College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
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Item Beyond Consultation: Rethinking the Indigenous Right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent in Costa Rica(2024) Breitfeller, Jessica Ashley; Chernela, Janet M.; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) is an international legal norm meant to ensure Indigenous Peoples’ right to be consulted about projects that affect their lands. Over the past decade, the small Central American country of Costa Rica has strived to develop and implement a series of new, ‘culturally appropriate’ consultation protocols to better uphold the right to FPIC. This dissertation investigates the concept of FPIC as it applies to the Indigenous Bribri in the context of Costa Rica's burgeoning national forestry and climate change strategy known as the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) program. Drawing on extended, multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork, including semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and document analysis, this dissertation addresses the issues of Indigenous agency and autonomy by considering the ways in which the country’s REDD+ consultations and emerging FPIC processes serve to both strengthen and weaken communities’ rights to participation and self-determination. Weaving together a conceptual framework from political ecology, critical development theory, and political and legal anthropology, this study reveals that the country’s current FPIC protocols perpetuate historical state-Indigenous relations while simultaneously creating new opportunities for negotiation, compromise, and resistance. I demonstrate that FPIC consultations are all at once sites of ontological conflict, a legal instrument for the ontological defense of territoriality, and participatory spaces of (re)negotiation and resistance wherein ontological differences are arbitrated in an effort to shape policy and transform age-old power relations. Ultimately, this research deepens our understanding of how Western mechanisms designed to protect human rights and natural resources intersect with Indigenous ways of knowing and being to inform broader debates on Indigenous self-determination and climate justice. In doing so, it asks us to consider how we—as scholars, advocates, and practitioners—may go about collaboratively reimagining and rethinking FPIC in the future.Item Effectively evaluating environmental, social, and economic outcomes in voluntary sustainability programs: Lessons from Laos(2022) Traldi, Rebecca; Silva, Julie A; Geography; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Voluntary sustainability programs (VSPs) are a subset of environmental interventions which rely on participants’ willingness to engage, rather than mandatory regulation. VSPs have been a central component of sustainable development and environmental mitigation strategies for decades, with significant investments from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), multilaterals, and the private sector. VSPs typically aim to positively influence environmental, economic, and social outcomes, although program-specific priorities often result in an uneven focus across these three domains (also known as the three pillars of sustainability). Despite their popularity, questions regarding the value of VSPs remain unanswered. Assessments of VSPs typically do not eliminate rival explanations for program outcomes when evaluating their successes and failures, thus limiting our understanding of their effectiveness.This dissertation addresses this gap by investigating socioeconomic and environmental outcomes for agriculture and forestry VSPs. Mixed methods including systematic review, inverse probability-of-treatment weighted regression (IPWR), and inequality and polarization decomposition provide insights both at a global level, and for two national case studies in Lao People’s Democratic Republic (hereafter Laos). A wide range of datasets inform the analysis, including nationally representative poverty and expenditure surveys and land-use land cover estimates derived from remotely sensed imagery. By exploring a variety of VSPs – including agricultural and forestry voluntary sustainability standards and sustainable development projects – the study acknowledges the context-specific nature of VSP impact, while also drawing generalizable insights relevant for different types of interventions. The research findings presented in this dissertation elucidate the degree to which VSPs deliver on stated goals and objectives. First, a systematic literature review reveals that the evidence base for VSP impact remains limited, with some geographies, sustainability outcomes, and project types receiving more inquiry and evaluation than others. Second, an IPWR analysis suggests that agriculture and forestry VSPs have achieved some success in generating positive outcomes – specifically, for poverty and forest cover. However, variations in project focus and design bring different results. For example, food security and livelihoods programs which prioritize local socioeconomic well-being can generate significant co-benefits for environmental outcomes, and resource management projects can positively impact forest cover. Conversely, the forest management projects considered here do not achieve significant benefits for poverty or forest cover – presumably due to challenges like land tenure insecurity, insufficient participant incentives, and persistent drivers of deforestation (illegal logging, large-scale concessions). Finally, an assessment of economic inequality and polarization associated with the Laos rubber boom demonstrates the importance of assessing how VSPs influence economic inequality. It also indicates that VSPs must address inequality’s systemic drivers – including dispossession from land and forest resources, lacking worker protections, livelihood vulnerability, and barriers for smallholders – to maximize potential benefits. Overall, this dissertation research provides an example of how evidence synthesis, quasi-experimental methods, and consideration of economic, social, and environmental sustainability can deepen our understanding of VSPs.Item Understanding Values in Organizational Contexts: The Case of Species Conservation(2021) Dewey, Amanda Michelle Milster; Ray, Rashawn; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Biodiversity loss poses an existential threat to human life, and human activities both intentionally and unintentionally affect other species. Values provide an