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Naidoo works for WWF-US, not WWF-Namibia; the former does not play a role in implementing CBNRM in Namibia. Koot et al. claim we "ignore discordant results", however we cite works by Sullivan in this set of papers 5 times, and those of other authors critical of current community-based and/or "neo-liberal" conservation approaches an additional 10 times. Koot has published highly critical papers on CBNRM in Namibia and elsewhere, and appears to have significant involvement in a community-run lodge in Namibia situated outside of a communal conservancy (Koot [8]). The premise of Koot, Hebinck, and Sullivan ([9]) is that as "professionals working for organizations that have collaboratively instigated and supported CBNRM initiatives" we may be biased toward finding positive outcomes for Namibia's CBNRM program. [Extracted from the article]

While many studies have explored the value of water, little is known concerning the meaning of water for Australian river communities. This rapid literature review provides an overview of the recreational, cultural, and environmental meaning of water for Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian river communities and notes important connections between these relationships. Consequently, this review adds a critical dimension to water management debates by privileging community voices. Most papers explored cultural and environmental aspects rather than recreational relationships with water, with the majority of papers exploring Indigenous cultural and environmental meanings of water and fewer papers focusing on these meanings of water for non-Indigenous people. Our review shows that the meanings of water are understood very differently in cultures, with Indigenous water relationships marginalized by a dominant culture. Understanding the multiple dimensions of hydro-social relationships is critical to socially and environmentally just water management and to people's health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Complex environmental problems span multiple disciplines and scales of inquiry. Discovering solutions requires inclusive problem-solving spaces. Participatory modeling represents a collaborative research approach that engages stakeholders to co-produce knowledge and problem responses. Scholarship largely features the results of scientific modeling. Lacking are assessments of the nature of participant engagement and collaboration. Our paper offers insights on how to structure, support, and evaluate interactive spaces for participatory modeling, especially during the initial (community building) phase of projects when collaborative culture is established. The Floridan Aquifer Collaborative Engagement for Sustainability (FACETS) convenes stakeholders in the Southeast US from farming, forestry, government, conservation, and academia. We explore network assembly, trust diversity, and iterative process design in FACETS. Through longitudinal reflexive monitoring facilitators appreciate the range of participant needs, integrate feedback into agenda design, and catalyze group reflection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surrounded by four of the five Great Lakes, Michigan is characterized by water. Historically, much of the state's industry was situated along the water, often preventing public access to waterfronts and negatively impacting the quality of water resources. Economic shifts, paired with a growing interest in revitalizing waterfronts, have led many Michigan communities to invest in water-based restoration projects. This paper investigates the experiences and perceptions of key stakeholders in four waterfront towns where water restoration projects have been implemented as communities shift toward recreation and tourism-based economies. Twenty interviews were conducted with key stakeholders to explore the factors that lead to successful implementation of water restoration and in turn, how these projects impact community vibrancy. Results suggest that community vibrancy related to water restoration can be characterized by a series of reinforcing feedback loops between local leadership, access to water resources, socio-economic and environmental opportunities, and relationships with water. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sense of place provides a strategy to identify qualities of landscape change in rural areas undergoing urban development, yet a scale to assess such qualities has not been developed. Research on place meanings tends to draw from either an interpretivist or positivist approach but does not integrate them. This research integrates the two approaches with a mixed-methods design that resulted in the first scale of regional place meanings for two counties undergoing landscape change on the urban-rural fringe. We conducted interviews and focus groups with stakeholders in Jasper County, IA and Will County, IL, followed by a household survey to assess the psychometric properties of our scale. Eight regional place meanings were identified to characterize the reasons why residents developed connections with places. This paper responds to previous calls for research to merge different philosophical paradigms and it directs attention within the place scholarship to the study of rural communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This descriptive study explored organic farmers' perceived contribution to community resilience. