Global demand for timber is projected to grow and much of this timber will continue to be sourced from natural forests. As these forests, particularly in the tropics, tend to be inhabited by the... Show moreGlobal demand for timber is projected to grow and much of this timber will continue to be sourced from natural forests. As these forests, particularly in the tropics, tend to be inhabited by the world's most marginalized communities, the social impacts of logging require more attention within policy, practice and research. This Introduction to the Special Issue of International Forestry Review on The Social Impacts of Logging compiles evidence that the overwhelmingly negative social impacts of logging are systemic. As logging companies fail to fulfill their social obligations, and elite capture is common, the extent to which local communities benefit from logging operations is minimal, while long-term, harmful effects on livelihoods, social fabric and safety are severe. Logging operations reinforce and often exacerbate pre-existing inequities, particularly for women and Indigenous people. Weak governance, a lack of transparency and poor participation procedures partially explain this unfavourable situation. However, logging will only achieve better social outcomes if underlying power-imbalances are tackled. Show less
Rural, tropical coastal communities are experiencing sustained, often increasing food insecurity, poverty, and global change impacts. These challenges have stimulated a rise in projects aiming to... Show moreRural, tropical coastal communities are experiencing sustained, often increasing food insecurity, poverty, and global change impacts. These challenges have stimulated a rise in projects aiming to enhance and diversify local livelihoods. The ability of these projects to achieve broad-scale benefits is limited by approaches that do not account for feedbacks among sectors and across marine and terrestrial environments. To address these limitations, we present an applied research agenda to support an integrated approach to livelihood project planning and management. This agenda explicitly examines interactions among natural resources, industries, and livelihoods and is based on three foundational activities: (1) a governance review and assessment, (2) strategic partnership formation, and (3) a diagnostic approach supported by science and shared outcomes. We add structure to the established logic in our field by broadening the sectoral and spatial scope of livelihoods projects, so they can better contribute to interrelated UN Sustainable Development Goals. Show less
Solomon Islands has relied on highly unsustainable industrial logging since the 1980s. While the development narrative around logging emphasizes its macro-economic importance, it structurally... Show moreSolomon Islands has relied on highly unsustainable industrial logging since the 1980s. While the development narrative around logging emphasizes its macro-economic importance, it structurally overlooks the impacts on local people’s lives. Based on 200 qualitative interviews conducted in 25 villages and 14 logging operations in Malaita Province between 2016 and 2019, this paper demonstrates that the impacts of logging on subsistence and social relations are systemic rather than incidental. By making use of interview quotes, the paper gives voice to rural Solomon Islanders. The results show that the logging industry fails to generate lasting local benefits, while unsustainable logging practices undermine subsistence livelihoods, especially fisheries. Logging triggers conflict that long outlasts the operations themselves, causes sexual exploitation, facilitates excessive alcohol use and reinforces gender disparities by structurally excluding women from decision-making and benefit-sharing. This paper calls for a stronger focus on the social impacts of logging in forestry science, policy and practice. Show less
Key messages • Gender inequality and gender-based violence are major development issues throughout Solomon Islands. • Injustices against women and girls are particularly pronounced in the logging... Show moreKey messages • Gender inequality and gender-based violence are major development issues throughout Solomon Islands. • Injustices against women and girls are particularly pronounced in the logging sector. • Solomon Islands is making important advances towards designing policies that aim to achieve gender equity, but these advances are yet to become visible within the forestry sector. • This info brief summarizes research on the impacts of logging operations on Solomon Islands’ women and girls. • It calls for the development of legislation, policy and practice that ensures gender equity in logging operations and offers recommendations for doing so. • The National Forest Policy and ongoing review of the Forest Resources and Timber Utilization Act provide important opportunities to address the gender injustices that characterize the Solomon Islands’ logging sector. Show less
Over the past weeks, The Guardian featured a mind-boggling series called Pacific Plunder, which focuses to a large extent on the effects of logging in Solomon Islands. In this blogpost Tessa Minter... Show moreOver the past weeks, The Guardian featured a mind-boggling series called Pacific Plunder, which focuses to a large extent on the effects of logging in Solomon Islands. In this blogpost Tessa Minter sheds light on the one story that remains untold: the story of women’s experiences. Show less
