1st Edition

Managing Natural Resources for Sustainable Livelihoods Uniting Science and Participation

    272 Pages
    by Routledge

    272 Pages
    by Routledge

    Management of local resources has a greater chance of a sustainable outcome when there is partnership between local people and external agencies, and agendas relevant to their aspirations and circumstances. Managing Natural Resources for Sustainable Livelihoods analyses and extends this premise to show unequivocally that the process of research for improving natural resource management must incorporate participatory and user-focused approaches, leading to development based on the needs and knowledge of local resource users. Drawing on extensive and highly relevant case studies, this book presents innovative approaches for establishing and sustaining participation and collective decision-making, good practice for research, and challenges for future developments. It covers a wide range of natural resources - including forests and soils, and water and management units, such as watersheds and common property areas - and provides practical lessons from analysis and meta-analysis of cases from Asia, Africa and Latin America. It offers insights on how to make research participatory while maintaining rigour and high-quality biological science, different forms of participation, and ways to scale up and extend participatory approaches and successful initiatives. This book will be invaluable for those professionally involved in natural resource management for sustainable development and an essential resource for teachers and students of both the biophysical and social science aspects of natural resource management.

    Foreword by Joachim Voss, Director General, International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) * Preface * Acknowledgements * Introduction: Uniting Science and Participation in the Process of Innovation - Research for Development * Navigating Complexity, Diversity and Dynamism: Reflections on Research for Natural Resource Management * Whose Research, Whose Agenda? * Scaling Up and Out * Transforming Institutions to Achieve Innovation in Research and Development * Principles for Good Practice in Participatory Research: Reflecting on Lessons from the Field * Participatory Research, Natural resource Management and Rural Transformation: More Lessons from the Field * Participation in Context: What's Past, What's Present, and What's Next * Annexe1: Summaries of Case Studies * Index

    Biography

    Barry Pound is a farming systems and livelihoods specialist at the Natural Resources Institute, UK. Sieglinde Snapp is Assistant professor of Integrated Crop Management at Michigan State University, US, and Works with farmers in applying biological principles to the design of resilient systems. Cynthia McDougall is a social scientist at the Center for International Forestry Research, Indonesia, focusing on enhancing equity and livelihoods in community forestry. Ann Braun is an agricultural ecologist focused on mentoring participatory and user-sensitive approaches to research, supporting learning processes and promoting ecological literacy.

    '...this book presents innovative approaches for estabilishing and sustaining participation and collective decision making, good practice for research, and challenges for future development in the management of natural resources.' Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich, Chatham, UK