This project is a joint effort by nineteen researchers from around the world led by Doyle McKey at the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research) in France, with the aim to study and strengthen the management of agrobiodiversity through social networks. It will devise an interdisciplinary method for analyzing how local seed systems and exchange networks impact the diversity of domesticated plants. This project is supported by CESAB, an initiative of the French Foundation for Research on Biodiversity – FRB.
In the former USSR environmental protection was understood as a set of engineering measures; interests and expertise of stakeholder groups were often ignored. As a result, even the best engineered solutions led to unexpected socio-economic problems. This attitude also drove the development of environmental sciences and professional training. Issues of environmental policy (or rather environmental governance) are still considered unimportant in many universities in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, or their presence in curricula is formal. This, and weak integration in international research communities often lead to a situation when in new curricula novel developments are limited to adjusted terminology and new approaches of engineering nature. As a result, environmental graduates with robust natural science or engineering education have difficulties with identifying environmental problems and suggesting balanced solutions / translating them into sound policies. A related problem is that environmental practitioners and educators do not cooperate; this affects the quality of training and employability of graduates. Evaluation and self-evaluation tools are also far from operational.
To address this, we propose (1) to revise BSc courses in environmental sciences in partner universities, upgrading them in general and introducing environmental governance context; (2) to set up at partner universities joint MSc and PhD programs in Environmental Governance, (3) to create a set of textbooks covering multidisciplinary issues of environmental studies, especially emerging and rapidly developing fields, (4) to set-up national permanent seminars of environmental educators and employers and a web-portal, (5) to introduce new mechanisms of evaluation and self-evaluation. Points (2) and (3) include development of curricula and syllabuses, re/training of teachers and short mobility periods for faculty and students, especially in support to international network-building.
Latvia’s Eco-health farm network is a group of certified organic farmers that has been working since 2000 to integrate human health issues with agro-ecosystems, rural tourism, and community environmental education. This is a collaborative project exploring how farmers embrace new practices and knowledge systems, and involves a series of seminars on permaculture and agrobiodiversity through the food chain.
This research aims to show new light on the issue of human and carnivore conflict and coexistence in the Romanian Carpathians by studying spatial and temporal patterns of conflict, by investigating attitudes of various interest groups towards carnivores and their management and by researching what role do protected areas and private lands play in carnivore conservation and in promoting the coexistence of people and carnivores. The carnivore species targeted by this research are: the Brown bear (Ursus arctos), the Wolf (Canis lupus) and the Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx).
The EC TEMPUS Joint Project "Improvement of education on environmental management" aims at the development of teaching expertise in environmental management, security and policy in Belarus, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine.
The Global Energy Assessment (GEA) is a major initiative established by IIASA in late 2005 to help decision makers address the challenges of providing energy services for sustainable development, whilst ameliorating existing and emerging threats associated with: security of supply; access to modern forms of energy for development and poverty alleviation; local, regional and global environmental impacts; and securing sufficient investment.
Events since 1991 have led to social dislocation with decidedly negative consequences for the region's children in social, economic and educational terms. As a result of instability across the region, children often have serious gaps in their learning and skills that follow them into adulthood. Such children often have difficulty integrating, leading to further exclusion both in the classroom and in wider society.
Civil society organizations in the region warn that the growing numbers of under- or uneducated and vulnerable children contributes in turn to increasing levels of poverty, decreasing social cohesion and further declines in socio-economic development. Such a situation clearly poses a threat to the immediate and long-term prospects of building free, open societies in the region.
The Open Society Institute's Education Support Program and the Interkulturelles Zentrum Austria, in partnership with the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Culture and the Arts, and Soros foundations in the South Caucasus, are jointly carrying out the Education Cooperation across the Caucasus initiative, which will fund local and cross-regional projects in the North and South Caucasus.
The purpose of the initiative is twofold: to promote identified national priorities for education change, and to explore the potential for cooperation and mutual learning between countries and communities in the Caucasus. In line with ESP mission, the initiative aims to serve education justice, which places priority on access to quality education for excluded and vulnerable children, making this the key indicator for effectiveness and success within the education system. Education Cooperation across the Caucasus will accomplish these goals by creating opportunities for education professionals to better address their common challenges. In 2008-09 ESP has funded 12 projects that focus on the specific priorities identified by governments in each country and which, with support from the international community, could be replicated or scaled up by local and national governments.
