Interactions between people and the saltwater crocodile Crocodylus porosus frequently occur on islands and in coastal regions. Saltwater crocodiles impact people's lives and livelihoods by attacking them, resulting in minor or serious injuries, and by interfering in people's foraging activities. Retaliation may include killing the crocodiles involved. To reduce such human–crocodile interactions, data about the occurrence of incidents are required. We present data on encounters with crocodiles and attacks on people in the Roviana Lagoon, Solomon Islands. Data includes time of incident, gender, age and activity of the victim, water conditions and what happened to the crocodile after the incident. We used a questionnaire to capture the details of incidents that occurred during 2000–2020 in the villages of Dunde, Baraulu, Nusa Hope and Kozou. Most incidents were in the evening, mostly involving women, and most victims were aged 20–39 years or ≥ 60 years. In all cases people were attacked while gleaning for shellfish in the mangroves. Attacks occurred irrespective of whether the water was clear or murky, and in all cases the crocodiles were not killed. Such site-specific data will facilitate the formulation of strategies for reducing negative interactions between people and crocodiles in this particular location. Although the saltwater crocodile is categorized as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List, research such as this provides data that can be used for promoting coexistence with and conservation of this species.

Contested from the early period of Menelik territorial expansion into the hinterlands of Addis Ababa, areas in the vicinity of Suba Park continue to be a bone of political contention in the context of the struggle of Oromo people against the expansion of the central state. A flashpoint is the Oromo protests (2014–2018) against federal state territorial expansion into the Oromo ethnic territory through a new Addis Ababa Master Plan that led to the deposition of Haile Mariam Desalegn and the installation of Abiy Amhed. I investigate how the state environmental policy maintained for extraction and conservation in the Suba forest between the late 1890s and 2018 affected the Tulama modes of land use related to their worldviews and their use of material, social, spiritual and symbolic values of land in the struggle for land and resource rights. I used ethnographic methods that included in-depth and semi-structured interviews, participant observations and document analysis to investigate long-standing and complex land-based conflicts in and around Suba Park. I show how simplifying state narratives of environmental policy entrenched in centralized state administration and exclusionist resource management schemes have reinforced a wider concern about indigenous land and resource rights and decentralized environmental governance.

This essay addresses tensions within political philosophy between group rights, which allow historically marginalized communities some self-governance in determining its own rules and norms, and the rights of marginalized subgroups, such as women, within these communities. Community norms frequently uphold patriarchal structures that define women as inferior to men, assign them a subordinate status within the community, and cut them off from the individual rights enjoyed by women in other sections of society. As feminists point out, the capacity for voice and exit cannot be taken for granted, for community norms may be organized in ways that deny women any voice in its decision-making forums as well as the resources they would need to survive outside the community. This essay draws on research among the Gond, an indigenous community in India, to explore this debate. Given the strength of the forces within the community militating against women’s capacity for voice or exit, the question motivating our research is: Can external organizations make a difference? We explore the impacts of two external development organizations that sought to work with women within these communities in order to answer this question.

In the coming decades, promoting the production of ecosystem service provisioning will become increasingly important in the U.S. Northeast, which is expected to experience a number of impacts as a result of climate change, including rising temperatures, changes in precipitation and seasonality, and sea-level rise, among others (U.S. Global Change Research Program 2020). Incentives have been shown to motivate the adoption of sustainable production practices that provision ecosystem services across different types of working landscapes. Using data from a recent landscape assessment in the Northeast, this paper finds an incredible breadth of programs available to producers across a variety of working landscapes (e.g., agricultural lands and working forests) and for different production practices. These data also point to critical gaps in current programming and also highlight important opportunities for programmatic synergy and more holistic program design going forward. This paper concludes by discussing the results in the context of four main themes of particular relevance to the U.S. Northeast which include (1) working landbase and infrastructure, (2) livelihood provisioning, (3) scale, and (4) resilience.

Water management and distribution rules in flood-based livelihood systems (FBLS) have a key role in enhancing system-wide productivity and livelihoods. While such potential has to a certain extent been harnessed in DG Khan FBLS in Pakistan, it has not yet been fulfilled in the Tana River and Fogera FBLS in Kenya and Ethiopia, respectively. These three systems are considered among the major sources of water and food security in their respective regions by the local governments and communities. Drawing from 105 individual interviews with Pakistani FBLS farmers, the paper establishes that a package of water management and distribution rules have significantly contributed to (a) mitigating excessive upstream floodwater use, (b) reducing downstream water scarcity and (c) realizing nearly 4 tons ha−1 harvest of the major wheat crop across the upstream and downstream areas. This yield is about 20% higher than the country-wide average, and two-third of the maximum achievable. Furthermore, 86% of the upstream and three in four of the downstream farmers have managed to cover their livelihood needs that included health, school, housing, transportation, energy and food expenses. On the other hand, the analyses based on individual interviews with 94 and 147 FBLS farmers from Kenya and Ethiopia respectively, uncovered the negative consequences of the absence of a comprehensive package of water management and distribution rules. In Kenya, the downstream small-scale farmers that account for two-third of the Tana River FBLS population frequently suffer from floodwater scarcity. They could not cultivate the high return rice crop and their staple maize yield was low at about 1.25 tons ha−1 or 20% of the maximum attainable. Four in five reported poor livelihoods. The upstream large-scale farmers however often diverted excessive floodwater; over 90% usually grow rice as well as maize as a second crop for home consumption. The situation in Fogera is similar. The water distribution rules prioritized the upstream rice cultivation introduced a decade back to boost economic growth. This, as informed by 95% of the interviewed farmers, has caused downstream floodwater scarcity, about 30% maize yield reduction and livelihood deterioration. These findings on the impacts of water distribution rules can contribute to formulating investments that better achieve the productivity and livelihood potentials of FBLS across Africa and globally.