Yearly, development-induced displacement affects some 20 million people, a disproportionate share of whom are indigenous. Within the diverse category of indigenous peoples, hunter-gatherers are... Show moreYearly, development-induced displacement affects some 20 million people, a disproportionate share of whom are indigenous. Within the diverse category of indigenous peoples, hunter-gatherers are especially vulnerable to displacement as they form the least powerful sectors of society. While displacement poses a major threat to the few remaining hunter-gatherer peoples, case studies of how this process unfolds are scarce. This ethnographic study details how two decades of indigenous land rights legislation have been ineffective in preventing displacement of indigenous communities in the Philippines, through the case of Agta hunter-gatherers of Dimasalansan. The paper demonstrates how procedural inconsistencies, institutional competition and a development paradigm focused on commodification of land have undermined the legal titling process. We argue that the ensuing land-rush that currently displaces Agta is symptomatic for how the implementation of indigenous land rights legislation is undermined by business interests, thereby creating more uncertainty than certainty for the least powerful. Show less
Many hunter-gatherer groups live on the outskirts of wider society, experiencing poor health outcomes with little access to medical care. From a development perspective, key interventions include... Show moreMany hunter-gatherer groups live on the outskirts of wider society, experiencing poor health outcomes with little access to medical care. From a development perspective, key interventions include the sedentarisation of these mobile peoples into camps nearby larger towns with sanitation infrastructure and medical care, as increased access to services is assumed to improve outcomes. However, recent research in the Agta (Philippine foragers from North-east Luzon) has demonstrated that individuals residing in more ‘developed’ communities suffer from increased morbidity and mortality. Here, using quantitative and ethnographic data on health collected between 2002 and 2014, we explore why this trend occurs by examining the relationship between key development initiatives with self-reported illness and the uptake of medical interventions with 415 Agta men, women and children. We demonstrate that health outcomes worsen as sedentarisation progresses, despite some increases in medical access. We argue this is because the development paradigm is not evidence-based, but rather stems from an ideological dislike of mobile hunter-gatherer lifestyles. Compounded by cultural insensitivity and daily discrimination, current interventions are ill-suited to the unique needs of hunter-gatherers, and thus ineffective. Based on our findings we offer future short and long-term policy suggestions which seek to reduce the Agta's vulnerability, rather than increase it. Show less
Pels, P.; Boog, I.; Florusbosch, H.J.; Kripe, Z.; Minter, T.; Postma, M.; ... ; Richards‐Rissetto, H. 2018
Recent demands for accountability in ‘data management’ by funding agencies, universities, international journals and other academic institutions have worried many anthropologists and ethnographers.... Show moreRecent demands for accountability in ‘data management’ by funding agencies, universities, international journals and other academic institutions have worried many anthropologists and ethnographers. While their demands for transparency and integrity in opening up data for scrutiny seem to enhance scientific integrity, such principles do not always consider the way the social relationships of research are properly maintained. As a springboard, the present Forum, triggered by such recent demands to account for the use of ‘data’, discusses the present state of anthropological research and academic ethics/integrity in a broader perspective. It specifically gives voice to our disciplinary concerns and leads to a principled statement that clarifies a particularly ethnographic position. This position is then discussed by several commentators who treat its viability and necessity against the background of wider developments in anthropology – sustaining the original insight that in ethnography, research materials have been co‐produced before they become commoditised into ‘data’. Finally, in moving beyond such a position, the Forum broadens the issue to the point where other methodologies and forms of ownership of research materials will also need consideration. Show less
Minter, T.; Orirana, G.; Boso, D.; Ploeg, J. van der 2018
This article provides an ethnography of Agta mobility, based on fieldwork in the northern Philippines conducted over the past decade. The Agta are a population of about 10,000 people, living in... Show moreThis article provides an ethnography of Agta mobility, based on fieldwork in the northern Philippines conducted over the past decade. The Agta are a population of about 10,000 people, living in small settlements distributed along the coasts and in the mountainous interior of northeastern Luzon. They follow a hunting-fishing and gathering lifestyle, which includes a relatively mobile settlement pattern. First, this article aims to document Agta mobility by exploring its drivers and by showing how it is both facilitated and limited by kinship relations. How mobility varies regionally and seasonally will also be discussed. Second, the article focuses on Agta mobility in relation to Philippine development policies. This includes a discussion of past and recent efforts at sedentarization, as well as the government’s misconceptions of Agta mobility in relation to the ongoing ancestral land titling processes. Finally, the article explores the ongoing and future developments likely to influence Agta mobility. These concern Agta parents’ recent emphasis on enrolling their children in formal education and the approval of a road construction project that will traverse Agta living areas and the associated claims on coastal land by politically influential outsiders. An underlying question of this article is how anthropological knowledge on mobility could contribute to improving policy. Show less
