Natural resource management

Natural Resources Management


Natural resource management issues have attracted increasing attention in recent decades, particularly in Asia, partly in response to a sequence of crises in energy, food, water, and other resources. Effective governance and management of resources have always been important, but have become increasingly challenging in the face of changing climate, livelihoods, and market pressures. Many Asian countries have compromised their natural resource base for the sake of development, and are consequently facing various environmental challenges. The pressure on natural resources has potentially been aggravated by the development of infrastructure, advancement in extraction techniques, and expanding product markets that enlarge extraction opportunities for concession holders as well as local populations. Under such circumstances, the quality of land, water, and forest is threatened, and the regenerating capacity of resources is hardly guaranteed. The haphazard use, and the conflicts over use, of natural resources pose serious threats to the viability and sustainability of the natural resources in Asia. These conflicts over natural resources are largely fueled by the dual goals of the government and the community for both the preservation of and utilization of protected zones, and the political and economic value of natural resources that has also increased inter-ethnic tensions and struggles.

3.1 Introduction

Natural Resource Management (NRM) refers to the sustainable utilization of major natural resources, such as land, water, air, minerals, forests, fisheries, and wild flora and fauna. Together, these resources provide the ecosystem services that provide better quality to human life. Natural resources provide fundamental life support, in the form of both consumptive and public-good  services. Ecological processes maintain soil productivity, nutrient recycling, the cleansing of air and water, and climatic cycles.

Biological diversity (biodiversity) is the occurrence of different types of ecosystems, different species of organisms with the whole range of their variants and genes adapted to different climates, and environments along with their interactions and processes. Biodiversity encompasses the variety of all life on earth. India is one of the 17 mega-biodiversity countries of the world. Although India has only 2.5% of land area, it has a large pool and diverse pool of plants and microbes  which accounts for 7.8% of recorded species in the world. Genetic diversity describes the variation in the number and type of genes as well as chromosomes present in different species. The magnitude of variation in genes of a species increases with increase in size and environmental parameters of the habitat. Species diversity describes the variety in the number and richness of the spices with in a region. Ecosystem diversity describes the assemblage and interaction of species living together and the physical environment in a given area. It is referred to as landscape diversity because it includes placement and size of various ecosystems.

Countries identified to have mega-biodiversity include Australia, the Congo, Madagascar, South Africa , China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, United States, and Venezuela. 

16.8 Polycentric Approach to Climate Change and Emission Reduction

Natural resources management in Vietnam is built on the foundation of sustainable development and environmental protection. Nonetheless, Vietnam lost around half of its forest from 1943 to 1990 (Nguyen, 2013), which meant that Vietnam had the second highest deforestation rate in the world; further aggravated by climate change. The 13th Conference of the Parties (COP 13) identified Vietnam as one of the five countries to be affected by climate change. The consequences of climate change have been prominent through reduced forest and agriculture productivity and a decline in the quantity and quality of water resources; simultaneously intimidating economic gains mostly gained through the doi moi policy. The country has developed strategies to address multifaceted issues in climate change but these strategies often are not deliberated as demands of local communities. Vietnam is 1 of the 13 countries selected for future emission reduction programs. In the process, Vietnam is preparing itself through devising institutional arrangements and organizational reforms. But as Ostrom (2009) argues, singularities of legal provisions are not sufficient to render trust among local stakeholders and confirm collective action in a transparent and comprehensive manner to address climate change and global warming issues. In this section, we try to summarize multifaceted attributes likely to affect future emission reduction programs.

16.8.1 Informed Decision Making

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD +) calls for the effective participation of diverse stakeholders for transparent resource governance information on ways to mitigate climate change and adaptation interventions, and economic and social safeguards are being incorporated in the policy. A number of policies strengthen participation and an informed decision-making process. The Constitution of Vietnam, Vietnam’s Law on Environmental Protection, Law on Land, Vietnam’s Agenda 21, the Forest Protection and Development Law, and others specify organizations and individuals to be involved in environmental protection management through the right to information. As indigenous communes reside adjacent to natural resources, their existence and rights have been recognized legally. However, there are overlaps among polices that often create confusion through inconsistent definitions and interpretations.

