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LU0093

Governance of Natural Resources

This course departs from the insight that natural resource governance is as much about managing people as it is about managing nature. The course provides students with tools for understanding different ways in which control and access over natural resources are collectively organized and governed, and the different social, economic and ecological conditions that underpins various forms of environmental dilemmas. The course deals with the inter-linkages between natural resource management and rural change from a cross-disciplinarily perspective. Through an exploration of different concepts and perspectives from social theory and political ecology the course critically analyses different natural resource dilemmas from different contrasting contexts at different scales.



The course covers relevant theoretical concepts and approaches concerning the governance of natural resources and enables students to reflect and use these in class discussions and individual and/or group exercises. The development of the student’s generic competence and capabilities constitute an important part of the course and the course consists of a mixture of lectures, individual and/or group works, which are presented and discussed during seminars.

Information from the course leader

Dear all,

Welcome to the course! Please review the following material and let us know if you have questions.

Looking forward to see you all!

//Hal and Linus

Ps. Most course meetings will be held in real life, IRL. Please see the schedule.

Course evaluation

The course evaluation is now closed

LU0093-20160 - Course evaluation report

Once the evaluation is closed, the course coordinator and student representative have 1 month to draft their comments. The comments will be published in the evaluation report.

Additional course evaluations for LU0093

Academic year 2022/2023

Governance of Natural Resources (LU0093-20067)

2022-11-01 - 2023-01-15

Academic year 2021/2022

Governance of Natural Resources (LU0093-20132)

2021-11-02 - 2022-01-16

Academic year 2020/2021

Governance of Natural Resources (LU0093-20132)

2020-11-02 - 2021-01-17

Academic year 2019/2020

Governance of Natural Resources (LU0093-20043)

2019-11-01 - 2020-01-19

Academic year 2018/2019

Governance of Natural Resources (LU0093-20108)

2018-11-05 - 2019-01-20

Syllabus and other information

Litterature list

Week 44 – Introduction & foundation

Lecture: Theorising resource governance dilemmas

Required

Dryzek, J. 2005. The Politics of Earth – Environmental Discourses. Oxford University Press. Read the parts on canvas.

Nightingale, A., Böhler T., Campbell, B. and Karlsson, L (eds.). 2019. Environment and sustainability in a globalizing world, Routledge, New York. (Read chapter 1, 3 and 6)

Lemos, M. C. and Agrawal, A. 2006. Environmental Governance. Annual Review of Environment and Resources.

Mehta, L. Leach, M. Newell, P. Scoones, I. Sivaramakrishnan, K and Way, S-A. 1999. Exploring Understandings of Institutions and Uncertainty: New Directions in Natural Resource Management. IDS Discussion Paper 372. Environment Group, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK.

Moran, L & Ray, H. 2014. Mapping divergent concepts of sustainability: Lay knowledge, local practices and environmental governance. Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability.

Week 45 – Central concepts & Theories 1

Lecture: Natural resource governance: Key concepts and perspectives

Required:

Agrawal, A. 2001. Common Property Institutions and Sustainable Governance of Resources. World Development 29(10); 1649-1672.

Cleaver, F.D. and de Koning, J., 2015. Furthering critical institutionalism. International Journal of the Commons, 9(1), pp.1–18

Lecture: Theorizing local democracy in NRM

Required:

Fischer, H. 2021. Decentralization and the governance of climate adaptation: Situating community-based planning within broader trajectories of political transformation. World Development 140: 105335.

Suggested:

Chambers, R. (1994). The origins and practice of participatory rural appraisal. World Development, 22(7), 953–969.

Cook, B., and Kothari, U. (2001). Participation: The new tyranny? Chapter 1. Zed Books, New York.

Hickey, S., & Mohan, G. (2005). Relocating Participation Within a Radical Politics of Development. Development and Change, 36(2), 237–262.

Lecture: Resource governance in human and political geography: property, territory, and other analytics

Required:

Sikor, T & Lund, C. (2009). Access and Property: A Question of Power and Authority. Vol. 40(1). Pp. 1-22. Development and Change.