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and examined for predetermined and emerging categories and themes. Ten producers and 20 workers described direct contributions to community resilience constructs, particularly increased political, economic, and natural capital; a sense of community pride and belonging; and historical responsibility. Participants described creating new spaces and opportunities for social interactions such as volunteer engagement and closer relationships with customers, farmers and social organizations. They also referred to three different types of social networks: (1) farmer-to-farmer networks (bonding); (2) farmer-to-community networks (bridging); and (3) organization-to-organization networks (linking). Findings also suggest a perceived bidirectional relationship between local food systems and strong social networks. This paper discusses existing literature; proposes a theoretical framework that supports the research approach taken by the study; and identifies specific constructs connecting local food systems to community resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper unpacks the environmental justice concerns of rural migrants in relation to land tenure and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) processes. We explore the "geography of recognition", whereby sense of community, identity and place interact to produce unequal experiences of recognitional justice in relation to the EIA process. We develop our argument by using qualitative research and a village case study in East Kalimantan, Indonesia, involving transmigrant communities and indigenous Kutai people. This study highlights how a failure to recognize transmigrants' identity creates barriers to their meaningful participation in the EIA. Structural flaws in the decentralized land-use system mean a failure to address the contested claims for recognition and land rights between transmigrant and indigenous communities, which in turn fuels social and environmental conflict. Resolving land tenure conflicts requires the empowerment of socially marginalized groups in the decision-making over land-use projects affecting them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maine faces a period of socio-economic transition as it contends with a shift in natural resource utilization. From the declining contribution of natural resource industries to the rise of conservation lands, the state's relationship with its natural capital is increasingly influenced by a multitude of factors. Meanwhile, Maine's rural communities may struggle to adapt. In order to gain better insight, a statewide web-based survey was used to collect data on perceptions of community resilience, natural resource industries, and conservation. Analysis revealed divergences largely based on demographic characteristics. Politically conservative respondents expressed a belief that their communities are resilient but are concerned that conservation lands reduce economic productivity. Rural residents tend to believe natural resource industries remain important but do not perceive their communities to be economically diverse. Respondents in urban areas instead perceive a lack of social cohesion and trustworthiness of local elected leadership. Communities across the state contend with a diverse array of vulnerabilities for which no single resilience building solution will suffice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contamination intrusion into the municipal water distribution network (WDN) without appropriate action may lead to disaster. This study examined community resilience (CR) and its effects on optimal consequence management (CM) plans. CR was measured by five dimensions: governance, preparedness, social learning, social trust, and collective efficacy. The above dimensions were measured by conducting a structured questionnaire survey, and CR was then defined using structural equation modeling. Furthermore, water usage changes of consumers in response to contamination intrusion were investigated through questionnaires. NSGA-II algorithm was used for CM optimization with the objectives of minimum contaminated water ingestion and operational interventions, and the results were presented in three scenarios. The proposed method was evaluated in a WDN in the southeastern part of Tehran. The CR was quantified as 2.58 out of 5 using a one-sample t-test which shows that the studied community is not resilient. Without considering the demand changes during WDN contamination, the maximum total ingested polluted water is 184 Kg. Considering demand reduction (scenario 2), it diminishes to 154 Kg. As CR was identified as one of the significant factors for water demand variations via linear regression analysis, by empowering CR by one point (scenario 3), contaminated water ingestion decreases to 151 Kg. The immense difference between the base scenario and the two others (16% and 18% reduction in total ingestion) indicates that it is vital to consider people's reactions in CM plans and enhance CR to preserve public health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Freshwater resources (FWRs) are under enormous stress due to human activities and climate change. Given the centrality of local communities in managing natural resources, community-based conservation (CBC) for FWRs (fCBC) offers a mechanism for addressing these challenges. A framework informing fCBC that incorporates unique features of FWRs (such as being fugitive resources, having increased risk of negative externalities, and sheer spatial coverage) is needed to unlock CBC's potential in achieving environmental and developmental impacts in freshwater contexts. We critically review and synthesize existing research adapting The Nature Conservancy's Voice, Choice and Action framework, organized around four pillars (Secure rights and fair externality consideration; Strong community capacity; Effective multi-stakeholder platforms; Sustainable livelihood and development opportunities) and two cross-cutting elements (Cultural connections; Equity and power balancing), and provide recommendations on ways to strengthen facilitation and support community empowerment in fCBC. We report on how applying the framework during a conservation planning process for fCBC projects in four geographies provides important insights for developing robust CBC programs. The unique features of freshwater resources require additional considerations as compared to terrestrial resources. Elevating thinking about how these unique features can exacerbate threats helps motivate more diverse ideas on holistic strategies for community-based conservation. The Voice, Choice and Action framework has been adapted to the freshwater resource context in this study, drawing on a critical literature review. The adapted framework provides a useful framework for conducing strategy selection processes and situation and stakeholder analyses to ensure that projects pay attention to creating critical enabling conditions for robust community-based conservation for freshwater resources capable of preserving cultural connections, achieving equity and water justice, and resolving power