Relational hubs for collaborative landscape stewardship
- Cockburn, Jessica J, Cundill, Georgina, Shackleton, Sheona E, Cele, Ayanda, Cornelius, Susanna F, Koopman, Vaughan, Le Roux, Jean-Pierre, McLeod, Nicky, Rouget, Mathieu, Schroder, Samantha, Van den Broek, Dieter, Wright, Dale R, Zwinkelse, Marijn
- Authors: Cockburn, Jessica J , Cundill, Georgina , Shackleton, Sheona E , Cele, Ayanda , Cornelius, Susanna F , Koopman, Vaughan , Le Roux, Jean-Pierre , McLeod, Nicky , Rouget, Mathieu , Schroder, Samantha , Van den Broek, Dieter , Wright, Dale R , Zwinkelse, Marijn
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/392748 , vital:68789 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2019.1658141"
- Description: Landscape stewardship is considered an important place-based approach to addressing sustainability challenges. Working at landscape-level requires collaboration between diverse landscape stakeholders. In this study, we partnered with local stewardship practitioners across six cases in South Africa to investigate how they facilitate collaboration towards social-ecological sustainability outcomes. We found that practitioners facilitate collaboration among stakeholders by operating as relational hubs in the landscape. Through these hubs, they build new inter-personal relationships among stakeholders, creating social networks which enable stewardship practice. The hubs deepen human-nature relationships by creating enabling conditions for stewards to put stewardship ethics into action. Drawing on insights from these cases, we call for a relational approach to landscape stewardship which focuses on human-to-human and human-to-nature relationships. Moreover, we argue that landscape stewardship initiatives need to re-focus stewardship on stewards, recognizing them as key agents of change in addressing the conflict between agriculture and conservation inherent in many landscapes.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Cockburn, Jessica J , Cundill, Georgina , Shackleton, Sheona E , Cele, Ayanda , Cornelius, Susanna F , Koopman, Vaughan , Le Roux, Jean-Pierre , McLeod, Nicky , Rouget, Mathieu , Schroder, Samantha , Van den Broek, Dieter , Wright, Dale R , Zwinkelse, Marijn
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/392748 , vital:68789 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2019.1658141"
- Description: Landscape stewardship is considered an important place-based approach to addressing sustainability challenges. Working at landscape-level requires collaboration between diverse landscape stakeholders. In this study, we partnered with local stewardship practitioners across six cases in South Africa to investigate how they facilitate collaboration towards social-ecological sustainability outcomes. We found that practitioners facilitate collaboration among stakeholders by operating as relational hubs in the landscape. Through these hubs, they build new inter-personal relationships among stakeholders, creating social networks which enable stewardship practice. The hubs deepen human-nature relationships by creating enabling conditions for stewards to put stewardship ethics into action. Drawing on insights from these cases, we call for a relational approach to landscape stewardship which focuses on human-to-human and human-to-nature relationships. Moreover, we argue that landscape stewardship initiatives need to re-focus stewardship on stewards, recognizing them as key agents of change in addressing the conflict between agriculture and conservation inherent in many landscapes.
- Full Text:
The meaning and practice of stewardship in South Africa
- Cockburn, Jessica J, Cundill, Georgina, Shackleton, Sheona E, Rouget, Mathieu
- Authors: Cockburn, Jessica J , Cundill, Georgina , Shackleton, Sheona E , Rouget, Mathieu
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/390683 , vital:68574 , xlink:href="http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/sajs.2019/5339"
- Description: Stewardship offers a means of addressing social-ecological sustainability challenges, from the local to the global level. The concept of stewardship has had various meanings attached to it over time, and the links between the theory and practice of stewardship are not well understood. We sought to characterise the practice of stewardship in South Africa, to better understand the relationship between theory and practice. We found that practitioners’ understandings of stewardship coalesce around two core notions: the idea of stewardship as ‘responsible use and care’ of nature, and stewardship as a ‘balancing act’ between stewards’ use of natural resources for agricultural production and their responsibility to protect and manage the wider ecosystem. Stewardship practice in South Africa is strongly influenced by the biodiversity stewardship tool; however, many practitioners are integrating biodiversity stewardship with other approaches. These emerging social-ecological stewardship initiatives operate at landscape-level and work towards integrated social and ecological stewardship outcomes, by facilitating collaboration among diverse stakeholders. Further research is needed to better understand what is required to support these integrated, collaborative and cross-sectoral initiatives. Policy mechanisms that facilitate integrated place-based stewardship practice can contribute to expanding the practice of biodiversity stewardship in South Africa.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Cockburn, Jessica J , Cundill, Georgina , Shackleton, Sheona E , Rouget, Mathieu
