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Issue 13.1 Abstracts

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Common Property Resource System in a Fishery of the Sao Francisco River, Minas Gerias, Brazil

By Ana Paula Glinfskoi The and Nivaldo Nordi

Studies of local natural resource management institutions have contributed to many co-management agreements around the world and also have demonstrated how communities interact with their environment through their culture and social organization. C ommon P roperty S ystems ( CPS ) which define duties and rights in the use of natural resources are examples of these interactions. But a s Ostrom (1990: 14) notes: “getting institutions right . . . is a process that requires reliable information about time and place variables, as well as a broad repertoire of culturally acceptable rules”. One of the potential benefits of co-management institutions is the inclusion of a variety of information systems and knowledge bases. For example, local users have intensive knowledge and understanding about day to day local uses and conditions, whereas national governments and international NGOs have more global knowledge and financial and administrative resources to tackle large-scale scientific research.

In this paper, we examine the role of local ecological knowledge in the management of a common pool resource, the artisanal fishery at Buritizeiro, Minas Gerais state, Brazil . The research was carried out between 1999 and 2001 with 7 field trips of 15 days each. Open and structured interviews were conducted, complemented by direct observation of the fishing activity. During three field trips, the fishery yield was recorded for 175 fishery shifts.

Approximately 30 fishermen share the rights to access and use of four principal fishing spots in the rapids. In addition to operational rules, decision-making rules related to management, and exclusion and alienation rights have been developed. Local ecological knowledge helps the fishermen identify most productive fishing spots, has been instrumental in determining the limits of the CPS area, maintains fishery yield (average: 7.29kg/fisherman/day), and has provided the basis for institutional rules regulating the spatial and temporal limitations for each user. As the number of resource users has increased over the years due to the lack of other job opportunities in the region, this CPS has demonstrated flexibility in the rights to access and use, avoiding conflicts among the users and ensuring its longevity. The success of this CPS can help in the development of appropriate policy for fishery co-management plans in this area.

Keywords : commercial fishery, artisanal fishery, common property systems, local regulations, fishery production, management of fisheries resources

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Attitudes of the Food Industry towards Safety Regulations: Descriptive Statistics and Some Major Predictors

By Stan A. Kaplowitz and Toby A. Ten Eyck

A mail survey of managers of businesses that produce and sell food found that most respondents think that food safety regulations are neither too lenient nor too strict. By far the largest predictor of attitude towards regulation is the respondent's own belief about the safety of food -- those who are more convinced that food is safe are more opposed to regulation. Other smaller effects are, 1) the more the firm's workers are perceived to be trained in safety; and 2) the more the respondent perceives customers to be concerned about safety, the less opposed they are to regulations. Moreover, 3) Producers and processors were more opposed to regulation than were those who sell the final product; 4) Those who responded after September 11, 2001 were less opposed to regulation than those who responded before hand.

Keywords: food regulations, food safety, food industry opinions

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A Tale of Two Towns: Black and White Municipalities Respond to Urban Growth in the South Carolina Lowcountry

By Cassandra Johnson and Myron F. Floyd

Sea Islands off the South Carolina coast have experienced rapid development rates in the past half century. This trend is now impacting the rural Lowcountry (coastal) near Charleston , SC. A better understanding of traditional rural communities' responses to expanding urbanization is critical because of the obvious threat to the natural environment in rural areas and also because of the potential threat to the culture and value systems held by long-time residents. This exploratory, qualitative study examines the response of two municipalities to growth. Majority black “Newborn” has initiated legislative actions that may encourage growth and is much more receptive to development initiatives. In contrast, mostly white “ Seaside Village” is strongly opposed to proposals that may result in development. The bifurcated town responses are theorized in terms of procedural justice and sense of place.

