W M Adams
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 143202 |
|---|---|
| NOME | W M Adams |
| PRENOMES | W M |
| SOBRENOME | Adams |
| ASSINATURA | ADAMS W M |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of Cambridge |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1559-0379 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 59 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 672 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 59 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1985 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 16 |
Digital surveillance of animals and nature recovery
Digital surveillance technologies (DSTs) are widely applied in nature recovery for their potential to generate novel data on species and ecosystems through digital tracking, automation (e.g. from hazardous locations) and from newly recruited citizen scientists. However, their use raises a number of wider questions relevant to nature recovery. This paper is an interdisciplinary review of published literature about the potentialities and implicatio…
Reconciling global and local benefits of forest restoration
The Politics of Environmental Consensus
Recent discussion of global environmental assessment processes suggests that the process of consensus creation is central to understanding the way knowledge is produced and conclusions are reached. Here we contribute to this literature by providing a case study of the World Commission on Dams, which brought together supporters and opponents of large dams, at the height of controversy about dams in the 1990s. The Commission reviewed evidence and f…
The digital peregrine
Humans, non‐human animals, and technologies are increasingly entangled. Using the peregrine falcon ( Falco peregrinus ) as an illustrative example, we propose ‘technonatural history’ as a theoretical and methodological approach for observing, describing, and examining the role technologies play in shaping human relations with other species. After nearing extinction in the 20th century, peregrines have become woven into the fabric of everyday urba…
Addressing conflict over dams
The World Commission on Dams (WCD) was active between 1998 and 2000. Despite the Commission's short life, it left a lasting mark on the global debate on large dams, one of the most intractable and conflicted issues in environmental governance. Existing accounts of the Commission focus chiefly on its recommendations and their influence on dam planners. Another major topic of interest has been the novelty of making global environmental policy throu…
Biodiversity and the challenge of pluralism
Gene editing for climate
This paper comments on the idea of engineering novel and artificial forms of life to combat anthropogenic climate change by ‘terraforming' the Earth. The idea of ‘Nature-based Solutions' that sustain biodiversity while supporting human well-being connects conservation and climate change. However, the technologies of synthetic biology, particularly gene-editing, challenge the notion that only naturally-evolved organisms and ecosystems are capable …
In search of the good dam
Dam planning and construction is notoriously difficult. It is highly complex, involving a multitude of social, environmental, economic and technological questions that often become politicised in the process; negative impacts are often concentrated on small, vulnerable groups within society, while the benefits are typically spread in a much more diffuse pattern; it requires changing riverine ecosystems, often irreversibly so; and it takes a very …
Quarantine encounters with digital animals
Quarantine conditions led to the proliferation of digital encounters with nonhuman animals. Here, we explore three prominent forms: creaturely cameos, avatar acquaintances and background birding. These virtual encounters afforded during lockdown life generated novel and affective human–animal relations that could have lasting effects for humans and nonhumans post-quarantine, posing interesting questions for more-than-human scholarship
Geographies of conservation III
There is a rich literature by geographers on the spatial imagination and ambition of conservation, and particularly the long-established strategy of creating protected areas such as national parks. This report highlights five ways in which the spatial ambitions, imaginations and practices of conservation are changing. First, appetite for the expansion of protected areas continues to grow, with proposals for marine reserves and up to half of the e…
Geographies of conservation II
The wide range of wildlife tracking and surveillance technologies (radio and satellite tracking, cameras, and audio) that are being deployed in conservation have important implications for a geographical understanding of care for non-human nature. This report explores four dimensions of their influence. First, their detailed view of spatial dimensions of non-human lives affects conservation’s demarcation and control of space. Second, the applicat…
Sleeping with the enemy? Biodiversity conservation, corporations and the green economy
This article explores the surprising closeness and apparent warmth of the relations between biodiversity conservation organisations and corporations. It argues that in this paradoxical engagement, conservationists are exhibiting an extreme form of pragmatism - a willingness to 'sleep with the enemy.' The article considers the implications of these arrangements using the metaphor of a Faustian Bargain, a deal with the devil to acquire power in exc…
