Developing resource management and conservation.

Turner, Nancy J. ; Berkes, Fikret

Published online: 17 August 2006

[c] Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2006

How can we humans learn to conserve and maintain our resources and live sustainably on our planet? This is perhaps the biggest question we face as we move into the new millennium with our burgeoning population and our ever-increasing impacts on the other lifeforms with whom we share this Earth. One way we can address this critical question is to look for examples across the rich diversity and experiences of human knowledge, thought, and practice around the world. A complementary approach would be to look back through history to search for models of humans successfully conserving their resources and managing them in ways that did not deplete them.

We know from the archaeological record, as well as from recent history and our own contemporary experiences, that there are plenty of examples of our failure to conserve. Some of them, such as the collapse of Atlantic cod stocks off the east coast of North America (see Murray et al., this issue), and the dramatic loss of wetlands that contributed to the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana in the summer of 2005, occurred despite the availability of a plethora of sophisticated scientific knowledge and strong government regulatory powers. Many of the other examples of failure to conserve occurred long ago, some of them serious enough to result in the demise of entire ecosystems, or linked social-ecological systems. Examples include the Mesopotamian and the Mayan civilizations (Tainter, 1988; Redman, 1999). Diamond's (2005) recent book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, deliberates on the causes of the collapse of some of the world's great civilizations of the past and how contemporary humans can learn from their downfall; in many cases, failure to live within the constraints of available resources has been the underlying explanation for a society's demise.

Yet, there are also many instances where humans have been able to reside in particular environments, relying on their local resources, for many hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of years. One prevailing idea is that humans can only learn to conserve if they have experienced some type of catastrophic resource depletion. Only then can they recognize that resources are vulnerable to human impacts. This is certainly a reasonable assumption and one not without many compelling examples. However, we felt that the whole question needed more exploration. From our own work with indigenous groups and other local resource-dependent societies in Canada and elsewhere (Berkes and Folke, 1998; Berkes, 1999; Berkes et al., 2000, 2003; Deur and Turner, 2005; Turner et al., 2000, 2003; Turner, 2005), we saw evidence of conservation concepts and practices embedded in rich and complex knowledge systems that obviously had deep roots extending far back in time. How did these peoples and others around the world develop a capacity to conserve and an ethic of maintaining and caring for their resources?

Considerations of history and geography seem to be important. A group that may have conservation practices for a particular area or resource may not have these for another resource or area. A society that conserved resources at one stage in their history may not have done so at another. As Diamond points out, there are almost always additional variables such as climate change, hostile neighbors, or loss of trading opportunities that compound the problem of environmental mismanagement and ultimately precipitate a society's downfall. It is significant that much of the evidence cited by the critics of indigenous conservation and management is archaeological or ethnohistorical in nature. This suggested to us that the evolutionary or developmental aspects of management knowledge and practice needed more attention.

In an effort to better understand this question, we organized a three-panel session at the annual conference of the International Association for the Study of Common Property (IASCP), held in Oaxaca, Mexico, August 2004. Our objectives were to investigate first, how conservation and management practices evolve, and second, how such knowledge is created, modified and used. The first two panels addressed the question, "How Does Resource Management Knowledge Develop?" Five of the papers presented in the two panels are included in this special Human Ecology issue (Turner and Berkes, Grant et al., Ballard and Huntsinger, Parlee and Berkes, and Davidson-Hunt). The third panel was called Knowledge for the Development of Adaptive Comanagement. Two of the papers from this session are included here (Berkes and Turner, Hahn et al.).

Together, the presenters in the symposium covered a range of topics relating to the question of how conservation practices can be learned, adapted and applied. Cases were presented on how new knowledge is created and acquired, both from learning from changes in environment and through the movement of people to new areas; how institutions and local governance can affect resource management and conservation; and some difference in approach between indigenous peoples (dwelling in one place for a long time) versus relative newcomers and new users of a resource. We also examined the role of leaders and community organizations in learning, and how horizontal and vertical linkages (cross-scale linkages) contributed to the development of conservation practices.

In keeping with the IASCP theme and the host Association's interests, we connected these examples and ideas with commons management, with special attention to the developmental aspects of commons institutions that make conservation possible. The panel participants and discussants represented a broad international spectrum, providing examples from Sweden, Canada, the United States, the Caribbean, Brazil, India, and Cambodia, and covering a range of resource types--agriculture, forests and non-timber forest products, fisheries and aquatic resources, and wildlife.

In this volume, we have organized the papers along a spectrum of interrelated topics, beginning with our overview chapter on the conceptual background for the creation of knowledge and practice for conservation, presenting two differing approaches for learning conservation (Berkes and Turner). This is followed by a more detailed consideration of the "softer" alternative to learning from catastrophic resource depletion: coming to ecological understanding through incremental learning from careful observation, knowledge exchange and development of a conserving belief system and worldview that guides peoples' collective actions towards other species (Turner and Berkes).

The third paper, by Parlee and Berkes, provides an analysis of institutional development and dynamics relating to berry patch management within a Gwich'in community of Canada's Northwest Territories, including how rules for use of the commons occur and how they are adapted and fine-tuned to fit spatial, temporal and species variability in berry production. The fourth paper (Ballard and Huntsinger) provides another case study, this time of experiential knowledge of residents versus newly acquired knowledge of immigrant harvesters on the sustainable management of salal (Gaultheria shallon) as a floral green. This paper focuses on individuals, and on a single, relatively recently identified type of resource and therefore represents at the basic level the type of new learning that can be enfolded into a longer held complex of knowledge about salal and other plants of the region from a traditional use perspective.

