IASC News and Announcements

2011-02-11T16:22:00.000-05:00

The IASC blog & website have moved to:
www.iasc-commons.org

2010-10-21T14:19:00.000-04:00

Call for papers: ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE: LESSONS ACROSS NATURAL RESOURCE SECTOR

A University of Cape Town project led by the Environmental Evaluation Unit,

Department of Environmental & Geographical Science

In collaboration with researchers in the Departments of Law, Sociology, History, Botany, Economics and the Graduate School of Business

Contributions are invited towards a book entitled Environmental Governance for Social Justice: Lessons Across Natural Resource Sectors in Southern Africa.

Worldwide, natural resources are faced with increasing pressures from globalization, growing consumption levels, stark disparities between the rich and the poor, and contestation for use by different stakeholders. As a result, natural resources are threatened by over-exploitation, mismanagement, degradation and pollution. These threats have had a severe impact on local communities and indigenous people, many of whom are exposed to abject poverty and who rely on natural resources for food security, income and livelihoods. An increased understanding of the complex interactions and interdependencies that exist between natural and socio-economic systems has prompted calls for alternative and innovative approaches to managing natural resources. In some cases this has included shifts from a centralized, top-down approach to a more holistic and people-centred approach that embraces the concepts of social justice, participation, poverty alleviation and human rights. In other instances, however, peoples’ rights are trammelled and the poor often find themselves the victims of autocratic policy decisions. Issues of governance underpin many of these threats and pressures, meaning both the political dimension of policy formulation as well as the ’system of rules that shape the actions of social actors’ (in Treib et al, 2007, p. 3). Environmental governance is concerned not only with government regulation and law enforcement, but also with the ’political, institutional, and cultural frameworks through which diverse interests in natural and cultural resources are coordinated and controlled’ (Cronkleton et al, 2008, p. 1). An integral part of this picture is the interaction between private and public actors to address natural resource management problems.

Despite the plethora of research undertaken on environmental governance, research has traditionally been undertaken within specific natural resource sectors and by specific disciplines with limited joint analyses and sharing of knowledge and lessons learned across these sector studies. Yet a number of interesting parallels are emerging with regard to natural resource management across coastal and land-based sectors, including:

- the role played by government in regulating access to and use of natural resources,

- an emphasis on participatory approaches to resource management,

- influences and outcomes of different institutional models of governance, including devolution,

- influences of international and regional soft law instruments on governance approaches in Southern Africa,

- the role of customary law and indigenous knowledge systems in governance,

- governance changes that occur with the commercialization of natural resources,

- approaches towards compliance that move beyond reactive law enforcement,

- the evolving institutional landscape within communities as resources become more scarce and contested,

- conservation governance and the impacts of protected areas on livelihoods,

- identification and maintenance of alternative livelihoods as a means to address poverty in resource scarce and stressed areas,

- approaches towards securing equitable and fair benefit sharing,

- the influence of globalization, corporatization and market forces on the governance of natural resources, and

- governance approaches in a time of high volatility and rapid environmental and climate change.

Contributors are invited to prepare chapters relating to these themes – or to propose new themes - to form part of a book, to be published in 2012. This stems from a project initiated by the Environmental Evaluation Unit at the University of Cape Town, working in collaboration with researchers in various disciplines across the university. The project aims to consolidate and enhance intellectual understanding, knowledge and capacity regarding environmental governance in southern Africa through collaborative trans-disciplinary research across natural resource sectors and institutions. A key interest is to bring together expertise from different sectors and disciplines to critically analyze existing concepts and approaches to environmental governance and seek models of governance that uphold principles of equity, social justice and environmental sustainability.

The book will be edited by Associate Professor Merle Sowman, Dr Rachel Wynberg and Dr Maria Hauck, all of the University of Cape Town. The publisher has not yet been finalized, although several have expressed interest.

Potential contributors should submit a 300 word abstract by 15 November 2010. Those selected for inclusion in the book will be notified by 30 November 2010.

Authors of selected abstracts will be invited to prepare an extended abstract for presentation to a writer’s workshop in Cape Town in February 2011.

Authors should note the need for papers to be integrative in nature, drawing on lessons from a variety of sectors, disciplines and/or ecosystems. Although papers can include case study reviews and material, the requirement for cross-cutting analysis is highlighted, encouraging co-authorship across sectors if appropriate.

Only original and unpublished papers will be considered and manuscripts must be in English.

Submissions from nationals in Southern African countries are especially encouraged.

A multi-disciplinary Advisory Committee will be formed to review individual chapters based on their expertise.

Please submit abstracts to: Fahdelah.Hartley@uct.ac.za by 15 November

Additional information about the project is available from Associate Professor Merle

Sowman or Dr. Rachel Wynberg

2010-09-24T14:55:00.000-04:00

Shareable Magazine is Hiring Part-time Contract Editors (mountain view)

Date: 2010-09-21
Reply to: job-zvmwe-1966914496@craigslist.org

Shareable Magazine is Hiring Part-time Contract Editors http://shareable.net

Are you passionate about alternative economics, innovations in government, or the commons? Are you obsessed with new projects that help people share, manage resources, collaborate, make decisions, and learn together? Do you have domain experience one of the areas below combined with passion, integrity, reliability, writing talent, and great contacts in your field? Do you love collaborating with thoughtful people?

If so, then writing and editing for Shareable Magazine might be for you. We're looking for editors for the following channels:

WORK & ENTERPRISE:
Write about startups that help people share real world resources, the changing nature of work, new peer production methods, and shifts in the economy at large. Write useful how-to articles and guides that help people create a work life and an economy that's sustainable and fulfilling. Business reporting training or experience appreciated, but not mandatory. Key words: workplace democracy, product service systems, social enterprise, collaborative consumption, peer production, the dematerialization of the economy, work-life balance, entrepreneurship, local economy, Gen Y at work.
LINK: http://shareable.net/channel/work-enterprise

CIVICSYSTEM:
Write about how governments are becoming more shareable through new democratic processes, increased transparency, and other innovations that give citizens more power. Writing is a mix of news, how-tos, and useful guides. The goal is to increase awareness of and equip citizens with new innovations for government. Key words: Gov 2.0, participatory budgeting, citizen deliberative councils, open government data, fair elections.
LINK: http://shareable.net/channel/civicsystem

ECOSYSTEM:
Write about innovations in managing important physical commons like fisheries, forests, climate, water and more. Write useful how-tos, guides, and share news of the commons. Make the commons relevant to a general audience. Environmental reporting experience appreciated, but not mandatory. Keywords: social-ecological resilience, the commons, Elinor Ostrom, The Resilience Alliance, conservation, environment.
LINK: http://shareable.net/channel/ecosystem

Editors will also have the opportunity to foster online community, guest posts on other influential sites, invite others to write for their channel, and edit submitted pieces.

Considering talent from San Francisco Bay Area and beyond.

INSTRUCTIONS TO APPLY:
Reply to this ad with a less than one page e-mail that includes:

2-3 paragraphs summarizing why you're qualified and desire the work. Relevant domain experience important.

a link to an online resume like LinkedIn, but NO ATTACHMENTS, PDFs, PASSWORD PROTECTED GOOGLE DOCs, etc

links to three writing samples

please put this in the subject line: Applying for [Channel Name] Editor

the date you can start

Compensation: Pay is for approximately one day a week, competitive for nonprofits.
This is a part-time job.
This is a contract job.
This is at a non-profit organization.
OK to highlight this job opening for persons with disabilities
Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.
Please, no phone calls about this job!
Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

2010-04-05T14:08:00.000-04:00

Sustaining Commons: Sustaining our Future

IASC 2011 Second Announcement:
Deadline for Abstract submission extended to

15th April 2010!

Dr. Ostrom to address the plenary at IASC 2011!

We are very pleased to share with you that Dr. Elinor Ostrom, Founding President of IASC and 2009 Economics Nobel Laureate, has agreed to address the plenary at IASC 2011 in Hyderabad. Upon accepting our invitation to speak, Ostrom wrote, “I am looking forward to the meetings with considerable enthusiasm.”

Call for Abstracts:

Owing to a great amount of interest generated regards IASC 2011 from various prospective participants and in order to accommodate requests for extending the time for submission, the deadline for submission has now been extended till 15th April 2010.

For the first time, abstracts to the IASC Conference are being accepted through the online submission process. All interested participants are invited to submit abstracts for presentation of papers, posters, videos or for panel sessions, symposia or workshops focused on specific issues through the online conference system. Papers may address theory, policy, practical work, empirical research, describe case studies or any aspect of issues of commons listed below (indicative subthemes):

· The Commons, Poverty and Social Exclusion
· Governance of the Commons: Decentralization, Property Rights, Legal Framework, Structure and Organization
· The Commons: Theory, Analytics and Data
· Globalisation, Commercialization and the Commons
· Managing the Global Commons: Climate Change and other Challenges
· Managing Complex Commons (Lagoons, Protected Areas, Wetlands, Mountain Areas, Rangelands, Coastal Commons)
· New Commons (the New Global Commons – Digital Commons, Genetic Commons, Patents, Music, Literature etc)

Submission of Paper, Video and Poster abstracts

Making an online submission would require the author/s to follow the online submission system. All submissions must include the mandatory information as indicated in the online format. Should you face any specific problem related to the online submission process, do let us know at iasc2011@fes.org.in. Guidance on full paper, poster and video submission will be provided to authors on acceptance of abstracts.

For assistance on the submission process, visit:
http://iasc2011.fes.org.in/conference/index.php/IASC/index/pages/view/submissionguidelines

Paper Abstract Guidelines
Word Limit: 100-300 words. Identify the Conference Sub-Themes the abstract is relevant to(academic reviewers of your abstract will be assigned based on the sub-theme you indicate); provide a title for the abstract/paper; names and contact information for all contributing authors; 5 keywords (i.e. describing methods, region of study, etc). Note: Final paper should be between 6,000-10,000 words.

Poster Abstract Guidelines
Word Limit: 100-300 words. Identify the theme or provide a title for your poster; indicate if your poster will present a project, conceptual work, or results from an empirical study, etc. In your abstract, you may include key elements of the script of your poster.

Note: Practitioners are strongly encouraged to submit poster abstracts, and the profile of posters will be elevated at the IASC 2011 Conference, to successfully "bring a practitioner perspective to the Conference."

Video Abstract Guidelines
Word Limit 100-300 words. Indicate the title of the video, run-time of the video, original format of the video, equipment needs for showing the video, production credits, date the film was produced and description of its original purpose if not created for this Conference itself, the contact details for the corresponding presenter. The online process allows users to upload links to their videos as supplementary files along with their abstracts. Interested participants are requested to post hard copies of their videos to the mail address mentioned below:
Foundation for Ecological Security
PB No. 29, Anand - 388001, India
Tel: 02692-261402/261238/261239

Submission of Panel abstracts

Panel sessions
We encourage the submission of proposals for organizing panels focused on a specific theme or topic. A panel session may have 4-5 papers focused on a central theme. A total time of about an hour and a half is allocated to each panel presentation. It is up to the organizer of the panel to determine how to fill those hours (in terms of number of speakers, etc.). However, time for questions from the audience and discussion needs to be considered.

A panel submission would need an identified organizer/coordinator, an abstract summarizing the aims of the panel session and how each paper will contribute to the overall aim (abstracts should be a maximum of 500 words and include names and affiliations of the organizer and individual presenters) and planned outcomes (if any).

Authors of individual papers that constitute a particular panel are requested to make individual submissions into the online conference system as well, and enter a note stating that they are also part of a proposed panel for IASC2011, along with details of the Title and Panel Organizer of that particular panel/s in the space provided under "Comments to Co-chair" within the online abstract submission form.

Workshops, Symposia, Pre-Conference Workshops
We encourage a range of alternative activities such as workshops, symposia and pre-conference workshops as part of/build up to the Conference. Please note that the proposals for organizing workshops, symposia and pre-conference workshops would need to be presented as abstracts (of maximum 500 words) outlining the ideas and/or aims and emailed directly to iasc2011@fes.org.in

IMPORTANT DATES
· Call for Abstracts: December 14, 2009
· Abstract Submissions: February 1, 2010 to April 15, 2010 – Open Now
· Abstract Selections: May 31, 2010
· Early Registration: September 30, 2010
· Complete Paper Submissions: October 31, 2010

Contact:
Jagdeesh Rao Puppala, Conference Co-Chair
Foundation for Ecological Security
PB No. 29, Anand - 388001, India
Tel: (+91) 2692-261402 / 261238 / 261239
Email: iasc2011@fes.org.in
Website: http://iasc2011.fes.org.in/

2010-03-23T16:02:00.005-04:00

13th Biennial IASC Conference

Call for Panels

1. Customizing Commons: Methods for Diversifying Institutional Design
Coordinated by Bryan Bruns -- http://iasc2011.fes.org.in/customizing-commons-call-for-papers.pdf

2. Inside the natural resource bureaucracy: How does the internal organization of bureaucracies affect natural resource management?
Coordinated by Forrest Fleischman -- http://iasc2011.fes.org.in/IASCBureaucracyPanelProposal.pdf

3. Rural out-migration and resource dependent communities in a globalized world Coordinated by James Patrick Robson and Prateep Kumar Nayak-- http://iasc2011.fes.org.in/callforpaper.pdf

4. Call for Papers: IFRI and IFRI co-hosted panels for IASC 2011

As in years past, the International Forestry Resources and Institutions (IFRI) research program (www.umich.edu/~ifri) plans to organize several panels at the 2011 annual meeting of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC) in Hyderabad, India (10-14 January 2011; more information at http://iasc2011.fes.org.in/) . IFRI will co-host a number of panels with CIFOR (www.cifor.cgiar.org/), as well as with the IFLEA project based at the Center for Development Research at the University of Bonn (www.iflea.uni-bonn.de/index.shtml). We invite paper contributions on the eight panel themes listed below:

1. Inequality in Forest Commons

2. Understanding Commons Institutions and Interactions across Scales

3. Comparative research on forests and forest commons

4. Forest Policy Decentralization in East Africa: Institutional and Livelihoods Change in East African Forest Landscapes (IFRI-IFLEA co-hosted panel)

5. Dynamics of Natural Resource Policy Decentralization

6. Methods for measuring vulnerability and adaption (IFRI-CIFOR co-hosted panel)

7. Climate Change and Governance (IFRI-CIFOR co-hosted panel)

8. Property Rights and Tenure in Forest Commons (IFRI-CIFOR co-hosted panel)

Please visit our website regularly for updated information on IASC activities at: www.iascp.org

2009-12-18T09:51:00.005-05:00

IASC 2011 Call for Abstracts

Thirteenth Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of Commons (IASC)

January 10-14, 2011 Hyderabad, India

Hosted by the Foundation for Ecological Security

Chaired by: Mr. Nitin Desai, Co-Chair: Jagdeesh Puppala

http://iasc2011.fes.org.in/

Theme: Sustaining Commons: Sustaining our Future

The Conference will provide opportunities for academics, researchers and practitioners to exchange ideas, knowledge and experience. Multiple forms of participation are envisaged at this global meeting. These include:

·         Paper presentations
·         Thematic panels
·         Poster presentations
·         Video presentations
·         Pre-Conference workshops
·         Practitioners’ Colloquium
·         Young researcher sessions
·         Exhibitions

SUB-THEMES

The Conference will deal with physical common resources such as Forests, Grazing resources, Protected Areas, Water Resources, Fisheries, Coastal Commons, Lagoon Commons, Irrigation Systems, Livestock and Commons as well as New Commons such as Information Commons, Cultural Commons, Genetic Resources, Patents, Climate, etc.

