The European Beaver came close to extinction in France at the beginning of the twentieth century. It has since been reintroduced across the country but its gradual expansion has caused conflicts linked to its behavior, exacerbated by strict enforcement of laws against poaching or the destruction of beaver dams. We conducted field research in 2021 in three municipalities, two in the Loire basin and one in the Seine basin. Using a reconciliation ecology perspective and participatory science methodology, we investigated the dynamics of beaver rejection and approaches to defuse them by emphasizing the anthropomorphic characters of the beaver. During successive meetings with study participants, we attempted to mitigate attitudes of human/nature opposition by presenting humans as part of ecosystems, engaged in social relations with other living beings using the concept of "neighborhood," which specifically places these relationships and has proven to be more readily adopted than the more abstract concepts of ecosystem, habitat, or biotope. We used a three-stage process of reconciliation/reconnection/protection to raise environmental awareness and concerns. Our results can provide guidelines for environmental agents and officers to engage local populations in conservation efforts.

The outbreak of COVID-19 has had an enormous impact on most of society. The most effective measure to prevent the spread has been reducing mobility, which is especially problematic for pastoralists relying on mobility to follow the movement of their livestock. We investigated to what degree Norwegian reindeer husbandry and the reindeer husbandry management system are affected by COVID-19 and government restrictions to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. For reindeer herders, our main finding was that the COVID-19 had little to no impact on their daily work. However, impacts varied by domain, with work in corrals, income, and slaughter being negatively affected. For employees in the management system, communication/contact with herders and visits/control of corrals/slaughter have been negatively affected. Employees in the management system were satisfied with how information concerning COVID-19 and prevention measures have been communicated by the central government, while the herders were mainly dissatisfied.

Power relationships, access and control, (in)equity, and (in)justice are key modulators of conflicts arising from ecosystem services between multiple stakeholders. A greater knowledge of stakeholder value systems and behaviors is crucial for understanding socioecological dynamics. We propose an analytical framework that combines political ecology and game theory to analyze water ecosystem services. This integrated framework was used to reinterpret concepts such as common goods, (a)symmetric flows, and (un)fair trade-offs in the context of ecosystem services. The purpose was to gain a better understanding of behaviors and (a)symmetries in power relationships between multiple stakeholders. We studied the case of a north-western Mediterranean river basin using data obtained from stakeholder interviews and newspaper articles. Our findings uncovered different types of stakeholder relationships, ranging from mutual support and cooperation to conflict. The proposed analytical framework shows how social mechanisms can affect ecosystem services flows, potentially facilitating or hindering the development of more equitable management models for natural resources.

Vultures constitute globally the most rapidly declining group of birds. Across their wide distribution range, they share common ecological functions and unfavourable conservation status while being associated with varying habitats, lifestyles, cultural standing, and threats. We reveal conceptualisations about the emblematic yet critically endangered Egyptian vulture along its migratory flyway from the Balkans through the Middle East to Africa. Information was gathered through interviews, focus group discussions, and market surveys, with 420 people in 11 participating countries contributing overall. Our results showed that all vultures are recognised primarily for the environmental cleaning services, but the level of awareness differs between countries. Τhe Egyptian vulture has some perceptual advantages based on its white color, migratory nature, and endangered conservation status. This underlines its suitability as a charismatic flagship species that can potentially benefit other vulture species and thus enforce broader vulture conservation initiatives.

Different chronicles of the Byzantine Empire's history have noted various economic data gleaned from historical documents and accounts of the Empire's existence. I provide conjectures on approximate real GDP per capita for the Empire over its existence from AD 300 to 1453. I use these to investigate whether climate forcing variables are associated with real GDP per capita fluctuations. Some hypotheses on factors that would have affected Byzantine economic performance are tested using climate/environmental factors in time series regression. The results support and confirm some findings on how the Byzantine economy may have been affected by periods of regional climate change.