imbalance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communities can play an important role in the transition toward sustainable living; however, a meso perspective bridging individual behavior and social context has rarely been applied. To address this issue, our study introduces the broad landscape of nonprofit community-based organizations as meso-level entities whose activities relate in one way or another to sustainability. Through an exploratory study relying on in-depth interviews, we examine the meaning of community and the role of sustainability in the operation of these communities. The emergence of a new authoritarianism in Hungary gives a special context for the study and enables identification of the characteristics of urban communities from "illiberal democracy." The findings indicate the presence of five different types of community-based organizations with sustainability-related activities. We argue for the analytical usefulness of a meso-level perspective and for the importance of researching how community-based organizations help individuals in transition to a more sustainable lifestyle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to identify trends in social capital-focused studies on community-based forest management and collective actions related to forests (collectively CBFM) and how social capital affects forest management by reviewing studies on this topic in Asian developing countries. We found an increased number of studies over the last decade using various approaches in terms of social capital positioning, types of structural social capital, and analysis methods. Four main social capital positionings were identified in their research designs: (a) as features found in communities; (b) as a factor influencing CBFM; (c) as an effect of CBFM; and (d) as an agent in a dynamic process involving CBFM. The studies we reviewed did not extend to assessing forest conditions. Given the contextual nature of social capital, integrative approaches combining qualitative and quantitative techniques with assessment of forest conditions present challenges in relation to social capital studies on CBFM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2021, Ghana was Africa's largest gold producer and sixth largest producer worldwide. However, mining wrecks tremendous environmental havoc and poses significant human health risks. Efforts to mitigate these impacts have focused exclusively on regularizing mining, with little recognition of the crucial role farmers play in mining, particularly as agents that lease their land for the same. Ghana's new tree tenure policy allows cocoa farmers to acquire individualized, allodial rights to commercial timber species on their farms, which permits famers to capture forestry sector payments. We examine farmers' impressions of tree tenure reform as a potential counter to mining in eleven communities in Western and Western North regions, using focus group and individual interviews. While the concept of tree tenure is enthusiastically embraced, practical difficulties encountered by smallholders attempting to navigate the bureaucratic registration system limit the sway of tree registration and ownership as a means of limiting mining proliferation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mail and telephone surveys are becoming increasingly expensive and unreliable, while internet-based surveys raise issues of geographic representation and other matters of authenticity. The Drop-Off/Pick-Up (DOPU) method is an alternative which can elicit higher response rates and reduce non-response bias issues. DOPU involves dropping off and picking up surveys in person and can yield high participation because personal interactions have been shown to stimulate norms of reciprocity. We share insights from our 2019 DOPU study of hydrocarbon energy export impacts in four communities that have experienced oil-by-rail transportation and related disasters, with surveys collected in two metropolitan and two rural communities in the U.S. Midwest and Pacific Northwest. We organize and present a suite of novel and established recommendations suitable for both scholarly and community-based researchers and practitioners to strengthen community support, improve fieldwork efficiency, increase response rates, and reduce costs in future DOPU studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Ngao River basin of Northern Thailand, over 50 ethnic Karen communities practice successful riverine community-based conservation (CBC) programs. While institutional approaches provide insights for conservation successes, critical approaches are needed to understand the context that partially determines communities' actions. Thus, drawing on political ecology and using a rooted networks framework to investigate the introduction and management of these programs, the first author, a North America-based researcher, remotely collaborated with the second, a local community researcher, to conduct qualitative fieldwork to understand the conditions and connections that shape and constrain communities. We found that networked relations with outsiders threatened food security and self-determination, and enabled opportunities to respond to these threats through river conservation. "Rooted" relations with the environment allowed communities to recognize the positive impacts of conservation. Understanding situated and entangled relationships within complex networks enables opportunities to support CBC programs that meet conservation and development goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conservation for and with local communities and stakeholders is essential. Despite the importance of community-oriented approaches and calls for capacity building in conservation, the impacts and inputs of training in relational fields like collaborative conservation remain unclear. We used mixed methods to conduct one of the first evaluations of a collaborative conservation capacity building program, and present an empirically-based causal model of the programmatic inputs supporting long-term changes. We found moderate to transformational impacts on participants' practice and professional trajectories, and on multiple dimensions of capacity, including comfort, conviction, and identity. Flexible funding, immersion into a safe community of