The above subjects would be captured under the following sub-themes:

The Commons, Poverty and Social Exclusion;
Governance of the Commons: Decentralization, Property Rights, Legal Framework, Structure and Organization;
The Commons: Theory, Analytics and Data;
Globalisation, Commercialisation and the Commons;
Managing the Global Commons: Climate Change and other Challenges;
Managing Complex Commons (Lagoons, Protected Areas, Wetlands, Mountain Areas, Rangelands, Coastal Commons);
New Commons (Digital Commons, Genetic Commons, Patents, Music, Literature etc);

Please note that the papers may cut across more than one of the seven sub-themes. The illustrative sub-theme questions and topics below are intended to help contributors and are in no way binding. For more information on the subthemes visit the conference website: http://iasc2011.fes.org.in/

IMPORTANT DATES

· March 31^st 2010: Deadline for submission of paper, panel and poster proposals
· September 30^th 2010: Deadline for submission of papers
· August 1^st 2010: Early registration deadline (tentative)

GUIDELINES FOR THE SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS

We invite anyone interested or working on the issues relating to Commons to participate in the Conference. We encourage scholars and practitioners to submit abstracts for panels, individual papers, poster and videos. The panels, papers, poster and video abstracts should be submitted to the Conference Committee through the online submission process.

2009-11-18T09:14:00.000-05:00

Job Vacancy Announcement

Two Assistant or Associate Professors

The Arizona State University, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, home to the anthropology program at ASU, invites applications for two sociocultural anthropology positions available at the assistant or associate professor level. We are seeking individuals whose research focuses on human-environment dynamics. ASU strongly encourages excellence in scholarship and teaching that transcends traditional subdisciplinary and disciplinary boundaries.

We are particularly interested in candidates who can articulate the rigorous ethnographic study of local peoples, cultures, and the environment with other research strengths at the School of Human Evolution and Social Change and ASU, such as urbanization, health, globalization, migration, environmental and social justice, technology and society, environmental social science, institutions, and social complexity.

Minimum qualifications include a Ph.D. in anthropology or a closely related discipline; research interests in environmental anthropology, broadly construed; and an ability to contribute to undergraduate and graduate instruction in sociocultural anthropology. Preferred qualifications include an active ethnographic research program that involves students and an ability to contribute to the school’s new transdisciplinary social science-based degree programs, such as environmental social science, in addition to the anthropology degree programs. Qualifications that are required for applicants at the associate professor level and preferred for applicants at the assistant professor level include a demonstrated record of: scholarly achievement, ability to obtain external funding, leadership in professional activities, and teaching effectiveness.

Review of applications will begin on January 8, 2010 and will continue weekly until the search is closed. Applicants must apply online at http://academicjobsonline.org and include a letter of application that includes a statement of professional interests and goals, a statement of teaching philosophy, curriculum vitae, and the names and email addresses of three references. Please make sure your name appears in each uploaded file name. You may address your letter to Professor James F. Eder, Search Committee Chair.

Information about the School can be found at http://shesc.asu.edu. A background check is required for employment. Arizona State University is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer committed to excellence through diversity. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply. See https://www.asu.edu/titleIX/

2009-11-11T14:16:00.002-05:00

Call for Papers on Climate Vulnerability and Adaptation

Arun Agrawal, Maria Lemos, Benjamin Orlove, Jesse Ribot

Workshops of ICARUS

The Initiative for Climate Adaptation Research and Understanding through the Social Sciences

We invite your participation in two linked ICARUS workshops on vulnerability and adaptation. The first will be on ‘Climate Vulnerability and Adaptation: Theory and Cases’, to be held 11-13 February 2010 at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. The second will be on ‘Climate Vulnerability and Adaptation: Methods and Cases’, and will be held at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, from 3-5 April 2010.

These workshops follow an initial planning meeting held at SNRE at the University of Michigan in Winter 2009. They are a part of a series of meetings sponsored by the newly established ‘Initiative for Climate Adaptation Research and Understanding through the Social Sciences’ – ICARUS. ICARUS intends to further the conversation and research on the subjects of climate vulnerability and adaptation. We are particularly interested to draw young scholars and advanced graduate students into the discussion, and welcome proposals to write and present theoretical and case-based papers at the workshops. A subset of papers presented at the first workshop will be invited for discussion at the second meeting after they have been revised by their authors in consultation with advanced scholars working on climate change.

Vulnerability and adaptation have emerged as key concepts in the social science literature on climate change. Both concepts have long inter-linked histories. Scholars of development and of crisis working on acute disasters and slowly unfolding hunger, famine and dislocation have contributed insights on the meanings and drivers of vulnerability. Development of systematic ideas about adaptation continues to occur in a variety of fields – in both the ecological and the social sciences. The ways these writings are applicable to understanding and intervening in climate-related stress, crisis and response remains a vigorous arena of discussion. In recent years there have been many calls (by IPCC, NSF, Stern Review and others) for greater social science engagement in climate research. ICARUS responds to these calls.

At the first we propose to hold several panels on “Theorizing Vulnerability and Adaptation” to help improve the understanding of these two inter-related concepts, identify theoretical frontiers, and to build frameworks and approaches that move beyond what is currently available. Panels will also feature empirical cases that help interrogate and illuminate these concepts. Some of the major themes around which we expect papers include:

Frameworks for understanding vulnerability and adaptation,
Forms, causes, and outcomes of vulnerability and adaptation,
Contextual conditions that affect vulnerability or the prospects for successful adaptation, with a particular focus on local particularities,
Politics, policies and policy processes relevant to vulnerability and adaptation,
Types of private and civic action to reduce vulnerability and support adaptation.

Selected papers from the workshops will be brought together to produce one or more edited volumes and/or special issues of journals. Coherent groupings of papers will also be invited to participate in a series of ICARUS panels at the Second International Conference on Climate, Sustainability and Development in Semi-arid Regions (ICID), a Rio+20 preparatory meeting focusing on climate and vulnerability issues to be held in Fortaleza, Brazil 16 to 20 August 2010.

The ICARUS workshops are sponsored by the Social Dimensions of Environmental Policy (SDEP) Initiative of the Department of Geography, School of Earth Society, and Environment and Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois and the International Forestry Resources and Institutions research initiative (IFRI) and the School of Natural Resources and Environment (SNRE) of the University of Michigan. The workshop organizers have a small pool of funds to support participation in the two ICARUS meetings at University of Illinois and University of Michigan. Support will also be available from the ICID organizing committee for participation in the ICID 2010 conference.

Those interested in participating in the workshop and contributing papers on theories, frameworks, and empirical applications of the concepts of vulnerability and adaptation should submit their title, 150 word abstract, and contact information at the ICARUS website. For clarifications, contact icarus@icarus.info. Additional information about the workshops will be circulated shortly, and will also become available at the ICARUS website. Web Page: http://www.icarus.info/registration-instructions/ E-Mail: icarus@icarus.info

2009-10-19T11:38:00.001-04:00

Visiting Professor Position

The Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity at Arizona State University has a visiting professorship program for scholars employed in non-OECD countries and Mexico to spend a sabbatical at the center. Each financial year the program will support one 12 month visit or two 6 month visits with a stipend of up to $40,000 on an annual basis. This will allow the visitor to stay at the center and interact with faculty and students and participate with the broader community of ASU. To be considered for this program, the visiting professor should:

• have a regular professor appointment or equivalent in a non-OECD country or of Mexico;
• have an independent research agenda that overlaps with the aims of the center and;
• be willing to deliver a number of seminars during their stay.

This position is aimed at those on sabbatical leave who are interested in spending it at ASU within the period July 1 2010 – June 30 2011. To apply for this program applications must include the following:

• a most recent CV;
• one or more relevant publications and;
• names and addresses of referees.

Proposals should be submitted under one cover via email to Marco.Janssen@asu.edu by March 1, 2010. Incomplete applications will not be evaluated.

2009-10-15T14:46:00.002-04:00

Congratulations to Elinor Ostrom from IASC President Ruth Meinzen-Dick

Monday’s news of Elinor Ostrom winning the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences is still reverberating, causing much excitement. In awarding the prize, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences noted it is "for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons". It is so encouraging to see the explicit recognition, by the economics profession, of her landmark studies in the factors that encourage cooperation.

Those who have been privileged to work with her know how richly deserved this recognition is. Those who are not familiar with her work, who still believe in the inevitability of Garrett Hardin’s “tragedy of the commons” have a treat in store, discovering her research. She is a brilliant scholar who can still communicate her ideas to a wide audience, an inspiring teacher and generous colleague.

I am fortunate to be in the former group. I have been following her work on cooperation for managing water, forests, and other shared resources (even the internet!) for more than 20 years. She was the founding President of the International Association for Study of the Commons (IASC), instrumental in building an organization that brings together researchers and practitioners to build understanding and improve institutions for the management of resources that are (or could be) held or used collectively by communities in developing or developed countries. I’m privileged to be the current President of IASC, able to build on the foundations of her work and that of hundreds of others who are helping to learn how to craft institutions to govern the commons effectively.

From this vantage point, let me point out two aspects of Prof. Ostrom’s work that are noteworthy, especially for a Nobel Laureate in Economics Sciences. The first is that her work is grounded in empirical observations. She draws on theory, but also questions the underlying assumptions and tests them against the actual behavior of people and institutions. She looks for the commonalities—and differences—in the way people relate to different types of resources, in developing countries as well as the US and other industrialized countries, using case studies, structured comparable data collection across sites, and experimental games, both in the lab and in the field.

The second significant aspect of her work is that she is transcends disciplines. A political scientist who wins the highest prize in economics, she works with the whole range of social scientists, but also with foresters, ecologists, mathematicians, … the list goes on. She learns from each discipline, and offers conceptual frameworks (notably the Institutional Analysis and Design, or IAD framework) that help integrate knowledge and insights. And more importantly, the combination of perspectives helps to address important practical problems of resource management and crafting institutions that are sustainable and equitable.

For those who want to learn more, a list of her key publications that are available free online is at www.iasc-commmons.org . Over 100 of her online articles are also available in the Digital Library of the Commons at http://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc/browse?value=Ostrom%2C+Elinor&type=author

See what others thought of her award:

* Elinor Ostrom and the Future of Economics (Umair Haque, Harvard Business)
* Elinor Ostrom breaks the Nobel mould (Kevin Gallagher, Guardian)
* Governing the Commons (Vernon Smith, Forbes)

(This blog posting is copublished with the International Food Policy Research Institute www.ifpri.org)

2009-10-12T14:33:00.001-04:00

Press Conference of Elinor Ostrom named Nobel laureate

http://www.broadcast.iu.edu/

2009-10-12T14:28:00.001-04:00

Elinor Ostrom wins Nobel Prize in Economics

Elinor (Lin) Ostrom, a past president, founding member, and active inspiration to the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC) has been selected as a recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. In awarding the prize, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences noted it is "for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons".

“Many natural resources, such as fish stocks, pastures, woods, lakes, and groundwater basins are managed as common property. That is, many users have access to the resource in question. If we want to halt the degradation of our natural environment and prevent a repetition of the many collapses of natural‐resource stocks experienced in the past, we should learn from the successes and failures of common‐property regimes. Ostrom’s work teaches us novel lessons about the deep mechanisms that sustain cooperation in human societies.”

The theme of the award is Economic governance: the organization of cooperation.

Prof. Ostrom shares the award with Oliver E. Williamson "for his analysis of economic governance, especially the boundaries of the firm"

The International Association for the Study of the Commons DEEPLY congratulates Dr. Ostrom for this well‐deserved recognition of her research on “Governing the Commons”. And want to let her know how privileged and happy we feel to have her as a mentor and colleague at IASC.

We encourage anyone interested in more information to read the prize committee’s excellent overviews of the contributions of these new laureates, with versions for the general public at

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2009/info.pdf

and for the scientific community at

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2009/ecoadv09.pdf.

2009-09-09T10:08:00.002-04:00

International Association for the Study of the Commons USA Regional Meeting
Hosted by the Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity

September 30 - October 2, 2010
Arizona State University
Tempe, Arizona, USA

Theme: Capturing the Complexity of the Commons

The regional meeting of the US branch of the IASC will have as its theme “capturing the complexity of the commons” reflecting the increasing efforts to understand commons over time at multiple levels of scale. The goal is to foster more discussion and collaboration especially among US researchers working on commons from an interdisciplinary point of view. We invite scholars from the natural and social sciences as well as humanities and arts.

The conference is interdisciplinary and open to any individual interested in common-pool resources and common property issues. It is aimed at encouraging the discussion on the conference topics among researchers and practitioners living in US or elsewhere. This should result in a stronger research network and an enhanced exchange of experiences primarily among US researchers and students working on the Commons and also with scholars elsewhere.

The conference is organized in 3 subthemes:

Complexity
This theme address the increasing focus of commons research on cases with historical depth, multiple resources and resource uses, and multiple levels of social and ecological processes. Topics included in this subtheme are the resilience of common pool resources, institutional learning and adaptation, and transboundary commons and conflicts.