16.8.2 Planning Process

Vietnam’s climate change strategies are focused on retrieving impacts of climate change and then developing plans for obtaining a low carbon economic trajectory. The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE) is responsible for overall climate change planning while the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) simultaneously develops action plans for adaptations in agriculture while other sectorial departments make plans accordingly. Locally, committees at each level commence land management in their dominions, prepare effective plans, and submit it to an upper hierarchy level for approval. These are then combined to develop a national plan. In a way, Vietnam’s governance system determines foundational mandates of actors from the local to the national level. However, there exists turf between departments and diverse authorities creating confusion and rules overlaying are often considered difficult to understand and implement.

16.8.3 Property Rights and Benefit-Sharing Mechanisms

“The state owns all forests in Vietnam, which are then allocated to households and organizations for short term or long term benefits.” In the context of selling and transferring greenhouse gases, it is considered as one of the forest products that could be marketed as any form of forest by-product; but carbon marketing exclusively requires prime ministerial approval and this may defy the REDD + scheme. The fact that current rights include carbon rights or not may pose an additional challenge to REDD +; according to Covington et al., “uncertainty surrounding land title is significant preconditions for REDD + scheme.” To address this situation, legal certainty on land titles is essential. This may have consequences to ethnic minorities where no legal title is given and a huge gap is seen between de jure and de facto rights. Particularly, legal and institutional challenges will only be ensured if the rights are managed equitably; otherwise, competing claims from the ethnic minorities are likely to arise and many communities may lose access to forest resources.

Equitable benefit distribution systems may be understood to initiate from the Cancun Agreements as a precursor to guidance and several safeguards. Particularly, equitable benefit distribution aggravates benefits to directly involved communities from REDD +, contributing to overall forest management, poverty eradication, and sustainable development. It also delivers effective interventions and permanence by creating incentives for carbon sequestration through results-based payment. Vietnam does have experience in such results-based equitable benefit distribution systems through Payment for Environmental Services (PES) programs. Lessons from PES can aid in research and identifying issues on REDD + implementation that significantly includes degrees of compensation required to fully engage community into PES schemes along with the management and timely disbursement of funds; as such it may serve for a future REDD + sharing mechanism.

8.7 Laser and LiDAR Technology

In natural resource management, laser technology can be used to measure ground slope, vertical and horizontal distances, and, if compasses are incorporated into their design, direction. Lasers use emitted and reflected light energy to determine distances and angles. Their value in measuring the diameters and heights of trees for forestry and natural resource management purposes is increasing (Wing et al. 2004), and they can be employed to effectively map the spatial location of trees within sample plots. Unfortunately, as the density of vegetation increases, the efficiency and suitability of using laser technology in forested conditions may be affected (Kalliovirta et al. 2005). Some typical types of lasers are called rangefinders or laser dendrometers. Calipers have also been developed to allow the diameter of trees to be measured without having to physically touch each tree; one simply aims the calipers at a tree of interest and adjusts the caliper tongs so that the laser beams  barely touch each side of the tree. The resulting diameter of the tree can then be read from the caliper scale, as one would normally do using a nonlaser caliper. Remotely measuring tree diameters with a technique such as this is beneficial for purposes that require measurements at tree bole heights well above DBH (1.37 m or 4.5 ft).

