Dr Rebecca Kariuki is a guest editor for two special issues:
Impacts of People’s Engagement in Nature Conservation
Frontiers in Conservation Science
Manuscript Submission Deadline 31 May 2023
People’s participation and support for natural resource conservation have increasingly emerged as essential ingredients all over the world. These processes have evolved towards wider concepts encompassing collaborative design, planning and production, co-management and co-governance, active campaigning and citizen-science. People’s engagement is emphasized in relation to local and traditional knowledge integration, efficiency and cost-effectiveness of interventions, conflict resolution, equity in distribution of benefits, long term sustainability, communities empowerment, as well as contribution in decision-making processes, public opinion and political support.
However, participation itself does not guarantee success in preventing biodiversity loss and habitat fragmentation nor in balancing nature conservation with human well-being. Many factors have proven to affect the level of people’s participation and support, and therefore their effectiveness. For example, involvement of relevant stakeholders; inclusiveness of institutional and legal frameworks; cultural and historical components; social-environmental awareness; involvement in management mechanisms for benefits sharing and governance; efficiency of conflict-resolution strategies; and proper communication and dissemination. Credibility and legitimacy of conservation outcomes from participatory approaches is sometimes debated while uptake by decision-makers remains low.
In this Research topic we aim to take stock from and critically analyze the wealth of knowledge on people’s engagement in nature conservation, and to investigate the role that local as well as international communities have played at various extent for the success or failure of conservation endeavors. This includes identifying gaps and challenges, setting targets and designing interventions, actively supporting and campaigning, implementing best practices, measuring outcomes and effectiveness, and sharing management and governance techniques. Some of the questions we would like to address are for example:
What value has been added by collaborative design, planning, management or governance in natural resources conservation?
How many community-driven recommendations that could support decision-making are actually taken up by relevant decision-makers?
Which impacts have been generated by people’s participation and support, and what barriers and opportunities were found?
How people’s perceptions and public opinion have shaped conservation advocates’ visions and agenda, from local to global scale?
What are strengths and weaknesses of community managed conservation areas and how can this model can be scaled up?
How can local knowledge be integrated into expert-driven modeling of conservation priorities?
In this Research Topic we encourage submissions from all over the world of studies targeting:
1) Critical reflection on people’s participation (wide concept) and support in conservation, strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and challenges. Submitted articles can include reviews as well as lesson-learned from specific case studies.
2) Impacts assessment of participatory processes in conservation. Submitted articles can include case studies on participatory approaches and tools , e.g. scenario planning, management effectiveness and governance assessment, ecosystem services evaluation, citizen-science based data collection. We encourage to focus on actual impacts on decisions and/or interventions outcomes, and taken up by policy and practice.
3) Analysis of how people’s participation and support has shaped visions and agenda of the natural resources conservation policy frameworks, from global to sub-national level.
4) Comparative analyses of participatory approaches versus desktop-based or model-driven approaches for planning and forecasting in conservation, including, for example, mixed-approaches and counterfactual analyses.
Special Issue “Future Scenarios of Land Use and Land Cover Change”
A special issue of Land (ISSN 2073-445X). MDPI
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Scenarios of land use and land cover change are shaped by complex interactions across biophysical, socioeconomic, and governance factors operating at multiple spatial-temporal scales. These interactions feed back to the climate system affecting nature, people, and development. Although there is a considerable effort in understanding the nature, processes, and consequences of land use and land cover change, uncertainty persists in understanding future changes informed by perceptions of futures elicited using participatory approaches. Land use scenario analysis is a promising approach to generating diverse visions of potential and desired future land use trajectories that resonate with international, national, and local planning agendas. This Special Issue aims to collate contributions on recent advances in the application of land use scenario tools in exploring future land use and land cover change trajectories at different scales and foci with innovative and transformative adaptation pathways. Potential topics include but are not limited to drivers and impacts of land use and land cover amongst other drivers of change; interactions between developmental and environmental processes; participatory approaches to land use land cover change analysis; interactions between institutions, technologies, and cultural practices; and identification of barriers and contingency factors that enable or hinder the acceptance and adoption of scenario findings—making scenarios work.
It should be noted that waivers or partial waivers of the publication fees will be available to high quality, well-written papers.
Prof. Dr. Rob Marchant
Dr. Jessica Thorn
Dr. Rebecca Kariuki
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Land is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI’s English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- land use land cover change
- scenario analysis
- land use trajectory
- stakeholders
- diverse visions
- multiple scales