New Commons
This theme includes commons that can be grouped in four broad classes: the urban commons, the virtual commons, the environmental services and public health. Research on those topics using conceptual tools designed for the study of commons has strongly increased in the last few years. Moreover, many of those commons are, at present, crucial for the welfare of human beings as a whole.

Multiple Methods to Study the Commons
This theme addresses the methodological contributions to study the commons including ethnographic case studies, collaborative field studies, experiments, formal modeling and participatory processes. Besides contributions of the individual methodologies we recognize the benefits of using multiple methods to address the same research questions.

We welcome proposals for panels, workshops, and individual papers relating to the three subthemes of the conference:

Panels and Workshops. Submit a proposal to organize a 1.5 hour concurrent panel session (3 to 4 speakers and session chair) or workshop (a practically-oriented session with 2 or 3 speakers, session facilitator, and sufficient time for audience questions). Proposals include an abstract of the goal and topic of the session (maximum of 350 words), include names and affiliations of the organizer and individual presenters, and provide abstracts for the individual papers (maximum 250 words).
Proposals for panels and workshops are due April 1, 2010.

Individual Papers. Submit an abstract to give a 20-minute oral presentation. Abstracts should be a maximum of 250 words. Include the name, title and affiliation of each author. Abstracts will be peer reviewed and are due April 1, 2010. Confirmation of acceptance of the abstract will be sent by May 1, 2010. Final papers are due September 1, 2010 (details will be sent to authors upon abstract acceptance).

Conference Proceedings. All abstracts and submitted papers will be made available online and provided to the. All conference paper submissions will be peer reviewed and a selected of the papers will be considered for a special issue of the International Journal of the Commons.

Submission of Abstracts. All abstracts must be submitted electronically in Word, text, or pdf format. Abstracts should be submitted via the conference website.

2009-07-13T11:12:00.001-04:00

Fulbright Commission- Politecnico of Turin, Italy
RESEARCH LECTURESHIP IN
POLICIES AND TOOLS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY
AT THE POLITECNICO DI TORINO
A.Y. 2010 – 2011

Information

According to the agreement, signed in 2008 by the Politecnico of Turin and the Fulbright Commission, a Fulbright Distinguished Senior Lecturer will be selected for a six months period of teaching and research at the Politecnico in academic year 2010-11 (see other information at: http://www.fulbright.it/publicity/2010-11/lectureships/Polito_0305.pdf).
Teaching activities will involve a Module in “Policies and Tools for Environmental Sustainability” within the Master in Pianificazione territoriale, urbanistica e paesaggistico-ambientale (Territorial, Urban, Landscape and Environmental Planning), in the second Facoltà di Architettura (School of Architecture), while research activities will be developed in the Dipartimento Interateneo Territorio (DITER).
Both activities are related to the issue of sustainable development, with a particular focus on public policies and on planning and evaluation tools through which to attain the environmental sustainability in territorial innovation and transformation processes. This approach includes also subjects such as the international cooperation for nature and landscape conservation, and protected areas management.
These issues resume, with a broader trans-scale attention, some of those which are the focus of the teaching activity of a Fulbright Distinguished Chair on “International Environmental Policies and Legislation” which has been developed in the BA in Pianificazione territoriale, urbanistica e ambientale (Territorial, Urban, Landscape and Environmental Planning), each year since 2002. This teaching experience (held in English) has involved seven diverse American teachers and has been greatly appreciated by the students.
Now, this past experience scope should be broadened taking into account the growing political and cultural interest for the global changes affecting not only the climate conditions and their physical effects, but also the economic, social and cultural processes and the planning and governance perspectives. This implies scientific comparisons, exchanges and interactions between the most meaningful American and European (and particularly Italian) experiences.
Teaching activities can also include lectures and seminars in the PhD address in “Territorial Planning and Local Development”, organised by DITER within the Politecnico PhD Course “Environment and Territory”.

In the light of the past experience, it seems important to associate to the teaching activity the research one. Such research activity can be linked to the research activities theme developed within DITER, which will host the Fulbright Lecturer.
DITER was born at the beginning of the ‘80s from a joint initiative of geographers, economists, sociologists, planners and architects partly belonging to the University of Turin, partly to the Politecnico, and it is the only inter-universities Department still existing in Italy.
Research activities are carried out by means of research Centres and groups.
DITER hosts three Research Centres:
o ECD-NPP, European Centre of Documentation on Nature Parks Planning
o EU-POLIS Centre for Research and Documentation on European and Mediterranean Urban Systems
o CCTM – Third World City Centre

The activity of these Centres and of other research groups operating in DITER is focused on a wide range of themes, such as human and economic geography, urban and regional governance and planning, environment and landscape policies and planning, spatial development and European policies, cooperation and planning in developing countries, sustainability and assessment of plans and programmes.
Each of the above Centres and the other research groups has important relationships with International Associations and Networks, such as, for instance, the IUCN (the World Conservation Union) and UNISCAPE (European Network of Universities for the Implementation of the European Landscape Convention). Such relationships could make easier for the incoming lecturer to interact with the national and international networks.

DITER, where the Lecturer will have his office, is located in the Castle of Valentino, on the river Po, just in the historic centre of Turin, the old seat of Politecnico since the middle of the 19th century and one of the main seats of the Savoy Court since the 17th century (for more information about Turin and Politecnico see http://www.fulbright.it/publicity/2010-11/lectureships/Polito_0305.pdf).

2009-06-15T15:05:00.001-04:00

Seeking Virtual Presenters for Participation Camp: Changing the Rules, June 27-28

If you, or someone that you know, might be interested in being a virtual presenter at the following event, please let us know.

Participation Camp: CHANGE THE RULES! – seeking virtual presenters and/or collaborators

Democracy is the game where we can change the rules together! How do we make this game more serious, more fair and more fun? Please let us know if you are interested in convening a virtual session at this event on a topic of your choice, or collaborating with us in some way!

Participation Camp, Change the Rules, in New York on June 27-28, will provide the spark for an explosion of sharing, experimentation and collaboration around this question. Participants may attend a wide range of physical and virtual presentations (or deliver one themselves), compete in a conference wide web participation game called Nomic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomic), or roll up their sleeves in a hands on workshop. For preliminary details see: http://participationcamp.org/.

If you might be interested in collaborating with us, please check out our wiki at: http://barcamp.pbworks.com/ParticipationCamp

What Makes Change The Rules Different?

Virtual/Physical Hybrid Structure: One particular feature of this event is that we will be bridging the physical and virtual worlds. We will be opening up virtual spaces in advance of the actual session so as to engage virtual participants in the project. We will also have a room where virtual presenters can connect with those at the conference.

Open Space/Defined Hybrid Structure: We will be using Open Space principles for the creation of some of the sessions, but will also be seeking out the involvement of those that would like to actively
engage participants on a specific topic. If there is an issue or a question that you would like to discuss at this event, please let us know!

Play Game: We will be playing the game, Nomic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomic). This is a game that is designed to teach participants, by virtue of their experience, some of the interesting features of governance, democracy, rule making, rule following, collaboration etc.

Pre-Session Dialogue: We will open SkypeChat spaces that enable those that are interested in the PCamp theme(s) to connect with each other, exchange ideas, plan potential sessions etc.

Sustain Dialogue: Due to the fact that virtual environments are accessible from anywhere, it becomes possible for participants to continue their conversations with others after the conclusion of the
session. This makes it possible for them to continue to explore the ideas and projects that they are interested in, as well as to cultivate the relationships with those that they have connected with.
We hate the fact that what happens when events end is that there is little or no follow up!

Questions/Themes

Here are a few questions that we have been thinking about. Are there any such questions that are of interest to you, and around which you might be interested in organizing a virtual session?
• What, generally speaking, is the role that technology can play in fostering citizen engagement?
• What are the best tools for creating the right frameworks for fostering citizen engagement?
• What are the particular challenges of using open, collaborative, platforms?
• What sorts of business models are consistent with ‘open collaboration’? How can organizations that subscribe to these principles also generate revenue?
• How do we utilize technology to mobilize the youth vote?

Process

On June 20th, we will create a chat space/conversation in Skype to which we will invite all those that are interested in participating in an open dialogue on issues relating to open governance. This chat space will allow you the opportunity to:
• Introduce yourself and your project to others that are like minded
• Connect with others that might be interested in your project or might have interesting project ideas.
• Learn, via participation, about how open, collaborative, patterns of interaction work
• Learn, via participation, how groups self organize Virtual Tools

We will be using free online tools that are easily accessible by any participant, such as:

Drop.io: We will utilize drop.io (www.drop.io) in order to organize and share files.
Google Documents: will be used for the joint authoring of documents.
SkypeChat: Will provide a open space where people can start the dialogue, network and keep the discussion going.
Etherpad: for notetaking during sessions.
Twitter: as a channel to the outside to integrate other interested parties.

Stephan Dohrn

2009-05-05T15:03:00.004-04:00

IASC Membership Survey

Dear IASC Member,

Inorder to encourage the exchange of knowledge and experience between our members, we have been working for the past year on our membership strategy. To make you membership in the IASC community as useful and enjoyable as possible we need you to provide us with feedback on your personal experience and expectations. Therefore we kindly request that you fill out a survery. Your answers are very valuable for the design of our new membership strategy and the future of the IASC.

You can fill out the survery online by clicking the following link:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=ckJqN0lJajR3bGxvSU9Dem8xVUY3cFE6MA.

We will analyze results by May 19th, so please send use your reply before that.

We appreciate your time and suggestion. If you have additional ideas feel free to share them with us by sending an e-mail to Luz Aliette Hernandez at iasc@iasc-commons.org.

Also, please remember to renew your membership registration for the period of July 2009-June 2010 through the member's link:

https://www.regonline.com/Renewal.aspx?EventId=86527. There you can also check your membership fee record at the link "View my details" that appears after you enter your personal information.

Thank you for your participation,

The IASC Secretariat

2009-04-27T15:46:00.000-04:00

Invitation to a Virtual Real-time Collaboration Workshop

What tools and principles do we need to help change to unfold? Social and technological development is a means for better organizations, and a better world.

Please join us for a global of trial using Open Space principles to convene and connect participants from around the world.

When: Saturday, 9 May, 2009
Time: 14.00-17.00 GMT (please check your local time here)

Cost: Free

For more information and to register: http://www.change-management-blog.com/2009/03/real-time-virtual-collaboration.html

2009-03-19T10:26:00.001-04:00

International Conference: Towards Knowledge Democracy
25-27 August 2009

I would like to draw you attention to the forthcoming International Conference "Towards Knowledge Democracy", which will be held in Leiden, The Netherlands, on 25-27 August 2009. http://knowledgedemocracy/nl

Background information: "This conference offers you a unique opportunity to share your visions and experiences on how to deal with the challenges and possibilities that occur on the interface between science, politics, society and the media. The ability to handle these boundary issues is essential in our world where knowledge becomes increasingly democratised. An international audience consisting of scientists, politicians, government officials, media professionals, societal organisations and other interested parties will convene in Leiden to exchange ideas. We expect hundreds of visitors and over a hundred keynote and panel speakers to discuss their views during this three-day event."

Call for papers here: http://www.knowledgedemocracy.nl/files_content/CALL_FOR_PAPERS_TKDpdf

Deadline for submission of abstacts 1 May 2009.

Best wishes - and apologies for cross posting.
Sarah Cummings

Context, international cooperation
Cornelis Houtmanstraat 15
3572 LT Utrecht
The Netherlands
mail: sc@developmenttraining.org
www.developmenttraining.org
www.civicdrievenchange.org

www.ikmemergent.net
http://thegiraffe.wordpress.com
www.km4dev.org/journal

2009-02-13T09:49:00.000-05:00

Call for Papers

SYMPOSIUM

Decentralization, Power & Tenure Rights of Forest-Dependent People

Dahod, Gujarat, India; 27-28 October 2009

Wageningen University (the Netherlands) and the Sadguru Foundation (India) will jointly host a symposium ‘Decentralization, Power and Tenure Rights of Forest-Dependent People’ at Dahod, Gujarat, India on 27-28 October 2009. An optional one-day field visit will be arranged on 29 October 2009.

Objective - The main aim of the symposium is to share local, national and international experiences of decentralization reforms and forest tenure rights in relation to the political position of forestdependent indigenous peoples and pastoralists.

Symposium - Key identified thematic issues for discussions are:

Decentralization Reforms
Decentralized forest management reforms recognize new types of institutions. In practice, what kinds of institutions are chosen and why? Are the local institutions supportive towards marginalized groups? Do marginalized groups have a say in choosing the ‘right’ local institution?

Politics of Power
Different forms of power are devolved to different types of institutions through decentralized forestry. Which kinds of powers are transferred to local authorities? Who are the new authorities? Does devolving power to local authority means empowerment of indigenous peoples and women?

Forest Tenure Rights
Statutory laws are increasingly recognizing forest tenure rights of the indigenous peoples. To what extent do international instruments and institutions influence national and local forest governance? Is the state ‘recognition’ of forest tenure rights conducive to the reduction of rural
poverty?

Abstract - The paper should address one or more of the above identified three thematic issues based on empirical and/or theoretical research.

Abstracts should include title, author(s), institutional affiliation, full contact address, telephone number and a summary (max 250 words) of the paper with four keywords. Please email the abstract as an attachment to Purabi Bose (purabi.bose@wur.nl) before 10 April 2009. Please state “symposium abstract/your last name” in the email subject line. We will notify acceptance of the abstract via email by 30 April 2009.

Participants - We encourage participants from multidisciplinary background including international and national researchers, academics, postgraduate students, policymakers, legal experts, NGO members, government officers.

Language - English is the symposium language.

Programme - Two-day interactive symposium will have keynote lectures, selected paper presentations, panel discussion, and an openforum focussed debate. The confirmed programme will be available by September 2009.

Venue - Sadguru Foundation, Chosala, Dahod district, Gujarat, India.

Being hosted in a semiarid, tribal district bordering Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh states, the symposium presents an opportunity to explore what future holds for some of India's poorest forest-dependent tribal communities.