The fifth paper (Murray et al.) also deals with the evolution of new knowledge, this time focusing on the marine environment through the perspectives of anthropology and sociology. The authors track the various sources of environmental and conservation knowledge as embedded in the practices and perspectives of fishers, fish buyers, fish processors, and community members. They document how this knowledge has coevolved, diffused and become engrained across community networks.

Hahn et al., in the sixth paper, present an analysis of an even more recently developed management system in Sweden, with a time frame of only a decade or so. This paper examines the role of key individuals and institutions, and the development of networks for collective action in ecosystem comanagement. In particular, it identifies the importance of bridging organizations that can facilitate cross-scale linkages among locals, farmers, environmental groups, and government bodies, helping to build trust, providing educational opportunities, and generally serving as a creative interface between potentially conflicting participants in resource management. This situation indeed reflects adaptive comanagement in action. In the final paper, Davidson-Hunt details how new observations and knowledge relating to the environment are incorporated into the communally-held knowledge system of Anishinaabe peoples of northwestern Ontario, and concludes with a model of adaptive learning. It reflects theory grounded in a particular time, place and experience, embodying the author's own knowledge and experience, about how learning networks and knowledge institutions develop.

Our collective inquiry has focused on ways of learning about conservation in the context of complex adaptive systems. We have linked conservation practices with the dynamics of common property management institutions and have sought case examples and integrative models from a range of environments and cultural modes. We have paid special attention to the role of learning and self-organization. While recognizing that learning from catastrophic resource depletion has played a definite role in some cases, we maintain that the process of learning conservation and development of sustainable resource management is much more complicated and context dependent. We have recognized that the way such learning develops may require the experience of many hundreds of years, with knowledge embedded in enduring and flexible institutions, as in the Gwich' in case study (Parlee and Berkes). However, we have also seen, for example in the work of Ballard and Huntsinger and Hahn et al., that developing conservation practices and approaches can begin within a scale of less than a decade. Certainly, the process of learning to learn can be fostered and assisted at any time, with the right combination of legacy of knowledge and practice, opportunities for learning, and support of relevant and interacting institutions.

Our examples illustrate how internally developed community institutions and processes, in some cases combined with key involvement of external organizations, can facilitate the application of knowledge in conserving and even enhancing resources, and towards various types of adaptive comanagement. The papers all point towards diverse, flexible, multilevel, interlinked, participatory, and collaborative management systems, embodying opportunities for incorporating new knowledge and sharing information and ideas, as having the greatest potential for creating effective systems for long-term resource management and conservation. We hope that this special issue of Human Ecology will serve as a beginning for further research and discussion on this critically important topic.

We are grateful to the IASCP conference organizers; the discussants of our panels, Elinor Ostrom and Tony Charles; and other panel participants and contributors to the development of the ideas presented here: Prateep Nayak, Melissa Marschke, Sergio Rosendo, Richard Stoffle, Brent Stoffle, Chantelle Marlor and Katrina Brown. We would also like to thank Arun Agrawal, Associate Editor, and Ludomir Lozny, Managing Editor, Human Ecology, for their encouragement and assistance in producing this issue.

References

Berkes, F. (1999). Sacred Ecology. Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Resource Management, Taylor & Francis, Philadelphia.

Berkes, F., and Folke, C. (eds.) (1998). Linking Social and Ecological Systems. Management Practices and Social Mechanisms for Building Resilience, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Berkes, F., Colding, J., and Folke, C. (2000). Rediscovery of Traditional Ecological Knowledge as Adaptive Management. Ecological Applications 10: 1251-1262.

Berkes, F., Colding, J., and Folke, C. (eds.) (2003). Navigating Social-Ecological Systems: Building Resilience for Complexity and Change, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Deur, D., and Turner, N.J. (eds.) (2005). "Keeping it Living": Traditions of Plant Use and Cultivation on the Northwest Coast of North America. University of Washington Press, Seattle, Washington.

Diamond, J. (2005). Collapse. How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. Penguin, New York.

Redman, C. (1999). Human Impact on Ancient Environments, University of Arizona Press, Tucson.

Tainter, J. A. (1998). The Collapse of Complex Societies, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Turner, N. J. (2005). The Earth's Blanket. Traditional Teachings for Sustainable Living, Douglas & McIntyre, Vancouver, BC and University of Washington Press, Seattle (Cultures and Landscapes series).

Turner, N. J., Ignace, M. B., and Ignace, R. (2000). Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Wisdom of Aboriginal Peoples in British Columbia. Ecological Applications 10: 1275-1287.

Turner, N. J., Davidson-Hunt, I. J., and O'Flaherty, M. (2003). Living on the Edge: Ecological and Cultural Edges as Sources of Diversity for Social-Ecological Resilience. Human Ecology 31: 439-463.

N. J. Turner

School of Environmental Studies, University of Victoria, P.O. Box 1700, Victoria BC V8W 2Y2, Canada

e-mail: nturner@uvic.ca

F. Berkes

Natural Resources Institute, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada