Finding “Space” for Comanagement of Forests within the Neoliberal Paradigm: Rights,Strategies, and Tools for Asserting a Local Agenda

As neoliberalism continues to influence environmental governance, it affects notions about the appropriate level of community involvement in resource management. Under more recent iterations, hybrid forms of governance are emphasized, including government–civil society partnerships and approaches geared towards harnessing the strengths of local communities. Here we explore the characteristics of different resource management rights, strategies, and tools through which communities can find political space to assert their own agendas within a neoliberalized policy environment. We examine the successful use of some of these approaches by communities during the initial development of community forests policy and practice in British Columbia, Canada. While we confirm the complex, contingent and case-specific nature of opportunities for comanagement created through neoliberal policy elements, we suggest that space does exist for community forest bodies to assert local values, goals and strategies, demonstrating the creativity, ingenuity and determination of communities to attain a real voice in management.

The Ethics of Birth and Death: Gender Infanticide in India

This paper discusses the persistent devaluation of the girl child in India and the link between the entrenched perception of female valuelessness and the actual practice of infanticide of girl babies or foetuses. It seeks to place female infanticide, or ‘gendercide,’ within the context of Western-derived conceptions of ethics, justice and rights. To date, current ethical theories and internationally purveyed moral frameworks, as well as legal and political declarations, have fallen short of an adequate moral appraisal of infanticide. This paper seeks to rethink the issue.

Measurement error in racial and ethnic statistics

In the United States, the racial and ethnic statistics published by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) assume that each member of the U.S. population has a race and ethnicity and that if a member is black or white with respect to his risk of one disease, he is the same race with respect to his risk of another. Such an assumption is mistaken. Race and ethnicity are taken by the NCHS to be an intrinsic property of members of a population, when they should be taken to depend on interest. The actual or underlying race or ethnicity of members of a population depends on the risk whose variation within the population we wish to describe or explain.

Why Folkbiology Matters: Resource Conflict Despite Shared Goals and Knowledge

There is a continuing controversy over Native American fishing and hunting rights. We show that Native American (Menominee) and European American fish experts have a common knowledge base and share values and attitudes associated with fishing practices (though organized around different ethical principles). Nonetheless, perceived group differences are dramatic (especially European American perceptions of Native Americans). Cultural differences in models of nature and associated inference processes appear to mediate these stereotypes and may hold the key to reducing intergroup conflict over resources.

Is it a revolution?

Jablonka and Lamb's claim that evolutionary biology is undergoing a ‘revolution’ is queried. But the very concept of revolutionary change has uncertain application to a field organized in the manner of contemporary biology. The explanatory primacy of sequence properties is also discussed.

Adaptationism and the adaptive landscape

Debates over adaptationism can be clarified and partially resolved by careful consideration of the ‘grain’ at which evolutionary processes are described. The framework of ‘adaptive landscapes’ can be used to illustrate and facilitate this investigation. We argue that natural selection may have special status at an intermediate grain of analysis of evolutionary processes. The cases of sickle-cell disease and genomic imprinting are used as case studies.

Legal Rights in Human Bodies, Body Parts and Tissue

This paper outlines the current common law principles that protect people’s interests in their bodies, excised body parts and tissue without conferring the rights of full legal ownership. It does not include the recent statutory amendments in jurisdictions such as New South Wales and the United Kingdom. It argues that at common law, people do not own their own bodies or excised bodily material. People can authorise the removal of their bodily material and its use, either during life or after their death, for medical or scientific purposes. Researchers who acquire human bodies, body parts or tissue pursuant to such an authority have a right to possess and use them according to the authorisation they have been given, but their rights fall short of full ownership because they are limited in the way that they can use the material. The legal rights of researchers who develop intellectual property and biological products from excised human tissue can be adequately protected by existing common law principles without the need for a new legal principle that people own body parts and tissue removed from their bodies.

Enhancement and Entitlement—the Impact of Stocking on Rural Households’ Command over Living Aquatic Resources: A Case Study from the Lao PDR

Enhancement of inland fisheries through stocking can potentially increase fisheries production in developing countries and improve rural livelihoods. However, results of stocking are often unexpected in terms of benefit distribution. Taking an environmental entitlements approach, this paper details the nature and extent of institutional change that accompanied stocking in Savannakhet Province, Lao PDR, and quantifies its impact on households from different socioeconomic groups. Stocking was a catalyst significantly affecting people’s command over living aquatic resources. New rules changed who could go fishing for what and when, and how the fish could be utilized. Customary rights were transformed and decision-making power concentrated. Despite this, household surveys demonstrated that no socioeconomic group was benefiting disproportionately and this was due to the specific social, political and institutional context into which enhancement was placed. However, in different contexts, increased benefits for resource users, even in cases of increased fisheries production, cannot be assumed.