The Sasanian Empire (224-651 CE) has been given relatively little attention in research on climate-society interactions when compared to the neighboring Byzantine Empire, despite evidence of changing conditions and an agricultural economy that is theoretically vulnerable to droughts due to low annual precipitation. We review the available historical, archaeological, paleo-environmental, and paleo-climatic evidence to assess whether climatic conditions factored into periods of Sasanian growth and decline. We find evidence for drier conditions across Sasanian territories at the turn of the sixth century, a pattern that extends to the Aegean, Anatolia, and Central Asia. These same conditions contributed to a significant decline for the nearby Kingdom of Himyar but occurred alongside a period of expansion and intensification for the Sasanian Empire. We suggest that a combination of careful management of water infrastructure, including qanats, which can conserve water resources during dry periods, and land-use strategies that are both diverse and flexible, may have mitigated the worst impacts of this dry period. However, we note several weaknesses in the available data that still hinder confident interpretations of the potential impacts of climate change in the Sasanian Empire. Notably, there are gaps in the coverage of paleo-hydrological records and a complete lack of terrestrial paleo-temperature records in the region, as well as low resolution and high chronological uncertainties in the archaeological and paleo-environmental evidence.

Mongolians have long known of the association between marmots and the plague. We examine their understanding of the marmot not only as a biological species that can harbour the plague, but also from a cosmological perspective as a chimerical being with potential punishment on hunters who have transgressed ancient taboos. To do so we deconstruct the multiple image of the chimerical marmot in legends, stories, and beliefs. Many Mongolians believe that if the marmot is over-exploited and the population decimated through excessive hunting, hunting households may be punished with infections of the plague.

We examine factors affecting the choice of marketing channels for maize among male, female, and joint decision-making farm households using data from households in Dawuro zone, southern Ethiopia. Econometric results suggest that female and joint decision-makers are more likely to sell maize to consumers or retailers in the main local market where the maize price is higher than to wholesale merchants directly from the farm. Individual decision-makers (male or female) who grow improved maize varieties are more likely to sell to wholesalers directly from the farm. This may be an indication of the effectiveness of joint decisions over individual decisions related to the market price. We also found that improved maize varieties distributed to farmers in the study area are of poor quality and that there is a lack of modern storage facilities so that farmers have to sell immediately after harvest during the lower price season. Thus, there is a need for policies promoting the distribution of high-quality maize seeds and encouraging investments in the establishment of modern maize storage facilities in the study area.

This article analyzes bottom-up institution-building processes in a region considered deforestation and environmental degradation hotspot. Utilizing the constitutionality approach developed by Haller, Acciaioli, and Rist (2016), we examine two recent cases of bottom-up institution-building in the department of Rivadavia, Chaco Salteño, Argentina. We highlight the similarities and differences between both constitutionality processes and identify various weaknesses in the two cases. We argue that constitutionality, understood as a process, has occurred to different (incomplete) degrees in each case. Finally, we show that external catalyzing agents play a decisive role in enabling or hampering the constitutionality process. Our study contributes to the literature on common-pool resource governance by highlighting how collective action can lead to participatory-development processes.

The rise of zoonotic disease-related public health crises has sparked calls for policy action, including calls to close wildlife markets. Yet, these calls often reflect limited understanding of where, precisely, exposure to risk occurs along wildlife and wild meat trade chains. They also threaten to negatively impact food security and livelihoods. From a public health perspective, it is important to understand the practices that shape food safety all along the trade chain, resulting in meat that is either safe to eat or managed as a potential vector of pathogens. This article uses ethnographic methods to examine the steps that lead a wild animal from the forest to the plate of an urban consumer in Yangambi and Kisangani in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Focusing on hunters, village-level consumers, transporters, market traders and urban consumers, we highlight specific practices that expose different actors involved in the trade chain to wild meat related health risks, including exposure to food borne illnesses from contaminated meat and zoonotic pathogens through direct contact with wild animals, and the local practices in place to reduce the same. We discuss interventions that could help prevent and mitigate zoonotic and food borne disease risks associated with wild meat trade chains.

For decades, Mexico has been one of the major illegal opium poppy cultivation countries in the world. In 2017-2018 the price of the opium gum dropped abruptly to a historical low, causing a sudden collapse of production. We analyze the dynamics of rural land systems amid this price collapse through a multi-site approach in three neighboring municipalities in the Southern Highlands of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. We use medium-scale spatial resolution satellite imagery for a quantitative assessment in a five-year period (2016-2020), complemented by secondary data and structured/semi-structured interviews with poppy growers and other key informants. Findings show that all three municipalities experienced pronounced declines in the areas of overall cultivated agricultural land immediately after the poppy price collapsed (2017-2018). However, there is a clear contrast among municipalities in how these areas recovered the following years (2019-2020). We identify three differentiating factors that explain this contrast in land-system trajectories: different levels of extreme poverty, livelihood diversification, and geographic isolation associated to (trans)national migration networks. These findings contribute to the analysis of the dynamic relationships among rural land systems, local resource management (including agrobiodiversity), and economic globalization involving illegal crop-commodity cultivation and migration, particularly in Latin America.

