16th July 2008

IASC Conference 2008: Governing shared resources: connecting local experience to global challenges

Stefano Fiorini, Steve Yearley and Norman Dandy presented a paper entitled ‘Wild Deer, Multivalence and Institutional Adaptation: the deer management group in Britain’ at the 12th Biennial Conference of the International Association of the Commons (IASC). The focus of the paper was the conceptualisation of wild deer as a common-pool resource despite a complex institutional structure governing access to it. In recent decades a number of socio-political, economic and ecological factors have emerged which have fundamentally altered the nature of wild deer as a resource, introducing new interactions between them, their environment and an increasing variety of stakeholders. These factors include mounting interest in the preservation of woodland habitats, agricultural reform, and rising levels of traffic on British roads. Using evidence gathered through interviews and local case studies the paper investigated how established institutional arrangements react to this increasingly multi-facetted resource. Specifically the paper considers Deer Management Groups (DMGs). These have existed for many years in a variety of forms and are primarily a response to the mobility of deer which creates interactions across the landscape. The paper shows how newly emergent stakeholders seek to engage with, influence and/or bypass existing institutions, including DMGs, and how the existing institutions adapt to the resource and/or can be used to define the boundaries of legitimate engagement with the resource. The paper is being edited for submission to peer-review in the near future.

12 March 2008

How do you like your woods? (320KB pdf poster)

As part of the Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC) 2008 Festival of Science members of the Project team hosted events in Aberdeen (The Macaulay Land Use Research Institute) and Edinburgh (University of Edinburgh) called "How do you like your woods?"

Participants learned about and expressed their preferences for woodlands and their management during 20 minute sessions. Woods are increasingly important for people, wildlife and timber production and the Virtual Landscape Theatre provided IT support for these successful events with 109 members of the public participating (46 in Aberdeen and 63 in Edinburgh).

For more information please contact Rene Van der Wal.