LiDAR is a remots sensing technique similar to radar, which uses laser pulses to determine characteristics of landscape or vegetative features. The development of a LiDAR image is based on the time required for pulses to return to the system that emitted them. With LiDAR technology, a device is needed to emit wavelengths of electromagnetic energy in the ultraviolet to near Infrared range of energy (0.25–10 μm), and a photodetector is needed to collect the reflected energy. LiDAR devices can be mounted in airplanes or positioned on the ground. Some common applications of LiDAR in natural resource management include the development of ground surface contours or canopy surfaces, the description of tree structure within a forest (Zimble et al. 2003), and the estimation of biomass (Nelson et al. 2007). Subcanopy vegetation height can also be estimated using this technology (Dubayah and Drake 2000). A number of archeological applications are also facilitated using LiDAR technology, since LiDAR data can be used to locate subtle changes in ground surface conditions. Thus, LiDAR data have been used to locate cultural features that are obscured by dense vegetation (Gallagher and Josephs 2008). LiDAR has also been used to detect the smoke plumes of forest fires (Fernandes et al. 2006) and to help describe wildlife habitat characteristics (Graf et al. 2009). However, there are challenges associated with using this technology; for example, LiDAR data are relatively expensive to capture and to use, and the accuracy of some LiDAR data (e.g., tree heights) may vary with forest conditions (Gatziolis et al. 2010). However, laser and LiDAR technology, in conjunction with GIS and satellite-based positioning systems, may provide opportunities for precise and efficient forest and natural resource data collection efforts.

Evidence-based decision-making

Contemporary natural resource management and policy development requires evidence-based decision making (Conroy & Peterson, 2013). This was made clear in the Water Act, which required the MDBA “to act on the basis of the best available scientific knowledge and socio-economic analysis” in developing the Basin Plan.8 This is one of the few pieces of legislation that specifically requires this approach.

The process used by the MDBA to decide on the optimum SDL (via the establishment of the ESLT) was evidence-based, and is discussed in detail in the next section. This required the development of an iterative method to determine, at both a local catchment scale and at the Basin scale, the volume of environmental water that would result in improved environmental outcomes with minimal social and economic impacts on Basin communities. To achieve this balance required use of both the best available scientific knowledge and robust social and economic analysis.

However, as is discussed in the next section, even with a concerted effort to assemble the best available science and social and economic information, and to make it publicly available on the MDBA website, it was still necessary for the MDBA to make a number of judgments. The important point here is not that judgments were made, but that the options considered, the evidence supporting each option, and the reasons for selecting the final option were documented and made widely available.

An important consideration regarding evidence-based decision making is the question of the relevance, robustness and quality of the evidence. The MDBA adopted a general principle that all reports and research should, as far as possible, be peer reviewed, and this has been done. One important example was the peer review of the ESLT methodology done by a CSIRO-lead team (Young et al., 2011). Additionally, the MDBA has since established a high-profile Advisory Committee on Social, Economics and Environmental Sciences (ACSEES)9 to provide advice on the relevance and quality of the environmental, social and economic evidence it seeks to use.

2.2 Multimethods in Natural Resources Management (NRM)

Community-based natural resources management (CBNRM) involves both physical and socioeconomic systems. Interaction of these two systems influences both the viability of the natural resource and livelihood levels of the resource users. Conceptualization of the research approaches, methods, tools, and techniques for studying social processes and livelihoods outcomes need further research work and intellectual debate. In recent years, livelihoods for example, are increasingly conceptualized as partly the outcome of negotiations and bargaining between individuals with unequal power, even within households. Measuring the social capital, an interhousehold network of relationships for livelihoods has therefore become increasingly important in studying collective action in the NRM sector (Pokharel et al., 2002).

Government policy, regulations, officials’ preconceptions, and attitude together with the relationships that the community has with them and vertical and horizontal linkages and relationships with other organizations affect how community forestry functions and collective action is promoted. The concept and methods of analyzing community structure, social and physical processes, methods of analyzing institutional linkages, and development interventions all take an important place in the methodology of studying collective action. The formal as well as informal relationships that community members have among themselves, with outsiders, and with the broader economic as well as the political process and the methods to study their relationships rather than study of organizations only pose a new conceptual challenge in the field of CBNRM.