Ribot, J. & Peluso, N. 2003. A theory of access. Rural Sociology, 682, 99. 153-181

Suggested:

Elden, Stuart (2010). Land, terrain, territory. Progress in Human Geography, 34(6): 799-817

Week 46 – Political ecology & environmental justice

Lecture: Political ecology & environmental justice: critical perspectives

Required:

Svarstad, H & Benjaminsen, T. A. (2020). Reading radical environmental justice through a political ecology lens. Vol. 108. Pp. 1-11. Geoforum.

Benjaminsen and Svarstad *political ecology, (*Read chapters – 1+ 2)

Lecture: Feminist and decolonial political ecology perspectives on environmental governance

Required:

Gonda, N., Flores, S., Casolo, J. J., & Nightingale, A. J. (2023). Resilience and conflict: rethinking climate resilience through Indigenous territorial struggles. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 1-27.

Optional:

Wijsman, K., & Feagan, M. (2019). Rethinking knowledge systems for urban resilience: Feminist and decolonial contributions to just transformations. Environmental Science & Policy, 98, 70-76.

Lecture: Is good mining possible? Exploring green and just transitions in the extractive industries

Required:

Toumbourou, T., Muhdar, M., Werner, T., & Bebbington, A. (2020). Political ecologies of the post-mining landscape: Activism, resistance, and legal struggles over Kalimantan’s coal mines. Energy Research & Social Science65, 101476.

Optional:

Asdal, K., Cointe, B., Hobæk, B., Reinertsen, H., Huse, T., Morsman, S. R., & Måløy, T. (2021). ‘The good economy’: A conceptual and empirical move for investigating how economies and versions of the good are entangled. BioSocieties18(1), 1–24.

Week 47 – Climate, forest and development dilemmas

Lecture: Does traceability fit for its purpose?: Example from traceability mechanisms in seafood supply chains

Required:

Kadfak, A., & Widengård, M. (2022). From fish to fishworker traceability in Thai fisheries reform. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

Bailey, M., Bush, S. R., Miller, A., & Kochen, M. (2016). The role of traceability in transforming seafood governance in the global South. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 18, 25-32.

Optional:

Arthur P J Mol 2006 Environmental Governance in the Information Age: The Emergence of Informational Governance. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

Calvão, F., & Archer, M. (2021). Digital extraction: Blockchain traceability in mineral supply chains. Political Geography, 87, 102381.

Lecture: Global agendas for forest conservation in an era of climate change

Required:

Fleischmann, F., et al. 2020. Pitfalls of tree planting show why we need people-centered natural climate solutions. Bioscience 70(11): 947–950.

Osborne, T et al. 2021. The political ecology playbook for ecosystem restoration: Principles for effective, equitable, and transformative landscapes. Vol. 70. Global Environmental Change

Erbaugh,- J T & Oldekop, J A 2018. Forest landscape restoration for livelihoods and well-being. Vol. 32. Pp. 76-83. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability.

Lecture: Planting trees in Africa: Local consequences of Swedish carbon forestry

Required:

Leach, M. and Scoones. I. 2015. Political Ecologies of Carbon in Africa. In Leach, M., & Scoones, I. (2015). Carbon conflicts and forest landscapes in Africa. Pp. 1-42. London and New York: Routledge

Suggested:

Hajdu F, Fischer K, Penje O 2016 Questioning the use of ‘degradation’ in climate mitigation: A case study of a forest carbon CDM project in Uganda. Land Use Policy. 59 (31) 412–422.

Week 48 – Land and water grabbing dilemmas

Lecture: Peasants and Corporations: Land Reform and agriculture in post-communist Ukraine

TBA

Lecture: Land as symbol and substance in struggles over social and material survival

Required:

Braun, B. (2002). The intemperate rainforest: nature, culture, and power on Canada's west coast. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.

Sundberg, J. (2014). Decolonizing posthumanist geographies. Cultural geographies21(1), 33-47.

Lecture: Land deals in limbo: land access in a post-investment setting in rural Tanzania

Required:

Borras Jr, S. M., Franco, J. C., Moreda, T., Xu, Y., Bruna, N., & Demena, B. A. (2022). The value of so-called ‘failed’large-scale land acquisitions. Land Use Policy, 119, 106199.