practice, and the obligation and opportunity to experiment with collaborative approaches fostered these changes. We also found evidence of a developing landscape of practice, and perceived benefits to communities where fellows worked. We suggest programs incorporate intentional design, including networked communities of practice and heuristics, to enhance individual and systems impact. Building collaborative conservation capacity involves more than training: applied experiences, immersion into communities of practice, and flexible funding can support long-term adoption of new approaches. Fostering a sense of conviction for collaboration early may incite participants to engage with (sometimes uncomfortable) new experiences and groups. Adopting "networked" communities of practice may allow collaborative conservation fellowships to reduce potential tradeoffs between individual and social systems level goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oil and gas-producing communities are threatened by a precarious oil market and global commitments to transition to a greener economy. Economic diversification has been proposed as a potential strategy for supporting the resilience of these communities amidst such challenges. We sought to explore community members' attitudes toward the future of their small oil and gas-producing Canadian community to understand the socio-psychological factors and processes that influence their support for economic diversification and those which reinforce path dependency. This qualitative study involved interviews with 37 adults in the community, and a subset of 16 of those participants engaged in transect walks to further explore emerging themes. While the recent prolonged economic downturn prompted some participants' willingness to diversify, the deeply ingrained culture and identity as an oil and gas town, the 'golden handcuffs' of the industry, and optimism for another boom, acted to reinforce path dependency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecological restoration is the process of repairing ecosystems that have been degraded by human activity. Because success depends upon the support of communities, engaging with the cultural values held by local people is critical to the restoration process. Cultural values are closely held beliefs about what is important to local communities, grounded in historical and contemporary cultural relationships with ecosystems. To address to what extent restoration projects in the peer-reviewed literature consider cultural values, we conducted a systematic review covering 1994–2021, resulting in a sample of 56 articles. From our review, we found that restoration projects include data on cultural values collected mostly through qualitative approaches. Concepts from cultural analysis, ecosystem services, and traditional ecological knowledge are commonly used to frame cultural values in restoration. Drawing on our results, we suggest a standardized process and set of best practices for practitioners and researchers incorporating cultural values into their restoration projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering the growing need to protect nature and acknowledging that not everyone has intrinsic desires to do so, what happens when social, community-based motives are seen to align with pro-environmental behavior? Specifically, the hypothesis addressed in this study is that individuals engage in actions to protect the natural environment at least partly to improve their sense of belonging to their community. To test this hypothesis, we distributed an online survey in rural regions of the UK. We found that particularly people who are concerned about their reputation and have a strong desire to belong engage in conservation actions. Our findings support the hypothesis that people conserve the environment to enhance their sense of belonging and illustrate that there are different additional processes at work that affect the relationship between desire to belong and engagement in conservation actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1980s, many rural forest-based communities in the United States Pacific Northwest have experienced negative shifts in their socioeconomic well-being. Following a preceding assessment conducted in the early 2000s, we analyzed the socioeconomic status and local perspectives of change in 10 rural federal forest-based communities after 25 years of ecosystem management under the Northwest Forest Plan. We used a community classification approach to understand the variability in socioeconomic trajectories and illustrate how trajectories shape the different ways that communities define themselves as forest-based. The classification groups communities according to distinct trends in the shifting relationships between forests, community identity, and socioeconomic characteristics. We found that community well-being did not improve with trajectories retaining significant timber-based production. We discuss our results within the context of previous findings and suggest some hypotheses for deepening understanding of the relationships between the developmental pathways of rural forest-based communities and federal forest management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trust is critical to collaborative governance, including of natural resources. Existing frameworks variously emphasize the impact of individual propensity, interpersonal dynamics, and institutional characteristics on trust. However, few frameworks consider the impacts of these influences on trust simultaneously. This study uses a survey of 51 representatives of Indigenous and non-Indigenous governments from across Canada with experience in natural resource collaborations to test a multidimensional framework for trust. Results show that interpersonal influences may have a bidirectional relationship with trusting behaviors, in which constraints imposed by governments on the actions of collaborators have a mediating effect. However, only institutional influences and experiences of discrimination were observed to predict trust behaviors between collaborators. Discrimination perpetrated against Indigenous Peoples in Canada has a pervasive effect on trust in collaborative natural resource governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]