Local People, Scientific Inquiry, and the Ecology and Conservation of Place in Latin America (original) (raw)
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A participatory approach to conservation in the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, Campeche, Mexico
Landscape and Urban Planning, 2006
Since the advent of integrated conservation and development programs, participatory approaches have been used to engage local people in protected area management and conservation action. While participatory approaches provide local people a role in telling their own story and enable them to contribute to conservation and development processes, it is unclear how much consideration local people's opinions receive within the framework of a participatory process that exists to meet the specific goals and objectives of conservation programs. This paper evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of the participatory approach used in an applied research program conducted in three ejido communities in the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve on the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. The research program used community mapping, historical matrices, institutional diagramming, seasonal calendars, semi-structured interviewing and other community-level reflection techniques to assess the complex interrelationships among population growth, migration, tenure regimes, and land-use practices in rural communities bordering the reserve. The program also sought to build local capacity and support for land-use planning and conservation programs. While the paper acknowledges the critical benefits of local participation it also questions the compatibility of this approach with conservation programs administered by conservation organizations as they are currently structured.
The Use of Ecological Science by Rural Producers: A Case Study in Mexico
Ecological Applications, 2005
The role of ecological science in promoting sound environmental decisions has concerned ecologists worldwide and it has been stressed that the application of ecological knowledge requires new interactive and participatory forms of research, as well as sound partnerships between ecologists and land managers. However, concrete examples of ecological science as part of rural decision making have rarely been examined, especially in intertropical countries. We analyzed interactions between ecological scientists from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and a rural indigenous community involved in forest management in Central-Western Mexico. Using qualitative research methods (such as observing participants, conducting interviews; generally focusing on the meanings that social actors give to phenomena), we compared the perspectives of the academic and community sectors in relation to benefits, products, problems, and obstacles faced when conducting integrative forest management. The research showed the relevance of rural communities demanding scientific information for ecosystem management and of academic institutions accepting to respond to these demands. Participatory approaches and continuous communication between sectors were essential for establishing trust and commitment for everyone involved. The obstacles found were related to an academic institution's inability to support such an experience and to accept capacity building of rural managers as part of its scientific mission. We concluded that applied ecological science in developing countries, such as Mexico, should regard rural communities as key ecosystem managers and should respond to their needs and demands in order to convert pure scientific findings into wise environmental decisions.
A participatory approach to conservation in the Calakmul Biosphere Resereve, Campeche, Mexico
Since the advent of integrated conservation and development programs, participatory approaches have been used to engage local people in protected area management and conservation action. While participatory approaches provide local people a role in telling their own story and enable them to contribute to conservation and development processes, it is unclear how much consideration local people's opinions receive within the framework of a participatory process that exists to meet the specific goals and objectives of conservation programs. This paper evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of the participatory approach used in an applied research program conducted in three ejido communities in the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve on the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. The research program used community mapping, historical matrices, institutional diagramming, seasonal calendars, semi-structured interviewing and other community-level reflection techniques to assess the complex interrelationships among population growth, migration, tenure regimes, and land-use practices in rural communities bordering the reserve. The program also sought to build local capacity and support for land-use planning and conservation programs. While the paper acknowledges the critical benefits of local participation it also questions the compatibility of this approach with conservation programs administered by conservation organizations as they are currently structured.