In England, provision of temporary accommodation for people experiencing homelessness has often entailed using traditional construction approaches to deliver housing. However, recent experiments are using modular homes to provide temporary accommodation, accompanied by support services for people experiencing homelessness. Given the early nature of these trials, it is unclear what impacts these modular homes have on their occupants and how these projects in turn impact surrounding residents and businesses. We present a case study of the first modular homes for people experiencing homelessness in Cambridge, England, drawing on longitudinal interviews with the six residents occupying these homes. We found that the physical features of the homes, coupled with wrap-around support services, yielded positive short- and mid-term outcomes for occupants, including improved management of their substance use and money, skills development and readiness for employment, social relations, and a burgeoning sense of community, safety, and security. These positive outcomes have spurred wider interest, including the incorporation of modular homes as alternative temporary accommodation in the Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Strategy of Cambridge City Council, alongside a growing research interest in modular homes and other new schemes by the national government. We argue for further empirical studies of the impacts of different modular home projects, including those that admit more diverse resident cohorts and offer different accommodation types to establish a clear methodology for future modular homes projects in England and beyond.

The Paiter Suruí people in the southwestern Brazilian Amazon have a complex food system that includes insects and crustaceans. We designed our study to systematize data about the invertebrates they incorporate into their traditional diet. After conducting a review of the literature, we verified and expanded the data through semi-structured interviews with Paiter Suruí volunteers, and traced trends in their consumption of invertebrates. We identified 61 invertebrates, including 58 insects of the orders Coleoptera, Lepidoptera, Hymenoptera, and three crustaceans. While beetle larvae remain a popular choice, consumption of other insects and crustaceans seems to have diminished over time.

We studied conservation paradigms of small-scale artisanal fishers and other actors involved in the conservation of the Bahía Blanca Estuary (BBE)-a Southwestern Atlantic estuary under anthropogenic pressures (conservationists, NGOs, individuals in the private sector and the port consortium). We focused on the relationship between fishers and non-human entities (e.g., animals, tides, lunar cycles, etc.) from alternative conservation paradigms according to Pálsson's schema (orientalism, paternalism, communalism). We also explored the ecological knowledge of fisher communities to identify possible conservation strategies. Using an ethnographic approach, we identified communalism as the dominant paradigm within the fisher communities as opposed to the paternalistic and orientalist approaches of conservationists and industry employees in the BBE. Fishers demonstrated a broad knowledge on the effects of climate change on fish stocks and pollution on ocean environments and biota, which gillnets avoid catching juveniles and threatened species, and landscape changes over the long-term period, among others areas that could be useful for conservation of these changing coastal ecosystems. We conclude that understanding local perspectives and practices is essential for a democratic exchange among different bodies of knowledge to conserve marine ecosystems.

Rural adaptation encompasses place-based perceptions, behaviors, livelihoods, and traditional ways of life associated with local environments. These perceptions, norms, and practices are disturbed by coupled environment-development externalities. This study employs the Vietnamese Mekong floodplains as an exemplary case to illustrate how floods impact agrarian communities and how they have experienced flood alterations driven by hydropower development and climate change in recent years. Drawing on thematic and narrative analyses of qualitative data (focus group discussions and interviews) collected in three agrarian communities in the Vietnamese Mekong floodplains, sources drawn from various news outlets, and academic materials, we argue that disrupted flood environments in the floodplains have triggered affective flood reminiscences, catalysing shifts to incremental and transformative adaptation to achieve resilience. We build a nuanced understanding of how social memory helps to enhance human-environment relationships in response to highly complex hydrological dynamics in the delta.

China is one of the world's leading consumer markets for wildlife products, yet there is little understanding of how demand will change in the future. In this study, we investigate the consumptive habits and attitudes of the millennial '' demographic - a subset of society in China with the potential to substantially influence future demand for wildlife products. We surveyed 350 Chinese university students across Harbin and Beijing, China, and found that the intended future consumption of wildlife products was relatively low in this population but with a strong orientation towards wildlife products with medicinal properties. Seventy percent of those respondents who had used and/or intended to use wildlife products were willing to try substitutes, but this was heavily dependent on their price (cheaper) and quality. The insights gained through this survey are intended to meaningfully inform future initiatives to introduce sustainable substitutability into wildlife markets to alert future wildlife product consumers to alternative choices.