Geographies of conservation I
Extinction has long been a central concern in biodiversity conservation. Today, de-extinction offers interesting possibilities of restoring charismatic species and ecosystem function, but also risks and costs. Most de-extinction depends on genetic engineering and synthetic biology. These technologies are also proposed for use in ‘gene tweaking’ in wild species to enhance their chance of survival. Within conservation, the resulting debates pit an …
Property institutions for rural land conservation
The future of public forests
Accessing the Impenetrable
Nature-based tourism is widely considered a conservation strategy because it can provide benefits for local people and thereby increase support for conservation and contribute to development. However, concerns have been raised over the uneven distribution of benefits. Here we use access analysis to investigate the distribution of tourism benefits at Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda, and the underlying factors constraining access to benef…
Back to the Barriers? Changing Narratives in Biodiversity Conservation
The dominant approach to conservation in the 20th century was the establishment of protected areas from which people were excluded. However, in the 1980s, decentralised, community-based approaches to biodiversity conservation and natural resource management began to spread rapidly, especially in southern Africa. From the early 1990s, there has been a growing divide between proponents of community-based approaches to conservation (particularly com…
Working the Sahel
This book looks at how people in the semi-arid conditions of the Sahel cope with their harsh environment. It draws on four years of field research with farmers in the Sahelian region and builds on work with these communities over several decades. Reporting on studies of four village communities, it shows how people work to achieve sustainable livelihoods and emphasises that there can be development without disaster
Who is on the Gorilla’s Payroll? Claims on Tourist Revenue From a Ugandan National Park
Farmer adaptation, change and ‘crisis’ in the Sahel
Adapting to Dams
Landforms, authenticity and conservation value
Researchers and the rural poor
This paper discusses the theory and practice of rural socioeconomic surveys in the Third World. It offers a personal commentary on some practical problems and pitfalls that beset the would‐be researcher in making the leap from seminar room to someone else's distant home. It highlights the close links between choice of research topic, field area and research methods, and the importance of the ethics of field research. It considers in particular qu…
Rationalization and Conservation
Nature conservation in the UK comprises not only a response to the perceived impacts of rationalization on nature but is itself a dimension of that process of rationalization. The paper describes the development of conservation institutions and ideologies in the UK and considers the ways in which ecology (and particularly ideas of nature as equilibrium) have provided the intellectual framework for conservation. Ecology underpinned the establishme…
Agricultural Intensification and Flexibility in the Nigerian Sahel
This paper discusses evidence of agricultural intensification in the Sahelian zone of north-east Nigeria, drawing on data from a five-year monitoring study of soils, cultivars and livelihoods across environmental and demographic gradients. The paper stresses the importance of flexibility in ecological management and in economic activities as components of rural livelihood strategies. In the villages studied, the intensity of agricultural operatio…
Back to the Barriers? Changing Narratives in Biodiversity Conservation
The dominant approach to conservation in the 20th century was the establishment of protected areas from which people were excluded. However, in the 1980s, decentralised, community-based approaches to biodiversity conservation and natural resource management began to spread rapidly, especially in southern Africa. From the early 1990s, there has been a growing divide between proponents of community-based approaches to conservation (particularly com…
Geographies of conservation II
The wide range of wildlife tracking and surveillance technologies (radio and satellite tracking, cameras, and audio) that are being deployed in conservation have important implications for a geographical understanding of care for non-human nature. This report explores four dimensions of their influence. First, their detailed view of spatial dimensions of non-human lives affects conservation’s demarcation and control of space. Second, the applicat…
Farmer adaptation, change and ‘crisis’ in the Sahel
Rationalization and Conservation
Nature conservation in the UK comprises not only a response to the perceived impacts of rationalization on nature but is itself a dimension of that process of rationalization. The paper describes the development of conservation institutions and ideologies in the UK and considers the ways in which ecology (and particularly ideas of nature as equilibrium) have provided the intellectual framework for conservation. Ecology underpinned the establishme…
Green Development
Biodiversity and the challenge of pluralism
Who is on the Gorilla’s Payroll? Claims on Tourist Revenue From a Ugandan National Park
