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Background Reading: Department Of Agriculture, 2013 Budget Overview, United States. Forest Service, United States. Department Of Agriculture

The Future of Natural Resources Policy (December 6)

57 pages.

"Fiscal Year 2013 Budget Overview"

"February 2012"

"Background Reading"

The Future of Natural Resources Policy: This forum will provide a post-election perspective on some of the challenges and opportunities that natural resources, public lands, and energy policymakers in Washington are likely to face in the next four years. An expert panel will discuss the dynamics in the Department of the Interior, the Department of Agriculture, and Congress, and how their evolving policies are likely to affect Colorado in the coming years.

Tujiin Nars: A Story Of The Forest, Julia Bowman

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This paper uses the northern Mongolian pine tree forest called Tujiin Nars as a case study to examine forestry and reforestation projects in Mongolia. It outlines the general history of Mongolian forests from socialism to present day, looking specifically at Tujiin Nars. It goes on to identify and examine the five most important factors in the successful reforestation of Tujiin Nars: a stronger economy in Selenge Aimag, committed civil servants, forest policy with harsher penalties for illegal loggers, government support, and local and global environmental awareness trends.

Amazonian States Map Threatened Borderlands, David S. Salisbury, A. William Flores De Melo, Jorge Vela Alvarado, Bertha Balbin Ordaya

Geography and the Environment Faculty Publications

Recently, the Regional Initiative to Integrate South America has begun promoting a transboundary road that would bisect the forested borderlands and connect the two largest cities in the region, while the state governments seek to promote a direct ecological railroad alternative. Both transportation initiatives promise to alter forests and rivers and transform economies and cultures, but these projects also lack the base geographic information necessary to understand their potential transboundary impacts and benefits.

Land Rights And Mine Action In Afghanistan: Frequently Asked Questions, Gichd

Global CWD Repository

This document provides simple, practical guidance on land issues for mine action organisations in Afghanistan. It covers the following topics: why land matters for mine action; land rights and land release; what mine action organisations can do; and where to get additional information and support.

Land Rights And Mine Action In Afghanistan: Analysis And Programming Entry-Points For Mine Action Organisations - Final Report, Gichd

Global CWD Repository

In 2010, GICHD initiated a project on landmines and land rights in conflict affected contexts. The purpose of the project was to strengthen the capacity of mine action organisations to prevent and respond to land-related conflict before, during and after mine action operations. Since 2011, GICHD has been partnering with UN-HABITAT to undertake a series of land assessment and support missions in key countries toprovide mine action organisations with analyses of land related conflicts and practical guidance on how they can ensure their mine action operations “do no harm” and take land issues into consideration. This report summarizes the main …

Two People Killed In Panama In Logging Dispute, Louisa Reynolds

NotiCen

No abstract provided.

Road Construction And Amur Tigers (Panthera Tigris Altaica) In The Russian Far East, Elizabeth Cohan

Geography and the Environment Capstone Projects

The Amur tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), also known as the Siberian tiger, is an endangered species in the Russian Far East that has experienced a sharp population decline during the past century (Tian et al. 2011, 3166). Roads may be one of the primary factors for the dramatic decline of tiger population because the species most sensitive to roads tend to be large carnivores that rely on large movement ranges and have low reproductive rates (Fahrig and Rytwinski 2009, 1 and Tian et al. 2011, 3166). Tigers (Panthera tigris) are an example of such fragile large …

Mitigating Confusion: Classification Of Road Subtypes And Socioeconomic And Environmental Impacts Of Roads In The Amazon, Ellen J. Goodrich-Stuart

Geography and the Environment Capstone Projects

This paper recognizes the disconnect of road terminology present in current road ecology literature. The epistemological methods of First-Order Logic and the Q-Method along with political ecology are utilized to form a working typology of roads and their impacts, specifically centered in the Amazon. Following this, this work briefly discusses three unique cases studies that focus on different road aspects to display real-life examples of subtypes in the typology. The overarching goal of this study is to better organize the field of road ecology and help to mitigate negative environment and socioeconomic impacts in the future.