Editors' Foreword: Contemporary Debates on Ecology, Society, and Culture in Latin America
Latin American Research Review, 2011
For the past two decades, studies on ecology, society, and culture in Latin America have multiplied rapidly, mirroring the increasing importance of ecological and environmental debates worldwide. The environment has become the object of a multidisciplinary research endeavor in which the natural sciences, policy and technical sciences, social sciences, and humanities converge. This special issue of Latin American Research Review brings together some of today's most innovative social science and humanities research on environmental issues in Latin America and aims to make it more widely known to scholars working in other elds of Latin American studies and to the public at large. Contributors come from such diverse disciplines as political science, geography, history, anthropology, and literary studies and adopt a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches. From a geographical perspective, we have tried to be as broad as possible in our selection of articles to give readers a sense of contemporary environmental discussions in different parts of Latin America. Articles in this volume deal with Chile, Peru, Mexico, Costa Rica, Argentina, and particularly Brazil, which receives special attention because of its important role in contemporary conservation and environmental debates. Cases examined range from islands and aquatic environments to rain forests, agricultural elds, and protected conservation areas, from the rural-urban interface to the arenas of international policy making. Latin America's historical dependency on natural resources, both for local livelihoods and to supply an evolving global market, has made environmental issues central in policy debates and in widespread contests over the meaning and use of natural species and habitats, carried out against the region's persistent legacy of inequality. Many scholars of Latin America have addressed these complex issues from the perspective of economic development and globalization, but perhaps less so through the lens of environmental conservation. Yet the two are intertwined. Conservation of protected areas has grown worldwide, as has the mobilization of citizens at different levels, often in unlikely alliances, to propose new, alternative models for the governance of natural resources that incorporate diverse perspectives and stakeholders in often complex transactions. As conservation has become internationalized, these debates have meshed with the development concerns long of interest to scholars of Latin American studies, through parallel streams
Modern Environmental Science and Engineering
With a population of 3.5 million on an island of 100 miles long and in severe economic crisis partners for the conservation of biodiversity is crucial for the sustainability of urban natural protected areas (NPA surrounded by large population centers, IUCN). The Conservation Trust of Puerto Rico (CTPR) is using citizen science (CS) an informal science education method to engage citizens in nature. While the conventional model for CS is a participant attending a workshop or training session, learn standard methodologies to measure and assess species, habitats and ecosystems from a scientist and then go off to collect data on their own and share data with the scientist, the CTPR propose an alternative model that includes the scientist with citizens, throughout the spatial and temporal long-term data collection. In this model, the citizens are mentored by the scientists or scientist assistant to pass through the different phase of the Informal Science Education model (contributory, collaborative, co-created). The main goal is to enable the citizens to develop the skills of scientific inquiry and to address environmental concerns within their community. Of the 1300 participants 19 have developed community based projects to better understand their environment and the impacts of urban development. The co-creator participants have used three levels of communication to disseminate findings of biodiversity in NPA along an urban gradient. The citizen science research projects conclude that urban protected areas play an important functional role in the watershed.
The Value, Limitations, and Challenges of Employing Local Experts in Conservation Research
Conservation …, 2011
Evidence suggests that the involvement of local people in conservation work increases a project's chances of success. Involving citizen scientists in research, however, raises questions about data quality. As a tool to better assess potential participants for conservation projects, we developed a knowledge gradient, K, along which community members occupy different positions on the basis of their experience with and knowledge of a research subject. This gradient can be used to refine the citizen-science concept and allow researchers to differentiate between community members with expert knowledge and those with little knowledge. We propose that work would benefit from the inclusion of select local experts because it would allow researchers to harness the benefits of local involvement while maintaining or improving data quality. We used a case study from the DeHoop Nature Preserve, South Africa, in which we conducted multiple interviews, identified and employed a local expert animal tracker, evaluated the expert's knowledge, and analyzed the data collected by the expert. The expert animal tracker J.J. created his own sampling design and gathered data on mammals. He patrolled 4653 km in 214 days and recorded 4684 mammals. He worked from a central location, and his patrols formed overlapping loops; however, his data proved neither spatially nor temporally autocorrelated. The distinctive data collected by J.J. are consistent with the notion that involving local experts can produce reliable data. We developed a conceptual model to help identify the appropriate participants for a given project on the basis of research budget, knowledge or skills needed, technical literacy requirements, and scope of the project.
Journal of Applied Ecology, 2000
1. Participatory research methodologies incorporating local knowledge are important to the success of ecological research and the sustainable management of natural systems. However, methods of this type are not commonly employed in the natural sciences. 2. We adopted a scienti®cally rigorous ethnographic research methodology to incorporate local knowledge into understanding a natural limnological phenomenon in the Brazilian Pantanal. Known locally as`dequada', it is associated with ®sh kills. 3. Using primarily open-ended questions and semi-structured interviews, 30 older head-of-household men were interviewed, by the same interviewer, in a small community representative of the few local riverside settlements. Their opinions were then contrasted with current scienti®c knowledge. 4. In concordance with the scienti®c community, the local community cited decomposition of organic material as the principal cause of ®sh mortality due to the dequada. Local people therefore can have a well-founded understanding of their environment. 5. This study demonstrates the importance of incorporating local knowledge to corroborate and, often, to guide the process of scienti®c inquiry. In this case, local knowledge added to scienti®c knowledge by providing a more complete understanding of the management and conservation of a natural system. We recommend that ecologists should be ready to acknowledge that local understanding can be greater than that of`outsiders'.