Skip to 0 minutes and 7 seconds Property rights and market-based exchanges of environmental goods and services dominate the way we govern social ecological systems. They are considered to be the foundations for the study of economics. But it’s not the only way of relating to nature, and alternative paradigms are often overlooked or dismissed. It’s not that one is wrong or the other is right, it’s about having an awareness that there is more than one language to describe nature.
Skip to 0 minutes and 46 seconds I’m Professor Jon Lovett, Chair in Global Challenges at the University of Leeds. My role here is to guide you through this course. We start by exploring three basic principles, hunter-gathers versus agriculturalists, the hierarchy of property rights, and more people, less erosion. These principles will then be applied to a classic case study looking at power and rights. We’ll explore how the values of the Tanzanian forests have changed in the last few hundred years from communal ownership to state ownership and then back to communal ownership again. We close the course with a discussion about language of nature. I’m joined by colleagues from the University of Leeds, as well as Abdullah Al-Mahri, a Mehri language expert.
Skip to 1 minute and 30 seconds And together we discuss how local languages are nuanced to describe the complexity of seasonal change. So how is nature perceived in your society? And what is the role of property rights in natural resource management? I look forward to hearing your thoughts and joining your discussions on the course.
