Moving from sustainable management to sustainable governance of natural resources: The role of social learning processes in rural India, Bolivia and Mali

The present paper discusses a conceptual, methodological and practical framework within which the limitations of the conventional notion of natural resource management (NRM) can be overcome. NRM is understood as the application of scientific ecological knowledge to resource management. By including a consideration of the normative imperatives that arise from scientific ecological knowledge and submitting them to public scrutiny, ‘sustainable management of natural resources’ can be recontextualised as ‘sustainable governance of natural resources’. This in turn makes it possible to place the politically neutralising discourse of ‘management’ in a space for wider societal debate, in which the different actors involved can deliberate and negotiate the norms, rules and power relations related to natural resource use and sustainable development. The transformation of sustainable management into sustainable governance of natural resources can be conceptualised as a social learning process involving scientists, experts, politicians and local actors, and their corresponding scientific and non-scientific knowledges. The social learning process is the result of what Habermas has described as ‘communicative action’, in contrast to ‘strategic action’. Sustainable governance of natural resources thus requires a new space for communicative action aiming at shared, intersubjectively validated definitions of actual situations and the goals and means required for transforming current norms, rules and power relations in order to achieve sustainable development. Case studies from rural India, Bolivia and Mali explore the potentials and limitations for broadening communicative action through an intensification of social learning processes at the interface of local and external knowledge. Key factors that enable or hinder the transformation of sustainable management into sustainable governance of natural resources through social learning processes and communicative action are discussed.

A Calculus of Evolving Objects

The demands of developing modern, highly dynamic applications have led to an increasing interest in dynamic programming languages and mechanisms. Not only applications must evolve over time, but the object models themselves may need to be adapted to the requirements of different run-time contexts. Class-based models and prototype-based models, for example, may need to co-exist to meet the demands of dynamically evolving applications. Multi-dimensional dispatch, fine-grained and dynamic software composition, and run-time evolution of behaviour are further examples of diverse mechanisms which may need to co-exist in a dynamically evolving run-time environment How can we model the semantics of these highly dynamic features, yet still offer some reasonable safety guarantees? To this end we present an original calculus in which objects can adapt their behaviour at run-time to changing contexts. Both objects and environments are represented by first-class mappings between variables and values. Message sends are dynamically resolved to method calls. Variables may be dynamically bound, making it possible to model a variety of dynamic mechanisms within the same calculus. Despite the highly dynamic nature of the calculus, safety properties are assured by a type assignment system.

A Calculus of Evolving Objects

The demands of developing modern, highly dynamic applications have led to an increasing interest in dynamic programming languages and mechanisms. Not only must applications evolve over time, but the object models themselves may need to be adapted to the requirements of different run-time contexts. Class-based models and prototype-based models, for example, may need to co-exist to meet the demands of dynamically evolving applications. Multi-dimensional dispatch, fine-grained and dynamic software composition, and run-time evolution of behaviour are further examples of diverse mechanisms which may need to co-exist in a dynamically evolving run-time environment. How can we model the semantics of these highly dynamic features, yet still offer some reasonable safety guarantees? To this end we present an original calculus in which objects can adapt their behaviour at run-time. Both objects and environments are represented by first-class mappings between variables and values. Message sends are dynamically resolved to method calls. Variables may be dynamically bound, making it possible to model a variety of dynamic mechanisms within the same calculus. Despite the highly dynamic nature of the calculus, safety properties are assured by a type assignment system.