Protected area governance has evolved from exclusionary fortress conservation toward participatory approaches, yet historical patterns of Indigenous displacement continue shaping present-day human-wildlife conflicts. Uganda's Bwindi Impenetrable National Park exemplifies this tension: while mountain gorilla recovery represents a celebrated conservation success, expanding wildlife populations intensify conflicts with adjacent communities bearing disproportionate costs. This paper examines how Uganda's Wildlife Compensation Scheme shapes relationships between communities and conservation institutions at Bwindi, asking whether the scheme delivers on its justice objectives. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork with Bakiga and Batwa communities and integrating political ecology with environmental justice frameworks, the study traces how the conservation legacy that produced human-wildlife conflict shapes the scheme's institutional barriers and, in turn, the deterioration of community-park relationships. The findings show that the scheme's limitations are not implementation failures, but structurally inherited features of a colonial governance architecture reproduced through institutional stickiness. Baboon exclusion from eligibility reflects a state valuation logic organised around conservation value rather than community harm, while verification procedures systematically disadvantage the most exposed households. Bakiga and Batwa communities hold structurally distinct justice claims that the scheme calibrations cannot register. In that sense, the scheme performs justice without redistributing power, deepening resignation rather than repairing the community-park relationship.

The ongoing expansion of renewable energy goes hand in hand with the opening of new commodity frontiers. While academic literature has historically focused on extractivism enabled by (post-)colonial states in the Global South, the growth of renewables entails a reshoring of these frontiers to the Global North. Using Belgium as case study, we develop two arguments on these emerging manifestations of the relationship between the state and the commodity frontier: (a) we situate wind as a natural resource within a broader complex of entangled “innovative” commodities, and (b) we draw on Jessop's strategic-relational approach to unpack the varied ways state power is exerted in frontier-making. Belgium was an early adopter of offshore windfarms. By 2020, it had the second highest installed offshore wind energy capacity per capita in the world, meeting approximately 10% of its electricity demand. We show how the Belgian offshore frontier got its distinctive form through state interventions in the establishment of control over offshore wind resources and the entangled commodification of green electricity and technical know-how. Our analysis highlights marine spatial planning and the expansion of the electricity grid as key manifestations of the state's territorial power, illustrating the interplay between its discursive, legal-institutional, and infrastructural dimensions. Throughout the analysis, we emphasise that the state is not a singular, unified actor; rather, its interventions emerge from negotiations among diverse social actors exerting power through the state. The Belgian frontier-making process has been contingent on the opportunities created by the convergence of environmental sustainability and economic innovation agendas, whose alignment required careful mediation to sustain broad support for the transformation of marine territory.

Communal Reserves were established as a co-management compromise between the Peruvian state and Amazonian indigenous peoples to promote biodiversity conservation and indigenous territorial rights. However, these areas face escalating land grabbing, environmental degradation and violence. This study utilizes archival, spatial, and ethnographic data to analyze the magnitude, drivers, and mechanisms of Land Use and Land Cover Change (LULCC) in El Sira Communal Reserve and its buffer zone. We find that current pressures stem from a longstanding legacy of state-led colonization and agricultural development preceding the reserve’s creation. Our spatial analysis shows that El Sira’s deforestation and agricultural expansion rates are the highest among all Peruvian Communal Reserves and their buffer zones. Finally, our ethnographic action research highlights the role of subnational governments in facilitating LULCC through state-backed dispossession of indigenous lands. Our discussion exposes the limitations of co-managed conservation in the Central Peruvian Amazon, where growth coalitions and a legacy of settler colonization provide the administrative infrastructure necessary to transform protected forests into private assets.