The study of collective action to understand the relationships between people and natural resources without considering the outside organizations, economic, and sociopolitical forces that influence the collective action will therefore be incomplete and there is essentially a need for a combination of approaches, methods, and techniques. The structure and dynamics of community and natural resources, use of quantitative and qualitative information, assessment of the conditions of natural resources and the livelihoods outcomes, all these aspects have to be understood and captured in the study of collective action in CBNRM. Hence the application of research methods derived from both the natural and social sciences is necessary. In addition, the institutional research approaches and perspectives which are derived from common property literature, also need to be adapted in measuring collective action.

However, due to some conceptual problems in both natural and social science research approaches, there is a stronger need of a combination of various approaches to be applied in studying collective action for NRM. Collective action should not be seen in terms of community-resource relations only. Instead, CBNRM involves a number of various stakeholders at various levels, and the collective action among them also has to be recognized. The element of governance at all levels should be the focus of the study because many of the institutional conditions are derived from governance, which does affect the processes and outcomes of the collective action (Pokharel et al., 2002). Both qualitative and quantitative methods are entirely compatible and provide useful methodological complements. This provides the opportunity for a multidisciplinary team to work together.

Measuring collective action requires the study at macro, meso, and micro levels and their linkages. The linkage method has become useful to explain the influence of external factors on the ecological and social processes at the local level. As linkage research combines multilevel (international, national, regional, local) analysis and systematic comparison and longitudinal study (Kottak, 1999), this method enabled us to understand the link between the policies and practices at the micro level especially related to the process of inclusion and exclusion within resource users groups created under government and donor-funded programs. Uphoff (1998) identified actors and stakeholders at 10 different levels ranging from international, national, regional, district, subdistrict, locality, community/village, groups, to households and individuals. He argues that decision making and action can take place at any or all of these different levels that can influence the collective action and its outcomes.

Natural Resource Management and Conservation

Incorporating climate adaptation into natural resource management and conservation is key to decrease vulnerability and increase resilience in ecosystems. Strategies include incorporating climate change into restoration, enhancing connectivity to facilitate species movement between key habitats, and reducing nonclimate stressors.

Incorporate climate change into restoration

Climate-informed restoration projects aim to enhance the resilience of degraded, damaged, or destroyed habitats to a range of potential climate futures. Critical coastal habitats that provide nursery and breeding habitat for fish have been degraded over time by human activities, invastive species establishment, and coastal erosion. Climate change impacts, especially increasing storms and sea level rise, will cause even more damage to these ecosystems. The Nisqually Delta Restoration Project in Puget Sound was initiated to return tidal flow to the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge by removing four miles of dikes in order to restore habitats capable of buffering the effects of sea level rise and other climate-related changes.

Enhance connectivity and areas under protection

This strategy includes identifying and protecting migration corridors to accommodate climate-driven species range shifts. Examples include:

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Removing barriers to connectivity such as dams and other passage barriers in order to facilitate fish passage. For example, California's Estero de Limantour watershed (Point Reyes, California) was dammed in the 1950s, which severely altered freshwater flows and restricted connections between freshwater and saline habitats in the area. By removing these dams, the National Park Service has restored natural transition zones and connectivity to support anadromous fish passage.

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Creating a system of ecologically connected networks through marine protected area networks. The National Marine Protected Areas Center is prioritizing the establishment of a national system of protected areas to protect marine species, habitats, and migration corridors.

Reduce nonclimate stressors

It is critical to reduce nonclimate stressors that may interact with and exacerbate the effects of climate change, such as pollution, destructive fishing practices, and nonnative and invasive species establishment. Examples include:

Commission's projects to limit polluted stormwater runoff  that amplifies decreases in pH and dissolved oxygen and increases in nitrogen. For example, in Ebey's Prairie, Washington, the community installed a bioswale to filter polluted stormwater before it reaches Puget Sound and improve overall marine water quality in the area.