The AMICALL project
Attitudes to Migrants, Communication and Local Leadership (AMICALL) is an eighteen-month transnational project. It is funded by the European Union’s Fund for the Integration of Third Country Nationals (European Integration Fund – EIF) under its Community Actions 2009 programme. It specifically responds to Priority 3 of the 2009 programme: “Promote the role of civil society organisations and the local authorities in shaping integration strategies.” Led by a partnership of six European research institutions, with the Council of Europe as an associate partner, the project seeks to provide a platform for the sharing of good practice and the development of new strategies for the promotion of positive attitudes towards migrants and towards migrant integration at the local and regional level. Thus it addresses two core areas of integration policy and debate: the role of local and regional authorities (LRAs) in integration, and the importance of communication and public attitudes.
Researcher: Lenore Ethington
Agroenvironmental policies in new member states in CEE have been developed to align with the EU acquis. As a result, despite the lack of a negotiating role in the development of these policies, different states have interpreted EU Directives differently as a result of national histories and preferences. This study examines anti-GMO and conservation of agrobiodiversity campaigns and their interaction with public perceptions and legislation in Poland. I argue that anti-GMO legislation has been developed from the bottom-up in response to public opposition while agrobiodiversity legislation origniates from top-down international and EU law. Although the legislation regarding the two issues has been developed in a contrasting manner, both the actual implementation of laws and values of the public reflect a resistance to change both policies and practices.
Events since 1991 have led to social dislocation with decidedly negative consequences for the region's children in social, economic and educational terms. As a result of instability across the region, children often have serious gaps in their learning and skills that follow them into adulthood. Such children often have difficulty integrating, leading to further exclusion both in the classroom and in wider society.
Civil society organizations in the region warn that the growing numbers of under- or uneducated and vulnerable children contributes in turn to increasing levels of poverty, decreasing social cohesion and further declines in socio-economic development. Such a situation clearly poses a threat to the immediate and long-term prospects of building free, open societies in the region.
The Open Society Institute's Education Support Program and the Interkulturelles Zentrum Austria, in partnership with the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Culture and the Arts, and Soros foundations in the South Caucasus, are jointly carrying out the Education Cooperation across the Caucasus initiative, which will fund local and cross-regional projects in the North and South Caucasus.
The purpose of the initiative is twofold: to promote identified national priorities for education change, and to explore the potential for cooperation and mutual learning between countries and communities in the Caucasus. In line with ESP mission, the initiative aims to serve education justice, which places priority on access to quality education for excluded and vulnerable children, making this the key indicator for effectiveness and success within the education system. Education Cooperation across the Caucasus will accomplish these goals by creating opportunities for education professionals to better address their common challenges. In 2008-09 ESP has funded 12 projects that focus on the specific priorities identified by governments in each country and which, with support from the international community, could be replicated or scaled up by local and national governments.
Researcher: Emily Dowding-Smith
There is a global decline in biological diversity; specifically, genetic erosion of our plant genetic resources (“PGR”) of agricultural crop plants (cereals, fruits, nuts, and food legumes). The twin impact of this genetic erosion is a cultural erosion which occurs when the PGR such as farmers varieties’ are lost. Impacts of this on seed systems tend to be studied in rural agriculture settings with few studies addressing the impact of a decline in PGR on seed sectors in urban settings. There is vast literature on urban agriculture, but not seed. Cuba is a country with a well established urban agriculture system and the presence of both informal and formal seed sectors. The current study explored the seed practices in city gardens of Havana City, Cuba to highlight the importance of seed practices as a factor to be taken into account in resilience studies. Specifically, the knowledge and memories of city gardeners in relation to seed were addressed against the theoretical frames of resilience studies and margins. It was found that permaculture communities in Havana City provide a useful connection between these two frameworks and that in general, city gardeners have knowledge and memories of seed practices. This suggests the potential to study seed systems within the urban setting and also the importance of both marginal spaces and marginal communities when assessing resilience, in particular the importance of seed practices as a factor to take into account.
Although there have been extensive studies on damage-causing animals (DCAs) and local communities elsewhere, little is known about the factors influencing the interactions of DCAs between the Vwaza Marsh Wildlife Reserve (VMWR) and neighbouring communities, nor about the effectiveness of DCA mitigation. Furthermore, although the contentious issue of DCAs has been recognized in the area, there has been no systematic evaluation to date of the extent of this damage and how it is affecting attitudes towards the VMWR.
In this project we are building on SPHERU’s (University of Saskatchewan, University of Regina) previous work which created a conceptual framework that reflected northern Saskatchewan Aboriginal views of a healthy community. SPHERU produced a tool kit comprised of 165 potential indicators appropriate to the healthy community framework.
<p>With the advent of climate change, it is clear that developing countries, particularly those in the sub-Saharan Africa region, will be the worst hit as their economies are weak, technological development and adoption very low. Malawi, like other countries in the region, faces similar challenges.</p>
This project consists of a series of cases studies of the implementation of the Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Access to Participation, and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters in the post-socialist region.