Small islands face complex governance challenges shaped by limited capacity, economic dependency, and spatial constraints. In Aruba-one of the world's most tourism-dependent economies-these pressures are intensified by a growth-centric tourism regime that shapes land use, institutional priorities, and public discourse. This article examines how environmental collectives-citizen-led groups engaged in protecting socio-ecological commons-navigate and contest this governance landscape. Drawing on sociological institutionalism and social innovation theory, we analyze how collectives engage with formal and informal governance processes in a structurally constrained context. Based on interviews and documentary sources, we trace their evolving strategies across governance episodes, including protests, stakeholder dialogues, and litigation. Despite limited institutional responsiveness, these groups have introduced new discourses, mobilized multi-scalar alliances, and catalyzed local engagement around environmental justice and participatory rights. We argue that environmental collectives act as agents of social innovation-not only resisting extractive development but also experimenting with alternative governance practices grounded in solidarity and place-based values. However, their influence remains circumscribed by opaque institutions, symbolic participation, and persistent tourism dominance. The article contributes to debates on environmental governance in small island states by illustrating the dual role of environmental collectives as both challengers and co-constructors of governance. It highlights the tensions and transformative potential of bottom-linked action in tourism-dominated systems, offering insights into the conditions under which citizen-led innovation may shape more just and sustainable governance trajectories.

Integrated water resources management (IWRM) is a crucial process for sustainable and equitable water resource use. This study was carried out to assess the integration of water stakeholders in IWRM in the Saiss region (Morocco). Using SWOT analysis to reveal internal strengths and weaknesses, external opportunities and threats related to the water management system, and survey methods to determine the level of stakeholder integration in IWRM, we analysed the current water management framework, including local stakeholders' perceptions. Reinforcing stakeholders' integration, this study informs water resources management strategies and underlines the importance of ongoing stakeholder engagement for the success of IWRM.

This paper focuses on subjectivities of agents involved in socially innovative commoning practices. Social change agents, often influenced by neoliberal ideologies and individualist subjectivities, sometimes prioritize ‘practical’ approaches over approaches addressing the complexity of social relations and ethics in commoning; this can unintentionally undermine collective efforts, reinforcing the very systems these initiatives seek to dismantle. Responding to insights from our four-year large-scale research project on commoning, the paper proposes the groundwork for examining subjectivities and subjectivation processes within socially innovative commoning. It draws from an open definition of subjectivity volunteered by the psychologist Fernando González Rey, highlighting how subjectivity of actors is deeply intertwined with cultural, historical, and social contexts. It addresses individual and social subjectivation, showing how collective subjectivity is formed through their interaction. Collective subjectivation is staged by drawing from three literatures that give attention to the role of subjectivity and subjectivation in social and political action: political ecology (emotional and performative experiences of subjects as driving forces for the politics of resistance), ecofeminism (understanding affective and communicative social relations among humans and between humans and more-than-humans in everyday experiences), and anarchism (exploring the interplay between individual freedom and social cooperation in reimagining the political subject and community building). Collective subjectivation involves re-imagining and re-building social relations on the grounds of solidarity in opposition to dominant individualist mindsets, engaging in human-nature interactions, and integrating personal emotions, affective dimensions, and psychoanalytic insights to stimulate new collective practices.

This article examines, from a postcolonial perspective, the public policies promoting indigenous crafts implemented by museums in south-central Chile. The research incorporates the voices of various stakeholders involved in the valorization of indigenous pottery, including women potters, museum managers, outreach coordinators, academics, visual arts specialists and vendors. Through participant observation and semi-structured interviews, the study analyzes the heritage activation process of a deeply rooted practice within Mapuche culture. The findings reveal that, while museums have played a key role in promoting and preserving this craft, their approach often prioritizes its representation as a relic of the past, disconnecting it from its contemporary vitality. Additionally, there is a tendency to favour its economic sustainability over its social and cultural dimensions, resulting in the invisibilization and marginalization of rural potters in curatorial narratives and policies. Building on these insights, the article highlights the urgency of implementing sustainable and inclusive cultural policies that recognize Mapuche pottery as a living and dynamic practice, deeply connected to social dynamics, territory, and contemporary identities. It advocates for a collaborative, multivocal approach in museums, capable of transcending hegemonic narratives and fostering the active participation of local communities in constructing their own cultural heritage. This work aims to contribute to the design of more equitable and representative counter-hegemonic strategies, promoting cultural sustainability as a central axis in public policies.

