the country's efforts to implement a programme of post-apartheid land reform. Two decades after the formal end of apartheid, contestations over land rights and property ownership remain live and often unresolved. This theme issue explores these dynamics on private land partly or wholly dedicated to wildlife production, with special emphasis on two South African provinces: KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape. © 2014 The Institute of Social and Economic Research.

This chapter examines the ways in which two forms of wildlife-based tourism in South Africa, hunting farms and private luxury game reserves, have accelerated land consolidation and shifting land use and access patterns. It also shows that the spread of game farming and wildlife-based tourism is actively producing new landscapes with important cultural, social and economic consequences for farm dwellers. In light of recent land acquisition trends, this land consolidation process is arousing qualms regarding its social costs. The social impacts of conversions to wildlife production on farm dwellers vary somewhat by region and mode of wildlife utilisation. Farm dwellers have strong connections to the farming areas. Their removal from the properties means they lose access to land for grazing and cultivation. Numerous farm dwellers have been evicted but their displacement is induced by withholding certain basic services, refusal to employ them and introducing dangerous game without any protection.