Dahod is directly connected to Mumbai (540km/9hrs) and Delhi (840km/12hrs) by Indian railways. The nearest airports are in Ahmedabad and Vadodara city of Gujarat. By road: bus service is available from Ahmedabad (200km) and Vadodara (150km).
Check venue details at www.nmsadguru.org/FacilitiesAvailable.html and general information about Dahod at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahod

Important Dates - Abstract submission -- 10 April 2009
Acceptance of abstract -- 30 April 2009
Registration fees and paper submission -- 15 September 2009
Final programme & Keynote speakers -- 30 September 2009
Symposium -- 27-28 October 2009
Fieldtrip (optional) -- 29 October 2009

Registration - A nominal participation fee of Rs.2000 is to be paid by 15 September 2009. To encourage participation of PhD students and women from developing countries, the fee is further relaxed to Rs.1000. The fee includes presymposium proceedings, twinsharing accommodation for one night at the venue, and meals. The fees exclude all other expenses like travel, extra days of lodging/boarding, and field trip. All registrations will be confirmed on the receipt of fees.

Mode of Payment - Indian Participants: Kindly send demand draft in favour of “N. M. Sadguru Water and Development Foundation” together with a covering letter (including full name, institutional affiliation, position, address, telephone, email) to Harnath Jagawat, Director, Sadguru Foundation, Post Box 71, Dahod 389171, Gujarat, India.

International Participants: Through bank transfers, kind contact symposium secretariat.

For any further information, to register your participation, or to cosponsor the symposium, please contact the Symposium Secretariat preferably by email at:

Wageningen University, the Netherlands
Purabi Bose
Email: purabi.bose@wur.nl

Sadguru Foundation, India
Harnath Jagawat
Email: nmsadguru@yahoo.com

2008-12-15T10:24:00.000-05:00

Call for Papers

WATER POLICY DYNAMICS IN STATE-CENTRIC REGIMES

Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), defined by the Global Water Partnership as “a process which promotes the co-ordinated development and management of water, land and related resources, in order to maximize the resultant economic and social welfare in an equitable manner without compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems,” (GWP TAC 2000) is a concept that has gained international attention since water experts and advocates worldwide convened and agreed upon the Dublin Principles in preparation for the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio deJaneiro.

The Dublin Principles promote awareness-raising among policy makers and the general public, taking decisions at the lowest appropriate level, full public consultation and involvement of users in planning and implementation of projects, empowering women to participate in water resources programs in self-defined ways, and recognizing the basic right of human beings to have affordable access to clean water and sanitation. The concept of IWRM that came forward from these principles has been understood as having normative and strategic value for providing a framework to achieve sustainable resource management, which in turn can be operationalized through different types of approaches. Nonetheless, at the center of IWRM’s strongly normative global discourse is an emphasis upon distinctly society-centric assumptions of how governance is carried out within a nation-state (Mollinga 2008).

Society-centric theories of the state rely on a number of assumptions: liberal individual-rights and the protection of those rights; the competition of individuals maximizing their self-interest as a driving economic and social force; and the neutral role of the state in regulating the free market to coordinate the allocation of resources, and in arbitrating between competing forces in society to achieve the common good. Given these assumptions concerning the relationship between government and society, any given policy can be traced back to demands placed upon the government by competing interest groups within the national political system – the source of authority for policy formulation inherently comes from within society.

The society-centric assumptions upon which IWRM policies tend to be based can serve as a methodological challenge within states where there is an empirical reality of state-centric processes. In such polities, the state has some level of autonomy from social and economic forces, and it is assumed to not be neutral in its relationships with organized interests. As such, any given policy can be traced to the active role of government officials seeking to maximize their individual economic welfare and power or to the constraining role of the state’s organizational structure. State-centric theories of the state see the state as an independent variable in explaining political and social events.

Since the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002, there has been a push for all countries to adopt policies promoting IWRM. Authoritarian countries are obviously state-centric in their approach. A number of new democracies that have arisen since the end of the Cold War to satisfy domestic and donor pressure have established political hybrids, which Ottoway (2003) calls semi-authoritarian states. These regimes have deliberately combined the rhetoric of liberal democracy while allowing for little real political competition for power. Bell et al (1995) also discuss the phenomenon of Asian democratization as being “illiberal” in that these countries have promoted a non-neutral understanding of the state, with a technocracy managing the developing state as a corporate enterprise, while maintaining control over public space and civil society. Zakaria (1997, 2003) built upon this discussion, broadening its application outside of the Asian context by differentiating constitutional liberty (the protection of individual rights through a legal system that cannot be arbitrarily manipulated by government) from democracy (open, free, and fair elections). Many new democracies, he points out, have promoted the latter without developing the former, defining them as “illiberal democracies.”

A number of authoritarian and semi-authoritarian/illiberal-democratic nations have adopted institutional reforms within their water resources sectors. Such countries as China, Cuba, Egypt, Kyrgistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Vietnam, and Uganda have been recognized for instituting national policies, strategies, and laws for water resources development and management, but are nonetheless resistant to fully embracing the society-centric aspects of IWRM reforms. In this Call for Papers, we are seeking to make sense of processes involved in authoritarian regimes with respect to water reforms, drawing from a broad set of cases. As such, we seek not to solve the issue, but rather to open up discussion and explore findings to-date for further analytic development. We are interested in historically and geographically contextualized case studies employing the following types of analysis:

• Actor-oriented analyses (Long and Van der Ploeg 1994) exploring the processes of state-centric regimes in adopting and/or implementing water (including IWRM) policies. This can involve an analysis of bureaucracy or leadership to understand how policy ideas are distilled and how decisions are made in a closed policy regime, bringing light to the policy process and structure-agency issues embedded in decision-making. Such an account of how the normative ideas of IWRM arrive, translate, and are carried out in the technocratic engineering-oriented water bureaucracies of closed regimes greatly informs the discussion.

• Given that the state is not a distinctive actor nor an entity in itself, but rather can be considered to be an ideological project (Abrams 1988), accounting for the resources, strategies, and limitations of non-state actors actively interested in promoting society-centric water policy processes (including IWRM), and their respective experiences and responses to the state-centric structures of governance aids in understanding the dynamics of the relationship between state and society in authoritarian and semi-authoritarian regimes.

In discussing a set of such cases and the questions they present, we would like embark on developing a new vocabulary as well as an innovative set of ideas concerning how the analysis of water policy dynamics can be undertaken in state-centric water policy regimes, as frameworks incorporating society-centric assumptions seem to have clear limits.

The timeline for this Call for Papers is as follows:

Timeline

January 20, 2009: Deadline for submission of abstracts of papers. Abstracts should be submitted to Anjali Bhat at abhat@uni-bonn.de.

February 1, 2009: Selected authors invited to submit papers

March 24-25, 2009: Workshop on Water Policy, IWRM and Authoritarian Regimes
For enquiries or further details, please contact the Workshop organizers.
Peter P. Mollinga, pmollinga@uni-bonn.de
Anjali Bhat, abhat@uni-bonn.de
ZEF (Center for Development Research)
University of Bonn, Germany

References

Abrams, Philip. 1988. “Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State (1977)” Journal of Historical Sociology, 1(1): 58-89.

Belll, Daniel A., David Brown, Kanishka Jayasuriya, and David M. Jones. 1995. Towards Illiberal Democracy in Pacific Asia. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Grindle, Merilee S. 1989. “The New Political Economy: Positive Economics and Negative Politics. Policy, Planning and Research Working Papers. WPS 304. Washington, DC: The World Bank.

GWP TAC. 2000. “Integrated Water Resources Management.” Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) Background Papers No. 4. Stockholm, Sweden: Global Water Partnership.

Long, Norman and Jan Douwe van der Ploeg. 1994. “Heterogeneity, Actor and Structure: Towards a Reconstitution of the Concept of Structure”, in David Booth, (ed). Rethinking Social Development: Theory, Research and Practice. Harlow, Essex: Longman Scientific and Technical.

Mollinga, Peter P. 2008. “Water Policy – Water Politics.” In Waltina Scheumann, Susanne Neubert, and Martin Kipping (eds), Water Politics and Development Cooperation: Local Power Plays and Global Governance. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. Pp. 1-29.

Ottoway, Marina. Democracy Challenged: The Rise of Semi-Authoritarianism. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment ofr International Peace. 2003

Zakaria, Fareed. 1997. “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy.” Foreign Affiars. November.

Zakaria, Fareed. 2003. Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.

2008-11-18T14:18:00.000-05:00

Policy Forum:

Scaling Up Conservation Practices for

Natural Resource Commons in Africa

A Regional Meeting of the

International Association for the Study of Commons

The President Hotel, Bantry Bay, Cape Town, South Africa

Tuesday, 20 January 2009	Wednesday, 21 January 2009	Thursday, 22 January 2009
Welcoming Keynote Address: Dr. Monde Mayekiso Deputy Director General, Marine and Coastal Management South Africa	Keynote Address: Mrs. Portia Segomelo Deputy Director, Department of Environmental Affairs, Botswana	IASC Presidential Address: Dr. Ruth Meinzen-Dick
Parallel Panel Sessions	Parallel Panel Sessions	Parallel Panel Sessions
Evening Event: Launch of the Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Case	Afternoon Plenary Panel: Addressing Historical Discrimination through Commons Policy Discussant: Prof. Lungisile Ntsebeza, University of Cape Town	Afternoon Workshop: Getting our Message to Policy Makers, Community Members and Activists

The objective of this Policy Forum is to share existing research and experiences in the governance of large scale natural resource commons across different ecosystem types in Africa. These include among others: coastal zones; arid grasslands; forests; savannas and forest patches; and floodplain ecosystems. The Policy Forum brings together researchers and policy makers to examine existing research on commons governance. The Policy Forum takes as its starting point the insight that addressing natural resource degradation in Africa means finding ways to identify reproduce and encourage positive practices of commons management across wide scales.

Contacts

Dr. Lapologang Magole, Programme Committee Chair,
Harry Oppenheimer Okavanga Research Centre, University of Botswana
magolel@orc.ub.bw

Dr. Mafaniso Hara, Organizing Committee Chair,
PLAAS, University of the Western Cape, South Africa
mhara@uwc.ac.za

http://www.plaas.org.za/newsevents/iasc/reg/

Early Registration, before 1 December 2008, USD 180
Late Registration, USD 210
South African Student Registration, USD 25 (bring student card)
On Site Registration available from 08:30 on the 20th January 2009
Lunch is not included in the student registration fee

2008-11-05T10:31:00.000-05:00

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS
FIRST NOTICE

Property Rights and Sustainability: the evolution of property rights to meet the challenges of sustainability

Thursday 16 - Saturday 18, April 2009 at the University of Auckland.

Theme:

This conference aims to stimulate debate about property rights and the objectives of sustainability. The intention is to provide a forum to discuss how property rights and responsibilities may be applied or adapted in a way that addresses ecological problems in a more coherent and sustainable way.

The conference will consider the nature and function of property rights within the context of contemporary policy, law and ethical discourse. In particular, it will provide a basis for specific examination of how New Zealand can better respond to current problems including:

land use planning and land use change;
coastal and marine management;
water management;
forestry;
biodiversity;
climate change;
cultural heritage; and
corporate responsibility.

The target audience for this conference includes academics, law practitioners, judges, politicians, central and local government officers, planners, resource management professionals, members of NGOs, iwi authorities and students.

Programme:

The conference will commence with a public address by Judge Christopher Weeramantry (former Vice President of the International Court of Justice) on the evening of 16 April. The two full days of the conference will begin with keynote and theme papers before the lunch break. Parallel sessions will be held in the afternoons following specific session topics developing the theme of the conference. The Programme will be available on the conference website once finalised.

Confirmed Keynote Conference Speakers:

Judge Christopher Weeramantry (Sri Lanka), Professor Eric Freyfogle (USA), Professor Ron Engel (USA), Professor Sharon Beder (Aust.), Professor Tony Arnold (USA).

Conference website: www.nzcel-conf.auckland.ac.nz.

Call for Papers:

The conference organisers welcome papers on the conference theme. Papers need not have a specific New Zealand focus. Key topics include (but are not limited) to the following:

Concepts of property rights and responsibilities;
Property rights in land and natural resources;
Managing of 'free' resources;
Land use;
Water management;
Climate change responses;
Marine environment;
Maori and indigenous concepts of property;
Heritage protection;
Coastal management;
Forestry;
Public access; and
Corporate responsibility.

Submission Process:

Abstracts should be received by 1 December 2008.
Abstracts must be of 250-300 words and contain the following information; a. Name, affiliation, postal address and email address;
b. Title of paper;
c. List of key words that best describe the paper; and
d. For collaborative papers, the name of the presenter of the paper
Please submit your proposal by email to k.j.kilgour@paradise.net.nz in MSWord
You will be notified of acceptance of your paper via email early January 2009.

Further Information

For conference information, contact the Conference Organiser - Jane Kilgour at k.j.kilgour@paradise.net.nz. For queries relating to the theme and content of the conference papers, please contact David Grinlinton (d.grinlinton@quckland.ac.nz) or Prue Taylor (prue.taylor@auckland.ac.nz).

Please note: Presenters will be responsible for their own conference expenses.
Registration details will be available on the conference website at:
www.nzcel-conf.auckland.ac.nz

2008-10-30T14:54:00.000-04:00

NEW MARINE ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY JOURNAL LAUNCH

Coriolis: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Maritime Studies is seeking English language scholarly manuscripts for publication in a new on-line, fully indexed journal published in conjunction with the National Maritime Digital Library, hosted at Mystic Seaport with support from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation.

Named after the physical forces that drive global ocean currents and human activities on the seas, Coriolis welcomes studies in history, literature, art, music, archaeology, and environmental studies from researchers all over the world. The journal particularly seeks anglophonic manuscripts from scholars working outside the North Atlantic/North American regions, including Africa, the Indian Ocean basin, Australia, the Pacific basin, and South America. Papers that explore interdisciplinary approaches are encouraged. Submitted manuscripts will be fully peer-reviewed by university faculty and researchers active in the manuscript's relevant field.

Coriolis will launch in February of 2009 and can be found at http://ijms.nmdl.org.

For more information, contact:
Paul O'Pecko (paul.opecko@mysticseaport.org) or Andrew German (andy.german@mysticseaport.org)
Editors
Mystic Seaport Museum

Section Editors:

History:
Joshua Smith, Associate Professor of Humanities, U.S. Merchant Marine Academy

Arts (Literature, Art, Music):
Daniel Brayton, Assistant Professor of English and American Literatures, Middlebury College

Environmental Studies:
Matthew McKenzie, Assistant Professor of History, University of Connecticut

2008-08-05T13:48:00.000-04:00

IASC Conference Discount Form

From Earthscan

Many thanks to everyone who came to visit our stand at the IASC 2008 conference earlier this month. We hope you found the event as enjoyable and productive as we did. A number of you who came to our stand expressed an interest in our books and took away a discount order form, but for those who didn't get the chance I thought I would upload a downloadable version of it to our website so you can still take advantage of our 20% conference discount until the 18th August expiry date.