Paper prepared for the …

The Geopolitics Of The Brazil’S Amazonian Border, Peter C. Spoehr

Geography and the Environment Capstone Projects

The days of national security concerns being bound by geographic locality are long gone, replaced by intervention minded multi-lateral organizations, NGOs with influence surpassing some countries and aggressive military force projection strategies. Along with traditional nation states, these institutions must all navigate the complex global dialogue attempting to address global economic and environmental issues. The degradation of the Amazon and its effect on the global environment is a primary subject of this dialogue and Brazil has taken notice. Challenges to the geopolitical control of the Brazilian Amazon by these multi-level actors have only served to increase Brazilian assertion of its …

Political Ecology: An Analysis Of Peruvian Government Discourses In Support Of Road Projects, Juan Boettner

Environmental Studies Senior Seminar Projects

In this paper, I will explore the ways in which the Peruvian government supports road projects through various well-developed arguments. I will look at how authorities present and/or support road projects in different temporal and spatial scales. I will try to answer the following questions:

1) How has the Peruvian government’s arguments for improved connectivity changed over time?
2) What are the implications of such changes?

Answering these questions will help explain the government’s role and biases regarding economic development in Peru. Furthermore, answers to these questions can help us understand past positions and predict what the government’s position may …

Climate Conditions, Herbicide Use Resulted In Sharp Drop In Number Of Monarch Butterflies Wintering In Mexico This Past Season, Carlos Navarro

SourceMex

No abstract provided.

The East African Community And Theclimate Change Agenda: An Inventory Of Theprogress, Hurdles, And Prospects, James Forole Jarso

PEEL Alumni Scholarship

This article details efforts to combat climate change within the framework of the nascent United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (“UNECA”). The discourse begins by providing a clear picture of the EAC’s establishment, membership, purpose, and mandate, and the relevance of the latter two to EAC’s climate change agenda. This is followed by a general overview of the evidence and impacts of climate change in the sub-region. In the substantive sections, the article takes stock of the achievements registered by the EAC in its efforts to address climate change in the sub-region, as well as the challenges impeding these efforts. …

Reconstructing Disturbance History Using Satellite-Based Assessment Of The Distribution Of Land Cover In The Russian Far East, T.V. Loboda, Z. Zhang, K.J. O'Neal, G. Sun, I.A. Csiszar, H.H. Shugart, N.J. Sherman

United States Department of Commerce: Staff Publications

Russian boreal forests are the largest forested zone on Earth and a tremendous pool of organic carbon. Current limited records on forest structure, composition, successional stage and disturbances contribute to large uncertainties in estimates of carbon stocks and fluxes in this zone. Our ability to monitor ongoing changes in forest cover has improved with the influx of remotely sensed data products since 2000 from multiple satellite platforms. Here we present a method aimed at reconstructing disturbance history from a known distribution of land cover. We developed and tested the method over a biologically and topographically diverse region of the Russian …

High Conservation Value Or High Confusion Value? Sustainable Agriculture And Biodiversity Conservation In The Tropics, David P. Edwards, Brendan Fisher, David S. Wilcove

Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Green labeling of products that have been produced sustainably is an emerging tool of the environmental movement. A prominent example is the Forest Stewardship Council, which certifies timber that is harvested to manage and maintain forests defined as having High Conservation Value (HCV). The criteria for HCV are now being applied to four rapidly expanding crops in the tropics: oil palm, soy, sugarcane, and cacao. However, these criteria do not provide adequate protection for biodiversity when applied to agriculture. The only criterion that provides blanket protection to forests is one that protects large expanses of habitat (≥20,000-500,000 ha, depending on …

Assembling An Experimentalist Regime: Transnational Governance Interactions In The Forest Sector, Christine Overdevest, Jonathan Zeitlin

Comparative Research in Law & Political Economy

Transnational governance initiatives increasingly face the problem of regime complexity in which a proliferation of regulatory schemes operate in the same policy domain, supported by varying combinations of public and private actors. The literature suggests that such regime complexity can lead to forum-shopping and other self-interested strategies which undermine the effectiveness of transnational regulation. Based on the design principles of experimentalist governance, this paper identifies a variety of pathways and mechanisms which promote productive interactions in regime complexes. We use the case of the EU’s Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade (FLEGT) initiative, interacting with private certification schemes and public …

Emerging Private Governance: The Challenges Of Choosing A Policy Focus, Graeme Auld

Comparative Research in Law & Political Economy

Across sectors of the global economy, private governance has emerged as a new instrument for addressing pressing social and environmental problems. Although better suited for tackling the challenge of reaching agreements among states to address problems transcending national borders, these initiatives create new boundaries based on what problems they choose to focus on and which actors they choose to regulate – that is, the different policy foci of individual programs. Specialization is not inherently problematic. Private governance can focus attention on the problems of a single-issue area and build capacity among actors to resolve its problems, but equally a particular …

Emerging Private Governance: The Challenges Of Choosing A Policy Focus, Graeme Auld

