Pamela Mcelwee
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 412045 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Pamela Mcelwee |
| PRENOMES | Pamela |
| SOBRENOME | Mcelwee |
| ASSINATURA | MCELWEE P |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3525-9285 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 39 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 250 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 39 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2002 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 8 |
Revisiting the Environmental Legacies of the Vietnam War
The 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War provides an opportunity to reflect on the conflict’s enduring scars, from severe ecological damages to lingering human health impacts. In particular, the US military’s use of environmentally destructive technologies, ranging from herbicide campaigns to weather modification, followed by a lack of adequate postwar restoration efforts, left the country struggling to recover for decades. Vietnam’s ex…
Supporting researchers’ engagement in international science–policy bodies
New wine in old bottles? Key research gaps on neoliberal financing for biodiversity emerging from the Global Biodiversity Framework
Coming up with additional financing for biodiversity is a major goal of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), and neoliberal (or market-based) instruments have been proposed as key vehicles to raise this needed money. Lessons learned from the first generation of neoliberal financial instruments, including payments for environmental services and biodiversity offsets, can help to understand the research gaps and needs that surro…
Reflections on the Global Biodiversity Framework
Overcoming the coupled climate and biodiversity crises and their societal impacts
Earth’s biodiversity and human societies face pollution, overconsumption of natural resources, urbanization, demographic shifts, social and economic inequalities, and habitat loss, many of which are exacerbated by climate change. Here, we review links among climate, biodiversity, and society and develop a roadmap toward sustainability. These include limiting warming to 1.5°C and effectively conserving and restoring functional ecosystems on 30 to …
Climate precarity in rural livelihoods
In recent decades, agrarian transformations in Southeast Asia have resulted in significant environmental and social change, yet insufficient attention has focused on the particular pathways by which these changes have increased vulnerability to climate change. In particular, climate precarity, a situation in which class, social, labour and/or gender inequities amplify negative impacts from climate change, has been on the rise for many smallholder…
Advocating afforestation, betting on BECCS
Negative emissions technologies (NETs) for carbon dioxide removal (CDR) are increasingly important responses to achieve global climate change targets, but to date, there has been insufficient attention to land-based NETs (including afforestation, biochar, and other measures) as an agrarian challenge for the global South. This paper explores the implications of different NETs for land, labor, capital, and politics in rural spaces and contributes t…
Governing for Transformative Change across the Biodiversity–Climate–Society Nexus
Transformative governance is key to addressing the global environmental crisis. We explore how transformative governance of complex biodiversity–climate–society interactions can be achieved, drawing on the first joint report between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services to reflect on the current opportunities, barriers, and challenges for transformati…
The Politics of Indigenous Environmental Knowledge in Vietnam
Recognizing Indigenous peoples’ and local communities’ rights and agency in the post-2020 Biodiversity Agenda
The Convention on Biological Diversity is defining the goals that will frame future global biodiversity policy in a context of rapid biodiversity decline and under pressure to make transformative change. Drawing on the work of Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, we argue that transformative change requires the foregrounding of Indigenous peoples’ and local communities’ rights and agency in biodiversity policy. We support this argument with fo…
Response to “Practice what you preach
Reyes-García, Victoria; Fernández-Llamazares, Álvaro; Aumeeruddy-Thomas, Yildiz; Benyei, Petra; Bussmann, Rainer; García-del-Amo, David; Hanazaki, Natalia; Luz, Ana Catarina; McElwee, Pamela; Meretsky, Vicky J.; Molnár, Zsolt; Ruiz Mallén, Isabel; Salpeteur, Matthieu; Brondizio, Eduardo
Shifting policies for shifting cultivation
Swidden cultivation has long been seen as incompatible with state goals for development, modernisation and environmental protection in Vietnam. This article provides a history of anti-swidden programmes since the French colonial period: how targets were selected, how different justifications were used, how interventions were implemented, and what the impacts were. Shifts occurred over time in targets, tools, and techniques, due to leeway availabl…
Transformative Conservation of Ecosystems
Non-technical summaryMany conservation initiatives call for 'transformative change' to counter biodiversity loss, climate change, and injustice. The term connotes fundamental, broad, and durable changes to human relationships with nature. However, if oversimplified or overcomplicated, or not focused enough on power and the political action necessary for change, associated initiatives can perpetuate or exacerbate existing crises. This article aims…