Earthscan Title Information Flyer:
www.earthscan.co.uk/Portals/0/pdfs/EarthscanIASCdiscountFlyer.pdf

Earthscan 20% Discount Order Form
www.earthscan.co.uk/Portals/0/pdfs/IASC_20%_Discount_Order_Form.pdf

The easiest way to get your discount is to check the prices on the order forms above and then order your book/s through our website using the 20% discount voucher code: IASC08. Alternatively you can print and fill out the order form and post it back to us using the FREEPOST address specified on the form.

Andrew Miller
Marketing Assistant
Earthscan
www.earthscan.co.uk

2008-07-30T16:45:00.000-04:00

World Resources Institute’s Release of the World Resources Report

The World Resources Report has long been a source of data and inspiration for researchers and practitioners focused on environmental management for local livelihoods and sustainability. IASC members have dedicated their attention to bettering the livelihoods of resource dependent populations engaged in the collective management and use of the commons around them. This year’s WRR report is dedicated improving the livelihoods of the most marginal.

Below is World Resources Institute’s announcement for the new 2008 report.

Strengthening the Poor’s Roots of Resilience

The newly-released World Resources 2008: Roots of Resilience report charts a path for how sustainable, nature-based enterprise can help the world’s 2 billion rural poor escape the cycle of poverty.

Today, 2.6 billion people live on less than $2 a day. 75 percent of people at the bottom of the economic pyramid live in rural areas and are dependent on natural resources for some or all of their subsistence. The rural poor face even tougher challenges ahead, as climate change threatens to destroy the ecosystems and natural resources on which they depend.

But World Resources 2008 finds that well-designed, community-based sustainable enterprises can improve the way the rural poor draw from their area’s natural resources. Ultimately, these programs can make their communities more resilient against climate change and the other economic, social, environmental challenges they will face.

World Resources 2008 was produced by the World Resources Institute (WRI), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the World Bank.

The publication (PDF) is available online at:
http://www.wri.org/publication/world-resources-2008-roots-of-resilience.

Hardcopies can be purchased at:
http://www.wristore.com/wore20unweof.html

2008-07-22T15:03:00.000-04:00

CONFERENCE PHOTOS ON FLICKR

As announced at the closing session of the conference last week, we now have a Flickr group to share photos from conferences and of commons issues. If you are already using Flickr, join the group at http://flickr.com/groups/777619@N25/ and contribute your photos.

If you are not using Flickr (http://flickr.com/) yet, but are interested in joining the group, you can sign in though Yahoo. If you do not have a Yahoo account, you can create one here. Once your account is created you can upload your photos to your own site and connect with other users to see their photos. To join the IASC group and to add your photos to the group photo pool, go to http://flickr.com/groups/777619@N25/ and click on “Join this group”.

The site is very self-explanatory, but if you do need help, you can take a tour that explains how the site works (http://flickr.com/tour/). To make uploading of photos easier there are a number of software tools you can use.

Lastly, if you are concerned about copyright, note, that you can determine what level of rights you want to grant viewers for each photo from “all rights reserved” to a fairly open creative commons license. You can also keep photos private, so they are visible only to you or your friends or family).

I am looking forward to seeing many of your conference photos.

Best,

Stephan

2008-03-04T10:42:00.000-05:00

Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment
Bangalore, Darjeeling and New Delhi

www.atree.org

Faculty positions in social sciences

Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), India, invites nominations and applications for two faculty positions in social sciences.

1. Conservation Governance and Policy: Candidates must have strong social science research experience in environment and conservation, with interests in policy analysis.
2. Social Sciences: Candidates must have strong social science research experience in environment and conservation, preferably with degrees in sociology, anthropology, political science, history or geography.

The appointments will be made at the level of Fellows or Senior Fellows, depending upon qualifications and experience. Short term visiting appointments of 3-6 months duration each are also feasible. Fellows and Senior Fellows are expected to build and lead independent research programmes, contribute to interdisciplinary research and teach in ATREE’s doctoral programme.

While applicants with a PhD in the social sciences are preferred, candidates with a masters’ degree and substantial research experience will also be considered.

These positions are endowed with grants from the Arghyam Foundation and The Ford Foundation and will be based in Bangalore.

ATREE, established in 1996, is a young, fast growing, dynamic organization that seeks to address pressing environmental challenges through interdisciplinary research and engagement with civil society, and policy makers. ATREE fosters autonomy, professional growth, diversity and gender equity at the work place. Thus women and persons from underprivileged groups are especially encouraged to apply. Salaries at ATREE are competitive and at par with other academic institutions in India. Salary for the advertised positions will depend upon qualifications and experience of the candidates.

Applications will be accepted until the positions are filled. Applicants should write to the address below, enclosing their CVs, names of three referees, and a letter describing their professional goals over the next 5 years and how these goals fit with ATREE’s mission. Electronic submission of applications is preferred.

Director,
Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment
659, 5th 'A' Main Road
Hebbal, Bangalore 560024, India
Email: director@atree.org

2008-02-01T10:28:00.000-05:00

University of Maine
College of Natural Sciences, Forestry and Agriculture
School of Marine Sciences Job Opening

The School of Marine Sciences at the University of Maine will hire a social scientist for a tenure-track position at the assistant professor level to start in fall 2008 in its marine policy and dual-degree programs (http://www.umaine.edu/marine/programs/graduate-programs.php). We seek applications from social scientists with strong experience and interests in institutional approaches to the social sciences and the interface between the social and natural sciences. A Ph.D. or equivalent education is required. We expect the successful candidate to have an active research program in marine or coastal-zone issues and to direct at least part of his/her research program towards issues of concern to the state and its localities.

The successful applicant will teach in both the graduate and undergraduate programs, undertake a research program concerned with local, state, national and international marine policy issues, participate in policy issues of concern to localities, the state and broader areas, advise and direct graduate students in the marine policy and dual-degree programs, and develop active professional collaborations with faculty in the School of Marine Sciences and other relevant departments.

Applications should be comprised of a full CV, a selection of up to five (p)reprints, a list of four references and statements of research, service and teaching goals that demonstrate capacity to perform the above functions. Address queries and send application materials in .pdf format to susanne.thibodeau@umit.maine.edu. If this format presents difficulties, mail hard copy to:

Sue Thibodeau
5706 Aubert Hall, Rm 360
University of Maine
Orono, ME 04469-5706.

Review will begin on 3 January 2008.
Applications will be accepted until March 1, 2008.
The University of Maine is an EO/AA employer.

2007-12-07T14:56:00.000-05:00

JOB ANNOUNCEMENT:

CHIEF OF PARTY, PROPERTY RIGHTS AND RESOURCE GOVERNANCE - BURLINGTON, VERMONT

ARD, Inc. (http://www.ardinc.com) has become leader in the land tenure and property rights (LTPR) “practice area” for the United States Government. Our land tenure and property rights work includes land policy, land tenure legal reform, conflict and disputes resolution, broadening land access including land reform and resettlement, land administration, land markets, land use planning and natural resource property rights. This practice area continues to grow, and to meet immediate programming and technical needs, ARD seeks a highly qualified, home office-based Chief of Party with:

-- Excellent personnel and team participation, management and coordination skills;
-- Significant USAID programming experience and support to USAID operating units - this includes work plan development, SOW development, results-based reporting, and financial/budget management;
-- Broad general knowledge of international development programming work, particularly in natural resources management, agricultural development, rural finance, land use planning, and natural resource management;
-- Specific knowledge of the role of property rights in development programming in at least one specific technical subject, and in at least one or two USAID programming regions;
-- Field level experience with residence in developing countries, as well as short-term technical assignments;
-- Excellent public relations, communication, and client management skills; and
-- The necessary skills to ensure the coherence and consistency of product and performance of technical and support personnel under tight deadlines.

The successful candidate will meet at least the following minimum qualifications in addition to those above:

-- Minimum Masters Degree in a field directly related to property rights (natural/land resources, anthropology; rural sociology, agriculture economics, and/or law).
-- Ten years or more of progressively responsible work in managing and implementing land tenure, land reform, and/or natural resource governance programs;
-- Five years of progressively responsible supervisory work including direct supervision of professional and support staff; and assembling teams of natural resource management, land tenure, property rights, gender and/or resource governance professionals to respond to complex assignments;
-- At least four years of substantial managerial and technical experience in natural resource management sector issues (water, forestry, wildlife, watersheds, land use planning, pastures, etc.), with broad geographic experience;
-- At least one foreign language, preferably French/Spanish/Arabic;
-- Proposal development, proposal management and MCC programming experience are a plus.

To apply:
Please email current curriculum vitae (CV) in reverse chronological format to homeofficejobs@ardinc.com. Please refer to COP-PRRG in the subject line.
Applicants must complete the U.S. Department of Labor’s Equal Employment Opportunity form (available at http://www.ardinc.com/careers/eeform.php) using Job Code: COP-PRRG.
Applications that do not meet the minimum requirements listed above will not be considered. No phone calls will be accepted.
ARD, Inc. is an Equal Opportunity Employer.
Closing Date: Open

2007-10-15T09:17:00.000-04:00

On October 15th - Blog Action Day - bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone's mind. In its inaugural year, Blog Action Day will be co-ordinating bloggers to tackle the issue of the environment. For our part we will be providing just a few links to commons related/environmental websites, but there are many more, so please visit and do your part. Thanks.

http://www.ifpri.org/
http://www.capri.cgiar.org/
http://www.nature.org/initiatives/climatechange/calculator/
http://sca21.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
http://www.wecanlivegreen.com/
www.greenpeace.org/international/
www.nwf.org
www.sierraclub.org/foundation
www.conservationfund.org

2007-09-13T09:19:00.000-04:00

ESF/ESA/ESPI Conference
Humans in Outer Space – Interdisciplinary Odysseys
Vienna, Konzerthaus
11‐12 October 2007

The space‐faring nations are heading for the human exploration of the Moon, Mars and Near‐Earth Objects. They might be soon prepared with regards technology development. But they also need to benefit from the humanities (history, philosophy, anthropology), the arts as well as the social sciences (political science, economics, law).

This conference, co‐organised by the European Science Foundation (ESF), the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Space Policy Institute (ESPI) will be the first comprehensive trans‐disciplinary dialogue on humans in outer space. It will go further than regarding humans as mere tools for exploration, or better robots, and will investigate the human quest for odysseys beyond the atmosphere and reflect on the possibilities to find extraterrestrial life.

The conference shall open up new perspectives in assessing humankind’s present and future outside the Earth and document this in a “Vienna Vision on Humans in Outer Space”.

Conference web site
http://www.esf.org/research‐areas/space/activities/inif‐activities.html

Draft Programme

Thursday, 11 October
10.00 – 10.15 Welcome by the Chairmen of the Programme Committee -- BMVIT, Codignola, Schrogl
Introduction of the ESF project -- van Donzel, Worms

10.15 – 11.45 Setting the scene ‐ Keynotes -- Moderator: Codignola
Encounters -- TBA
Are we alone? Searching for life in the universe and its creation -- Haerendel
Space and religion -- Tanzella‐Nitti TBA

11.45 – 12.15 Space and the movies -- Ballhausen

12.15 – 12.30 Next Generation Visions for the Next 50 Years in Space -- Lukaszczyk

12.30 – 14.00 Lunch

14.00 – 15.15 Can we compare? -- Moderator: van Donzel
Exploration in the 16th century -- Muldoon
Exploration inside the human being -- Palsson
Better drop analogies -- TBA

15.15 – 15.30 Break

15.30 – 17.00 Spatiality ‐ Space as a source of inspiration -- Moderator: Francis
How we talk and write about space -- Landfester
Marketing and branding space -- Keck
Inspiration through international cooperation -- Peter

19.00 Dinner at Heurigen

Friday, 12 October
09.00 – 10.30 First Odyssey: Humans around the Earth ‐ what effect does it have? -- Moderator: Egli
With the eyes of an astronaut -- Nicollier
Human spaceflight, technology development and innovation -- Tremayne‐Smith
Human‐machine cooperation in space environments -- Cortellessa
Space law in the age of ISS -- von der Dunk
The view we get from outer space -- TBA

10.30 – 11.00 Break

11.00 – 12.30 Second Odyssey: Humans in exploration ‐ what effects will it have? -- Moderator: Swings
Humans – more than the better robots for exploration -- Baumjohann
Philosophy of humans leaving the Earth -- Arnould
Human spaceflight as a matter of culture and national vision -- Lingner
In need of a legal framework for exploration -- Bohlmann

12.30 – 13.30 Lunch

13.30 – 15.00 Third Odyssey: Humans leaving the Earth ‐ why we should think! -- Moderator: Worms
Mars as a place to live? -- Horneck
Religion and the question: what happens, if we meet somebody out there? -- Musso
E.T. Culture -- Battaglia
SETI: social effects of a confirmed positive detection -- Wason TBA

15.00 – 16.00 Reports by session moderators – Conclusions:
The Vienna Vision on Humans in Outer Space -- Moderator: Schrogl

2007-02-21T10:54:00.000-05:00

« Institut du Développement Durable et des Relations Internationales (IDDRI, France) » University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve (UCL, Belgium)

and

University of Paris X (France)

Refgov project

Two Post-doctoral or Research fellow positions on the “biodiversity governance and global public goods” program

Partner institutions of the Refgov network offer two post-doctoral or research fellows for working in an international project on biodiversity governance and global public goods (1 year, extendible contingent on funding).

The project is part of a European project of 29 universities on reflexive governance (FP6, REFGOV, http://refgov.cpdr.ucl.ac.be/). The objective of the research on biodiversity in this network is to analyse and build institutional support for collective action in the field of sustainable management of natural resources.

DESCRIPTION

The researcher will work in a European network of research institutions on governance, develop background research for the project and prepare background documents for an international workshop. The working language is English.

The candidate should have obtained a doctorate (or show equivalent level of competence) in a field related to environmental governance with one of the following specialisations:

(1) institutional economics of environmental goods provision

(2) socio-economic and / or legal analysis of forest biodiversity and/or agro-environmental policies

(3) environmental impact assessment of biodiversity related policies, including the use of sustainability indicators

The first fellow will work at IDDRI Montpellier and/or IDDRI Paris. He will do field work on the implementation of European environmental policies in one of the Balkan countries, upon best convenience for accomplishing the research. Practical experience in one the Balkan countries is a plus.

