Resilience, power, culture, and climate: a case study from semi-arid Tanzania, and new research directions

Nelson, Valerie; Stathers, T.

doi:10.1080/13552070802696946

Cited by 100 publications

(74 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…The consequences of perceived physical effects of climate change were increased food shortage/hunger and body weakness due to low food intake; persistent low income; waste of resources including money, labour, time and productive land; farmers being subjected to bad food debts; increased family conflict; out-migration; decreased sanitation and hygiene; waste of productive time in less productive activities; and reduced status. Similar findings were reported by various studies including Nelson and Stathers (2009), Mengistu (2011), Jotoafrica (2011), Swai, Mbwambo and Magayane (2012.…”

Section: Perceived Effects Of Climate Change In the Study Areasupporting

confidence: 78%

Gender and Adaptation Practices to the Effects of Climate Change in Bahi and Kondoa Districts Dodoma Region, Tanzania

Swai¹,

Mbwambo²,

Magayane³

2012

JSD

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Climate change has different effects between men and women, but disaggregated data by gender to realize specific adaptation practices undertaken by men and women in Tanzania are scarce. To fill part of the information gap, this study analyzed adaptation practices to the effects of climate change by gender in Bahi and Kondoa Districts Dodoma region, Tanzania. The study also analyzed perception of climate change and identified elements influencing adaptation practices. A sample of 360 respondents, 12 focus groups of discussants and 78 key informants were consulted. Analysis involved descriptive statistics for quantitative data and content analysis for qualitative data. Results showed that women were more devoted to adaptation practices that enabled them to adapt to or reduce hunger/food, water and firewood shortages while men were more devoted to adaptation practices that enabled them to adapt to or reduce effects of climate change on crops, livestock and environment. The corrected Rao-Scott chi-square (χ c 2 ) test showed significant association between adaptation practices implemented by respondents and sex, revealing that undertaken adaptation practices varied by sex. Respondents perceived climate change and managed to identify adaptation practices undertaken to manage climate change effects. The findings can be used to improve/formulate appropriate adaptation practices to manage climate change problems in agriculture sector. The study recommends systematic collection of in-depth information of this kind at the community level in other areas of Dodoma Region, Tanzania and the LDCs in order for the policy makers to design and implement appropriate interventions to manage climate change problems.

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Section: Perceived Effects Of Climate Change In the Study Areasupporting

confidence: 78%

Gender and Adaptation Practices to the Effects of Climate Change in Bahi and Kondoa Districts Dodoma Region, Tanzania

Swai¹,

Mbwambo²,

Magayane³

2012

JSD

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“…Despite the increase in the participation of women at international climate summits, policy forums, and in forest resource negotiations, women's voices in the decision process at local and national levels remains limited (Hemmati and Röhr 2009;Peach Brown 2011;Terry 2009). As such, recent literature has advocated the need to increase the women's participation, while analyzing the power relations involved in decisionmaking processes regarding climate change and forests (Mai et al 2011;Nelson and Stathers 2009).…”

Section: Gender Land Use and Redd+mentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender influences decisions to change land use practices in the tropical forest margins of Jambi, Indonesia

Villamor

Amaruzaman

Noordwijk

2013

Mitig Adapt Strateg Glob Change

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This study explores the role of gender as a factor in decision making about alternative land use options and in responses to new investment opportunities, which has received little attention to date. An observational study to determine the different factors affecting male and female decisions to change land use at the individual level in a forest margin landscape in Jambi (Sumatra, Indonesia) was combined with a set of role playing games (RPGs) designed to assess participant responses in a simulated social setting of women-only and men-only groups. The RPG included simulated agents offering new opportunities to convert or conserve agroforest. In the study area, rubber (Hevea braziliensis) agroforests that support high biodiversity and carbon storage are giving way to monoculture rubber and oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) plantations. When women from both the upland and lowland villages played the RPGs, external investors proposing logging or oil palm conversion were approached very positively and the resulting land use change was more dynamic and extensive than in the equivalent men-only groups. Consequently, women outperformed men in achieving income targets. In lowland areas gender is strongly associated with land use change, while in the uplands the level of conservation awareness plays a more crucial role in the maintenance of rubber agroforests. Based on the data, and contrary to expectations and gender stereotypes, it is expected that the greater involvement of women in landscape level decision making will increase emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in the area, posing further challenges to efforts to reduce such emissions.

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“…Resilience thinking has been criticized for being difficult to operationalize [17], hard to measure [10], not fully integrating the social dimensions [21], not acknowledging the power relationships within a social-ecological system [35,36], being difficult to define the scales of analysis, and being challenging to put boundaries around the system [37]. To manage for resilience it is important to understand the social-ecological system with particular attention to the drivers that cause it to cross thresholds between alternative regimes, and how to enhance aspects of the system that enable it to maintain or build its resilience [14].…”

Section: The Debatesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Measuring resilience is also a difficult task, although several authors have put forward ideas about how to empirically measure resilience [5,10,14,17,35,36,[38][39][40][41]. Because resilience is not something that can be empirically measured, most researchers have been attempting to define surrogates or indicators of resilience as a proximate measure of resilience.…”

Section: The Debatesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, power inequalities between genders may shape their abilities to adapt to climate risks [47]. Power inequalities could include inequalities in participation in decision-making, the division of labor, resource access and control, and knowledge and skills [36]. Political ecology could help improve the understanding of any power inequalities and their causes, and therefore illustrate how they might be important in social-ecological resilience management [48].…”

Section: Where Is the Ecology? Where Is The Politics?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Towards Integrating Political Ecology into Resilience-Based Management

Quandt

2016

Resources

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Abstract:One of the biggest challenges faced today is how to sustainably manage social-ecological systems for both ecological conservation and human wellbeing. This paper explores two approaches to understanding such systems: resilience thinking and political ecology. Resilience thinking is a framework that emerged over the last 40 years as a management strategy for social-ecological systems, and a resilient social-ecological system is capable of absorbing disturbances and still retaining its basic function and structure. Political ecology is derived from cultural ecology and political economy and aims to critically examine how human-environment interactions are linked to environmental problems while exploring issues of power. Drawing from debates and theoretical issues both within and between these two theories, this paper proposes three main arguments for integrating political ecology into managing for resilience. First, political ecology could help fill in understanding gaps in resilience with its focus on society and politics, while resilience thinking's focus on ecology can ensure that political ecology engages with ecology. Second, the multiple lenses of political ecology may help define the system for resilience management. Third, political ecology's explanatory power may assist in identifying surrogates of resilience for indirectly measuring social-ecological resilience.

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Resilience, power, culture, and climate: a case study from semi-arid Tanzania, and new research directions

Cited by 100 publications

References 16 publications

Gender and Adaptation Practices to the Effects of Climate Change in Bahi and Kondoa Districts Dodoma Region, Tanzania

Gender and Adaptation Practices to the Effects of Climate Change in Bahi and Kondoa Districts Dodoma Region, Tanzania

Gender influences decisions to change land use practices in the tropical forest margins of Jambi, Indonesia

Towards Integrating Political Ecology into Resilience-Based Management

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