Recommendations to guide sampling effort for polygon-based participatory mapping used to identify perceived ecosystem services hotspots.

Participatory mapping is increasingly used to map spatial variation in people's perceptions about ecosystem services. It has growing use in the identification of locations where places perceived to be important converge. Few recommendations have been published to navigate decisions about sampling effort in participatory mapping research when polygon data is collected, although one recommendation is for ≥ 25 participants assuming each participant maps c. 4-5 polygons per ecosystem service. Underlying data informing this recommendation reflects a particular context: collected using postal questionnaires to map a vast spatial area in southern Australia. Although not intended as definitive or suited to all contexts, the 25 participant (or 100-125 polygon) minimum sometimes informs participatory mapping research. Our empirical work, undertaken using face-to-face questionnaires in a small Vietnamese coastal study area, suggests the recommendation may not be appropriate in all contexts. We propose a modified stepwise approach which:•Prioritises spatial agreement (polygon overlap) rather than polygon count and participant numbers to assess data sufficiency•Uses narratives to triangulate outputs generated from participatory mapping data to reduce uncertainty related to low polygon counts.

Coherence of marine alien species biosecurity legislation: A study of England and Wales.

The marine environment is particularly at risk from the intentional and unintentional introduction and spread of invasive alien species (IAS); preventing their introduction and spread from occurring is therefore, a key component in the on-going management of marine IAS. Ensuring legislation is coherent and consistent is essential to the success of managing the existing and future impacts of marine IAS. We explore the coherence (determined as consistency and interaction) of marine biosecurity legislation for IAS at different geopolitical scales. There was consistency between both the Bern Convention and Convention on Biological Diversity and European and national legislation that had been created in response. There was a lack of interaction evidenced by the Ballast Water Management Convention, which had not yet been transposed into regional (mainly European) or national legislation. Implementation measures such as legislation should be coherent as any failure in the chain could potentially weaken the overall effort to establish and maintain biosecurity and achieve behaviour change.

Perceived Climate Variability and Compounding Stressors: Implications for Risks to Livelihoods of Smallholder Indian Farmers.

Micro-scale perspectives are seldom included in planned climate change adaptations, yet farmers' perceptions can provide useful insights into livelihood impacts from interactions between climatic and other stressors. This research aims to understand how climate variability and other stressors are impacting the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in Azamgarh district, eastern Uttar Pradesh, India. Data from 84 smallholder farmers were collected using mixed qualitative and quantitative approaches, including interview and participatory methods, informed by multiple stressor and sustainable livelihood frameworks. Results revealed that farmers are increasingly facing problems caused by the reduced duration and number of rainy days, and erratic rainfall. Anomalies in seasonal cycles (longer summers, shorter winters) seem to have altered the local climate. Farmers reported that repeated drought impacts, even in years of moderate rainfall, are adversely affecting the rice crop, challenging the formal definition of drought. Climate variability, identified as the foremost stressor, often acts as a risk multiplier for ecological (e.g., soil sodicity), socio-economic (e.g., rising costs of cultivation) and political (e.g., mismatching policies and poor extension systems) stressors. In addition to climate stresses, resource-poor marginal groups in particular experienced higher risks resulting from changes in resource management regimes. This study provides an important cue to revisit the formal definitions of normal rainfall and drought, accommodating farmers' perceptions that evenly distributed rainfall, and not total rainfall is a key determinant of crop yields. Though India has developed adaptive measures for climate change and variability, integration of farmers' perceptions of climate and other stressors into such policies can improve the resilience of smallholder farmers, who have hitherto depended largely on autonomous adaptation strategies.

Corruption and conflicts as barriers to adaptive governance: Water governance in dryland systems in the Rio del Carmen watershed.

Water governance in the Rio del Carmen watershed has failed to achieve sustainable water use, generating social conflicts, water overexploitation, and grassland loss. This leaves it unable to adapt and learn, to reconcile different stakeholder perspectives and to adequately respond to uncertainty. Adaptive water governance regulates water access through flexible, inclusive and innovative institutions, increasing system adaptive capacity in the face of uncertainty. This is necessary for water-scarce systems since they suffer context-specific exposure to land degradation and climate change. This research focuses on how water governance regulates water access in the Rio del Carmen watershed, Mexico, identifying key legal and institutional features that could increase adaptation and secure water resources in the long-term. 27 semi-structured interviews were conducted with key stakeholders in the watershed, in order to understand the water governance structure and its system dynamics. It was found that water mismanagement, overexploitation, and conflicts over access to water are due to the lack of application and neglect of formal rules. Results indicate that breaches of the legal framework are commonplace, permitted by corruption of both former and current government officials. Many farmers have institutionalized this corruption in order to access water; increasing social conflicts and hindering any type of planning or water management, which, in turn, continues to affect the ecological conditions of the watershed. By understanding the governance system, its structure and the interactions that weaken and bypass formal institutions to the detriment of water resources, stakeholder engagement has emerged as an entry point for enabling collaboration and acceptance of formal institutions. This process has the potential to create a formal network, as a Watershed Committee, that could be honoured in practice through the efficacy of this engagement.

Investigating Climate Compatible Development Outcomes and their Implications for Distributive Justice: Evidence from Malawi.

