Motivation: Power relations, and the politics shaping and reshaping them, are key to determining influence and outcomes in water governance. But current discourse on water governance tends to present decision-making as neutral and technical unaffected by political influences.
The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands emphasizes the “wise use†of wetlands by conserving the ecological character of wetlands while managing the socio-economic value these landscapes hold for different stakeholders. Reviewing the Convention obligations, resolutions, and guidelines through a feminist political ecology lens, we find them to be overtly simplistic and technocratic.
This chapter highlights the key dependences, linkages and challenges of water resources management. (Many of these issues discussed are revisited and illustrated in the following chapters.) The first part introduces surface and groundwater management in the terrestrial part of the water cycle.
Local commons are underutilized in resource management models, thus limiting the effectiveness of the commons concept. This study examined the actual situation of the local commons in Altanbulag soum, a suburb of Ulaanbaatar City, Mongolia, where land degradation is a concern, using the case study method. Interviews using semi-structured questionnaires were conducted with pastoralists.
Rangeland management in former tropical rainforest areas may affect ecosystem services. We hypothesized that management practices like burning and overgrazing reduce supporting (soil quality) and consequently also provisioning (forage productivity and quality) and regulating (nutrient cycling) ecosystem services.
Grazing leads to the reduction of biomass and plays a critical role in land degradation in arid and semiarid lands. However, the indirect effects of grazing on the ecosystem, e.g., the effect on seed dispersal, have not been well understood.
Farm abandonment and over-extensification trends in less-favored livestock breeding areas in the Mediterranean have led to socio-environmental issues that are difficult to assess and address, due to the characteristics of these areas (e.g., poor data availability and reliability).
Most commonly in drylands the salinity levels are always high and evenly dispersed due to this salinity levels the plant cultivated are usually tremendously affected. Normal plants cannot grow in soils with high salinity levels. In this book the authors would like to analyze the effects of human acticities on the salinity lebvels in drylands.
Key success factors
There were several reasons for the success of the restoration initiative.
• Implementation had the active participation of the local community; i.e., it was community- led restoration.
• Restoration produced short- and long-term economic and environmental benefits.
• It systematically included women, girls and youth in restoration activities.
Since the mid-1980s, the positive impacts of these simple, cost-efficient water harvesting techniques become clear, following their increasingly widespread adoption. Their use has allowed smallholders to reverse land degradation, improve soil fertility, sustainably increase crop production, achieve food security, and create more productive, diverse and resilient farming systems.