Global demands for food and feed result in deforestation and consequent social-ecological disturbances across (especially) the Global South. In the Brazilian Cerrado, only 19.8

Este artículo examina, desde una perspectiva postcolonial, las políticas públicas de promoción artesanal implementadas por los museos en el centro-sur de Chile. La investigación incorpora las voces de diversos actores involucrados en la valorización de la alfarería indígena, incluyendo alfareras, gestores de museos, responsables de extensión, académicos, especialistas en artes plásticas y vendedores. A través de la observación participante y entrevistas semiestructuradas, se analiza el proceso de activación patrimonial de una práctica cotidiana profundamente enraizada en la cultura mapuche. El estudio revela que, si bien los museos han jugado un rol clave en la promoción y recuperación de esta artesanía, lo han hecho, en muchos casos, desde un enfoque que la presenta como un vestigio del pasado, descontextualizándola de su vitalidad actual. Asimismo, se identifica una tendencia a priorizar su sostenibilidad económica sobre sus dimensiones sociales y culturales, lo que ha llevado a la invisibilización y marginación de las alfareras rurales en los discursos y políticas expositivas. A partir de estos hallazgos, el artículo enfatiza la necesidad de implementar políticas culturales sostenibles e inclusivas que reconozcan la alfarería mapuche como una práctica viva y relevante, conectada con las dinámicas sociales, territoriales e identitarias contemporáneas. Se propone un enfoque colaborativo y multivocal para los museos, que trascienda las narrativas hegemónicas y fomente la participación de las comunidades locales en la construcción de su patrimonio cultural. Este trabajo aspira a contribuir al diseño de estrategias contrahegemónicas más equitativas y representativas, promoviendo la sostenibilidad cultural como eje central en las políticas públicas.

Nature conservation is an urgent issue globally, particularly regarding its integration with sustainable socio-economic development. In Latin America, countries like Peru face increasing tensions between nature conservation and neoextractivist models. The eco-territorial turn of socio-environmental movements in the region reflects a critique of this economic model and seeks collective governance of the territory. In this context, Private Conservation Areas (PCAs) have proliferated in recent decades, with the Chaparri Nature Reserve pioneering as the first private-community PCA led by a peasant community. The case of Chaparri illustrates the struggle between local conservationists and proponents of extractivist development. This article explores the eco-territorial movement generated in Chaparri from the activist research that brought together efforts with Belgian and Peruvian academics and students. The eco-territorial movement in Chaparri has not only catalyzed transformations in community dynamics but also collaborations with a wide range of actors. The scholars from the activist research managed to integrate into the landscape of actors and institutions revolving around Chaparri, opening new and innovative opportunities for collaboration.

Wildfires are increasingly recognized as a complex socioecological phenomenon, yet their linkages with territorial development are not clearly spelled out. This article seeks to unveil the sociopolitical and sociospatial ramifications of wildfires by framing them as a territorial issue, and understanding fire-prone territories as dynamic entities that emerge in essentially political processes, defined by socioecological relations that unfold across different spatial and temporal scales. Against this backdrop, building resilience is considered a territorially embedded and continuous process, driven by mechanisms operating "behind the flames." By operationalizing this framework in the region of Valencia (Spain), it is shown how social innovation can help overcome lock-ins and enhance resilience. This research showcases the importance of building a trusting, collaborative culture across sectors and actors, and brings to the forefront the importance of considering rural-urban relationships for reducing territorial inequalities and building more resilient futures in Mediterranean, fire-prone territories.

Resumen La conservación medioambiental es un tema urgente a nivel mundial, en particular en cuanto a su integración con el desarrollo socioeconómico sostenible. En Latinoamérica, países como Perú enfrentan crecientes tensiones entre la conservación ambiental y modelos neoextractivistas. El giro ecoterritorial de los movimientos socioambientales en la región refleja una crítica a esta economía y busca una gobernanza colectiva del territorio. En este contexto, las Áreas de Conservación Privada (ACP) han proliferado en las últimas décadas, y la Reserva Ecológica de Chaparrí es pionera al ser liderada por una comunidad campesina. El caso de Chaparrí ilustra esta lucha entre conservacionistas locales y defensores del desarrollo extractivista. En este artículo se explora el movimiento ecoterritorial generado en Chaparrí desde una investigación activista que congregó este esfuerzo con académicos y estudiantes belgas y peruanos. El movimiento ecoterritorial de Chaparrí no solo ha catalizado transformaciones en las dinámicas comunitarias, sino también en colaboraciones con una gran variedad de actores. Los investigadores lograron integrarse al paisaje de actores e instituciones que gravitan en torno a Chaparrí, abriendo nuevas e innovadoras oportunidades de colaboración.

