Date of Award:

8-2024

Document Type:

Dissertation

Degree Name:

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department:

Environment and Society

Committee Chair(s)

Claudia Radel

Committee

Claudia Radel

Committee

Mark Brunson

Committee

Sarah Klain

Committee

Eric Thacker

Committee

Roslyn McCann

Abstract

Working lands are a mosaic that hold critical opportunities for biodiversity, rural community wellbeing, and climate change adaptation. This landscape mosaic is made up of public lands, tribal lands, and private ranches, farms, and forests. The current era of ecological restoration and climate adaptation requires engaging in working lands conservation because the most promising strategies require working across multiple ownership boundaries. This dissertation argues that supporting working lands conservation, climate adaptation, and ecological restoration is a joint venture. Building adaptive capacity for climate change involves both social and ecological components. Adaptive capacity consists of building social collaborative capacity and ecological health and integrity. The key to successful working lands conservation is understanding the deep interconnections between nature and people, that local relationships matter, and that flexibility and adaptability are essential. This dissertation explores how collaborative transdisciplinary science and the braiding together of plural knowledge systems can help improve social and ecological outcomes of conservation, restoration, and climate adaptation projects at the intersection of watershed and range management. The dissertation is based on two case studies: the Watershared conservation incentive program in Bolivia and the Wuda Ogwa ecological restoration project led by the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation. In the case of Watershared, I used mixed methods including survey data, interviews and participant observation. In the first chapter, I show how cattle ranching contributes to local livelihoods and how participating in the Watershared program is associated with changes in range management practices. In the second chapter, I show how a relational approach to care-based stewardship is engendered by conservation program field staff attuned to local agency, care, and knowledge. In the third chapter, I reflect on lessons learned from transdisciplinary coproduced research conducted in partnership with the Wuda Ogwa ecological restoration project. Both case studies provide insight on how to work together on working landscapes by braiding together plural knowledges, designing relevant incentive structures that support intergenerational stewardship, and building the collaborative capacity to adapt to a changing climate.

Checksum

1f74f2b8aa532d32d760a86456619f28

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

Download

Share

COinS

Copyright for this work is retained by the student. If you have any questions regarding the inclusion of this work in the Digital Commons, please email us at .