The digital peregrine
Humans, non‐human animals, and technologies are increasingly entangled. Using the peregrine falcon ( Falco peregrinus ) as an illustrative example, we propose ‘technonatural history’ as a theoretical and methodological approach for observing, describing, and examining the role technologies play in shaping human relations with other species. After nearing extinction in the 20th century, peregrines have become woven into the fabric of everyday urba…
Agricultural Intensification and Flexibility in the Nigerian Sahel
This paper discusses evidence of agricultural intensification in the Sahelian zone of north-east Nigeria, drawing on data from a five-year monitoring study of soils, cultivars and livelihoods across environmental and demographic gradients. The paper stresses the importance of flexibility in ecological management and in economic activities as components of rural livelihood strategies. In the villages studied, the intensity of agricultural operatio…
The Physical Geography of Africa
1 c Tectonics, Geology, and Long-Term Landscape Development: M. A. Summerfield: . 2: C. Nyamweru: The African Rift System. 3: A. S. Goudie: Climate: Past and Present. 4: S. Nicholson: Environmental Change within the Historical Period. 5: M. Hulme: Climate Change within the Period of Meteorological Records. 6: D. E. Walling: Hydrology and Rivers. 7: W. M. Adams: Lakes. 8: O. Areola: Soils. 9: A. S. Goudie: The Geomorphology of the Seasonal Tropics…
Indigenous Farmer-Managed Irrigation in Sonjo, Tanzania
Despite wide interest expressed in indigenous farmer-managed small-scale irrigation in Sub-Saharan Africa, there are relatively few studies of such systems. This paper offers a preliminary description of that practised by the Sonjo in northern Tanzania. Sonjo irrigation involves simple canals carrying water diverted by stone and brushwood dams from spring-fed streams and rivers. Land is irrigated on floodplain and piedmont slopes, and a wide vari…
Wasting the Rain
Geographies of conservation III
There is a rich literature by geographers on the spatial imagination and ambition of conservation, and particularly the long-established strategy of creating protected areas such as national parks. This report highlights five ways in which the spatial ambitions, imaginations and practices of conservation are changing. First, appetite for the expansion of protected areas continues to grow, with proposals for marine reserves and up to half of the e…
The Physical Geography of Africa
The Downstream Impacts of Dam Construction
The Bakolori Dam was built in the mid-1970s on the River Sokoto in Northwest Nigeria to supply a 30 000 ha irrigation scheme. The dam reduced the magnitude of the wet season floods which supported an extensive and sophisticated agricultural system and a fishery on which a population of some 50 000 people depended. Reduced flooding caused a shift from rice to lower value millet and sorghum crops in the wet season, and a significant reduction in th…
Water, Rules and Gender
The management of indigenous irrigation systems has received increasing attention both from social science researchers and from those development agents who seek to change them, or to find in them a model for organizing newly developed irrigation schemes. This article discusses how water is allocated within one such irrigation system, the hill furrow irrigation of the Marakwet escarpment in Kenya. It describes the 'formal rules' of water rights, …
Quarantine encounters with digital animals
Quarantine conditions led to the proliferation of digital encounters with nonhuman animals. Here, we explore three prominent forms: creaturely cameos, avatar acquaintances and background birding. These virtual encounters afforded during lockdown life generated novel and affective human–animal relations that could have lasting effects for humans and nonhumans post-quarantine, posing interesting questions for more-than-human scholarship
Property institutions for rural land conservation
The future of public forests
Indigenous Use of Wetlands and Sustainable Development in West Africa
There is a wide variety of wetland environments in West Africa. They include various kinds of floodplains (for example those of the Senegal, Niger and Logone-Chari system), larger inland deltas and lacustrine wetlands (notably Lake Chad and the Niger Inland Delta in Mali), and coastal and delta environments (for example the deltas of the Senegal, Niger and Volta Rivers, the Basse Casamance or the Banc d'Arguin in Mauritania). Most of them support…
Nature's Place
Traditional Agriculture and Water Use in the Sokoto Valley, Nigeria
This article describes the ecology of traditional agricultural practices in the floodplain of the River Sokoto in north-west Nigeria. The area lies in the Sudan savanna, and rain-fed agriculture is subject to periodic drought. Although river flow is also highly variable, both seasonally and between years, the floodplain represents a valuable agricultural resource. Floodplain hydrology is complicated, but surveys of flooding based on interviews wi…
Geographies of conservation I
Extinction has long been a central concern in biodiversity conservation. Today, de-extinction offers interesting possibilities of restoring charismatic species and ecosystem function, but also risks and costs. Most de-extinction depends on genetic engineering and synthetic biology. These technologies are also proposed for use in ‘gene tweaking’ in wild species to enhance their chance of survival. Within conservation, the resulting debates pit an …
