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Natural Resources and Rights Program
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A roppong fishing raft is anchored in the 5,000 foot depths of the Makassar Strait.
(© 1996, Charles Zerner)
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Often environmental management projects and conservation programs often do not sufficiently integrate concerns for the livelihoods, rights and cultures of local communities. Unequal power and access to resources controlled by global institutions, governments or businesses means that local communities are often the objects of policies and projects that undermine their livelihoods and lead to the degradation of their local environments.
In response to this problem, the Natural Resources and Rights Program (NRRP), spearheaded by Alliance Senior Fellow Charles Zerner, sought to integrate concerns for social justice, rights and culture with tropical conservation and environmental management, particularly in biologically diverse areas of developing countries. From 1993-1999, this program generated and disseminated information, promoted socially progressive environmental policy in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific, collaborated on scientific field research, and communicated lessons and insights to educators, donors, NGOs and policy makers.
Specific activities undertaken by NRRP include:
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collaboration with Indonesian government researchers to explore community-based resource management in the Maluku Islands and the Sangihe-Talaud islands of Eastern Indonesia; |
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collaboration with researchers at the University of California and the University of Georgia to produce an international conference and book, Representing Communities: Politics and Histories of Community-Based Natural Resource Management; |
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assistance to the University of the South Pacific to shape a "biodiversity prospecting" agreement that responds to the needs and rights of local cultural communities as well as the broader community of Fiji citizens and guidance with the development of Fiji's first environmental protection laws; |
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publication of several books and articles emphasizing the social justice, cultural, and community dimensions of conservation, including, Culture and the Question of Rights to Southeast Asian Environments: Forests, Coasts, and Seas (Duke University Press, forthcoming), and Sea Change: The Role of Culture, Community, and Property Rights in Managing Indonesia's Marine Fisheries, (Jakarta: Obor Foundation). |
Charles Zerner is currently completing another publication: People, Plants, and Justice: Social Justice and Resource Extraction in Tropical Developing Countries (Columbia University Press, in press).
Read articles about Natural Resources and Rights:
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