Insights from a novel, user-driven science transfer program for resource management

Do regional natural resource management leaders reflect the attitudes of the landholders?

Natural resources provide any material from the natural environment that can be used by people for support and sustenance of life on earth with its ecological value and manifold resources. The purpose of this study was to explore the role of rural women in natural resources management and utilization in Ethiopia by taking Delanta as the case. The research design was descriptive survey using stratified random sampling technique along the agro-ecology. Both quantitative and qualitative data collected. The target population was 300 sample households from the total of 2992 households in six Kebeles. The data were analyzed using both descriptive (percentage, mean score, cumulative frequency) and inferential (Chi-Square tests) statistical techniques. The results have shown that women are good natural resources managers and the primary gatherers of fuel-wood (76%), fetching water (71%), agriculture participation (83%) and fodder to meet immediate household needs. However, women are culturally denied the right to register and control land resources. Women have also limited access of technology, skill training, education, extension services and information. The depletion of natural resources directly impact on women with increasing workload and drudgery, and the overall livelihood of people who depend on natural resources. Henceforth, women's role in natural resources exploitation and management cannot be undermined. To reinforce and build up women's participation in resources management and sustainable uses, all concerned bodies should take appropriate measures to empower women in decision making, skill training, education, extension services and information. Key words: Agriculture, environment, natural resources, resources management, resources utilization.

Improving the quality of government services in the era of globalization and digitalization is a demand for the State Civil Apparatus (SCA) to improve its performance. Employee performance is influenced by several factors such as organizational commitment, leadership style, and knowledge sharing. However, the phenomenon that exists in the field today is that the efforts made in building a sense of organization commitment, leadership style, and knowledge sharing of each SCA have not been maximized. This also happened at the Investment and One-Door Integrated Services Office (IODISO) of East Luwu Regency. For this reason, this research is expected to be able to provide solutions to the relevant agencies in improving employee performance. The three factors that have been mentioned are then measured using a questionnaire with question items in the form of a Likert scale that is submitted to each respondent. So the data obtained in the form of quantitative data. This data is then analyzed using path analysis. The analysis showed that organizational commitment and leadership style had a direct positive influence on knowledge sharing significantly. Then organizational commitment, leadership style, and knowledge sharing also have a positive direct effect on employee performance. Whereas organizational commitment and leadership style have an indirect positive influence through knowledge sharing on employee performance. This organizational commitment, leadership style, and knowledge sharing contributed to an influence of 92.1% on employee performance.

A major challenge exists in gaining wider recognition for the important role that indigenous knowledge can play in research direction-setting and in developing and implementing natural resource management (NRM) strategies. The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in 1992 highlighted the importance of indigenous knowledge in producing innovative strategies for sustainable resource management (Veitayaki 1997), the challenge since then has been in identifying pathways of integration for indigenous and scientific knowledge. Moller et al. (2009) document a research project in New Zealand, Kia Mau Te Tītī Mo Ake Tonu Atu (Keep the Tītī Forever), that works from within both the Rakiura Māori and scientific communities to incorporate diverse values to tītī management. They conclude that mātauranga and science have distinct epistemologies that should not be blended but rather should strengthen each other through dialogue. In this issue, several papers provide critique on these notions. Jacobson & Stephens (2009 this issue) argue that the scientific, indigenous and local knowledge traditions need to embrace, respect and value different epistemologies as pathways to pluralistic practice. Berkes (2009 this issue) contributes to the science versus traditional knowledge debate by suggesting a focus upon traditional knowledge as a process, rather than content, and calls for the co-production of knowledge through science and tradi-tional knowledge partnership and dialogue. Further, Agrawal (2009 this issue) locates these comments within a knowledge making context by articulating “indigenous knowledge is here to stay, even if what is represented is forever and always disappearing”. Our contribution to this discussion relates to research methodologies that explicitly embrace the co-production of knowledge. We present two research examples from Australia where the impetus is knowledge evolution and creation for cross-cultural NRM and governance. The methodologies practice multi-directional learning and mutual benefit for everyone involved. This approach promotes cross transfer of skills, for example, by generating or documenting scientifically valid information and strengthening indigenous knowledge and systems, with recognition of the value of indigenous knowledge and systems. Essential to these methodolo-gies is the creation of partnerships based on trust between co-researchers and genuine action research outcomes.