important tool for explaining such human behavior. While we have evidence of the causes and consequences of wildlife values at the individual level, much human activity that influences wildlife occurs in organizational settings. This project seeks to uncover the roles and negotiation of values in conservation organizations, filling an important research gap. The project uses a case study approach to illuminate the role and negotiation of values in case studies of three wildlife conservation contexts: national wildlife conservation, red wolf conservation, and horseshoe crab conservation in the mid-Atlantic. Through strategic selection of two organizations in each case, I explore how values function in these varied conservation contexts using interviews with staff and volunteers and content analysis of websites and social media. I argue that a broader typology of value frames exists within wildlife conservation organizations than is traditionally discussed in wildlife value literature. I find that frames include moral conservationist, community-steward, and complex utilitarian values, adding nuance to the previously understood value spectrum of humans versus nature. While findings indicated that values were behavior motivators for volunteers, volunteers were more likely to perceive and attempt to construct value alignment than to actively seeking organizations that were compatible with their values. While organizations proclaimed their values and described using values in determining tactics and approaches, they also did not report consciously attempting to align values in processes of volunteer recruitment. Findings indicated differences in value processes in local versus national organizations, and a complex value framing in organizational settings. Despite the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic is an extremely disruptive social event that was directly tied to wildlife and biodiversity issues, this connection was not highlighted equally by volunteers or organizations, nor did organizations equally or significantly respond to a nationwide call to reckon with racial injustice. I argue that the organizations and volunteers who framed their values and approaches more broadly and included moral value of the wellbeing of both humans and other species were more responsive to changing social contexts.Item Context and future potential for strategic afforestation and reforestation to meet state climate mitigation goals(2021) Lamb, Rachel Loraine; Hurtt, George C; Geography; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The development of greenhouse gas reduction plans, climate initiatives, and other international efforts, such as the Bonn Challenge, has driven demand for improved carbon accounting practices in the land-use sector. Recent projects advanced by the NASA Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) and the NASA Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) Mission provide critical information on present and future forest carbon stocks through high-resolution remote sensing and ecosystem modeling technologies. A key remaining geospatial and computational challenge is to identify and map strategic land areas for reforestation, which move decision-makers from considering wall-to-wall carbon sequestration potentials to priority implementation. This research seeks to address this challenge at the U.S. state scale by situating and demonstrating the unique capability of high-resolution NASA CMS forest carbon products to inform strategic reforestation in support of multiple policy goals. This work began with a review of the broader science and policy context for integrating forest carbon estimates into state climate mitigation planning across eleven states in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) domain (USA). Next, two specific and linked applications of CMS products were advanced in Maryland (USA) in support of state reforestation goals. First, a forest carbon rental model was developed and applied to determine whether and where potential revenues from reforestation would outcompete existing cropland profit at the hectare scale. Second, two reforestation scenarios that jointly maximized remaining carbon sequestration potential and unprotected biodiversity conservation areas were mapped and evaluated under several socio-economic factors. These results show that while most states in the region do not yet including forest carbon estimates within their climate mitigation planning, high-resolution CMS forest carbon products can be combined with socio-economic data to advance strategic reforestation in support of climate mitigation, as well as landowner livelihoods and expanded biodiversity protection. This research provides a framework for other states interested in strategic climate mitigation planning with high-resolution forest carbon products. Furthermore, the results directly advance carbon monitoring science applications to ecosystem management, environmental policy, and land-use planning, and address relevant issues in public and private sector decision-making, such as uncertainty, valuation, implications, costs, and benefits.Item Geodesign and the Expression of Environmental Values: A Mixed Methods Evaluation(2020) Kuniholm, Matthew Whitney; Geores, Martha; Geography; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)There is a stark contrast between professed environmental values and actual action taken to express those values. This ‘value-action gap’ limits the extent to which individuals enact both simple and collective actions to address critical and declining environmental trends ranging from global climate change to species loss and habitat degradation. While conceptual models positing individual and institutional approaches to overcome the value-action gap do exist, they minimize the complexity of socio-environmental challenges, on the one hand, or the importance of individual action, on the other. This dissertation evaluates an alternative approach to overcoming the value-action gap using a participatory form of environmental design and planning known as geodesign. Despite its apparent benefits, the geodesign approach remains under-theorized and largely unevaluated from the geographic perspective. Using a taxonomic review of geodesign practice and two case studies, this dissertation critically evaluates geodesign practice, identifies opportunities to improve its participatory characteristics, and positions the geodesign framework for use in participatory action research. The results show that the geographic concept of place and theory of place making can