Transnational Business Governance Interactions Working Papers

Across sectors of the global economy, private governance has emerged as a new instrument for addressing pressing social and environmental problems. Although better suited for tackling the challenge of reaching agreements among states to address problems transcending national borders, these initiatives create new boundaries based on what problems they choose to focus on and which actors they choose to regulate – that is, the different policy foci of individual programs. Specialization is not inherently problematic. Private governance can focus attention on the problems of a single-issue area and build capacity among actors to resolve its problems, but equally a particular …

Assembling An Experimentalist Regime: Transnational Governance Interactions In The Forest Sector, Christine Overdevest, Jonathan Zeitlin

Transnational Business Governance Interactions Working Papers

Transnational governance initiatives increasingly face the problem of regime complexity in which a proliferation of regulatory schemes operate in the same policy domain, supported by varying combinations of public and private actors. The literature suggests that such regime complexity can lead to forum-shopping and other self-interested strategies which undermine the effectiveness of transnational regulation. Based on the design principles of experimentalist governance, this paper identifies a variety of pathways and mechanisms which promote productive interactions in regime complexes. We use the case of the EU's Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade (FLEGT) initiative, interacting with private certification schemes and public …

Modeling The Spatial And Temporal Heterogeneity Of Deforestation-Driven Carbon Emissions: The Inpe-Em Framework Applied To The Brazilian Amazon, Ana Paula Dutra Aguiar, Jean Pierre Ometto, Carlos Nobre, David Montenegro Lapola, Claudio Almeida, Ima Célia Vieira, Joao Vianei Soares, Regina Alvala, Sassan Saatchi, Dalton Valeriano, Juan Carlos Castilla-Rubio

United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration: Publications

We present a generic spatially explicit modeling framework to estimate carbon emissions from deforestation (INPE-EM). The framework incorporates the temporal dynamics related to the deforestation process and accounts for the biophysical and socioeconomic heterogeneity of the region under study. We build an emission model for the Brazilian Amazon combining annual maps of new clearings, four maps of biomass, and a set of alternative parameters based on the recent literature. The most important results are as follows: (a) Using different biomass maps leads to large differences in estimates of emission; for the entire region of the Brazilian Amazon in the last …

Asean's Gradual Evolution: Challenges And Opportunities For Integrating Participatory Procedural Reforms For The Environment In An Evolving Rights-Based Framework, Tarik Abdel-Monem

University of Nebraska Public Policy Center: Publications

The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) is entering an interesting and important new phase in its evolution. Having survived the cold war and Asian financial crisis of 1997, the Association remains a uniquely successful, yet enigmatic organization comprised of ten major Southeast Asian countries. ASEAN nations have successfully obtained rapid levels of economic and human development in the face of the region's political difficulties, yet at the risk of causing significant environmental degradation. Now, ASEAN is implementing two new structures that have major implications for the state of civil society among its member nations-the ASEAN Charter and the …

Error Propagation In Raster Data Integration: Impacts On Landscape Composition And Configuration, Zachary J. Christman, John Rogan

Geography

Integrating raster-based categorical maps from multiple sources necessitates the transformation of geometric characteristics to compare maps, as in land change analyses. By projecting maps to a new geographic reference framework and scaling pixel values to a new size, distortions of map information are introduced that can affect the proportion and arrangement of thematic classes across the landscape. Using a sample land cover dataset depicting a heterogeneous landscape, this paper examines these impacts using three common raster-based transformation methods and introduces a new vector-based method that minimizes error propagation. While relative class area was best preserved by a nearest-neighbor resampling method, …

Global Production Networks, Relational Proximity, And The Sociospatial Dynamics Of Market Internationalization In Bolivia's Wood Products Sector, James T. Murphy

Geography

This article advances conceptualizations of global production networks (GPNs) through an analysis of the relational processes that firms in Bolivia's growing wood products industry use to build ties to international markets. Both large- and small-scale manufacturers are increasingly internationalizing their operations in response to the global demand for tropical hardwoods and decentralization of control over the country's forest resources. These firms use four different types of production networks and networking practices to develop international market ties. Each of these networks is distinguishable by its entry barriers, value-creation possibilities, upgrading strategies, and the cognitive, social, and cultural factors that influence who …

Experimentalist Governance, Charles F. Sabel, Jonathan Zeitlin

Faculty Scholarship

This article discusses the concept of the so-called experimentalist governance. It explains that the experimentalist architecture in regulation is well illustrated by the European Union Water Framework Directive (WFD) and its Common Implementation Strategy. The article suggests that experimentalism appears particularly well suited to transnational domains, where there is no overarching sovereign with the authority to set common goals even in theory, and where the diversity of local conditions and practices makes the adoption and enforcement of uniform fixed rules even less feasible than in domestic settings.