The social sciences hold the potential to help interpret and address the complex challenges confronting society. The impact agenda actively encourages the social sciences to make and demonstrate a difference; to justify and protect social science funding. Knowledge mobilisation (KM) can be thought of systematically as a process, encompassing the co-production and channelling of knowledge that can enable the social sciences to gain purchase and voice in the policy-making and delivery process, and supports the endeavour to make a difference. This article serves as an editorial introduction to a special issue in two parts: ‘KM: Research Impact’ and ‘KM: Engagement’. It sets out to outline the forces leading to the rise of the impact agenda and the questions it poses for the social sciences. Particular attention is given to the changing policy context that has reshaped the academy. The article then progresses to outline debates on research and impacts and the forms of engagement that are needed to demonstrate and deliver impact beyond the academy. The article examines the ways in which impact is defined, measured and ‘delivered’ within the social sciences. This is followed by a section on the ways in which social science knowledge is mobilised. The penultimate section addresses the co-production of social scientific knowledge and this is followed by a brief conclusion.

This paper examines the issues associated with the conceptualization and formation of community in community-based natural resource management (CBNRM). The paper is guided by qualitative research methods and is based on the context of southern African countries, with specific reference to Botswana. The results indicate that the clustering of communities to become CBNRM beneficiary groups, regardless of their geographical locations, interests, tribal relationships, historical formations, and the adoption of a single CBNRM implementation model approach fail to incorporate local variations in natural resources, culture, and socioeconomic conditions. Thus, the argument made in this paper is that most problems experienced cannot be attributed to CBNRM as a concept, but to the implementation processes, hence the call for a rethinking in the implementation of CBNRM projects. The paper provides alternative community models to overcome the issues associated with the hasty community clustering process in CBNRM.

The purpose of this review is to provide an historic record of the author’s experience from the 1960s through the 1990s with coral reefs and the impacts of land-based pollution and other actions by man on this important ecosystem, from the islands of the Caribbean and Central America to the West/East Coasts of Africa and the Western Indian Ocean. This is tied into the concept of Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM), its origins in Southern Africa tied to Africa’s mega-fauna and how it can apply to fisher communities in the tropics. It concludes that unless human population pressures and the current forms of “development and conservation” both linked to pollution and habitat degradation are addressed, the future for both man and these unique ecosystems are in jeopardy. A key to this solution is how the Developed World relates to the Developing World. It is hoped that this review will provide insight to future generations of ecologists, researchers, resource managers, politicians donors and NGOs (non- governmental organizations) as to the issues they will confront if both mankind and nature are to have a viable future, living in harmony. Currently, they appear to be in conflict with each other and only man can resolve these issues based upon how he interacts with Mother Nature.

Where do public sociology and the study of natural resources meet? One promising intersection is at community-based natural resource management. At this juncture there are multiple opportunities for rural sociologists to embrace the tenets of public sociology, as espoused by Michael Burawoy. By working with an active, thick, and local ‘civil society’, rural sociologists have the opportunity to improve livelihoods as well as contribute to the sustainability of the natural resource base that so many depend upon. This article examines these possibilities by discussing three domains for rural sociologists to apply public sociology to community-based natural resource management: participation, empowerment, and knowledge coproduction. This article makes an explicit call for rural sociologists to ‘go public,’ and by doing so challenge the underlying structures of marginalization and inequity that have characterized public involvement in natural resource management through the contemporary era of resource management in the United States.

Collective action for multi-scale environmental management: Achieving landscape policy objectives through cooperation of local resource managers

Co-producing knowledge: A demand-led, prosperity-focused, research agenda with forest and farm producer organisations