improve geodesign practice, account for its current limitations, and explain its hypothesized role in overcoming the value-action gap.Item An Environmental Anthropology of Modeling and Management on the Chesapeake Bay Watershed(2017) Trombley, Jeremy M.; Paolisso, Michael; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the last few decades, computational models have become an essential component of our understanding of complex environmental processes. In addition, they are increasingly used as tools for the management of large-scale environmental problems like climate change. As a result, understanding the role that these models play in the socioecological process of environmental management is an important area of inquiry for an environmental anthropology concerned with understanding human-environment interactions. In this dissertation, I examine these roles through an ethnographic study of computational environmental modeling in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The Chesapeake Bay region is an excellent place to investigate modeling and management because, for over thirty years, it has been the site of a watershed-scale effort to reduce nutrient pollution (nitrogen, phosphorous, and sediment) to the Chesapeake Bay. In order to carry out this management process, the Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) was created as a partnership between the federal government and seven watershed jurisdictions. In addition, modelers at the CBP have been developing a complex computational model of the watershed known as the Chesapeake Bay Modeling System (CBMS) in order to identify and track the sources and effects of nutrient pollution on the estuary. In this dissertation, I explore the role of the CBMS and other models in our understanding and management of nutrient pollution in the region through three articles written for publication in peer-reviewed journals, each of which addresses the question in a different way. The first discusses the ways that the process of building and implementing a computational model is affected by its inclusion in a management institution. The second describes the ways that the computational models themselves are affected by the management contexts in which they are developed and deployed. The third examines the various roles that they play in building and maintaining the relationships that underlie the management process. Together, these articles shed light on the ways that computational models mediate human-environment interactions by way of environmental management, and will help to plan more inclusive and effective modeling and management approaches in the future.Item Did I Say This Land Is Your Land? Patterns of Contention in Indonesian Environmental Disputes(2014) Innes, Tara; Haufler, Virginia; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Environmental disputes occur frequently, particularly in contexts of poor natural resource management and vague law, but while some of these disputes end quickly without fatalities, some escalate to violence or become persistent contentious juggernauts that are increasingly hard to end. What makes a sequence of contentious events more likely to escalate to violence or persistent contention? This dissertation argues that strategic interactions in the form of violence, government behavior, and scarcity type signal the likelihood that the government will support claimant demands, and thus determine whether desperate claimants must escalate to maintain access to environmental goods and services necessary for survival. I also argue that there are material constraints from current repression and violence, and that timing matters. I test these propositions in two sets of logistic regressions, using new sub-national data from Indonesia and an in-depth case study. I find empirical support for the claims that prior violence, structural scarcity, and past government repression increase the likelihood of continued contention. The same variables except for past government repression also increase the likelihood of violence. Current government repression reduced the likelihood of both violence and continued contention, but as time passed it exerted a more pernicious effect on violence and resolution. In other words, timing mattered, although dense events were surprisingly less likely to yield violence or continued contention. This project indicated that there are significant opportunities for reducing the likelihood of violence and persistent contention through policy changes, potentially reducing the suffering of individuals, the destruction of natural environments, and drains on the capability of the state.Item Sustaining Peace? Environmental and Natural Resource Governance in Liberia and Sierra Leone(2011) Beevers, Michael David; Conca, Ken; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Over the last decade environmental and natural resources governance has received a growing share of attention on the international peacebuilding agenda. Few studies have scrutinized in detail the role of international peacebuilders or whether reforms and policies help or hinder peacebuilding outcomes. This dissertation examines international efforts to shape the governance of forests in Liberia and diamonds and minerals in Sierra Leone. I find that international peacebuilding organizations frame the challenge in both cases as transforming conflict resources into peace resources for the purpose of reducing the propensity for violence. To accomplish this transformation, international peacebuilders promote and establish governance reforms and policies designed to securitize and marketize the environment and natural resources. I find that, despite producing the potential peace enhancing benefits of increased stability and revenue, rapidly pushing such a transformation strategy comes with significant linked pathologies that run the risk of recreating pre-war political arrangements, provoking societal competition, undermining environmental management and sustainable livelihoods, and creating unrealistic expectations. These effects can produce contention, foster resistance and increase the likelihood of violence in ways that undermine the conditions essential for achieving a long-term peace. An alternative approach would be to mitigate the effects of securitization and marketization by first addressing issues that have historically led to violence and contention in the environmental and natural resources sector, including land ownership and tenure issues, genuine public participation, government corruption and a lack of sustainable livelihoods.