Doctoral Dissertation Research: Promoting Sustainable Communities: Community Forestry as a Conduit of Change

博士论文研究：促进可持续社区：社区林业作为变革的管道

• 批准号: 0902865
• 负责人: James McCarthy
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Pennsylvania State Univ University Park
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-09-01 至 2011-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0902865&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Promoting; Sustainable

Community forestry is designed to provide community-based groups with resource access, income generation, and greater social equity through localized forest management. Its implementation is representative of broader shifts in environmental governance away from centralized command-and-control regulation, and towards public/private partnerships and voluntary and decentralized approaches. Nepal is often cited as a success story for community forestry, with over 14,000 community forest user groups controlling over 1.1 million hectares of forest land, benefiting over 35% of Nepal's population. Building on their success in forest management, such groups have begun to promote other sustainability initiatives, including biogas technology. This study has two objectives. First, it explores whether and how participation in community forest programs promotes broader environmental awareness and values, including interest in other environmental sustainability programs, such as biogas. Second, the study explores whether and how national and global movements for environmental sustainability influence the form and content of community forestry and biogas technology programs in Nepal. The study will advance the field of political ecology by combining recent perspectives on how and why people internalize environmentalist views and put them into daily practice with political ecology's longer-term efforts to theorize the relationships among politics, discourse, and sustainability. This multi-sited case study explores the connections between community forestry and biogas initiatives in two locations in Nepal. In Jhapa district, multiple community forest groups are promoting biogas, with one receiving an 800,000 rupee government loan to continue its work, while in Gorkha district, such groups are participating in a new biogas promotion program. These sites represent a spectrum of conditions under which biogas can be promoted, with environmental conditions in Jhapa more favorable to biogas than those in Gorkha, and with farmers in Jhapa owning more land and cattle than their Gorkha counterparts. Given biogas' potential to improve quality of life, it is critical to understand if and how such projects can succeed under both ideal and challenging circumstances. Data collection methods include ethnographic fieldwork, participant observation, in-depth interviews, survey, participant mapping, focus groups, primary documents, and secondary literature. Content analysis of the collected data will explain why respondents do or do not participate in community forest groups and adopt biogas technology, as well as how they view these actions with respect to broader environmentalist views and agendas. This study seeks to understand the implications of using participation in decentralized, voluntary forms of environmental governance---here, community forestry---as a pathway towards a broader sense of environmental citizenship and participation in other sustainability initiatives. Understanding how groups design synergies between programs that advance sustainability on many fronts is thus relevant not only to community forestry in Nepal, but to efforts to promote and implement environmentally and socially sustainable practices worldwide. This award to support research in Nepal is cofunded by SBE/GSS and the Office of International Science and Engineering.

社区林业旨在通过本地化森林管理为社区群体提供资源获取、创收和更大的社会公平。它的实施代表了环境治理从集中的命令和控制监管转向公私伙伴关系以及自愿和分散方法的更广泛转变。尼泊尔经常被认为是社区林业的成功典范，超过 14,000 个社区森林用户群体控制着超过 110 万公顷的林地，使超过 35% 的尼泊尔人口受益。基于在森林管理方面的成功，这些团体已开始推广其他可持续发展举措，包括沼气技术。这项研究有两个目标。首先，它探讨了参与社区森林计划是否以及如何促进更广泛的环境意识和价值观，包括对沼气等其他环境可持续性计划的兴趣。其次，该研究探讨了国家和全球环境可持续性运动是否以及如何影响尼泊尔社区林业和沼气技术项目的形式和内容。该研究将通过将人们如何以及为何内化环保主义观点并将其付诸日常实践的最新观点与政治生态学对政治、话语和可持续性之间关系进行理论化的长期努力相结合，推动政治生态学领域的发展。这项多地点案例研究探讨了尼泊尔两个地点的社区林业和沼气计划之间的联系。在贾帕地区，多个社区森林团体正在推广沼气，其中一个获得了 80 万卢比的政府贷款以继续其工作，而在廓尔喀地区，这些团体正在参与一项新的沼气推广计划。这些地点代表了推广沼气的一系列条件，贾帕的环境条件比廓尔喀的环境条件更有利于沼气，而且贾帕的农民比廓尔喀农民拥有更多的土地和牛。鉴于沼气具有改善生活质量的潜力，了解此类项目在理想和充满挑战的情况下是否以及如何取得成功至关重要。数据收集方法包括民族志实地考察、参与观察、深入访谈、调查、参与者制图、焦点小组、主要文件和二手文献。对所收集数据的内容分析将解释受访者为何参加或不参加社区森林团体和采用沼气技术，以及他们如何从更广泛的环保观点和议程角度看待这些行动。本研究旨在了解参与分散的、自愿形式的环境治理（此处为社区林业）的影响，作为实现更广泛的环境公民意识和参与其他可持续发展举措的途径。因此，了解团体如何设计在许多方面促进可持续发展的计划之间的协同作用不仅与尼泊尔的社区林业相关，而且与在全球范围内促进和实施环境和社会可持续实践的努力相关。该奖项旨在支持尼泊尔的研究，由 SBE/GSS 和国际科学与工程办公室共同资助。