Small-scale farmer-managed irrigation in Northern Nigeria
Countryside Conflicts
The Effects of Dam Construction
The Downstream Impacts of Dam Construction
The Bakolori Dam was built in the mid-1970s on the River Sokoto in Northwest Nigeria to supply a 30 000 ha irrigation scheme. The dam reduced the magnitude of the wet season floods which supported an extensive and sophisticated agricultural system and a fishery on which a population of some 50 000 people depended. Reduced flooding caused a shift from rice to lower value millet and sorghum crops in the wet season, and a significant reduction in th…
Agriculture and the development process
The environmental effects of dam construction in tropical Africa
Traditional Agriculture and Water Use in the Sokoto Valley, Nigeria
This article describes the ecology of traditional agricultural practices in the floodplain of the River Sokoto in north-west Nigeria. The area lies in the Sudan savanna, and rain-fed agriculture is subject to periodic drought. Although river flow is also highly variable, both seasonally and between years, the floodplain represents a valuable agricultural resource. Floodplain hydrology is complicated, but surveys of flooding based on interviews wi…
Countryside Conflicts
Nature's Place
Ecosystem Theory and Application
The term ecosystem has been widely used, often in a confusing manner, since it was first coined some 50 years ago. This book uses the term in the way it was originally defined, as a means of describing the biota which live together as a social unit and also the inorganic and dead parts of the system. Topics covered include arctic, desert, marine and tropical ecosystems, their dynamics and structure, economics, evolution and ecological phenomena. …
Approaches to water resource development, Sokoto Valley, Nigeria
Introduction In recent years there has been a growing awareness among development 'experts' (Chambers, 1983), of the importance of the natural environment, not simply as a constraint on possible action, but as part of the proper concern of development planning. In part this is the effect of the growth of environmentalism in the developed world in the 1970s (Sandbach, 1980; O'Riordan, 1981), in part a response to specific environment-related crise…
Rural protest, land policy and the planning process on the Bakolori Project, Nigeria
Opening ParagraphIn the literature and accumulated folk wisdom of development in rural Africa there are numerous instances of government projects which are expensive, ineffective and unpopular. These include now classic failures of the past, such as the Tanganyika Groundnuts Scheme (Wood, 1950; Frankel, 1953), which are still cited as cautionary tales demonstrating the need for proper project appraisal. There are also numerous more recent example…
Definition and Development in African Indigenous Irrigation
(1989). Definition and Development in African Indigenous Irrigation. Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa: Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 21-27
World Resources 1987
How beautiful is small? Scale, control and success in Kenyan irrigation
Small-scale farmer-managed irrigation in Northern Nigeria
Management agreements for nature conservation in Scotland
Green Development
Conservation in the wider countryside
Wetland Agricultural Production and River Basin Development in the Hadejia-Jama'are Valley, Nigeria
There are relatively few studies of the values associated with tropical wetlands. Lack of such knowledge is a significant contributor to the failure of river basin planning to take account of existing economic activities such as indigenous irrigation, herding or fishing. Development of formal projects such as dams and large-scale irrigation schemes can have serious adverse effects on existing activities and economic values in wetlands. Data on th…
The Cost of Conservation
Agreements between individual occupiers of agricultural land and government agencies have become a major element of policy for the rural environment in the United Kingdom. Brotherton has made a comparison between the two most important types of agreement: management agreements on Sites of Special Scientific Interest and participation in Environmentally Sensitive Areas. However, his analysis suffers from a number of limitations which are not fully…
Development's deaf ear
Green Development
Water Resources in the Arid Realm
Wasting the Rain
Indigenous Use of Wetlands and Sustainable Development in West Africa
There is a wide variety of wetland environments in West Africa. They include various kinds of floodplains (for example those of the Senegal, Niger and Logone-Chari system), larger inland deltas and lacustrine wetlands (notably Lake Chad and the Niger Inland Delta in Mali), and coastal and delta environments (for example the deltas of the Senegal, Niger and Volta Rivers, the Basse Casamance or the Banc d'Arguin in Mauritania). Most of them support…
Nature conservation and the management of the wider countryside in Eastern England
Geography (46 obras) · Ecology (27 obras) · Economics (27 obras) · Environmental Science (26 obras) · Biology (22 obras) · Political science (22 obras) · Environmental resource management (21 obras) · Business (20 obras) · Environmental planning (20 obras) · Ecology (14 obras)