Governments and donors are investing in climate compatible development in order to reduce climate and development vulnerabilities. However, the rate at which climate compatible development is being operationalised has outpaced academic enquiry into the concept. Interventions aiming to achieve climate compatible development "wins" (for development, mitigation, adaptation) can also create negative side-effects. Moreover, benefits and negative side-effects may differ across time and space and have diverse consequences for individuals and groups. Assessments of the full range of outcomes created by climate compatible development projects and their implications for distributive justice are scarce. This article develops a framework using a systematic literature review that enables holistic climate compatible development outcome evaluation over seven parameters identified. Thereafter, we explore the outcomes of two donor-funded projects that pursue climate compatible development triple-wins in Malawi using this framework. Household surveys, semi-structured interviews and documentary material are analysed. Results reveal that uneven outcomes are experienced between stakeholder groups and change over time. Although climate compatible development triple-wins can be achieved through projects, they do not represent the full range of outcomes. Ecosystem-and community-based activities are becoming popularised as approaches for achieving climate compatible development goals. However, findings suggest that a strengthened evidence base is required to ensure that these approaches are able to meet climate compatible development goals and further distributive justice.

Implementing REDD+ at the local level: Assessing the key enablers for credible mitigation and sustainable livelihood outcomes.

Achieving cost-effective mitigation and sustainable livelihoods through reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) depends heavily on the local context within which REDD+ projects are implemented. Studies have focused on how REDD+ can benefit or harm local people, with little attention paid to how people, their assets and institutions can promote or impede REDD+. This paper examines the key local assets necessary for REDD+ to protect forests and support local livelihoods based on evidence from a globally-linked REDD+ project in Kenya. Household interviews (n = 100), focus group discussions (n = 6) and in-depth interviews with government (n = 8) and project stakeholders (n = 14) were undertaken to rank and explain how local assets interact with the project's efforts to protect forests, and the role of State institutions in shaping project-asset interactions. Locally, pro-poor assets such as land tenure and water access had most influence on the project's ability to protect forests. Inclusion of communal forests as part of the REDD+ project entitled local poor peasant farmers to participate in and benefit from the project and so dissuaded them from using protected forests for charcoal production. Water access determined agricultural productivity and intensity of forest use for livelihoods and coping. Even though carbon revenues were distributed equally between social groups and support directed to pro-poor livelihood initiatives, efforts were impeded by State decisions on land that interfered with communal approaches to forest conservation, by strict carbon standards that limited trade-offs between livelihoods and forest protection and by fluctuating carbon prices and buyers that limited funds needed for project operations and local livelihoods. Equitable and pro-poor benefit sharing are necessary but not sufficient for effective REDD+ implementation unless national institutions are reformed and global carbon pricing harmonized with local livelihood needs.

Who's in and why? A typology of stakeholder analysis methods for natural resource management.

Stakeholder analysis means many things to different people. Various methods and approaches have been developed in different fields for different purposes, leading to confusion over the concept and practice of stakeholder analysis. This paper asks how and why stakeholder analysis should be conducted for participatory natural resource management research. This is achieved by reviewing the development of stakeholder analysis in business management, development and natural resource management. The normative and instrumental theoretical basis for stakeholder analysis is discussed, and a stakeholder analysis typology is proposed. This consists of methods for: i) identifying stakeholders; ii) differentiating between and categorising stakeholders; and iii) investigating relationships between stakeholders. The range of methods that can be used to carry out each type of analysis is reviewed. These methods and approaches are then illustrated through a series of case studies funded through the Rural Economy and Land Use (RELU) programme. These case studies show the wide range of participatory and non-participatory methods that can be used, and discuss some of the challenges and limitations of existing methods for stakeholder analysis. The case studies also propose new tools and combinations of methods that can more effectively identify and categorise stakeholders and help understand their inter-relationships.

Design principles and common pool resource management: an institutional approach to evaluating community management in semi-arid Tanzania.

This paper analyses the role of institutions in the management of common pool resources (CPRs) in semi-arid Tanzania. Common property regimes have often been considered inadequate for the management of CPRs because of the problems of excludability, but they are becoming more widely supported as the way forward to overcome the problems of resource use and degradation in developing countries. A series of design principles for long enduring common property institutions have been proposed by Ostrom, but there is concern that they are not applicable to a wide range of real life situations or that they may be specific to certain types of CPR. Here, we compare these principles to the situation prevailing in 12 villages in six districts in semi-arid Tanzania. Data on management institutions were collected through semi-structured interviews and meetings at district and village level. The combined information was used to make a qualitative assessment of the strength with which each design principle appeared to operate in the management of forest, pasture and water resources. Boundaries, conflict and negotiation in CPR management are of key importance in semi-arid regions. However, the need for flexibility in order to deal with ecological uncertainty means that many management institutions would be considered weak or absent according to the design principle approach. This supports the view that the design principles should not be used as a 'blueprint to be imposed on resource management regimes' rather that they provide a framework for investigating common property regimes with the proviso that, certainly for semi-arid regions, they may highlight where management cannot be explained by institutional theory alone.

Local perceptions of risk to livelihood in semi-arid Tanzania.

This paper examines variation in local perceptions of risk in semi-arid Tanzania, identifying factors that influence local perceptions of problems and testing the feasibility of risk mapping as a technique. Twelve villages in six districts were visited between February and April 2001. Villagers were asked about their worries and concerns in providing for themselves and their families using a risk questionnaire. The responses were grouped into 21 categories of problem and incidence and severity indices were calculated for each category. Most problems were associated with the availability of natural resources on which livelihoods depend but others related to human and social capital assets. In addition to environmental factors, livelihood strategy and gender both influenced people's perceptions of risk. Problems of irrigation and weather, for example, were important for agricultural communities while problems relating to livestock diseases, access to land and hunger were more important in pastoral communities. The risks cited by men and women generally reflected their traditional roles in society. Very broadly, the risks associated with natural capital tended to be seen as higher by men while women mentioned more problems relating to human and social capital. However, this was not always the case. Problems linked to finance, traditionally the concern of men, were ranked similarly by men and women. In projects designed to facilitate community management and control over common pool resources, the identification of common interests is particularly important. Risk mapping can provide a cost-effective way of gaining insights to help improve research design and to inform policy development.