In 2016, I returned to Chimkhola, a village whose farming system I had studied in detail in the mid-1980s. Living conditions, child mortality, education levels had all improved greatly. Remissions from family members working overseas were supplanting subsistence farming. Community resources include agricultural fields and forests from 1600 to 4000 m on the southeast flank of Dhaulagiri Himal. I seek to preserve an account of the complex farming system the community used in 1986, describe how it appears to be dissolving, and speculate on the future. Unlike many parts of Nepal, in 2016 the people of Chimkhola farmed without industrial inputs, as they did in 1986. However, they reduced the area they were farming. It seems likely that, if recent trends continue, the communal system will collapse.

Empirical research has shown that climate-related variables, the decline in economic well-being, and the mutual reinforcement of positive checks are the primary drivers of epidemic outbreaks in recent human history. However, their relative importance in causing the outbreak of epidemics is rarely examined quantitatively in a single study. I sought to address this issue by analyzing the 1402 epidemic incidents in China between 1841 and 1911, which partially overlaps partly with the Third Pandemic period. Fine-grained historical big data, multiple regression, and wavelet coherence analysis were employed. Statistical results show that economic fluctuations drove the country-wide epidemics outbreaks in China in inter-annual and decadal time scales. Economic fluctuations could cause short-term hardship and long-term impoverishment to the underprivileged social groups since a large portion of the Chinese population lived at the subsistence level in the past. The fluctuations might have sustained the repeated waves of epidemic outbreaks during the Third Pandemic period.

Guinea-Bissau remains among the African countries most vulnerable to climate change due to its flat topography and large meandering coastal area invaded by the tides.We present a case study of the island-village of Djobel, showing the dramatic consequences of socio-environmental change. The inhabitants' attempts to mitigate the impact of extreme weather events and sea-level rise and adapt to the new circumstances have been hampered by the seizure of their upland territory by a neighboring village. In the context of a disconnect between state and society, Djobel's inhabitants want the state to guarantee their rights to productive land, water, and safe housing conditions. This case shows the need for legal protection of the rights of poor, marginalized, and underrepresented populations at risk of becoming climate refugees in the fragile context of politically unstable, failed, and often authoritarian states.

Despite the popularity of integrated conservation and development approaches to protected area management, adjacent communities increasingly face livelihood dilemmas. Yet understanding of how market processes and conservation enforcement interact to influence livelihood responses remains limited. Targeting eight villages in Nam Et-Phou Louey (NEPL) National Park in northern Lao PDR, we draw on survey data with 255 households, 93 semi-structured interviews, and meso-level data on village conditions to examine how residents navigate associated livelihood dilemmas. A cluster analysis reveals five livelihood types with divergent capacities to engage in market development and cope with enforcement pressures. We show how market linkages, historical conservation interventions, and local access conditions shape livelihoods and differences between villages. Our approach yields a nuanced picture of how global conservation efforts result in an uneven distribution of costs and benefits at local scales. Conservation measures must account for highly divergent capacities to cope with access loss and diversify livelihoods.

Hunting wild animals for food and income, which is pervasive across tropical regions, drives biodiversity loss. Interventions to promote sustainable wild meat harvesting require information on hunter behavior. Here we monitored the hunting activities of 33 hunters in SE Nigeria over three years (1,106 hunter-months) to identify correlates of (a) the probability of initiating a hunting trip on any given day; (b) trip success - whether an animal was caught, and if so, how many; and (c) carcass price. We found a higher probability of initiating a trip during periods with bright moon phases and in peak agriculture season. Hunters were more likely to catch at least one animal when there was less rainfall and on shorter hunting trips. However, among successful trips, the number of animals caught increased with trip duration. Taken together, these results suggest hunters set themselves a minimum target of not returning empty-handed rather than optimally adjusting their hunting effort. Lastly, the carcass price per kilogram of a species' meat increased with its palatability but decreased with mass, with the fall in price observed to be greater for rarely caught, smaller-bodied animals than more frequently caught animals. Our results provide deeper insights into the behavioral plasticity of wild meat hunters.