Chapter 8 analyzes the case of Trage Wegen (TW - Slow Paths) in Flanders, a commoning project aiming to revalorize slow paths all over Flanders as 'roads inaccessible for motorized transport'. By use of the micro-case of Hoofse Hoek, a 900-metre intermunicipal slow path that connects the municipalities of Hove and Lint, the construction of a Landed Commons (LCs) located on land with diverse ownership regimes is meticulously reconstructed. The Théorie des Cités+ analytical framework is placed in dialogue with the Grand Principles of the Landed Commons (GPLC) to uncover which actors and Communities of Practice (CoPs) collaborated towards the making and governance of the slow path. The case study reveals four main time dynamics that calibrate the co-construction process, namely: 1) regulating use rights of the path crossing lands owned and used by various actors; 2) the creation of a project team culminating in the building of a Host Community (HC); 3) the building of a section of a network of slow paths; and 4) the shifting ownership of the concerned land. The chapter narrates how a small project team applying this Action Research approach managed to navigate through a wide field of person-actors and CoPs, adjusting its approach and strategy taking into account their social role (socio-institutional and political realities), the psychology of interpersonal relations, and translating an ambition into practice by transforming concepts and practices of ownership.

Chapter 6 capitalizes on the previous chapters, particularly on how to overcome the dualities in commoning; how to democratically common and build equitable and sustainable operational governance relations; how to negotiate with or twist prevailing power relations and ownership regimes, laws, and regulations; and how to compromise between various interests of agents and institutions. It builds on the institutionalist perspective and focuses on social relations elaborated to finetune the Théorie des Cités (TdC) introduced by Boltanski and Thévenot into a Théorie des Cités plus (TdC+) as a methodological framework for the analysis, evaluation, and (co)design of interaction processes in building Landed Commons (LCs). This finetuning makes a distinction between 'collective' (Communities of Practice or CoPs) and 'personal' actors (protagonists representing the CoPs, but also non-CoP-affiliated person-actors). It takes into account the affinity of person-actors to particular cités, as well as the personal and interpersonal psychological understanding of person-actor behaviour in negotiation processes, the social relations among actors, their institutional logics, and puts more stress on the building of a 'Common' world based on a cité supérieure - a shared world of reference. The chapter proposes the Grand Principles of the Landed Commons (GPLC), based on a holistic definition of the LCs, as an image of a 'new world' already described in foundational analyses of (and in) lived commoning experiences. The GPLCs indeed reflect features of several cités and act as a reflective mirror in evaluating the dynamics of evolving LCs.

The reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD+) mechanism is a climate change mitigation policy tool widely used in tropical forested countries that faces institutional and governance challenges in its implementation. Peru provides a particularly rich case study to analyze the agency of Amazonian Indigenous Peoples' organizations (IPOs) in the development of a national REDD+ policy. We examine the multi-scalar interaction between the Peruvian State and IPOs in the governance of REDD+, identifying the role of Amazonian Indigenous groups in this process. Drawing on socio-ecological governance and political economy approaches, we analyze data collected through interviews and participant observation. The article provides a case study of how IPOs work within the evolving governance system of REDD+ in Peru-both in responding to opportunities and in shaping the emergent system. Furthermore, it reveals that IPOs' rights and equity frame-deployed through several multi-scalar strategies-has finally found a place in Peru's REDD+ governance. This has resulted in a more pluralistic mode of coordination between the State and IPOs and in the increase of the socio-political empowerment of Indigenous Peoples. Our analysis suggests that Peru's REDD+ policies could progress toward more equitable outcomes through a true operationalization of cohesiveness and inclusiveness that encourages a meaningful relationship building between the state and Indigenous Peoples.

