Author
Thomas Sikor
Other affiliations: CGIAR, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Toronto
Bio: Thomas Sikor is an academic researcher from University of East Anglia. The author has contributed to research in topics: Land use & Land tenure. The author has an hindex of 35, co-authored 93 publications receiving 5313 citations. Previous affiliations of Thomas Sikor include CGIAR & Humboldt University of Berlin.
Papers published on a yearly basis
Papers
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University of Arizona1, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna2, Resources For The Future3, University of British Columbia4, Portland State University5, Stockholm University6, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign7, United States Department of Agriculture8, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne9, Indiana University10, University of Oregon11, University of East Anglia12, Ukrainian National Forestry University13, VU University Amsterdam14
TL;DR: A common representation is offered that frames cultural services, along with all ES, by the relative contribution of relevant ecological structures and functions and by applicable social evaluation approaches, which provides a foundation for merging ecological and social science epistemologies to define and integrate cultural services better within the broader ES framework.
Abstract: Cultural ecosystem services (ES) are consistently recognized but not yet adequately defined or integrated within the ES framework. A substantial body of models, methods, and data relevant to cultural services has been developed within the social and behavioral sciences before and outside of the ES approach. A selective review of work in landscape aesthetics, cultural heritage, outdoor recreation, and spiritual significance demonstrates opportunities for operationally defining cultural services in terms of socioecological models, consistent with the larger set of ES. Such models explicitly link ecological structures and functions with cultural values and benefits, facilitating communication between scientists and stakeholders and enabling economic, multicriterion, deliberative evaluation and other methods that can clarify tradeoffs and synergies involving cultural ES. Based on this approach, a common representation is offered that frames cultural services, along with all ES, by the relative contribution of relevant ecological structures and functions and by applicable social evaluation approaches. This perspective provides a foundation for merging ecological and social science epistemologies to define and integrate cultural services better within the broader ES framework.
1,184 citations
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that access and property regarding natural resources are intimately bound up with the exercise of power and authority, and that the process of seeking authorizations for property claims also has the effect of granting authority to the authorizing politico-legal institution.
Abstract: In this introduction we argue that access and property regarding natural resources are intimately bound up with the exercise of power and authority. The process of seeking authorizations for property claims also has the effect of granting authority to the authorizing politico-legal institution. In consequence, struggles over natural resources in an institutionally pluralist context are processes of everyday state formation. Through the discussion of this theoretical proposition we point to legitimizing practices, territoriality and violence as offering particular insights into the recursively constituted relations between struggles over access and property regarding natural resources, contestations about power and authority, and state formation.
554 citations
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VU University Amsterdam1, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation2, University of Maryland, Baltimore County3, University of Bern4, Humboldt University of Berlin5, University of Copenhagen6, Azim Premji University7, University of East Anglia8, Adria Airways9, Wellington Management Company10, National University of Tucumán11, United States Forest Service12, Africa University13, Université catholique de Louvain14, University of Waterloo15, Clark University16, Hokkaido University17, Chinese Academy of Sciences18
TL;DR: The Global Land Project has led advances by synthesizing land systems research across different scales and providing concepts to further understand the feedbacks between social and environmental systems, between urban and rural environments and between distant world regions as mentioned in this paper.
353 citations
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors estimated and compared the determinants of cropland abandonment in Albania and Romania during the postsocialist transitional period from 1990 to 2005, using boosted regression trees.
220 citations
Cited by
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TL;DR: The authors argue that societies have inherent capacities to adapt to climate change, but these capacities are bound up in their ability to act collectively, and they argue that this capacity is limited by the nature of the agents of change, states, markets and civil society.
Abstract: The effects of observed and future changes in climate are spatially and socially differentiated. The impacts of future changes will be felt particularly by resource-dependent communities through a multitude of primary and secondary effects cascading through natural and social systems. Given that the world is increasingly faced with risks of climate change that are at the boundaries of human experience3, there is an urgent need to learn from past and present adaptation strategies to understand both the processes by which adaptation takes place and the limitations of the various agents of change – states, markets, and civil society – in these processes. Societies have inherent capacities to adapt to climate change. In this article, I argue that these capacities are bound up in their ability to act collectively.