Challenges to understanding and managing cultural ecosystem services in the global South
Cultural ecosystem services (CES) have been proposed as the “intangible and non-material benefits that people enjoy from ecosystems”, and the literature has been expanding on how CES are defined, identified, valued, and incorporated into policy. However, the literature on CES has a strong geographical bias toward Europe and North America. In this Special Feature, authors examine how and in what ways CES concepts and frameworks have applicability …
Patriotism, place, and provisioning
Cultural ecosystem services (CES) provide multiple benefits to people, including experiences, identities, and capabilities through both material and non-material means. There have been few studies of CES in Vietnam, despite a number of historical, religious, cultural, and customary traditions that have long influenced landscape values and management. We aim to identify a range of CES important to respondents in a study site in north-central Vietn…
Locally Based, Regionally Manifested, and Globally Relevant
The knowledge, values, and practices of Indigenous peoples and local communities offer ways to understand and better address social-environmental problems. The article reviews the state of the literature on this topic by focusing on six pathways by which Indigenous peoples and local communities engage with management of and relationships to nature. These are ( a) undertaking territorial management practices and customary governance, ( b) contribu…
Climate Change and Biodiversity Loss
While often treated separately, biodiversity loss and climate change are related and mutually reinforcing problems. Rising temperatures and other climate impacts have seriously altered the composition, function, and structure of many ecosystems and species, some irreversibly. Policies to tackle both problems are clearly needed, but siloed approaches continue to dominate proposed solutions. There are also risks that some climate policies, such as …
Transformative governance of biodiversity
While there is much debate on transformative change among academics and policymakers, the discussion on how to govern such change is still in its infancy. This article argues that transformative governance is needed to enable the transformative change necessary for achieving global sustainability goals. Based on a literature review, the article unpacks this concept of transformative governance. It is: integrative, to ensure local solutions also h…
Political Ecology
This essay advances the argument for James C. Scott as a preeminent political ecologist, despite the fact that he has not claimed such a title for himself. While he is variously described as an (errant) political scientist, an (adopted) anthropologist, and a (most of the time) Southeast Asianist, he has not usually been called a card-carrying political ecologist. But in fact, his many works have foreshadowed a number of the topical concerns of po…
Power and Agency
The purportedly irreconcilable aims of "area studies" versus formal disciplines are a long-standing concern. In reality, their objectives are often inseparable, and approaches that start from and center a region have strongly contributed to theory building within disciplines. Few social scientists have been so productive in building bridges between these competing frames as James C. Scott, as evidenced by his celebrated body of work, his election…
Anthropological engagements with integrated assessment modeling
Working with Indigenous and local knowledge (ILK) in large‐scale ecological assessments
There have been calls for greater inclusion of Indigenous and local knowledge (ILK) in applied ecosystems research and ecological assessments. The Intergovernmental Science‐Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Global Assessment (GA) is the first global scale assessment to systematically engage with ILK and issues of concern to Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLC). In this paper, we review and reflect on how th…
Are We at a Climate Tipping Point
Political leaders once again failed to commit to adequate action against climate change, but its increasingly visible impacts have galvanized citizen activists
Contested Territory
Christian C. Lentz. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019. xvi and 331 pp., illus. $35 cloth (ISBN 9780300233957).We are delighted to bring together this forum on Contested Territory by Christ
Hybrid Outcomes of Payments for Ecosystem Services Policies in Vietnam
Vietnam has had a national Payments for Forest Environmental Services (PFES) policy in place since 2010, which transfers money for forest protection from water and energy users to households who live in upland watersheds. However, despite a loose resemblance to general Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) principles, implementation in Vietnam differs strongly from a theoretical ideal, and has a number of unique features, including: strong state …
Payments for environmental services as neoliberal market-based forest conservation in Vietnam
Transformative governance of biodiversity
While there is much debate on transformative change among academics and policymakers, the discussion on how to govern such change is still in its infancy. This article argues that transformative governance is needed to enable the transformative change necessary for achieving global sustainability goals. Based on a literature review, the article unpacks this concept of transformative governance. It is: integrative, to ensure local solutions also h…