Do caregivers in non‐Western communities adapt their behaviors to the needs of infants? This question reflects one of the most long‐standing debates on the universality versus culture‐specificity... Show moreDo caregivers in non‐Western communities adapt their behaviors to the needs of infants? This question reflects one of the most long‐standing debates on the universality versus culture‐specificity of caregiver–infant interactions in general and sensitive responsiveness to infants in particular. In this article, an integration of both points of view is presented, based on the theoretical origins of the sensitive responsiveness construct combined with the ethnographic literature on caregivers and infants in different parts of the world. This integration advocates universality without uniformity, and calls for multidisciplinary collaborations to investigate the complexities and nuances of caregiver–infant interactions in different cultures. Salient issues are illustrated with observations of infants (ages 7–31 months) in Mali, the Republic of Congo, and the Philippines. Show less
Ploeg, J. van der; Aquino, D.M.; Minter, T.; Weerd, M. van 2016
The legalisation of the customary land rights of rural communities is currently actively promoted as a strategy for conserving biodiversity. There is, however, little empirical information on the... Show moreThe legalisation of the customary land rights of rural communities is currently actively promoted as a strategy for conserving biodiversity. There is, however, little empirical information on the conservation outcomes of these tenure reforms. In this paper, we describe four conservation projects that specifically aimed to formalise land rights in the Philippines, a country widely seen as a model for the devolution of control over natural resources to rural communities. We demonstrate that these legalistic interventions are based on flawed assumptions, on: 1) the capacity of the state to enforce tenure; 2) the characteristics of customary land rights; and 3) the causal links between legal entitlements and sustainable natural resource management. As a result, these state-led tenure reforms actually aggravate tenure insecurity on the ground, and ultimately fail to improve natural resource management. Show less
A network of multiple caregivers contributing to the care of an infant is the norm in many non-Western cultural contexts. Current observational measures of caregiver sensitive responsiveness to... Show moreA network of multiple caregivers contributing to the care of an infant is the norm in many non-Western cultural contexts. Current observational measures of caregiver sensitive responsiveness to infant signals focus on single caregivers, failing to capture the total experience of the infant when it comes to the sensitive responsiveness received from multiple sources. The current paper aims to introduce the construct of received sensitivity that captures the sensitivity that an infant experiences from multiple sources in cultural contexts where simultaneous multiple caregiving is common. The paper further presents an adaptation of Ainsworth’s Sensitivity versus Insensitivity observation scale to allow for the assessment of sensitivity as received by the infant regardless of who is providing the sensitive responses to its signals. The potential usefulness of the Received Sensitivity scale is illustrated by two case studies of infants from an Agta forager community in the Philippines where infants are routinely taken care of by multiple caregivers. The case studies show that the infants’ total experience of being responded to sensitively cannot be simply derived from the sum of individual caregiver sensitivity scores, demonstrating the potential added value of the new Received Sensitivity observation measure. Show less
Extractive industries promise to bring prosperity to indigenous communities in order to obtain their consent to operate. While many of these promises are left unfulfilled, mining operations... Show moreExtractive industries promise to bring prosperity to indigenous communities in order to obtain their consent to operate. While many of these promises are left unfulfilled, mining operations adversely impact these communities’ natural and social environments. We document how the Philippine Agta resist mining, but also attempt to reclaim the benefits they were promised by the mining company. By elaborating the complexities of implementing compensation mechanisms, we also bring to light their problematic underlying logic. Drawing on the concept of equivalence (Li 2011), this leads us to question the validity of the assumption that long-term environmental and social impacts can be compensated for by short-term material benefits. Show less
The Agta of the Philippines depend on extensive knowledge of their naturalenvironment for their livelihoods. However, little is known about the transmissionof this indigenous ecological knowledge.... Show moreThe Agta of the Philippines depend on extensive knowledge of their naturalenvironment for their livelihoods. However, little is known about the transmissionof this indigenous ecological knowledge. This paper examines the transmission ofknowledge on hunting, fishing and gathering among the Agta in San Mariano, IsabelaProvince. We used observation, interviewing and knowledge tests as methods ofinquiry. Our results show that knowledge transmission happens on-site, is genderspecificand that pathways of knowledge transmission differ per livelihood activity.Learning among the Agta takes place stepwise but less systematically than suggestedby earlier research on knowledge transmission among hunter-gatherers. We found thatobservation, imitation and individual experimentation are important modes of learningin all livelihood activities. Contemporary environmental and social change, particularlydeforestation and formal education, have far-reaching implications for knowledgetransmission and identity in Agta society. Show less