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/390683 , vital:68574 , xlink:href="http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/sajs.2019/5339"
- Description: Stewardship offers a means of addressing social-ecological sustainability challenges, from the local to the global level. The concept of stewardship has had various meanings attached to it over time, and the links between the theory and practice of stewardship are not well understood. We sought to characterise the practice of stewardship in South Africa, to better understand the relationship between theory and practice. We found that practitioners’ understandings of stewardship coalesce around two core notions: the idea of stewardship as ‘responsible use and care’ of nature, and stewardship as a ‘balancing act’ between stewards’ use of natural resources for agricultural production and their responsibility to protect and manage the wider ecosystem. Stewardship practice in South Africa is strongly influenced by the biodiversity stewardship tool; however, many practitioners are integrating biodiversity stewardship with other approaches. These emerging social-ecological stewardship initiatives operate at landscape-level and work towards integrated social and ecological stewardship outcomes, by facilitating collaboration among diverse stakeholders. Further research is needed to better understand what is required to support these integrated, collaborative and cross-sectoral initiatives. Policy mechanisms that facilitate integrated place-based stewardship practice can contribute to expanding the practice of biodiversity stewardship in South Africa.
- Full Text:
Linking poverty, HIV/AIDS and climate change to human and ecosystem vulnerability in southern Africa: Consequences for livelihoods and sustainable ecosystem management
- Shackleton, Sheona E, Shackleton, Charlie M
- Authors: Shackleton, Sheona E , Shackleton, Charlie M
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/181081 , vital:43697 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13504509.2011.641039"
- Description: People in southern Africa are facing escalating levels of risk, uncertainty and consequently vulnerability as a result of multiple interacting stressors, including HIV/AIDS, poverty, food insecurity, weak governance, climate change and land degradation, to name but a few. Vulnerability or livelihood insecurity emerges when poor people as individuals or social units have to face harmful threats or shocks with inadequate capacity to respond effectively. In such situations, people often have no choice but to turn to their immediate environment for support. Evidence suggests that rising levels of human vulnerability are driving increased dependency on biodiversity and ecosystem services, which in turn, and along with other threats, is rendering ecosystems more vulnerable. This paper explores the dynamic and complex linkages and feedbacks between human vulnerability and ecosystem vulnerability, drawing on data from the southern African region. Human vulnerability is conceptualized as a threat to ecosystem health, as driven by the interplay between a number of current and emerging factors. We focus on poverty, HIV/AIDS and more intense climate extremes as examples of stressors on livelihoods and direct and indirect drivers of ecosystem change. We discuss how some of the responses to increased vulnerability may pose threats to biodiversity conservation, ecosystem management and sustainable development, whilst considering potential solutions that rely on a thorough understanding of coupled social–ecological systems and the interplay between multiple stressors and responses at different scales.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Shackleton, Sheona E , Shackleton, Charlie M
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/181081 , vital:43697 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13504509.2011.641039"
- Description: People in southern Africa are facing escalating levels of risk, uncertainty and consequently vulnerability as a result of multiple interacting stressors, including HIV/AIDS, poverty, food insecurity, weak governance, climate change and land degradation, to name but a few. Vulnerability or livelihood insecurity emerges when poor people as individuals or social units have to face harmful threats or shocks with inadequate capacity to respond effectively. In such situations, people often have no choice but to turn to their immediate environment for support. Evidence suggests that rising levels of human vulnerability are driving increased dependency on biodiversity and ecosystem services, which in turn, and along with other threats, is rendering ecosystems more vulnerable. This paper explores the dynamic and complex linkages and feedbacks between human vulnerability and ecosystem vulnerability, drawing on data from the southern African region. Human vulnerability is conceptualized as a threat to ecosystem health, as driven by the interplay between a number of current and emerging factors. We focus on poverty, HIV/AIDS and more intense climate extremes as examples of stressors on livelihoods and direct and indirect drivers of ecosystem change. We discuss how some of the responses to increased vulnerability may pose threats to biodiversity conservation, ecosystem management and sustainable development, whilst considering potential solutions that rely on a thorough understanding of coupled social–ecological systems and the interplay between multiple stressors and responses at different scales.
- Full Text:
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