Payments for environmental services and contested neoliberalisation in developing countries
Climate Change
Climate anthropology has broadened over the past decade from predominately locally focused studies on climate impacts to encompass new approaches to climate science, mitigation, sustainability transformations, risks, and resilience. We examine how theoretical positionings, including from actor-network theory, new materialisms, ontologies, and cosmopolitics, have helped expand anthropological climate research, particularly in three key interrelate…
Recognizing Indigenous peoples’ and local communities’ rights and agency in the post-2020 Biodiversity Agenda
The Convention on Biological Diversity is defining the goals that will frame future global biodiversity policy in a context of rapid biodiversity decline and under pressure to make transformative change. Drawing on the work of Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, we argue that transformative change requires the foregrounding of Indigenous peoples’ and local communities’ rights and agency in biodiversity policy. We support this argument with fo…
The Metrics of Making Ecosystem Services
Ecosystem services (ES) are increasingly used as the conceptual driver for conservation and development actions, largely following from the influential Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Scholars skeptical of the neoliberal turn in conservation have critiqued the use of economic values for nature's services. What has been less well understood and reviewed, however, is how concepts of ES are enacted by technologies of calculation, as well as how cal…
"Blood Relatives" or Uneasy Neighbors? Kinh Migrant and Ethnic Minority Interactions in the Trường Sơn Mountains
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Vietnam was largely divided between lowland-dwelling Vietnamese [Kinh] and a variety of ethnic groups living in the highlands. Yet by the close of the century, these ethnic minorities were far outnumbered by Kinh in most upland areas, thanks to extensive migration programs. This article looks at Kinh migrant and ethnic minority relations in the Annamite [Trường Sơn] uplands, with a focus on social, cultu…
Reforesting “Bare Hills” in Vietnam
In recent years, forestry has been strongly promoted by the government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam through large-scale projects to rehabilitate and reforest millions of hectares of land. One project to reforest 5 million hectares has received hundreds of millions of US dollars for implementation. Yet based on a case study in one area of northern Vietnam, this project appears to have had a number of unforeseen consequences. Large areas of…
Transformative Conservation of Ecosystems
Non-technical summaryMany conservation initiatives call for 'transformative change' to counter biodiversity loss, climate change, and injustice. The term connotes fundamental, broad, and durable changes to human relationships with nature. However, if oversimplified or overcomplicated, or not focused enough on power and the political action necessary for change, associated initiatives can perpetuate or exacerbate existing crises. This article aims…
Advocating afforestation, betting on BECCS
Negative emissions technologies (NETs) for carbon dioxide removal (CDR) are increasingly important responses to achieve global climate change targets, but to date, there has been insufficient attention to land-based NETs (including afforestation, biochar, and other measures) as an agrarian challenge for the global South. This paper explores the implications of different NETs for land, labor, capital, and politics in rural spaces and contributes t…
From the Moral Economy to the World Economy
This paper revisits themes from a classic text on Vietnam, The Moral Economy of the Peasant (1976), by James C. Scott. Fieldwork undertaken in Nghêê Tĩĩnh provides a contemporary re-examination of some of the key premises of Scott's book. The article argues that a "moral economy" that guarantees a right to subsistence, based on normative values and risk-averse behavior, does indeed still exist. Recent protests and rebellious acts that mirror prev…
Shifting policies for shifting cultivation
Swidden cultivation has long been seen as incompatible with state goals for development, modernisation and environmental protection in Vietnam. This article provides a history of anti-swidden programmes since the French colonial period: how targets were selected, how different justifications were used, how interventions were implemented, and what the impacts were. Shifts occurred over time in targets, tools, and techniques, due to leeway availabl…
Hybrid Outcomes of Payments for Ecosystem Services Policies in Vietnam
Vietnam has had a national Payments for Forest Environmental Services (PFES) policy in place since 2010, which transfers money for forest protection from water and energy users to households who live in upland watersheds. However, despite a loose resemblance to general Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) principles, implementation in Vietnam differs strongly from a theoretical ideal, and has a number of unique features, including: strong state …
There is Nothing that is Difficult
