Paper short abstract:

Operation of extensive land use including grassland-management systems are impacted by a variety of ecological, socio-cultural, economic and political drivers increasing vulnerability and impacting function of informal social institutions that previously optimized the workforces of family-run farms.

Paper long abstract:

Operation of extensive land-use systems is impacted by a variety of direct and indirect drivers. Grassland management is especially influenced. Mowing, especially the time of mowing, as an important element, and a top-down regulated leverage point of grassland management can be a good indicator of the effects of a set of ecological, social, cultural, economic, and political drivers.

We studied the local understanding of the interrelationship between time of haymaking and set of drivers using participatory observation, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions to reveal the relevant context of time of haymaking and trade-offs made by local farmers.

According to local farmers, direct drivers influenced the phenological stage of vegetation and thus the time of haymaking, while indirect social, cultural, and political drivers only impacted the time of mowing. Taking the 16 identified factors into consideration required compromises between trade-offs. Local farmers evaluated numerous factors when deciding on the optimal time of haymaking. The most important were: 1.) the proper quality of the hay; 2.) long-term yield stability, and 3.) qualifying for financial support. The difficulty of adaptation has also caused the disappearance of a social “barter” institution that previously optimized the workforces of family-run farms.

Vulnerability of extensive land-use systems increased as new drivers have appeared and others have intensified, while unfavourable impact of Common Agricultural Policy’s subsidy system, that is culturally insufficiently adapted to the local socio-economic and cultural contexts, has been exacerbated. These effects could have been compensated for with culturally sustainable agri-environmental schemes.

Co-authored by Béla Jánó

Paper short abstract:

The increasing number of ticks in Finnish nature have impacted the outdoor activities of humans and their companion animals. These impacts have been discussed and negotiated in Finnish media and online discourses as risks with significance on everyday life and practices among pet owners.

Paper long abstract:

During recent years, the public debate about the risks related to ticks, humans and their companion animals has increased and been widely negotiated in the Finnish media and online discourses. Many of these discources are based on climate change and its impacts on the increasing number of ticks. Ticks are considered dangerous for both humans and their companion animals due to tick related diseases such as TBE and Lyme disease. The fear of diseases have had a profound impact on the everyday practices shared by humans and their companion animals. The fear of ticks have also changed and continues to change the ways in which Finnish people spend time in nature and enjoy natural environments.

In this paper, I want to address questions of how ticks have influenced the everyday practices of humans and their companion animals with regards to nature. Why is nature nowadays considered a risk for pet owners rather than a place for recreation and as a source for well-being? How are the risks of ticks narrated and negotiated, and what kinds of changes in the everyday and outdoor life has this risk brought about? What kind of strategies have pet owners adapted in order to protect both themselves and their companion animals from the risks of ticks? These questions will be discussed in terms of knowledge formation and transformation as well as adaptation of new everyday practices as available in questionnaires and online discussions.

Paper short abstract:

Taking a case study of the implementation of a new waste water treatment system in the Netherlands, I think ethnographically ‘vulnerability’. Recognizing vulnerability as a characteristic of a damaged planet is a starting point to think vulnerability as a quality of solutions

Paper long abstract:

One of the challenges facing the Netherlands and elsewhere have to do with contaminants of emerging concern (CEC) present in waste water. To 'fix' the problem, engineers, ecologist, and citizens are busy creating new technologies in order to further clean waste water. These technologies, of course, demand new knowledges and learning approaches --for once, little is known about CEC pathways, and furthermore, new waste water technologies demand a lot of careful observation and adaptation. In this paper, taking a case study of the implementation of a new waste water treatment system in the Netherlands, I think ethnographically ‘vulnerability’ as it is enacted in the experimental setting. Villagers’ involvement in the new technology demanded learning to collaborate and coordinate with global actors such as researchers, governmental institutions, global fish, microalgae and polluted oceans. Recognizing vulnerability as a characteristic of a damaged planet is a starting point to think vulnerability as a quality of solutions for and arrangements to tackle and remedy planetary damage. In this paper I thus trace ‘vulnerability’ as a crucial question or element present in three different practices: 1) Vulnerability of the technological infrastructure; 2) vulnerability of damaged ecosystems; 3) vulnerability of the ‘the social’ understood as community that live and care for the system in a daily fashion. What can we learn while tracing vulnerability of the different normative repertoires are pertaining to each practice?