2,346 citations
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors draw new theorisation together with cases from African, Asian and Latin American settings, and link critical studies of nature with critical agrarian studies, to ask: To what extent and in what ways do "green grabs" constitute new forms of appropriation of nature? How and when do circulations of green capital become manifest in actual appropriations on the ground, through what political and discursive dynamics? What are the implications for ecologies, landscapes and livelihoods? And who is gaining and who is losing, how are agricultural social relations, rights and authority
Abstract: Across the world, ‘green grabbing’ – the appropriation of land and resources for environmental ends – is an emerging process of deep and growing significance. The vigorous debate on ‘land grabbing’ already highlights instances where ‘green’ credentials are called upon to justify appropriations of land for food or fuel – as where large tracts of land are acquired not just for ‘more efficient farming’ or ‘food security’, but also to ‘alleviate pressure on forests’. In other cases, however, environmental green agendas are the core drivers and goals of grabs – whether linked to biodiversity conservation, biocarbon sequestration, biofuels, ecosystem services, ecotourism or ‘offsets’ related to any and all of these. In some cases these involve the wholesale alienation of land, and in others the restructuring of rules and authority in the access, use and management of resources that may have profoundly alienating effects. Green grabbing builds on well-known histories of colonial and neo-colonial resource alienation in the name of the environment – whether for parks, forest reserves or to halt assumed destructive local practices. Yet it involves novel forms of valuation, commodification and markets for pieces and aspects of nature, and an extraordinary new range of actors and alliances – as pension funds and venture capitalists, commodity traders and consultants, GIS service providers and business entrepreneurs, ecotourism companies and the military, green activists and anxious consumers among others find once-unlikely common interests. This collection draws new theorisation together with cases from African, Asian and Latin American settings, and links critical studies of nature with critical agrarian studies, to ask: To what extent and in what ways do ‘green grabs’ constitute new forms of appropriation of nature? How and when do circulations of green capital become manifest in actual appropriations on the ground – through what political and discursive dynamics? What are the implications for ecologies, landscapes and livelihoods? And who is gaining and who is losing – how are agrarian social relations, rights and authority being restructured, and in whose interests?
1,396 citations
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University of Arizona1, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna2, Resources For The Future3, University of British Columbia4, Portland State University5, Stockholm University6, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign7, United States Department of Agriculture8, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne9, Indiana University10, University of Oregon11, University of East Anglia12, Ukrainian National Forestry University13, VU University Amsterdam14
TL;DR: A common representation is offered that frames cultural services, along with all ES, by the relative contribution of relevant ecological structures and functions and by applicable social evaluation approaches, which provides a foundation for merging ecological and social science epistemologies to define and integrate cultural services better within the broader ES framework.
Abstract: Cultural ecosystem services (ES) are consistently recognized but not yet adequately defined or integrated within the ES framework. A substantial body of models, methods, and data relevant to cultural services has been developed within the social and behavioral sciences before and outside of the ES approach. A selective review of work in landscape aesthetics, cultural heritage, outdoor recreation, and spiritual significance demonstrates opportunities for operationally defining cultural services in terms of socioecological models, consistent with the larger set of ES. Such models explicitly link ecological structures and functions with cultural values and benefits, facilitating communication between scientists and stakeholders and enabling economic, multicriterion, deliberative evaluation and other methods that can clarify tradeoffs and synergies involving cultural ES. Based on this approach, a common representation is offered that frames cultural services, along with all ES, by the relative contribution of relevant ecological structures and functions and by applicable social evaluation approaches. This perspective provides a foundation for merging ecological and social science epistemologies to define and integrate cultural services better within the broader ES framework.
1,184 citations
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01 Jan 2014
TL;DR: Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use (AFOLU) is unique among the sectors considered in this volume, since the mitigation potential is derived from both an enhancement of removals of greenhouse gases (GHG), as well as reduction of emissions through management of land and livestock as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use (AFOLU) is unique among the sectors considered in this volume, since the mitigation potential is derived from both an enhancement of removals of greenhouse gases (GHG), as well as reduction of emissions through management of land and livestock (robust evidence; high agreement). The land provides food that feeds the Earth’s human population of ca. 7 billion, fibre for a variety of purposes, livelihoods for billions of people worldwide, and is a critical resource for sustainable development in many regions. Agriculture is frequently central to the livelihoods of many social groups, especially in developing countries where it often accounts for a significant share of production. In addition to food and fibre, the land provides a multitude of ecosystem services; climate change mitigation is just one of many that are vital to human well-being (robust evidence; high agreement). Mitigation options in the AFOLU sector, therefore, need to be assessed, as far as possible, for their potential impact on all other services provided by land. [Section 11.1]
964 citations