Community owned solutions: identifying local best practices for social-ecological sustainability

Policies and actions that come from higher scale structures, such as international bodies and national governments, are not always compatible with the realities and perspectives of smaller scale units including indigenous communities. Yet, it is at this local social-ecological scale that mechanisms and solutions for dealing with unpredictability and change can be increasingly seen emerging from across the world. Although there is a large body of knowledge specifying the conditions necessary to promote local governance of natural resources, there is a parallel need to develop practical methods for operationalizing the evaluation of local social-ecological systems. In this paper, we report on a systemic, participatory, and visual approach for engaging local communities in an exploration of their own social-ecological system. Working with indigenous communities of the North Rupununi, Guyana, this involved using participatory video and photography within a system viability framework to enable local participants to analyze their own situation by defining indicators of successful strategies that were meaningful to them. Participatory multicriteria analysis was then used to arrive at a short list of best practice strategies. We present six best practices and show how they are intimately linked through the themes of indigenous knowledge, local governance and values, and partnerships and networks. We highlight how developing shared narratives of community owned solutions can help communities to plan governance and management of land and resource systems, while reinforcing sustainable practices by discussing and showcasing them within communities, and by engendering a sense of pride in local solutions.

Using social network analysis to identify key stakeholders in agricultural biodiversity governance and related land-use decisions at regional and local level

In 2013 the European Commission launched its new green infrastructure strategy to make another attempt to stop and possibly reverse the loss of biodiversity until 2020, by connecting habitats in the wider landscape. This means that conservation would go beyond current practices to include landscapes that are dominated by conventional agriculture, where biodiversity conservation plays a minor role at best. The green infrastructure strategy aims at bottom-up rather than top-down implementation, and suggests including local and regional stakeholders. Therefore, it is important to know which stakeholders influence land-use decisions concerning green infrastructure at the local and regional level. The research presented in this paper served to select stakeholders in preparation for a participatory scenario development process to analyze consequences of different implementation options of the European green infrastructure strategy. We used a mix of qualitative and quantitative social network analysis (SNA) methods to combine actors’ attributes, especially concerning their perceived influence, with structural and relational measures. Further, our analysis provides information on institutional backgrounds and governance settings for green infrastructure and agricultural policy. The investigation started with key informant interviews at the regional level in administrative units responsible for relevant policies and procedures such as regional planners, representatives of federal ministries, and continued at the local level with farmers and other members of the community. The analysis revealed the importance of information flows and regulations but also of social pressure, considerably influencing biodiversity governance with respect to green infrastructure and biodiversity.