Stakeholder engagement in social learning to resolve controversies over land-use change to plantation forestry

Rapid land-use change arising from incentives for afforestation has created tensions in rural communities previously dominated by agricultural enterprises. This paper reports on an innovative experiment with social learning that incorporated participatory modelling to resolve community concerns in a case study of plantation forestry in the Upper Clarence catchment of north-eastern NSW Australia. The development of a diagnostic framework helped identify socioeconomic and environmental issues within the community for investigation by a self-selected participatory advisory committee (PAC) representing a diversity of views. Implementation of a social learning exercise offered empathetic and intellectual engagement among PAC members that maintained interest, built confidence, and improved problem-solving capacity while fostering group ownership over decision making. A shared understanding of dynamic landscape problems helped empower participants to collaboratively develop solutions for improved management and operational practices, and cooperate to explore further options for plantation industry development under existing policy guidelines which are presented in this paper. As a result of frank discussions between diverse stakeholders in a mutually respectful learning environment that combined local, scientific and expert knowledge, concerns dissipated and participants developed a more favourable view of plantation forestry activity.

[1]  R. Lawrence,et al.  How sustainable agriculture can address the environmental and human health harms of industrial agriculture. , 2002, Environmental health perspectives.

[2]  Stewart Lockie,et al.  Conditions for building social capital and community well-being through plantation forestry , 2003 .

[3]  J. Vanclay,et al.  Participatory modelling to enhance social learning, collective action and mobilization among users of the mafungautsi forest, Zimbabwe , 2003, Small-scale Forest Economics, Management and Policy.

[4]  Josette Garnier,et al.  The food-print of Paris: long-term reconstruction of the nitrogen flows imported into the city from its rural hinterland , 2009 .

[5]  R. J. Petheram,et al.  Public response to plantation forestry on farms in south-western Victoria , 2003 .

[6]  Robert Muetzelfeldt,et al.  ZimFlores: A model to advise co-management of the mafungautsi forest in Zimbabwe , 2003, Small-scale Forest Economics, Management and Policy.

[7]  Alexander Conley,et al.  Evaluating Collaborative Natural ResourceManagement , 2003 .

[8]  E. Gaddis,et al.  Lessons for successful participatory watershed modeling: A perspective from modeling practitioners , 2008 .

[9]  Glenda Verrinder,et al.  Review of: Keen, M., Brown, VA, and Dyball, B. (Eds.), (2005), Social learning in environmental management: Towards a sustainable future. London, UK: Earthscan , 2006 .

[10]  C. Pahl-Wostl,et al.  Research, part of a Special Feature on Social Learning in Water Resources Management Social Learning in European River-Basin Management: Barriers and Fostering Mechanisms from 10 River Basins , 2007 .

[11]  Gabriel Medina,et al.  Landscape-scale approaches for integrated natural resource management in tropical forest landscapes , 2006 .

[12]  Kristen Purcell,et al.  Public Participation and the Environment: Do We Know What Works? , 1999 .

[13]  F. Berkes,et al.  Adaptive co-management for social–ecological complexity , 2009 .

[14]  O. Jolliet,et al.  Life cycle impact assessment of pesticides on human health and ecosystems , 2002 .

[15]  K. Schreckenberg,et al.  Equity in Community Forestry: Insights from North and South , 2009 .

[16]  R. Hobbs,et al.  Fauna conservation in Australian plantation forests-a review , 2004 .

[17]  D. Zimprich,et al.  Typical Intellectual Engagement and Cognition in Old Age , 2008, Neuropsychology, development, and cognition. Section B, Aging, neuropsychology and cognition.

[18]  Colin D. Brown,et al.  LogD: lipophilicity for ionisable compounds. , 2008, Chemosphere.

[19]  D. Lindenmayera,et al.  General management principles and a checklist of strategies to guide forest biodiversity conservation , 2006 .

[20]  Lori Gruen.  Attending to Nature: Empathetic Engagement with the More than Human World , 2009 .

[21]  Richard K. Johnson,et al.  Identifying, managing and monitoring conflicts between forest biodiversity conservation and other human interests in Europe , 2005 .

[22]  L. Copolovici,et al.  Temperature dependencies of Henry's law constants and octanol/water partition coefficients for key plant volatile monoterpenoids. , 2005, Chemosphere.

[23]  Carlo Giupponi,et al.  Network Analysis, Creative System Modelling and Decision Support: The Netsymod Approach , 2006 .

[24]  K. Ludlow,et al.  Australian pesticides and veterinary medicines authority , 2010 .

[25]  Poshendra Satyal.  Realizing Community Futures: A Practical Guide to Harnessing Natural Resources, Vanclay, Prabhu and Sinclair (2006), Earthscan, London , 2008 .

[26]  H. Lebaron.  Chapter 1 – The Triazine Herbicides: A Milestone in the Development of Weed Control Technology , 2008 .

[27]  V. Yordanova,et al.  Toxicological Effects of Fastac Insecticide (Alpha—Cypermethrin) to Daphnia Magna and Gammarus Pulex , 2009 .

[28]  A. Diduck,et al.  An Assessment of Stakeholder Advisory Committees in Forest Management: Case Studies from Manitoba, Canada , 2006 .

[29]  Yoh Iwasa,et al.  Synchronized deforestation induced by social learning under uncertainty of forest-use value , 2007 .