The North Vietnamese Army considered the Ho Chi Minh Trail a key part of their victory during the Vietnam War against the United States. The trail was often defended by encouraging large numbers of lowland Vietnamese villagers to show their patriotism by moving to the uplands. Ho Chi Minh himself said of the enormous task of making the trail, ‘There is nothing that is difficult’. Based on fieldwork in Ha Tinh province, where the trail began, this…
Response to “Practice what you preach
Reyes-García, Victoria; Fernández-Llamazares, Álvaro; Aumeeruddy-Thomas, Yildiz; Benyei, Petra; Bussmann, Rainer; García-del-Amo, David; Hanazaki, Natalia; Luz, Ana Catarina; McElwee, Pamela; Meretsky, Vicky J.; Molnár, Zsolt; Ruiz Mallén, Isabel; Salpeteur, Matthieu; Brondizio, Eduardo
Challenges to understanding and managing cultural ecosystem services in the global South
Cultural ecosystem services (CES) have been proposed as the “intangible and non-material benefits that people enjoy from ecosystems”, and the literature has been expanding on how CES are defined, identified, valued, and incorporated into policy. However, the literature on CES has a strong geographical bias toward Europe and North America. In this Special Feature, authors examine how and in what ways CES concepts and frameworks have applicability …
Patriotism, place, and provisioning
Cultural ecosystem services (CES) provide multiple benefits to people, including experiences, identities, and capabilities through both material and non-material means. There have been few studies of CES in Vietnam, despite a number of historical, religious, cultural, and customary traditions that have long influenced landscape values and management. We aim to identify a range of CES important to respondents in a study site in north-central Vietn…
Anthropological engagements with integrated assessment modeling
Conservation and Mobile Indigenous Peoples
Lost Worlds and Local People
There is Nothing that is Difficult
The North Vietnamese Army considered the Ho Chi Minh Trail a key part of their victory during the Vietnam War against the United States. The trail was often defended by encouraging large numbers of lowland Vietnamese villagers to show their patriotism by moving to the uplands. Ho Chi Minh himself said of the enormous task of making the trail, ‘There is nothing that is difficult’. Based on fieldwork in Ha Tinh province, where the trail began, this…
From the Moral Economy to the World Economy
This paper revisits themes from a classic text on Vietnam, The Moral Economy of the Peasant (1976), by James C. Scott. Fieldwork undertaken in Nghêê Tĩĩnh provides a contemporary re-examination of some of the key premises of Scott's book. The article argues that a "moral economy" that guarantees a right to subsistence, based on normative values and risk-averse behavior, does indeed still exist. Recent protests and rebellious acts that mirror prev…
"Blood Relatives" or Uneasy Neighbors? Kinh Migrant and Ethnic Minority Interactions in the Trường Sơn Mountains
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Vietnam was largely divided between lowland-dwelling Vietnamese [Kinh] and a variety of ethnic groups living in the highlands. Yet by the close of the century, these ethnic minorities were far outnumbered by Kinh in most upland areas, thanks to extensive migration programs. This article looks at Kinh migrant and ethnic minority relations in the Annamite [Trường Sơn] uplands, with a focus on social, cultu…
Reforesting “Bare Hills” in Vietnam
In recent years, forestry has been strongly promoted by the government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam through large-scale projects to rehabilitate and reforest millions of hectares of land. One project to reforest 5 million hectares has received hundreds of millions of US dollars for implementation. Yet based on a case study in one area of northern Vietnam, this project appears to have had a number of unforeseen consequences. Large areas of…
Payments for environmental services as neoliberal market-based forest conservation in Vietnam
Payments for environmental services and contested neoliberalisation in developing countries
Forests Are Gold
"Ho Chi Minh, the founder of modern Vietnam, once famously remarked that "forests are gold--if we know to protect and develop them well, they will be very precious." Ho's statement conveys important ideas about nature, the state, and society that are relevant in understanding contemporary environmental issues in Vietnam. For Ho and other political leaders, forests have been about more than trees: they were about the development and administration…
Vietnam's Urgent Task
[O]ne-size-fits-all adaptation will not work, given the wide variety of regional impacts in Vietnam
The Metrics of Making Ecosystem Services
Ecosystem services (ES) are increasingly used as the conceptual driver for conservation and development actions, largely following from the influential Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Scholars skeptical of the neoliberal turn in conservation have critiqued the use of economic values for nature's services. What has been less well understood and reviewed, however, is how concepts of ES are enacted by technologies of calculation, as well as how cal…
Silencing Agency in Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) by Essentializing a Neoliberal ‘Monster’ Into Being
The contributions of Indigenous Peoples and local communities to ecological restoration
Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPLC) are affected by global environmental change because they directly rely on their immediate environment for meeting basic livelihood needs. Therefore, safeguarding and restoring ecosystem resilience is critical to support their well‐being. Based on examples from the literature, we illustrate how IPLC participate in restoration activities maintaining traditional practices, restoring land degraded by ou…
Working with Indigenous and local knowledge (ILK) in large‐scale ecological assessments
There have been calls for greater inclusion of Indigenous and local knowledge (ILK) in applied ecosystems research and ecological assessments. The Intergovernmental Science‐Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Global Assessment (GA) is the first global scale assessment to systematically engage with ILK and issues of concern to Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLC). In this paper, we review and reflect on how th…
Are We at a Climate Tipping Point
Political leaders once again failed to commit to adequate action against climate change, but its increasingly visible impacts have galvanized citizen activists
Contested Territory
Christian C. Lentz. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019. xvi and 331 pp., illus. $35 cloth (ISBN 9780300233957).We are delighted to bring together this forum on Contested Territory by Christ
Hybrid Outcomes of Payments for Ecosystem Services Policies in Vietnam
Vietnam has had a national Payments for Forest Environmental Services (PFES) policy in place since 2010, which transfers money for forest protection from water and energy users to households who live in upland watersheds. However, despite a loose resemblance to general Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) principles, implementation in Vietnam differs strongly from a theoretical ideal, and has a number of unique features, including: strong state …
Climate Change
Climate anthropology has broadened over the past decade from predominately locally focused studies on climate impacts to encompass new approaches to climate science, mitigation, sustainability transformations, risks, and resilience. We examine how theoretical positionings, including from actor-network theory, new materialisms, ontologies, and cosmopolitics, have helped expand anthropological climate research, particularly in three key interrelate…
Locally Based, Regionally Manifested, and Globally Relevant
The knowledge, values, and practices of Indigenous peoples and local communities offer ways to understand and better address social-environmental problems. The article reviews the state of the literature on this topic by focusing on six pathways by which Indigenous peoples and local communities engage with management of and relationships to nature. These are ( a) undertaking territorial management practices and customary governance, ( b) contribu…
Climate Change and Biodiversity Loss
While often treated separately, biodiversity loss and climate change are related and mutually reinforcing problems. Rising temperatures and other climate impacts have seriously altered the composition, function, and structure of many ecosystems and species, some irreversibly. Policies to tackle both problems are clearly needed, but siloed approaches continue to dominate proposed solutions. There are also risks that some climate policies, such as …
Transformative governance of biodiversity
While there is much debate on transformative change among academics and policymakers, the discussion on how to govern such change is still in its infancy. This article argues that transformative governance is needed to enable the transformative change necessary for achieving global sustainability goals. Based on a literature review, the article unpacks this concept of transformative governance. It is: integrative, to ensure local solutions also h…
Political Ecology
This essay advances the argument for James C. Scott as a preeminent political ecologist, despite the fact that he has not claimed such a title for himself. While he is variously described as an (errant) political scientist, an (adopted) anthropologist, and a (most of the time) Southeast Asianist, he has not usually been called a card-carrying political ecologist. But in fact, his many works have foreshadowed a number of the topical concerns of po…
Power and Agency
The purportedly irreconcilable aims of "area studies" versus formal disciplines are a long-standing concern. In reality, their objectives are often inseparable, and approaches that start from and center a region have strongly contributed to theory building within disciplines. Few social scientists have been so productive in building bridges between these competing frames as James C. Scott, as evidenced by his celebrated body of work, his election…
Anthropological engagements with integrated assessment modeling
Governing for Transformative Change across the Biodiversity–Climate–Society Nexus
Transformative governance is key to addressing the global environmental crisis. We explore how transformative governance of complex biodiversity–climate–society interactions can be achieved, drawing on the first joint report between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services to reflect on the current opportunities, barriers, and challenges for transformati…
Political science (24 obras) · Geography (20 obras) · Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management (18 obras) · Economics (18 obras) · Sociology (18 obras) · Ecology (17 obras) · Environmental resource management (17 obras) · Ecology (14 obras) · Business (13 obras) · Environmental Science (12 obras)