Suggested:

Engström, L., & Hajdu, F. (2019). Conjuring ‘Win-World’–resilient development narratives in a large-scale agro-investment in Tanzania. The Journal of Development Studies, 55(6), 1201-1220.

Tania ML (2014) What is land? Assembling a resource for global investment. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 3

Week 49 – Climate and forest dilemmas

Lecture: Climate Governance: From the Global to the Local

Required:

Stoddard, I et.al. 2021. Three Decades of Climate Mitigation: Why Haven’t We Bent the Global Emissions Curve? Annual Review of Environment and Resources. Vol. 46:653-689.

Lecture: Land use policies, climate adaptation and livelihoods in Southeast Asia

Required:

Eriksen, S. Nightingale, A. and Eakin, H. 2015. Reframing adaptation: The political nature of climate change adaptation. Global Environmental Change. No 35 (2015) 523–533.

Suggested:

Beckman, M. & Nguyen, M.V.T (2015): Upland development, climate related risk and institutional conditions for adaptation in Vietnam, Climate and Development.

Lecture: Community forestry institutions and challenges to collective action in the context of socio-ecological transition. A case from Nepal

Required:

Ojha, H., Persha, L., & Chhatre, A. (2009). Community forestry in Nepal: a policy innovation for local livelihoods (Vol. 913). International Food Policy Research Institute.

Poudyal, B.P., Khatri, D.B., Paudel, D., Khatri, S. and Marquardt, K. (2023). Examining forest transition and collective action in Nepal’s Community Forestry. Land Use Policy (in press).

Suggested:

Chhetri, R., Yokying, P., Smith, A., Van Den Hoek, J., Hurni, K., Saksena, S., & Fox, J. (2021). Forest, agriculture, and migration: contemplating the future of forestry and agriculture in the middle-hills of Nepal. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 1-23.

Khatri, D., Paudel, D., Pain, A., Marquardt, K. and Khatri, S. (2022). Reterritorialization of Community Forestry: Scientific Forest Management in the Terai and Chure Region of Nepal. Political Ecology.

Week 50 – Nature conservation & biodiversity dilemmas

Lecture: Is there room for emotions in natural resources governance? Examples from environmental conflicts and disasters in the Global North and South

Required:

González-Hidalgo, M., & Zografos, C. (2017). How sovereignty claims and “negative” emotions influence the process of subject-making: Evidence from a case of conflict over tree plantations from Southern Chile.* Geoforum, 78*, 61-73.

Optional:

Spencer, D. (2011). Emotions and the transformative potential of fieldwork: Some implications for teaching and learning anthropology. Teaching Anthropology1(2).

Lecture: Achieving Conservation Goals in Human-inhabited Protected Areas: the Case of Zapatera Archipelago National Park in Nicaragua

Required:

Sriskandarajah, N. Givá, N., Hansen, H.P. 2016. Bridging Divides through Spaces of Change: Action Research for Cultivation the Commons in Human-Inhabited Protected Areas in Nicaragua and Mozambique. In: Hansen, H.P., Nielsen, B., Sriskandarajah, N. and Gunnarsson, E. (eds). Commons, Sustainability, Democratization: Action Reserach and the Basic Renewal of Society. Routledge Advances, In: Research Methods, 139-166.

Arévalo, A. R. 2010. Enhancing Natural Resources Management and Livelihoods in Zapatera Archipelago National Park, Nicaragua. An Action Research Study with Residents of two Communities in Zapatera Island. Masters Thesis. Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Uppsala, Sweden. (Read pages 8-21)

Course facts

The course is offered as an independent course: No The course is offered as a programme course: Environmental Economics and Management - Master's Programme Rural Development and Natural Resource Management - Master's Programme Master's Programme in Sustainable Development EnvEuro - European Master in Environmental Science Environmental Communication and Management - Master's Programme Agriculture Programme - Rural Development Tuition fee: Tuition fee only for non-EU/EEA/Switzerland citizens: 27500 SEK Cycle: Master’s level (A1N)
Subject: Rural Development Rural Development
Course code: LU0093 Application code: SLU-20160 Location: Uppsala Distance course: No Language: English Responsible department: Department of Urban and Rural Development Pace: 100%