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Reducing destructive fishing practices that can harm fish populations and critical fish habitats. For example, the Jefferson County Marine Resources Committee created voluntary no-anchor zones to protect eelgrass habitats and shellfish harvest areas in Puget Sound. This project included extensive engagement with recreational boaters and commercial operators and has achieved a 99% compliance rate overall.

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Invasive and nonnative species: The Waihe‘e Coastal Dunes and Wetlands Refuge on Maui is highly vulnerable to sea level rise and was once comprised of almost 95% invasive plants. The Hawaiian Islands Land Trust acquired the refuge in 2004 and since then, managers and volunteers have worked together to remove invasive species and plant native species to create a more resilient shoreline

Uses of Models

Modeling has become widespread in natural resources management because models can be incredibly useful and practical tools. Johnson (2001) defined three categories of purposes for models: explanation, prediction, and decision making.

1

Explanatory models are used to describe or decipher the workings of systems. Such models attempt to identify the mechanisms involved in the system.

2

Predictive models are used to forecast future states of systems or results of management actions. Prediction is a common use of landscape models and allows the user to determine the potential impacts of various proposed management actions (e.g., Shifley et al. 2006). The opportunity to ask “what if?” questions is especially attractive to natural resource managers.

3

Decision-support models are used to identify management strategies that will produce desired results. Optimization techniques are one useful example of decision-support models used in planning resource management (Moore et al. 2000).

A given model may be used for more than one purpose. For example, habitat suitability models may be used to investigate the relative importance of key habitat characteristics and simultaneously predict future habitat suitability. Many of the habitat suitability and population models discussed in this book and elsewhere are decision-support models that allow managers to assess the relative trade-offs of management actions.

Abstract

From a historical perspective, natural resource management and conservation have been based on quantitative and disciplinary science. This old approach often tended to ignore local communities and their traditional ways of valuing and using land. In turn, policies derived from traditional conservation approaches have often been labelled as anti-humanist. The social dimension was relegated to second place in decisions regarding the management of natural resources. The reason behind these approaches could be linked with the epistemological perspective from which a complex problem like an environmental one is tackled. Addressing a problem from a uni-disciplinary position does not allow for the understanding of a complex issue and lends to over-simplification of the environmental problems. By comparison, a holistic approach  allows for the understanding of environmental complexity and enables the use and incorporation of different perspectives, methods, formal and informal knowledge, reflections, uncertainty, cultural expressions and so on. The tendency of modern conservation is to use participatory approaches and transdisciplinary frameworks in order to integrate a diversity of knowledge to solve complex environmental problems. The transdisciplinary framework of Cybercartography allowed us to create solutions for an environmental problem affecting the Kumeyaay Peoples in Baja California, Mexico: the destruction of oak trees by woodborers and debarking beetles. Based on this framework we implemented a participatory research project in which the Kumeyaay Peoples shared their traditional knowledge with biologists and biologists shared their technical knowledge with the community. The combination of knowledge produced a cybercarographic atlas that incorporated both technical and traditional knowledge of all the species of woodborer and debarking beetles in the oak forests, and documented their impact within the Kumeyaay territory. The atlas content includes specific information on the species of insects, traditional and modern management strategies to deal with woodborers and debarking beetles and multimedia data detailing all stages of the process. This atlas enabled the Kumeyaay to make decisions regarding the management of the pests and oak woods. Moreover, the participatory method facilitated the creation of solutions and the atlas creation process itself empowered the Kumeyaay, and strengthened their identification of insects, their management of the woods and the diseases, and the general management of other natural resources. Nevertheless, we need to go further in the development of more complex atlases to enhance the management and conservation of the natural resources of the Kumeyaay Peoples, to create a strong community-based group to manage the Kumeyaay territory, and to establish a knowledge exchange process with other Yuman Peoples.