[30]  François Bousquet,et al.  A novel mediating participatory modelling: the self-design process to accompany collective decision making , 2002 .

[31]  T. Lynam,et al.  A review of tools for incorporating community knowledge, preferences, and values into decision making in natural resources management , 2007 .

[32]  Robert Dyball,et al.  Social Learning in Environmental Management: Towards a Sustainable Future , 2005 .

[33]  L. Santoso,et al.  Mutually Beneficial Company-Community Partnerships in Plantation Development: Emerging Lessons from Indonesia , 2005 .

[34]  Fergus L. Sinclair,et al.  Realizing community futures: a practical guide to harnessing natural resources , 2006 .

[35]  John D. Sterman,et al.  System Dynamics: Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World , 2002 .

[36]  J. Sterman.  Business Dynamics , 2000 .

[37]  M. Sánchez-Martín,et al.  Comparison of Pesticide Sorption by Physicochemically Modified Soils with Natural Soils as a Function of Soil Properties and Pesticide Hydrophobicity , 2006 .

[38]  P. Jeffrey,et al.  A critical review of the theory and application of social learning in participatory natural resource management processes , 2008 .

[39]  J. Jiggins,et al.  Governance of complex environmental situations through social learning: a synthesis of SLIM's lessons for research, policy and practice , 2007 .

[40]  Judith E. Innes,et al.  Outcomes of Collaborative Water Policy Making: Applying Complexity Thinking to Evaluation , 2001 .

[41]  K. Prager,et al.  Stakeholder involvement in agri-environmental policy making--learning from a local- and a state-level approach in Germany. , 2009, Journal of environmental management.

[42]  O. Masera,et al.  Evaluating the sustainability of complex socio-environmental systems. the MESMIS framework , 2002 .

[43]  J. Norberg,et al.  ADAPTIVE GOVERNANCE OF SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS , 2005 .

[44]  J. Schirmer,et al.  Socio-economic impacts of plantation forestry in the Great Southern region , 2005 .

[45]  R. Kookana,et al.  Pesticide Impact Rating Index – A Pesticide Risk Indicator for Water Quality , 2005 .

[46]  James O. J. Davies,et al.  Hypotension in Severe Dimethoate Self-Poisoning , 2008, Clinical toxicology.

[47]  N. Buckley,et al.  Differences between organophosphorus insecticides in human self-poisoning: a prospective cohort study , 2005, The Lancet.

[48]  D. Decker,et al.  Social Learning for Collaborative Natural Resource Management , 2003 .

[49]  J. Stenersen.  Chemical Pesticides: Mode of Action and Toxicology , 2004 .

[50]  Carlo Giupponi,et al.  Participatory Modelling and Decision Support for Natural Resources Management in Climate Change Research , 2008 .

[51]  Jac A. M. Vennix,et al.  Group model-building: tackling messy problems , 1999 .

[52]  M. Nendza,et al.  Literature Study: Effects of Molecular Size and Lipid Solubility on Bioaccumulation Potential , 2007 .

[53]  W. Blacklow,et al.  Adsorption and degradation of triazine herbicides in soils used for lupin production in Western Australia: Laboratory studies and a simulation model , 1994 .

[54]  C. Folke,et al.  Trust-building, Knowledge Generation and Organizational Innovations: The Role of a Bridging Organization for Adaptive Comanagement of a Wetland Landscape around Kristianstad, Sweden , 2006 .

[55]  M. Lockwood.  Good governance for terrestrial protected areas: A framework, principles and performance outcomes. , 2010, Journal of environmental management.

[56]  Masatoshi Nomura,et al.  Atrazine-Induced Aromatase Expression Is SF-1 Dependent: Implications for Endocrine Disruption in Wildlife and Reproductive Cancers in Humans , 2007, Environmental health perspectives.

[57]  Alexander Jonathan Brown,et al.  Collaborative governance versus constitutional politics: decision rules for sustainability from Australia’s South East Queensland forest agreement , 2002 .

[58]  P. Dargusch.  Understandings of Sustainable Corporate Governance by Australian Managed Investment Schemes and Some Implications for Small-scale Forestry in Australia , 2008, Small-scale Forestry.

[59]  Alexey A. Voinov,et al.  Effectiveness of a participatory modeling effort to identify and advance community water resource goals in St. Albans, Vermont , 2010, Environ. Model. Softw..

[60]  E. Stanley,et al.  Process-Based Ecological River Restoration: Visualizing Three-Dimensional Connectivity and Dynamic Vectors to Recover Lost Linkages , 2006 .

[61]  S. Carpenter,et al.  Insight, part of a Special Feature on Exploring Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems A Handful of Heuristics and Some Propositions for Understanding Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems , 2006 .

[62]  J. Schirmer,et al.  Socio-economic impacts of plantation forestry in the Great Southern Region of WA, 1991 to 2004 , 2005 .

[63]  Jac A. M. Vennix,et al.  Group model building effectiveness: a review of assessment studies † , 2002 .

[64]  C. Pahl-Wostl,et al.  Social Learning and Water Resources Management , 2007 .

[65]  E. Hodgson,et al.  Pesticides: an important but underused model for the environmental health sciences. , 1996, Environmental health perspectives.

[66]  E. Ostrom,et al.  Connectivity and the Governance of Multilevel Social-Ecological Systems: The Role of Social Capital , 2009 .