Chapter 5 examines how social relations affect the building, development, but also the decline and disappearance of Landed Commons (LCs) and as such, how understanding the exact nature of social relations, human behaviour, and subjectivities in commoning is central to analyzing LCs. The chapter explores the diversity of social relations and agencies (as well as the connections among them) and offers an interdisciplinary literature overview of different types of social relations and their relevance for the analysis and building of the Commons. In particular, the chapter points to how to better calibrate the types of social relations that matter in commoning, the typical behaviours that foster Commons (or which Commons embed), and how social relations can be geared towards non-hierarchical political systems. It argues that micro-relations grounded in shared freedom and solidarity are essential to building effective socio-political relations, and that the governance they (are expected to) embed is sufficiently potent to overrule or resist exploitative power relations. The chapter also explains how these insights give more flesh to action research methods that are used in the case studies of subsequent chapters.

Against a background of intensifying climate-induced disturbances, the need to enhance the resilience of forests and forest management is gaining urgency. In forest management, multiple trade-offs exist between different demands as well as across and within temporal and spatial scales. However, methods to assess resilience that consider these trade-offs are presently lacking. Here we propose a hierarchical framework of principles, criteria, and indicators to assess the resilience of a social-ecological system by focusing on the mechanisms behind resilience. This hierarchical framework balances trade-offs between mechanisms, different parts of the social-ecological system, ecosystem services, and spatial as well as temporal scales. The framework was developed to be used in a participatory manner in forest management planning. It accounts for the major parts of the forest-related social-ecological system and considers the multiple trade-offs involved. We demonstrate the utility of the framework by applying it to a landscape dominated by Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.) in Central Europe, managed for three different management goals. The framework highlights how forest resilience varies with the pursued management goals and related management strategies. The framework is flexible and can be applied to various forest management contexts as part of a participatory process with stakeholders. It thus is an important step towards operationalizing social-ecological resilience in forest management systems.

Cities are hubs of money, power, and information. Characterised by high population density, numerous built structures, extensive impervious surfaces, decreased vegetative cover, and highly modified ecosystem services, cities or urban areas are surrounded by less-densely populated areas with less built-up space, referred to as rural areas (Wu 2014). Rural areas are perceived as a mosaic of land uses with various types of human intervention and productivity, including various degrees of naturalness. In Europe, one of the most intensely anthropised areas of the world, very few natural areas have been left untouched, and thus the degree of naturalness of rural areas is relatively low. Notwithstanding certain benefits that rural areas gain from cities, such as market access, investment inputs, or employment opportunities (Gebre and Gebremedhin 2019), cities have generally developed an extractive relationship with those areas. The countryside is perceived as a source of food, water, materials, and energy to serve the needs of cities, which behave as accumulative economic nodes (McHale et al. 2015). Widespread policy attention on cities has marginalised rural areas from territorial development planning, forgetting to account for the urban and the rural on equal terms (Urso 2020). Urban dwellers, particularly in middle to high-income countries, are physically and mentally disconnected from the rural world, at most knowing it as a space for recreation and distraction (Roberts and Hall 2001). This disconnect could hamper awareness of overconsumption of natural resources and environmental degradation happening in the rural world (Church 2013), even though environmental driven protest against impacts of climate change and natural resource extraction is often originating from urban citizens (Scheidel et al. 2020).

The Cerrado is one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots, a key hydrological area of Brazil and home to socio-culturally diverse groups. However, the expansion of agribusiness activities in the Cerrado biome has led to acute social-ecological disturbances. Deploying strategies that promote socially and ecologically sustainable land use therein is hence imperative. One such strategy encompasses the harvesting, processing and commercialization of Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs). This paper thus aims to uncover what interdependent social-ecological dynamics hinder and/or facilitate the consolidation of NTFP activities as a strategy to promote sustainable land use in the Cerrado and how to overcome the challenges permeating these activities. It does so by analyzing NTFP activities in Pirenópolis, Goiás, originally combining different fields of research. This research highlights social-ecological dynamics resulting in positive outcomes, such as the satisfaction of material and socio-cultural needs, the protection and planting of tree species, and a sound knowledge on the ecology and phenology of NTFPs, as well as on sustainable harvesting techniques. Notwithstanding, the results also demonstrate that power imbalances, insufficient local capacity and the agribusiness hegemony hamper NTFP activities in Pirenópolis. This paper emphasizes the urgency of addressing power asymmetries, especially considering the need for the formulation of land use policies that can tackle issues of access to land and NTFPs. This research moreover points to the importance of stronger social relations that can enhance the role of NTFP activities as a strategy to promote sustainable land use.