Keywords : urban sprawl, environmental justice, Gullah

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Animal Passion and Beastly Virtues: Cognitive Ethology as the Unifying Science for Understanding the Subjective, Emotional, Empathetic, and Moral Lives of Animals

By Marc Bekoff

My essay was written as a response to four papers that were presented at the 2004 annual meetings of the American Academy of Religion in a session that was devoted to my research on animal behavior and cognitive ethology. Here I stress the importance of interdisciplinary research and collaboration for coming to terms with various aspects of animal behavior and animal cognition, and argue that we have much to learn from other animals with regard to a set of “big” questions including: Who are we in the grand scheme of things? What is the role science (“science sense”) plays in our understanding of the world in which we live? What does it means to “know” something? What are some other ways of knowing and how do they compare to what we call “science”? What are the uses of anecdotes and anthropomorphism in informing studies of animal behavior? Are other minds really all that private and inaccessible? Can a nonhuman animal be called a person? What does the future hold in store if we continue to dismantle the only planet we live on and continue to persecute the other animal beings with whom we're supposed to coexist? I argue that cognitive ethology is the unifying science for understanding the subjective, emotional, empathic, and moral lives of animals because it is essential to know what animals do, think, and feel as they go about their daily routines in the company of their friends and when they are alone. It is also important to learn why both the similarities and differences between humans and other animals have evolved. The more we come to understand other animals the more we will appreciate them as the amazing beings they are and the more we will come to understand ourselves.

Keywords : ethology, animal behavior, cognitive ethology, animal cognition, animal emotions, animal sentience, AAR

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Conservation of Biodiversity: Opportunities and Challenges

By Bill Devall

This essay includes a review of major strategies for preservation of earth's biodiversity including the biodiversity “hotspots,” “Wildlands Project,” and the “consensus” strategy. The essay includes a review of reasons for protecting biodiversity including the deep ecology, inherent value argument, and a review of philosophies and organizations that place low value on preservation of biodiversity. Local, national and international organizations working for protection of biodiversity are discussed. The paper concludes that preservation of significant portions of the global biodiversity is cost-effective, reasonable, and prudent. The paper calls for international organizations, national governments, and regional and local communities to focus attention and resources on preservation of biodiversity as a high priority of action because to do otherwise could cause irreversible harm to the diversity of life on the planet.

Keywords: biodiversity, conservation, strategies for change

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The Aesthetics of Wind Energy

By Justin Good

This essay develops a way to think about the aesthetics of wind energy systems. The inquiry begins by considering an increasingly familiar clash between aesthetic responses to wind farms: the NIMBY appreciator of wind farms who likes their ecological rationality but not their look, and the aesthetic appreciator who sees the wind farm as beautiful, in part because of its ecological rationality. I raise the following questions: Is one of these perceptions more objective than the other? Is one of the aesthetic judgments uttered more truthful than the other? Or is this simply a question of subjective or intersubjective preferences? The essay goes on to explore dialectically the various ways we can think about the different aesthetic responses to wind farms. I lay out an argument, using a concept of beauty from complexity theory as the perception of wholeness, to argue that the aesthetic perception of wind farms as beautiful is objectively more truthful than the NIMBY response.

Keywords: wind energy, aesthetics, Modernism, wholeness, beauty

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The Sustainable Livelihoods Approach: A Framework for Knowledge Integration Assessment

By Per Knutsson

A number of recent approaches to sustainable development, such as the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach, are genuinely transdisciplinary as they are produced, disseminated and applied in the borderland between research, policy, and practice. Human Ecology has the capacity to contribute to a better understanding and a critical evaluation of such new approaches, but is currently lacking the tools for identification and formulation of standards for this purpose. This paper outlines an assessment framework of criteria for integrative approaches to sustainable development problems and is applied to the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach. The results show the benefits of formulating standards that can be applied to plan and evaluate integrative approaches. Such standards are necessary if the goals of holism and integration that are implied by approaches such as the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach are to be attained.

Keywords : human ecology, Sustainable Livelihood Approach, rural development, knowledge integration

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