Paper short abstract:

Pastoralists in marginal drylands part of Kenya live with and off uncertainty (drought/conflict). These uncertainties are embraced through moral economy practices which are highly differentiated across sites, between people and overtime due to the structural transformation of the area.

Paper long abstract:

The paper present part of my doctoral research which is conducted in Northern Kenya drylands region of Isiolo County. In this paper, I assess the critical role of the traditional and modern 'moral economies' in managing everyday uncertainties including climate change, governance, animal disease and conflict.

These moral economies are highly differentiated depending on the capability, entitlement and access to various resources required to respond or manage any given variable condition. The variation is further witnessed within different pastoral groups in form of gender, wealth and generation (age).

Combined with conventional strategies to responding to drought-like early warning, contingency planning and provision of a safety net such as cash transfer, moral economy plays a significant role in cushioning pastoralists against these threats. Moral economies are the socially accepted norms of collective redistribution of resources to help people survive a certain crisis.

Paper short abstract:

During adaptation projects people with different assumptions about the world encounter. Consequently, knowledge transfers often do not take place as intended by implementing organisations. The paper looks at alternative approaches of people in Vanuatu to talk about and act within their environments.

Paper long abstract:

In many places in Vanuatu, various development organisations run so-called adaptation projects with the aim to change practices and to increase the knowledge of people and thus prepare them for adverse effects of climate change. These projects, and the knowledge they intend to transfer, are based on assumptions derived from natural science that include the separation of environmental changes and human actions. The paper shows that people in rural regions of Vanuatu categorise their world differently and it illustrates some basic characteristics. For them, climate change is not an environmental phenomenon that people influence or are influenced by, but also means changes in the way the community itself lives together. Accordingly, their actions after the implementation of an adaptation project often do not meet the expectations of the development organisations. The paper argues that in order to establish a constructive communication between the parties involved, it is not sufficient to record so-called local knowledge and to try to include it in the project designs. It is necessary to discuss basic assumptions of the people about their world and to establish a shared approach to problems carved out in this process. In order to achieve this, it may be necessary to scrutinise the concept ‘knowledge’.

Paper short abstract:

The paper offers the analysis of the impact of knowledge transfers in the field of environmental engineering, natural sciences and environmental conservation on the local ecology of knowledges which emerged among more-than-human communities in the wetlands of Narew National Park.

Paper long abstract:

The paper offers the analysis of the impact of knowledge transfers from the field of environmental engineering, natural sciences and environmental conservation into the situated worlds which emerged among more-than-human communities in the wetlands of Narew National Park. Tracing this process, which has its beginning in 1970 and continues to this day, is possible with use of Micha Rahder’s ecology of knowledges theoretical framework – a way to conduct ethnographic research sensitive to partial connections and multiplicity of emerging, interconnected, onto-epistemologically meaningful points of view. This framework is useful especially to follow relations between institutions, infrastructures, different kinds of inscriptions and interventions conducted by human and nonhuman agents. Research reveals that situated actions of the national park team, state representatives and third sector organisations serve to restore the conditions prior to drainage interventions in the area and are based on an acknowledgement of the benefits of maintaining a sustainable homeostasis of a self-regulating, isolated system. Nevertheless, the material-discursive practices of separation exist only in the intertwining of phenomena operating on vastly different scales: planetary processes, neoliberal values adapted in post-socialist Poland and local heritage of dealing with non-human world. Hence the conclusion, that nature protection forms associated with local history of knowledge transfer processes are methods of producing a fragile equilibrium within a troublesome static frame of closed landscape system in emergent, open worlds heading towards many uncertain futures in a time of climate crisis.