Towards Solutions for State vs. Local Community Conflicts Over Forestland: The Impact of Formal Recognition of User Rights in Krui, Sumatra, Indonesia

In 1998, a decree issued by the Indonesian government enabled communities in Krui, Indonesia, to register for concession rights over the area of state forest land planted with their agroforests. Registration would provide farmers with the legal right to manage and benefit from these agroforests. In 2005, we found that even though none of the Krui communities has ever formally applied for their concession rights, the decree has been instrumental in stopping outsiders’ attempts to appropriate these agroforests. Farmers within the state forest zone felt secure enough to continue investing in their complex agroforestry systems, while planting trees reinforced their feeling of security. We conclude that it is not the legal status of tenure, but the perception of tenure security that is of significance in people’s land-use decisions. These results are considered in the wider context of state–community conflicts over forest land in the tropics.

Responses of marine organisms to physical and chemical impacts

Studies on the effects of a variety of exogenous and anthropogenic environmental factors, including endocrine disruptors, heavy metals, UV light, high temperature, and others, on marine organisms have been presented at the 2nd Bilateral Seminar Italy–Japan held in November 2006. Reports were discussed in order to reveal the current situation of marine ecosystems, aiming at evaluation and prediction of environmental risks.

Individual variability of behavioural responses by Wandering Albatrosses (Diomedea exulans) to human disturbance

Sub-Antarctic Marion Island has had a permanent research station for 50 years and the islands Wandering Albatrosses have been intensively studied for 20 years. The reactions of breeding birds to approaches by a human on foot were recorded. Three response variables were calculated: intensity of vocal reaction (IVR), intensity of non-vocal reaction (INR) and overall response index (ORI). At 5 m from the nest, twice as many birds stood and/or vocalised as at 15 m. Nearest neighbour distance, age and gender did not explain individual variability of responses. Study colony birds had higher IVR scores than non-study colony birds; birds at colonies closest to the station had the highest ORI scores. A better breeding record was associated with lower IVR and ORI scores, but a causative relationship remains to be demonstrated. A minimum viewing distance of 25 m is recommended for breeding Wandering Albatrosses.

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Leitlinien zur molekulargenetischen Diagnostik: Fragiles-X und Fragiles-X assoziiertes Tremor/Ataxie Syndrom

Ohne Zusammenfassung

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The rise and fall of the adaptive landscape?

The discussion of the adaptive landscape in the philosophical literature appears to be divided along the following lines. On the one hand, some claim that the adaptive landscape is either “uninterpretable” or incoherent. On the other hand, some argue that the adaptive landscape has been an important heuristic, or tool in the service of explaining, as well as proposing and testing hypotheses about evolutionary change. This paper attempts to reconcile these two views.

Towards dynamical system models of language-related brain potentials

Event-related brain potentials (ERP) are important neural correlates of cognitive processes. In the domain of language processing, the N400 and P600 reflect lexical-semantic integration and syntactic processing problems, respectively. We suggest an interpretation of these markers in terms of dynamical system theory and present two nonlinear dynamical models for syntactic computations where different processing strategies correspond to functionally different regions in the system’s phase space.

The Use of Human Tissue

The use of human tissue raises ethical issues of great concern to health care professionals, biomedical researchers, ethics committees, tissue banks and policy makers because of the heightened importance given to informed consent and patient autonomy. The debate has been intensified by high profile scandals such as the “baby hearts” debacle and revelations about the retention of human brains in neuropathology laboratories worldwide. Respect for patient’s rights seems, however, to impede research and development of clinical knowledge in contemporary health care. The Common clinical endeavour argument and a Presumption for beneficial use argument suggest that the use of tissues for research and teaching in contemporary health care can respect patients and their values in multicultural communities where there are provisions for oversight and for opting not to contribute, both of which should respect the diverse views of different ethnic or cultural groups.

Objects limit human comprehension

This paper demonstrates that the human visual system, the primary sensory conduit for primates, processes ambient energy in a way that obligatorily constructs the objects that we ineluctably perceive. And since our perceptual apparatus processes information only in terms of objects (along with the properties and movements of objects), we are limited in our ability to comprehend ‘what is’ when we move beyond our ordinary world of midsize objects—as, for example, when we address the micro microworld of quantum physics.

Community Based Fisheries Management and Fisher Livelihoods: Bangladesh Case Studies

Poor fishers in Bangladesh have been disadvantaged by policies that favored powerful people leasing fishing rights. Community-based management was expected to improve fisher access, livelihoods, and the sustainability of fisheries. The impacts of community management in three floodplain waterbodies differed according to the environment and property rights. Where a set of fishers jointly held exclusive rights to a small enclosed lake they increased production by stocking fish and shared the returns. This strategy is productive but attracts competition for profits and fish consumption was unchanged. Access to capture fisheries in floodplain waterbodies enables the poor to catch diverse small fish for their consumption. Yet sustainability requires limits on fishing. Fish sanctuaries were respected, yet catches per day fell when more people from several villages increased fishing effort in a large wetland, while a tightly knit community restored the fishery in a smaller floodplain. Community organizations will need recognition of their long-term use rights to overcome future threats.