The second fellow will work at EconomiX/Paris X (France) or at the BIOGOV Unit/Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL, Belgium) and will be more generally in charge of economic and/or legal analysis in one of the three above mentioned fields of specialisation.

START DATE : as soon as possible (from 15^th of March), but no later than 1^st of October 2007 for the IDDRI position; October to December 2007 for the EconomiX/UCL position

APPLICATION PROCEDURE: Please send CV, a letter explaining research interests and plans for writing during your fellowship and at least one paper or other suitable evidence of scholarship, as e-mail attachment, to Selim Louafi at louafi@iddri.org, Tom Dedeurwaerdere at dedeurwaerdere@cpdr.ucl.ac.be and Eric Brousseau at eric@brousseau.info

Final deadline for applications is March 10th, 2007.

Additional information about the general context of the research can be found at

http://biogov.cpdr.ucl.ac.be/communication/refgovIDDRI.html

http://biogov.cpdr.ucl.ac.be/.

2007-01-23T13:55:00.000-05:00

Strategic Project Director

The Penobscot East Resource Center seeks an experienced Project Director to lead the Downeast Initiative, a groundbreaking pilot program in community-based management to rebuild the groundfishery in the eastern Gulf of Maine. The project director will secure federal regulatory policy support. Responsibilities include developing and implementing a campaign strategy that will result in the approval of the program by the New England Fisheries Management Council. This job position will be located in Stonington, Maine.

A master’s degree in fisheries or environmental policy, a law degree, or comparable experience required. Candidates should send a letter of interest and a detailed resume to Robin Alden, Penobscot East Resource Center, PO Box 27, Stonington, ME 04681, or to robin@penobscoteast.org. Job description posted at www.penobscoteast.org

2007-01-15T14:44:00.000-05:00

Journées d’études

La "mise en patrimoine" de l’eau :

une perspective interdisciplinaire

organisées par le GDR « rés-eau-ville » (GDR 2524 du CNRS) et le Centre EREIA (EA 4026, Université d’Artois)

Arras, Université d’Artois, Bâtiment des Arts

Vendredi 9 et Samedi 10 mars 2007

Entrée libre sur réservation

Renseignements et réservations

Nadine Hubert : + 33 (0)3 21 60 37 62 ou nadine.hubert@univ-artois.fr

Site Internet du GDR : http://www.ivry.cnrs.fr/res-eau-ville/

La « mise en patrimoine de l’eau »: une perspective interdisciplinaire

Vendredi 9 et Samedi 10 mars 2007,

Arras, Université d’Artois

Exposé de la thématique et présentation du programme:

Depuis quelques années on assiste, parallèlement à la diffusion du concept de développement durable, à une patrimonialisation de l’environnement et des ressources naturelles dans les discours comme dans les textes juridiques de portée nationale et internationale. L’eau n’échappe pas à cette tendance lourde et la loi française sur l’eau de 1992, tout comme la directive cadre européenne sur l’eau de 2000 reconnaissent à cette ressource un caractère patrimonial. Toutefois, la directive cadre stipule que « L’eau n’est pas un bien marchand comme les autres mais un patrimoine qu’il faut protéger et gérer », soulignant que l’eau est à la fois un bien marchand (certes différent des autres) et un patrimoine…

L’objectif de ces journées d’études est de fournir un lieu pour confronter la manière dont cette patrimonialisation des ressources en eau a été analysée par les disciplines de sciences humaines, sociales et juridiques. Que recouvre précisément la notion de patrimoine dans le domaine de l’environnement et des ressources naturelles ? Quelles sont les implications du passage de la notion de patrimoine à celle de patrimoine commun ? Peut-on étudier le patrimoine indépendamment de toute référence au cadre marchand ? Quelles sont les implications de la patrimonialisation des ressources en eau pour la gestion des ressources, mais aussi des réseaux d’eau ?

D’un point de vue opérationnel, de nombreux travaux ont été menés sur le thème de la gestion patrimoniale des ressources naturelles et de l’environnement dans les pays développés, comme dans les pays en développement. Cependant, dans quelle mesure peut-on qualifier la gestion des ressources en eau de gestion patrimoniale ? Dans quelles configurations ? Comment la gestion patrimoniale s’articule-t-elle à la gestion intégrée des ressources en eau ? Sur quels territoires cette patrimonialisation opère-t-elle ?

Toutes ces questions seront abordées à l’occasion des quatre sessions organisées lors de la première journée. D’abord, nous effectuerons un cadrage sémantique et épistémologique de la notion de patrimoine dans le domaine de l’environnement et des ressources naturelles. Puis, en resserrant progressivement notre champ d’étude, nous analyserons les implications de la qualification de l’eau comme patrimoine. Enfin, les deux dernières sessions examineront, à partir d’études de cas, la manière dont la gestion patrimoniale des ressources en eau est conduite dans plusieurs pays en développement et dans des pays occidentaux avec une démarche comparative.

La seconde journée sera l’occasion d’une visite de terrain, comme lors des précédents rendez-vous scientifiques du GDR rés-eau-ville. La visite projetée est une visite du territoire des wateringues du Nord-Pas-de-Calais (situés dans la plaine maritime des Flandres, c’est-à-dire dans le triangle St Omer, Calais, Dunkerque). Le territoire des wateringues révèle une configuration spatiale et institutionnelle singulière orientée depuis plusieurs siècles sur la gestion des risques liés à l’eau. Envahi à l’origine par la mer, le territoire des wateringues fut mis hors d’eau par différents travaux à partir du 12^ème siècle. Il s’agit aujourd’hui d’une vaste plaine maritime dont le

niveau moyen des terres est inférieur au niveau moyen des plus hautes mers. Un ensemble complexe de fossés, de watergangs, de canaux, d’écluses, de portes à la mer et de pompes permet l’évacuation de l’eau de surface face à la mer. L’ensemble du dispositif, constitué et amélioré au fil des siècles, est destiné à évacuer les eaux à la mer, faire barrage aux entrées d’eau marine à marée haute et lors de surcotes exceptionnelles, maintenir le plan d’eau à un niveau constant dans les terres en périodes humides et retenir l’eau douce en périodes sèches.

Présentation du comité d’organisation :

Coordinateur : Olivier Petit, économiste, Centre EREIA, Université d’Artois, Arras.

Comité d’organisation scientifique

Catherine Baron, socio-économiste, Lereps-Gres, Universités Toulouse I et II, Toulouse

Nadia Belaïdi, juriste, CNRS PRODIG, Paris

Iratxe Calvo-Mendieta, économiste, IMN, ULCO, Dunkerque

Catherine Carré, géographe, LADYSS, Université Paris I, Paris

Agathe Euzen, anthropologue, CNRS PRODIG, Paris

Jean Paul Haghe, géographe, PRODIG, IUFM de Caen

Graciela Schneier-Madanes, architecte-géographe, CNRS CREDAL, Paris

Comité scientifique d’évaluation

Federico Aguilera-Klink, Professeur d’économie à l’Université de la Laguna , Tenerife, Espagne.

Pierre Bauby, Chercheur en économie-gestion au Laboratoire d’Economie Dyonisien (LED), Université de Paris VIII.

Stéphane Callens, Professeur d’économie, Directeur du Centre EREIA, Université d’Artois, Arras.

Henri Coing, Professeur émérite de sociologie à l’université Paris XII - Val-de-Marne.

Hubert Gérardin, Maître de Conférences en économie, Rédacteur en chef de la revue Mondes en développement, Laboratoire Beta, Université de Nancy II.

Corinne Larrue, Professeur d’aménagement, Centre de recherches Ville Société Territoire, Université de Tours.

Patrice Mélé, Maître de Conférences en géographe, Centre de recherches Ville Société Territoire, Université de Tours.

Bruno Villalba, Maître de Conférences en sciences politiques, Laboratoire CERAPS-Lille II, Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Lille.

Franck Dominique Vivien, Maître de Conférences en économie, Laboratoire HERMES, Université de Reims.

Programme prévisionnel :

Vendredi 9 mars 2007 (Université d’Artois, Arras)

9 heures : Ouverture (Président de l’Université d’Artois, Directrice du GDR rés-eau-ville, les organisateurs)

9 h 15 : 1^ère session : Cadrage sémantique et épistémologique de la notion de patrimoine dans le domaine de l’environnement

- Franck-Dominique Vivien (Maître de Conférences en économie, Université de Reims, Laboratoire HERMES, Reims) : « Pour une économie patrimoniale appliquée à l’environnement et aux ressources naturelles ».

- Olivier Barrière (Chargé de recherches en anthropologie juridique à l’IRD, US "Espace", Montpellier) : « Une approche patrimoniale appliquée aux questions foncières et environnementales dans les pays en développement ».

10 h 45 : Pause-café

11 h 00 : 2^ème session : La qualification de l’eau comme patrimoine : entre patrimoine conçu et patrimoine construit

- Catherine Baron (socio-économiste, Professeur d’aménagement,

Universités de Toulouse 1 et 2), Nadia Belaïdi (Chargée de recherches en droit international au CNRS, Laboratoire PRODIG, Paris), Agathe Euzen (Chargée de recherches en anthropologie au CNRS, Laboratoire PRODIG, Paris) : « Le statut de la "ressource" à travers la réglementation de l'accès à l'eau ».

- Jean-Pierre Le Bourhis (Chargé de recherchs en sciences politiques au CNRS, CURAPP, UMR 6054, Amiens) : « De la loi sur l'eau à la gestion territoriale de la ressource. L'expérience française des SAGE après 15 ans de

mise en œuvre ».

12 h 30 : Déjeuner

14 h 00 : 3^ème session : Les territoires de la patrimonialisation de l’eau

- Mohamed El Faïz (Professeur d'histoire économique, Université Cadi Ayyad, Marrakech, Maroc) : « La gestion patrimoniale des ressources en eau : dimension historique et défis contemporains au Maroc ».

- Bruno Romagny (Chargé de recherches en économie à l’IRD, Laboratoire "Population-Environnement-Développement", UMR 151 IRD-Université d’Aix-Marseille) : « La gestion patrimoniale de l’eau au Maghreb : regards croisés Tunisie/Maroc ».

- Ioan Radu, Dorian Vladeanu, Minodora Ursăcescu, Mihai Cioc (Academia de Studii Economice Université de Bucarest, Roumanie) : « Contraintes et options stratégiques pour la gestion des ressources en eau : une perspective roumaine ».

16 h 15 : Pause-café

16 h 30 : 3^ème session (suite) : Les territoires de la patrimonialisation de l’eau

- Stéphane Ghiotti (Chargé de recherches en géographie au CNRS, Laboratoire Mutations des Territoires en Europe, UMR CNRS, Université de Montpellier II) : « La patrimonialisation des fleuves et rivières : une comparaison France-Liban ».

- Henry Ollagnon (Professeur en gestion du vivant et stratégies patrimoniales à l’INA-PG, Paris) : « La gestion de la qualité de l'eau : quelles stratégies patrimoniales ? »

18 h 00 : Conclusion de la journée

Samedi 10 mars 2007 : Visite de terrain – Les wateringues du Nord-Pas-de-Calais : un patrimoine à gérer

Renseignements et réservations :

Nadine Hubert:

UFR AES - 9, rue du temple – BP 665 – 62030 ARRAS CEDEX France

+ 33 (0)3 21 60 37 62 ou nadine.hubert@univ-artois.fr)

Site Internet du GDR : http://www.ivry.cnrs.fr/res-eau-ville/

Olivier PETIT
Centre EREIA (EA 4026, Université d'Artois) et IFRESI-CNRS

Membre du GDR Res-Eau-Ville (GDR 2524, CNRS)

Maître de Conférences en Sciences Economiques
Université d'Artois
UFR d'Administration Economique et Sociale
9, rue du Temple
BP 665
62030 ARRAS CEDEX

FRANCE
Tel : 03 21 60 49 52
Visitez le site de la Revue Développement Durable et Territoires : http://developpementdurable.revues.org

2007-01-11T10:32:00.000-05:00

Position: Conservation and Environmental Anthropologist

Please contact: Alaka Wali, awali@fmh.org, for additional information about this position.

This two-year grant-funded position focuses on working with partners and communities in South America to implement conservation programs.

The Center for Cultural Understanding and Change (CCUC) is part of the Environment, Culture and Conservation (ECCo) Division of The Field Museum. We work closely with the department of Environment and Conservation Programs (ECP) to identify, establish and sustain protected areas and their buffer zones. With our collaborators in ECP, we give equal consideration to the protection of biological and cultural diversity and the promotion of sustainable livelihoods for local communities. Our goal is to put specific knowledge to work for conservation of large tracts of wilderness while providing sustainable livelihoods for people in the surrounding communities.

Job Duties

Responsibilities include:

Train, resource-use map duties and assess social characteristics of communities
Work collaboratively with local South American partners to imlpement conservation programs
Contribute to grant writing, technical reports, publications and other materials for dissemination

Qualifications

A qualified candidate must have:

a Ph.D
Five years minimum field experience (may include dissertation research) working in community-based conservation
Fluency in spoken and written Spanish
Excellent communication skills
Excellent writing skills

Please direct them to www.fieldmuseum.org or send CV and cover letter to awali@fmnh.org

Applications will be accepted until February 28, 2007.

Thank you,

Alaka Wali

John Nuveen Curator of Anthropology

Director, Center for Cultural Understanding and Change

2007-01-10T09:53:00.000-05:00

IASC 2007 North American Regional Conference

Theme: “Transitions in Defining and Utilizing North American Commons”
Host: Sir Wilfred Grenfell College, Memorial University
Location: Newfoundland, Canada
Dates: July 31 – August 3, 2007

Plenary speakers are:

Dr. Fikret Berkes
Professor and Canada Research Chair
University of Manitoba
Title of Talk: Governance systems and role of communities: The challenge of scale

Dr. Roberto Enriquez-Andrade
Facultad de Ciencias Marinas, Universidad Autónoma de Baja California
Title of Talk: Globalization and market pressures on Mexico’s marine and coastal commons: 12 years of NAFTA

Registration is now open and participants and observers are encouraged to register early for discounted conference rates at: http://www.swgc.mun.ca/iasc2007/index.asp . Individuals not wanting to register online may complete the attached registration form.