The appropriate management of South Africa's elephant populations is the focus of a national debate. In terms of the Biodiversity Act of 2005 and the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, the ultimate responsibility for establishing national policy in this regard is the Minister of Environment Affairs and Tourism. The Minister convened a Scientific Roundtable (SRT) in January 2006 to advise him on policies regarding elephant management. The SRT concluded that in key aspects, the available scientific information was insufficient for a fully-informed decision (Statements from SRT 1 and 2, summarised in Owen-Smith et al. 2006).
The objective of this report is to assess perceptions and conservation attitudes of the people living in the area adjacent to the MMNP and identify the factors underlying them. This report serves as a baseline study that can be utilized to track the relationship of MMNP with its neighbouring communities. Another area assessed, in which this research represents a pioneering attempt, is the perception of the Consultative Committee by the inhabitants of the MMNP’s peripheral area.
Included in the IUCN Red List is the comprehensive assessment of the conservation status of the world's 6,000+ known species of frogs, toads, salamanders, and caecilians. Here you will find key findings of the assessment, as well as individual species accounts including IUCN Red List threat category, range map, ecology information, and other data for every amphibian species.
In Hungary, amphibian conservation is a relatively new focus but has been recognized as an area of need. To address this problem, survey methods (road call count) were tested in Hungary during 1998. MONITOR 2000 is a follow-up initiative designed to introduce this time and cost-effective amphibian monitoring method to volunteers in Hungary, and other representatives of Central & Eastern European (CEE) countries.
<p>The biodiversity of Papua New Guinea’s tropical rainforests is utilized by local communities in diverse and often unrecognised ways. Aside from the high commercial value of some rainforest trees, forests provide a number of other goods and services to communities that are more difficult to quantify such as construction, food, medicinal, spiritual, ornamental and recreational values.</p>
New Zealand’s Motueka River catchment is home to a renowned brown trout fishery. Trout numbers in parts of the river declined in the mid-1990, and have only slowly recovered; the precise reasons for this decline are unknown. Sedimentation has been identified as a potential cause, but scientific research is hampered by the lack of historical records of sediment events.
This project seeks to expand uranium mining and milling in the world famous Athabasca Basin in northern Saskatchewan, which is the source of 1/3 of the world's uranium. Recently, the cost of fossil fuels and the increased demand for uranium has reignited exploration in the region, promising employment and development opportunities, but historically has left in its wake a legacy of abandoned mines and concerned citizens. As stakeholders, the remote communities in the region (many of which are First Nation) are increasingly burdened with the environmental costs of such exploration and have requested assistance in interpreting the multitude of EISs which will have dramatic effects on their traditional ways of life
In the midst of escalating development in the area, Athabascan communities are also developing a Land Use Plan which they hope will streamline activities in the area, and ensure sustainable livelihoods well into the future. We have been asked to comment on the draft of this document, which will be developed further in 2009.
As part of SPHERU's First Nation’s Health Development: Tools for Assessment of Health and Social Service Program Impacts on Community Wellness and Capacity, this project developed indicators and a framework for use by First Nations and northern health organizations to track the effects of health and human service programs under their jurisdiction on indicators of community health. The first phase can be accessed at ttp://www.uregina.ca/fnh/. Revisions and future directions concerning the Environment domain will now be taken back to the project team and communities for discussion.
In recognition of the increasingly apparent failures of narrowly-targeted traditional management regimes to create sustainable fisheries, the last decade has seen a growing paradigm shift towards a more holistic ecosystem approach to fisheries (EAF). Despite South Africa’s commitment to the EAF and the implementation of a new management policy in 2005, the traditional linefishery in South Africa still exhibits many of the problems associated with traditional management regimes.
This thesis looks at the relationship between protected areas and their adjacent local communities by administering a questionnaire survey to local people living within and in the vicinity of Vanatori Neamt Natural Park, Romania.
Greenway developments are a global phenomenon and, apart from a number of common underlying principles such as the support of non-motorised transportation, they can take on numerous forms and have various multipurpose objectives depending on the local context. In Central and Eastern Europe, greenway programs aim to link local community initiatives through a shared vision that encourages people to find local solutions to problems.
Beliefs and attitudes of local people toward protected areas are increasingly being considered in conservation planning. Although park-people studies abound, relatively little is known about these relationships in Central and Eastern Europe. Romania’s protected area management system currently involves considering aspirations of local communities.
People whose livelihoods chiefly involve the direct exploitation of local natural resources often come into conflict with the institutions of protected areas, which are dedicated to natural resource conservation or preservation. Many scholars and managers now question the traditional top-down approach of excluding local participation and ignoring local interests in protected areas establishment and management.