The ecosystem services (ES) concept initially gathered momentum amongst the Australian scientific community in the late 1990s. This article seeks to investigate if the earlier Australian ES research efforts and findings have been adopted and utilised by Australian resource managers, highlighting factors that may have enabled or prevented this adoption. Combining a literature review, interviews and observations from Australian regional planning, we offer a snapshot of resource managers' experiences in engaging with the ES concept. Although based on a small pilot, our results suggest that thinking about biodiversity and ecosystems as providers of economic value has broadly found its way into Australian natural resource management (NRM) practice, but that the ‘language’ of ES is not necessarily found new, clear or practicable. Interviewees mentioned the lack of an ‘ES toolbox’, combined with clear national and regional policy drivers, as a major barrier to their broader adoption of the ES concept. For the ES concept to be used meaningfully and effectively at regional and local scales, a concerted effort at the nexus of NRM research, policy and practice will be required to further embed ES thinking in participatory planning processes. We argue that a well-facilitated process of group learning and reasoning about nature's values that is grounded in local knowledge and experience may ultimately better approximate the ‘true’ value of a region's natural capital than traditional positivist approaches aimed at comprehensive quantification and valuation of ES.

The complexity of relationships between social change and natural resource management has generated interest in the identification of indicators that might provide more streamlined means for monitoring and planning. In the case of Australia's National Land and Water Resources Audit, interest has focused on the capacity of resource managers to implement more sustainable resource-use practices. This paper reports on an attempt to develop indicators of 'capacity for change' that are statistically reliable and both meaningful and useful to resource managers at a variety of scales. It will be argued, however, that social, spatial and temporal variability in change processes means that no discrete list of social indicators can achieve this task. At the same time that rigorous testing is needed to challenge common-sense assumptions about who is capable of change and where to target capacity-building programmes, data collection and interpretation must be embedded in processes of ongoing negotiation and adaptation among all those involved in, or affected by, resource management.

The present article addresses the production and global dissemination of ‘policy relevant knowledge’. It not only unpacks the methodological assumptions of a particular type of knowledge production – known as impact evaluations – but also analyses the issue of knowledge mobilisation within the political economy of the global education policy field. Having a critical understanding of impact evaluations is crucial because they are widely regarded as the most valid informational basis from which to make policy decisions. The importance of grasping the methodological limitations and political-economic dynamics that afflict knowledge production and mobilisation is demonstrated through the case of Colombia’s well-known charter school programme. By employing a strategy that has been labelled bibliographic ethnography, this article not only takes a critical look at the knowledge base that has been produced on this programme but also maps the way that evaluations of this charter school programme, despite their limitations, have been cited and invoked in academic and organisational publications to project this programme internationally. The article concludes by offering a theoretically-informed discussion of how we should understand the trajectory of impact evaluations (and other knowledge products) as they cross multiple personal, organisational, political, and discursive contexts.

The engagement of stakeholders affects project outcome hence it is believed that when the stakeholders has a stake in the corporate social responsibility process that the project will meet its set objectives and be sustainable. The objective of the study was to establish the effect of stakeholders engagement on corporate social responsibility projects in Niger Delta. Stakeholders engagement focused on inclusion on project identification, planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluation. The guiding framework of the study was anchored on the theory of system, stakeholders theory and contingency theory. The study methodology involve literature review and multiple case study of corporate social responsibility projects carried out by oil and gas Companies in Niger Delta region. Data was collected and analyzed thematically. The finding of the study revealed that the stakeholders were involved in the determination of the project site. there was consultation in determining the the site of the Corporate social responsibility project, timelines were agreed upon by the stakeholders, funds were released based on progress made and there were regular site visit. Also, it was revealed that stakeholders engagement in project identification, project planning, project implementation, project monitoring and evaluation contributes to sustainability of corporate social responsibility projects in Niger Delta. From the findings it was concluded that increased engagement of stakeholder in every aspect of corporate social responsibility project process enhanced the project sustainability. Based on the finding it is recommended that the stakeholders particularly the beneficiary should be included in all aspect of the project.

This study investigates the relationship between knowledge leadership and innovation from the perspective of employees, with knowledge sharing serving as a mediating factor. A total of 160 randomly selected employees completed the questionnaire. After validating the measures, the data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results indicate that the components of knowledge leadership —namely leadership skills, participation and trust, and knowledge integration and innovation—have a significant positive effect on the speed of innovation and knowledge sharing. Additionally, knowledge sharing plays a significant mediating role in the relationship between knowledge leadership and innovation speed. These findings suggest that managers and organizational leaders can accelerate innovation by fostering knowledge sharing through the development of leadership skills and targeted leadership training.