The theme of the meeting is “Transitions in Defining and Utilizing North American Commons.”

We welcome proposals for panels, workshops, directed discussion sessions, individual papers, and posters relating to the following topics:

* Societal vision, goals, and objectives regarding the Commons and human well being;
* Expanding conceptions of the Commons, including the ‘New Commons’;
* Reducing conflict, improving management, and increasing efficiency in traditional natural resource (e.g., fisheries, forestry, agriculture, wildlife, water) sectors;
* Out-migration and eroding human/social capital in resource-dependent rural regions;
* Global benefits versus local costs – sustaining local and regional stewardship capacity;
* Global costs versus local benefits – mitigating the external costs of local resource use;
* International institutions and the Commons (e.g., Kyoto Protocol, NAFO, NAFTA);
* Globalization and market pressures on North American common pool resources;
* Aboriginal perceptions, goals, and governance issues in North American Commons;
* Theoretical and methodological advances in Commons research;
* Commons research – making the transition from information to public policy; and
* Resource management and challenges in Newfoundland and Labrador (e.g., fishery collapses, rural out-migration, sealing, tourism development, hydroelectric development).

Panels, Workshops, Directed Discussions. Submit an abstract to organize a 1.5 hour concurrent panel session (3 to 4 speakers and session chair), workshop (a practically-oriented session with 2 or 3 speakers, session facilitator, and sufficient time for audience questions), or directed discussion (a facilitator(s) stimulates audience participation on a particular topic). Abstracts should be a maximum of 350 words and include names and affiliations of the organizer and individual presenters (if applicable). Abstracts for panels, workshops and directed discussions are due February 16, 2007. Confirmation of acceptance will be sent by March 9. Panel session presenters will need to submit an abstract for their individual papers by March 23 (see below).

Individual Papers. Submit an abstract to give a 20-minute oral presentation. Abstracts should be a maximum of 250 words. Include the name, title and affiliation of each author. Abstracts will be peer reviewed and are due March 23, 2007. Confirmation of acceptance of the abstract will be sent by April 27, 2007. Final papers are due June 22, 2007 (details will be sent to authors upon abstract acceptance).

Posters. Submit an abstract to present a poster. Abstracts should be a maximum of 250 words. Include the name, title and affiliation of each author. Posters can be used to present research results, case studies, or provide information about practitioner initiatives relating to the management of the Commons. Abstracts are due June 22, 2007.

Conference Proceedings. All abstracts and submitted papers will be made available online. All conference paper submissions will be peer reviewed and successful papers will be published in full in an edited conference volume.

Submission of Abstracts. All abstracts must be submitted electronically in Word, text, or PDF format. Abstracts should be submitted to the Conference Chair, Murray Rudd, via email (mrudd@swgc.mun.ca).

Additional information about the venue, program, and accommodations is available on the conference website at: http://www.swgc.mun.ca/iasc2007/index.asp.

2006-12-04T15:28:00.000-05:00

Nominees for IASC Executive Council

The IASC Nominating Committee is seeking nominees for the 2008 slate for the positions of President-Elect and Executive Councilor.

Nominations for these positions are solicited from the general membership.
Candidates proposed must be members in good standing. The nominating committee will contact proposed candidates for their consent before being placed on the slate of nominees.

Please submit names and contact information for any nominations to iascp@indiana.edu or to any member of the nominating committee listed below by January 8, 2007.

NOMINATING COMMITTEE
Erling Berge, Chair
E-Mail: erling.berge@svt.ntnu.no

Doris Capistrano
Email: d.capistrano@cgiar.org

Leticia Merino
Email: lmerino@servidor.unam.mx

Jeffrey Campbell
E-mail: j.campbell@fordfound.org

Harini Nagendra
E-mail: nagendra@indiana.edu

2006-11-10T10:31:00.000-05:00

Job Announcement

CHAIR AND PROFESSOR

Emory University Department of Environmental Studies

The Department of Environmental Studies at Emory University invites applications for the position of Chair of the department. The appointment is at the level of Professor beginning Fall 2007. This position is a unique opportunity to build on the interdisciplinary strengths of the department and engage a faculty who is committed to excellence in both research and teaching that integrates the natural and social sciences in the study of the environment. The applicant should have a demonstrated history of excellence in administrative leadership and a strong record in interdisciplinary research and teaching. Candidates should have a PhD in a relevant discipline such as environmental science, earth and atmospheric sciences, ecology, public health, public policy, urban studies, economics, or other fields that examine sustainability and dynamics of the linked human/ natural systems. The position provides an opportunity to build collaborative research, teaching, and training programs that are consistent with the University’s newly launched Strategic Initiatives (http://www.emory.edu/univ_planning.cfm) in state of the art facilities within a unique urban forest setting. For additional information about the department and the chair’s position, plus links to Atlanta and Emory University, please visit the departmental website (http://www.envs.emory.edu )

Please submit a cover letter, CV, a statement of research interests, experience, and departmental leadership philosophy as well as the names of three references. Materials can be submitted electronically to wsize@emory.edu or mailed to Chair, Search Committee, Department of Environmental Studies, 400 Dowman Drive, Suite E-510, Mathematics and Science Center, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322. The review of applications will begin in January, 2007. Emory University is an Equal Opportunity, affirmative Action Employer. Women and minority candidates are encouraged to apply for this position.

2006-11-03T11:06:00.000-05:00

CALL FOR PAPERS

ESEE 2007: Integrating Natural and Social Sciences for Sustainability

UFZ - Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig, Germany, 5-8 June 2007

…………………………………………………………………….

** Abstract Submission Deadline: 20 November 2006 * *

…………………………………………………………………….

The European Society for Ecological Economics (ESEE), in co-operation with the German associations for ecological economics VÖÖ and VÖW, are pleased to invite you to join us in Leipzig, Germany for the 7th biennial international conference of the European Society for Ecological Economics: 5-8 June 2007. [Visit the conference website | http://www.esee2007.ufz.de]

Keynote speakers will include:

Elinor Ostrom, Malte Faber, Dick Norgaard, Inge Røpke, Clive Spash, and Carl Folke

The conference will explore contemporary scientific approaches for incorporating the concept of Sustainable Development in research and practice, with a particular focus on the bridging of contributions from the natural and social sciences. It will address a broad range of sustainability topics including loss of biodiversity, human vulnerability to global change and water problems on all geographical and institutional levels. The aim of the conference is to contribute to a better understanding of societal and natural processes and their interaction through the integration of different scientific methodologies, in order to overcome shortcomings associated with single- and multi-discipline approaches. Impediments to inter- and trans-disciplinary research will be examined and new research approaches for addressing sustainability questions will be identified.

Registration for ESEE 2007 is now open! [click here to register | http://www.esee2007.ufz.de/participation/registration.html]

Deadline for submitting abstract and full paper proposals is 20 November 2006

* SEE BELOW FOR FULL DETAILS OF THE CALL*

[click here to submit your abstract or full paper proposal | http://www.conftool.com/esee2007/]

PhD Student and Early Stage Researcher Workshop, 3-5 June 2007, Leipzig

Ahead of the seventh ESEE conference in Leipzig Germany, a special two and a half day workshop will be organized by and for PhD students and Early Stage Researchers. The objectives of this workshop are three fold: (1) strengthen the European Ecological Economics student network (2) expand students’ perspectives on interdisciplinary science and the future of Ecological Economics, (3) provide a forum for students to share experiences and stimulate collaboration. The programme includes lectures by Prof. Richard Norgaard, Dr. Sigrid Stagl and Dr. Martin Drechsler and a field trip in the vicinity of Leipzig. To apply for a place at workshop contact Esteve Corbera [estevecorbera @ telefonica.net] – for more information contact Kate Farrell [katharine.farrell @ ufz.de]

FULL DETAILS OF THE ESEE 2007 Call for Papers

Procedures and Options for Submitting Abstract and Full Paper Proposals

(1) Submission Content

(2) Submission Options

(3) Submission Procedures

…………………………………………………………………….

(1) Submission Content

Submissions that directly explore the challenges and possibilities of inter- and trans- disciplinary research are encouraged and all proposals should address one or more of the conference topics:*

- Biodiversity: conflicts and management - Global, regional and local water problems

- Sustainable use of landscapes - Sustainable cities

- Sustainable management of living systems - Managing contaminated sites

- Technological change for sustainability - Industrial ecology: managing product life cycles and material flows

- Environment and development: growth, globalisation and environmental degradation - Climate change: vulnerability, mitigation and adaptation

* For detailed descriptions of each topic please see: http://www.esee2007.ufz.de/topics/index.html

(2) Submission Options:

• Individual Full Paper, including a short abstract (not more than 800 characters): these papers will be considered for presentation in one of the Core Parallel Sessions of the conference. The Core Sessions will provide longer presentation times and will also include provision for prepared comments by a respondent. Full papers should be no less than 5,000 and no more than 10,000 words.

• Symposium Full or Short Paper, including a short abstract (not more than 800 characters): these papers or long abstracts (not more than 1,200 words) must be associated with a Symposium that has already been accepted by the conference committee. Full Symposium Papers will only be considered for presentation at the conference as part of a specific symposium. The length and management of symposium presentations are the responsibility of the Symposium Co-ordinator.

• Short Paper Abstracts: these abstracts will be considered for presentation during Ordinary Parallel Sessions of the conference. The Ordinary Sessions will provide adequate time for presentation and discussion. Submission of BOTH a long abstract (not more than 1,200 words) AND short abstract (not more than 800 characters) is required.

• Poster Abstracts: these abstracts will be considered for presentation as Posters, which will be displayed in the central hall of the conference venue. In addition, there will be a dedicated poster session held during the conference. Submission of BOTH a long abstract (not more than 1,200 words) AND short abstract (not more than 800 characters) is required.

• Open Space Sessions: in the interest of supporting and encouraging creative engagement with the conference topics and ESEE community, provision will be made for spontaneous Open Space Sessions organised during the conference. Arrangements for these sessions can be made with the conference organisers during the conference. No proposal is required in advance of the conference.

N.B. Presenters are requested to confine themselves to giving TWO oral presentations during the conference at MAXIMUM.

(3) Submission Procedures:

Submission should be made electronically, through the conference webpage at: http://www.esee2007.ufz.de/participation/registration.html

In addition to the scientific content, the following information is required for submission:

- Full Names and Institutions for all co-authors;

- Email, Phone and Postal Address for corresponding author;

- Specification of Main Conference Topic addressed;

- Specification of Your Approach as (a) modelling, (b) empirical work, (c) governance and policy research, or (d) philosophical and methodological work.

For more information please see the ESEE 2007 webpage [http://www.esee-leipzig2007.org/] or contact the conference Secretariat at esee2007@fu-confirm.de.

WE LOOK FORWARD TO WELCOMING YOU TO LEIPZIG!

2006-10-27T17:28:00.000-04:00

POSITION ANNOUNCEMENT

THE FORD FOUNDATION

REPRESENTATIVE

Vietnam

Hanoi, Vietnam

SUMMARY DESCRIPTION: The Representative directs the Foundation’s activities in Vietnam, providing overall leadership to the Foundation’s grant-making programs, managing the office in Hanoi, and representing the Foundation to various organizations and to members of the public having an interest in the Foundation’s work. Specifically, the Representative assesses political, social, cultural and economic developments in the region for their implications for the Foundation’s programming and grant-making priorities. He/she supervises and works closely with program staff in developing, monitoring and evaluating grants and projects within the office’s major fields of programmatic concern. The Representative prepares and manages the office’s $11 million grant and management budgets, oversees all legal matters, and supervises local administrative staff. The Representative maintains effective ties with local leaders, governmental agencies and non-governmental organizations and other donors. The Representative also manages a modest grants portfolio of his/her own. The Representative collaborates with the Foundation’s other representatives in Asia in developing region-wide strategies and with program staff from around the world in helping shape various aspects of the Foundation’s work globally.

QUALIFICATIONS: Demonstrated leadership, planning, management and analytical skills; substantial previous leadership experience in Vietnam, expertise in one or more areas of the Foundation’s current program interests; knowledge of the country’s history and culture; and in-depth understanding of development and social change processes. Excellent oral communication skill in English is required, and in Vietnamese is desired. An appropriate graduate degree and familiarity with philanthropy are highly desirable.

Grade: 138

Location: Hanoi, Vietnam

Target Date: Summer 2007

SALARY: is based on experience and on the Foundation’s commitment to internal equity. A generous benefits package is provided.

To apply for the position visit www.fordfound.org/employment or send full application materials (consisting of substantive cover letter, c.v., and a 5-20 page sole-authored writing sample in English) to Ms. S. Haynes at 320 E. 43^rd St., New York, NY 10017, USA, by October 27, 2006.

2006-10-05T15:50:00.000-04:00

Fellowship Opportunity
University of Gloucestershire

The University of Gloucestershire has been selected to receive two Leverhulme fellows. Details of the expectations, conditions and remuneration can be found on the web address below, but the basis of the scheme is 'To enable one or two post-doctoral academic researchers (normally with no more than eight years post-doctoral experience) to visit the UK university for the purpose of research and collaboration. Visiting Fellows are encouraged to give lectures and seminars and to participate in the intellectual life of the institution.' The fellowship lasts 9 or 10 months and must take place in 2006/7. It pays c £1700 per month, return fares and a spouses allowance. Do please circulate this amongst those who you think may be interested.

http://www.leverhulme.ac.uk/grants_awards/grants/visiting_fellowships/

The CCRU (see the website in the footer) would welcome interest from appropriately qualified researchers who consider themselves to be eligible. We would expect fellows to be interested in contributing to our work, developing the research culture and to engage in co-working with established staff. Candidates should be able to contribute to seminars and possibly some guest lecturing in the Department of Natural and Social Sciences.

www.glos.ac.uk/ccru

2006-10-05T10:48:00.000-04:00

The Challenge of Self-Governance in Complex, Globalizing Economies

Interdisciplinary PhD school with the Ostroms in April 2007

The Institute of Forestry Economics of the Albert-Ludwigs-University and the Walter-Eucken-Institute Freiburg are organising an interdisciplinary PhD school with Elinor and Vincent Ostrom from the 17th to the 26th of April 2007 in Freiburg and are inviting PhD students or other advanced scholars to submit applications. The title of the seminar will
be: The Challenge of Self-Governance in Complex, Globalizing Economies: Responding to Walter Eucken's Challenge.