Relatively few longitudinal studies have been undertaken of change and development among rural communities in Africa. Drawing on field-based research conducted over almost five decades, the article examines the shocks and adaptive strategies experienced in the remote rural community of Kayima in north-eastern Sierra Leone. In coping with both external and internal shocks and displaying a remarkable level of resilience, there has however been very little improvement in community livelihoods, and it is suggested that it is a case of ‘resilience without development’. It is likely that the findings of the study could have wider relevance among rural communities elsewhere in Africa.

The Asian elephant Elephas maximus is of cultural significance for the Thai people. The development of legal protection for elephants in Thailand dates back to the 17th century, reflecting concerns about both human livelihoods and elephant conservation. The legal status of privately owned, captive elephants differs from that of wild individuals, with consequences for the lawful use of ivory from captive animals. Prior to 2015, the lack of comprehensive measures to control the Thai ivory market enabled the laundering of illegally sourced ivory in the country. The Thai government introduced legal reforms in 2015, imposing strict controls over the possession and domestic trade of ivory from captive Asian elephants, and aligning the protection of African elephants and their ivory with CITES regulations. Nonetheless, the sustainable use of Thai ivory remains disputed, and international pressure to close the commercial trade in domestic ivory persists. Here we review this complex situation, aiming to inform future reforms. Consolidation of laws related to elephants and ivory would facilitate law enforcement and compliance. Use of an electronic database would improve the monitoring of ivory movements and aid the implementation and enforcement of laws.

Public preferences for wildlife protection can dictate the success or failure of conservation interventions. However, little research has focused on wildlife preferences among youth or how youth prioritize species-based conservation. We conducted a study of youth between 7 and 20 years old (n = 128) at five local schools situated near critical hawksbill turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata) nesting beaches in El Salvador to determine their wildlife preferences and how they prioritize species for conservation based on five attributes: endemism; use for hunting and fishing; rapid decline in population size; presence around their home; and ecological significance. These Salvadoran youth showed preferences for native over non-native species and tended to rank rapid population decline as the most important attribute for prioritizing wildlife for protection, followed by use for hunting and fishing. Participants in local environmental education activities placed greater importance on species in rapid decline than non-participants, who considered endemism as most important. Overall, these findings reveal how environmental education may successfully promote increased prioritization of imperilled species among youth. Economic payments for conserving hawksbill turtles may link the two top reasons that Salvadoran youth provided for protecting species by compensating for the reduced hunting required to facilitate population stabilization.

This study supplements spatial panel econometrics techniques with qualitative GIS to analyse spatio-temporal changes in the distribution of integrated conservation–development projects relative to poaching activity and unauthorized resource use in Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda. Cluster and spatial regression analyses were performed on data from ranger monitoring containing > 35,000 combined observations of illegal activities in Volcanoes National Park, against tourism revenue sharing and conservation NGO funding data for 2006–2015. Results were enriched with qualitative GIS analysis from key informant interviews. We found a statistically significant negative linear effect of overall integrated conservation–development investments on unauthorized resource use in Volcanoes National Park. However, individually, funding from Rwanda's tourism revenue sharing policy did not have an effect in contrast to the significant negative effect of conservation NGO funding. In another contrast between NGO funding and tourism revenue sharing funding, spatial analysis revealed significant gaps in revenue sharing funding relative to the hotspots of illegal activities, but these gaps were not present for NGO funding. Insight from qualitative GIS analysis suggests that incongruity in prioritization by decision makers at least partly explains the differences between the effects of revenue sharing and conservation NGO investment. Although the overall results are encouraging for integrated conservation–development projects, we recommend increased spatial alignment of project funding with clusters of illegal activities, which can make investment decision-making more data-driven and projects more effective for conservation.

Research on Somali mobility and migration has predominantly focused on forced migration from Somalia and diaspora communities in Western Europe and North America, neglecting other experiences and destinations. This article traces the journeys of Somali traders from East Africa to China, mapping the growth of a transnational trading economy that has offered a stable career path to a few but a chance to scrape by for many others. Understandings of migration and mobility must encompass these precarious terrains, allowing for a richer examination of how individuals have navigated war, displacement, and political and economic change by investing in transnational livelihoods, not just via ties to the West, but through the myriad connections linking African economies to the Gulf and Asia.