Eighth International Symposium on Society & Resource Management

"Transcending Boundaries: Natural Resource Management from Summit to Sea"

Transcending Boundaries: From Summit to Sea

A central challenge of living sustainably on a base of nature is to think about the natural world on large spatial and temporal scales.  Boundaries crisscross the spatial landscape: between nations, states, counties, cities, public and private lands.  Boundaries contain subunits of the landscape which people manage for particular ends and in particular ways, as for instance national parks are managed to protect scenic resources while surrounding national forests are managed for many resources, the scenic only one among them.

Recent concern about the conservation of biological diversity has led to the need to plan for/manage/cooperate on larger spatial scales.  This is leading to many developments in the field of natural resource management ranging from efforts to assess and ameliorate the cumulative effect of management regimes in watersheds to proposed schemes for continental systems of ecological connectivity.

The theme of our meeting will be to explore the social dimensions of this challenge, for the greatest obstacle to working across boundaries is the investment that people have in the viability of their "ownership" of their piece of the landscape, whether the owner be a government, a natural resource agency, or an individual.

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