The school will be organised with some initial lectures, followed by individual paper presentations (presentation and discussion of individual works of participants). Therefore, we strongly invite scientists, who are closely referring to or are applying the works of either Elinor or Vincent Ostrom. The scientific contributions of the Ostroms have been truly interdisciplinary. Therefore, we would also appreciate applications from diverse fields of social sciences (economics, forestry, political science, social anthropology, geography).

We invite students from all over Europe (or beyond). The language of the course will be English. There is no school fee, but travelling and subsistence costs are paid individually. However, a certain number of grants for covering subsistence costs in Freiburg are available.

There will be around 15 participants in the seminar. We invite scholars to apply by the 30th of November 2006. Please send us a letter, which shows the link between your and the Ostroms' work, your CV, an abstract of the paper you would like to discuss in the seminar and the proposal for your PhD, if applicable. For further details about the school (location, time schedule, finances, people, etc.), please see our web site (http://portal.uni-freiburg.de/ife/conferences/PhDS_org/). For an initial working plan of the lecture part of the course please see (http://portal.uni-freiburg.de/ife/conferences/PhDS_cont/) For questions please contact a.schlueter@ife.uni-freiburg.de.

2006-09-18T10:27:00.000-04:00

CALL FOR PAPERS:

Dear Colleagues,

As a follow-up of the July 2006 conference in Louvain-la-neuve "Institutions for providing global environmental goods", the RefGov network organizes a second call for paper, hosted as one of the streams of a major International Conference that will take place in Amsterdam
24-26 May 2007.

The Refgov Stream is stream number 7 which is called :

*The Reflexive Governance of Global Public Goods*/, that is, papers on the institutional analysis of participatory decision-making, deliberative policy-making and capacity building in the governance of global public goods, including global biodiversity, climate, health, security and fair trade issues.

The papers of the July 2006 conference and the Amsterdam 2007 conference will be published in one of the 2 publication projects that will be prepared next year : a collective volume at MIT on Environmental Governance and A special issue in a Journal, most probably Ecological Economics ; both on the basis of an independent review process.

The conference website is

www.2007amsterdamconference.org

All the information on the call is on the conference website. We expect an abstract of no longer than 300 words for the 1st of october. Please do not forget to tick the "refgov" stream in the submission form on the website

For any supplementary information you can contact the organizers or come back to me,

Looking forward to meeting you in Amsterdam

Best

Tom Dedeurwaerdere (dedeurwaerdere@cpdr.ucl.ac.be)
Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy
Director of research at the Centre for the Philosophy of Law (CPDR)
Université catholique de Louvain

2006-09-14T14:27:00.000-04:00

CALL FOR PAPERS
2007 IASC North American Regional Conference

We would like to invite researchers, students, civil society practitioners, and managers from the public and private sectors with interests in North American public goods, common pool resources, and common property to participate in the IASC 2007 North American Regional Meeting. The meeting is being hosted by Sir Wilfred Grenfell College, Memorial University in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, from July 31 to August 3, 2007.

Deadlines for Abstract Submission:

Panels, Workshops, Directed Discussions - February 16, 2007
Individual Papers - March 23, 2007
Posters - June 22, 2007

Submission of Abstracts:

All abstracts must be submitted electronically in Word, text, or pdf format. Abstracts should be submitted to the Conference Chair, Murray Rudd, via email ( mrudd@swgc.mun.ca )

For more information, please see the conference announcement at:
http://www.iascp.org/Canada/NorthAmerica.html

2006-09-08T09:45:00.000-04:00

Call for Papers, AAG 2007, San Francisco, CA

Community Natural Resource Management in Comparative Perspective

Community natural resource management or CNRM has become a prominent approach to restructuring social relations, governance, and resource use practices in a wide variety of local and regional contexts around the world. For many, it has become a mainstay representing a way to navigate the extremes of laissez-faire exploitation on the one hand, and top-down, state-centred resource management on the other. Yet CNRM is not without its critics, many of whom see forms of devolution entirely consistent with neoliberalism, and others who see the transfer of significant power from states to local elites, promising little or no progressive social or environmental outcomes. Despite both widespread and official enthusiasm for CNRM oriented reforms, and the existence of a growing critical literature, there remains considerable room for critically informed, empirical analyses of specific CNRM projects and cases.

One of the pressing needs for research on CNRM is to address particularities in the design, implementation, representation and actual practices characterizing CNRM programs in different geographical and institutional settings at local, regional, national and international scales. One reason for this is simply that what might be generically referred to as CNRM encompasses a wide variety of projects and programs, from small-scale experiments in community scale forest management in British Columbia, Canada to post-Socialist restitutions of communal property regimes in Eastern and Central Europe, and from the resurgence of customary authority across Africa to the re-working of state-society relations in the context of political reforms in Indonesia and Mexico and the creation of co-management regimes in India.

This collection of papers is aimed at bringing into conversation critical, theoretically informed analyses of specific instantiations of CNRM that can attend to their specificities, and at the same time analyze and contextualize them in contributing to an understanding of how and why particular programs have been designed and implemented, how and why differences between programs matter, and how these particular programs articulate with the now familiar discursive tropes of CNRM. In this context, key questions include the ostensibly simple issue of exactly how the notion of “community” is translated and enacted in actual practice (i.e. who are the individual and group actors prominent in these programs and how do they relate to one another?). What specific sets of property rights and obligations attend the development of CNRM, and why? What are the implications of CNRM for governance, and for the development and reform of resource use practices? Also, what regional, national, and international political economic and discursive conditions explain the emergence and shaped the design of particular programs and projects. How is evidence about the social, economic, and ecological outcomes of CNRM being mobilized in support of or opposition to them?

We welcome contributions from a variety of disciplinary and geographical origins and from scholars interested in building an international, substantive, and critically informed basis of understanding and comparing cases of CNRM in action. Please convey expressions of interest, questions, and abstracts to one or both organizers.

Organizers: Scott Prudham, Department of Geography and Centre for Environment, University of Toronto (scott.prudham@utoronto.ca); Thomas Sikor, Junior Research Group on Postsocialist Land Relations, Humboldt University, Berlin (thomas.sikor@rz.hu-berlin.de)

2006-08-29T11:41:00.000-04:00

RESEARCH SCIENTIST – FISHERIES INSTITUTIONS AND POLICY

The WorldFish Center is undertaking a global search for a talented researcher and leader to join our growing team in the Greater Mekong regional office, based in Cambodia. Perhaps you know someone with the right combination of skills and interests: practical experience addressing questions of policy and institutional development in natural resources management, with a proven ability to communicate and collaborate with a range of government and civil society partners, backed by a solid record of publications as an analyst. And a passion to make a difference. While experience in fisheries and aquatic resources is certainly an advantage, it is not a requirement.

See full details on the posted position announcement .

Closing date for applications 30 September 2006

2006-08-14T15:36:00.000-04:00

Job Posting - University of Amsterdam

The Department of Geography, Planning and International Development Studies has a vacancy for a

Researcher (Post-doc) Geography and/or Planning

full-time (1,0 fte)

for co-ordination and development of a new research theme “Geographies of Coastal Lowlands”.

Coastal regions all around the world constitute the location of economic and demographic development. Simultaneously they are vulnerable to environmental degradation and the future consequences of climate change. This research theme aims to promote the resilience of coastal lowland societies and takes a governance perspective. Multiple-use conflicts, water-related issues, and North-South comparisons are key topics.

The research theme “Geographies of Coastal Lowlands” builds upon expertise available within the department with regard to the history of water management as well as coastal and marine affairs.

Tasks

To make an inventory of scientific developments in the field of coastal lowlands in the Netherlands and Europe, and to identify appropriate niches.
To explore options for funding projects that establish a research programme.
To elaborate, in cooperation with senior researchers, selected concepts and topics and prepare a review publication.
To explore and elaborate application of spatial information and analysis techniques (e.g. GIS) in governance issues concerning coastal lowlands.
To coordinate the formulation of a research proposal(s) on these topics.
To organize (including the acquisition of funding) of an international workshop on the proposed programme.
To explore possibilities of input from the programme to education in Human Geography, Planning and International Development Studies
To contribute to the department’s teaching programme in the studies of environment, governance, and international development studies (bachelor and master-level).

Requirements

Knowledge and experience within two or more of the topics of our preliminary focus is required. These concern the exploration of the following concepts and sub-themes:
- governance of water related issues, in particular water and space;
- resilience, in particular social resilience;
- issues of application of spatial information techniques within the sub-themes;
- the elaboration of the connection between the North and South regarding these sub-themes.
PhD in relevant social and/or environmental science
Team worker (organization and communication skills)
Affinity with the research theme
Affinity with spatial information techniques
Fluent English (oral and written), with skills to teach in English
Experience in writing research proposals will be considered to be an advantage.

Information

A short programme description is available.

For further information, please contact:

Prof. dr Guus J Borger, (+31 20 5254092; G.J.Borger@uva.nl)

(after 20th august) Dr. Maarten Wolsink (+31 20 5256229; M.P.Wolsink@uva.nl)

(till 3 August) Dr. Karin Pfeffer (+31 20 5254003; K.Pfeffer@uva.nl)

Appointment

This is a full-time appointment (1.0 fte, 38 h/w, optionally an arrangement of 0.8 is possible) initially for a period of one year. Subject to generated financial support for new research, the appointment can be extended. The salary is depending upon qualifications and experience (0-4 years after PhD).

Applications

The official call for written applications will be published and sent to you personally on request. Our schedule aims at an official reaction period that ends on September 15, 2006.

2006-07-29T09:39:00.000-04:00

Call for Articles
LEISA : Magazine on Low External Input & Sustainable Agriculture
Issue 22/4 December 2006:
Making the most of ecological processes
Deadline for submission of articles: 1 September 2006
E-mail: ileia@ileia.nl
www.iied.org

Trying to develop sustainable agriculture which builds on ecological processes is an ongoing challenge. Though some of the basic ecological principles are well known (for example, nutrient cycles or nitrogen fixation), we know very little about how these processes work in detail and about how the different ecological processes interact with each other. Most of the knowledge about ecological agriculture therefore builds on practical experiences and trial and error – or success. Examples where farmers are managing ecological processes include intercropping, plant density and arrangement, use of shade, and seed treatment. The system of rice intensification (SRI) is one example of an integrated ecological approach that has been very successful in increasing rice yields of small scale farmers while reducing the need for commercial inputs and saving on natural resources like water (see also earlier articles on LEISA Magazine, volumes 15.3, 15.4 and 18.3). First described in the early 1990s, this approach is now spreading all over the world, mostly through inform exchanges. Farmers try it out in different contexts and with different levels of input and management. But how are these experiences developed? How have farmers and communities reacted to this rather revolutionary approach? When has it been successful and when hasn’t it? What adaptations have been made to the system? Could a similar approach be used for other crops?

2006-07-21T14:11:00.000-04:00

IHDP Endorsed: Call for Papers

'Earth System Governance: Theories and Strategies for Sustainability'
2007 Amsterdam Conference on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 24-26 May 2007

http://www.2007amsterdamconference.org/

2006-06-07T10:17:00.000-04:00

CALL FOR PAPERS
REMOTE REGIONS/ NORTHERN DEVELOPMENT SESSIONS
WESTERN REGIONAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION
FORTY-SIXTH ANNUAL MEETINGS

The forty-sixth annual meeting of the Western Regional Science Association will be held in Newport Beach, California at the Hyatt-Regency Newport Beach. The conference will begin on Wednesday afternoon February 21 with a special Opening Session and Reception. Paper sessions will be scheduled Thursday through Saturday, February 22-24, 2007.

For information, see http://www.u.arizona.edu/%7Eplane/NewportCall.pdf

2006-05-18T11:48:00.000-04:00

IASCP Discussion Forum

As part of the redesign of the IASCP website, we have implemented an online message board for IASCP members. Registration is free, and after registering members may discuss IASCP conferences, new publications, commons research, or any other topic related to the study of the commons. This would be an excellent forum for authors to post information about new and upcoming publications. The forum may be accessed by clicking on the Discussion Forum link in the navigation bar on the left of this page.

2006-05-12T15:12:00.000-04:00

Call for Papers/Abstracts/Submissions
5th Annual Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities January 12 - 15, 2007 Renaissance Ilikai Waikiki Hotel, Honolulu Hawaii, USA - Submission Deadline: August 23, 2006

Sponsored by:
Asia-Pacific Research Institute of Peking University University of Louisville - Center for Sustainable Urban Neighborhoods

Web address: http://www.hichumanities.org
Email address: humanities@hichumanities.org

The 5th Annual Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities will be held from January 12 (Friday) to January 15 (Monday), 2007 at the Renaissance Ilikai Waikiki Hotel in Honolulu, Hawaii. The conference will provide many opportunities for academicians and professionals from arts and humanities related fields to interact with members inside and outside their own particular disciplines. Cross-disciplinary submissions with other fields are welcome. Performing artists (live dance, theater, and music) interested in displaying their talents will be accommodated whenever possible.

2006-05-11T12:15:00.000-04:00

Call for Outline Proposals
Funding initiative for multidisciplinary research - TECT: The Evolution of Cooperation and Trading - DEADLINE Thursday 8 June

Following agreement with funding bodies in Austria, the Czech Republic, Finland, France (CNRS, IRD), Germany (MPIs) , Hungary (OTKA), Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States (NSF), the European Science Foundation is launching a first Call for Outline Proposals for collaborative research projects (CRPs) to be undertaken within the EUROCORES program “TECT”.

The Programme will run for three to four years (2007-2010/11), depending on regulations of the participating funding bodies. It includes national research funding, as well as support for networking and dissemination activities currently provided by the ESF. The Programme aims to support high quality multidisciplinary research.

More information is available here

2006-04-10T14:20:00.000-04:00

New Publications:

Managing the Commons, IASCP 2004 Post-Conference Publications, edited by L. Merino and J. Robson.
Water Rights Reform: Lessons for Institutional Design edited by B. Bruns, C. Ringler, and R. Meinzen-Dick.
Renegotiating the Commons by Graham Marshall.
The book of abstracts from the 10th Biennial IASCP Conference in Oaxaca Mexico is available for purchase. Contact Michelle Curtain at iascp.indiana.edu for ordering information.

Positions Available:

University of Victoria, Chair in Culture & Ecosystems at Risk

Other Announcements:

Ecology & Society Award, Deadline July 2006