Browsing by Author "Huxham, M."

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    Carbon in the Coastal Seascape: How Interactions Between Mangrove Forests, Seagrass Meadows and Tidal Marshes Influence Carbon Storage
    (Springer, 2018-04) Huxham, M.; Whitlock, D.; Githaiga, M.; Dencer-Brown, A.
    Purpose of Review We use the ‘seascape’ concept to explore how interactions between mangrove forests, tidal marshes and seagrass influence the storage of carbon in these ecosystems. Mangrove forests, with the other two ‘blue carbon’ habitats, are exceptionally powerful carbon sinks. Maintaining and enhancing these sinks is an emerging priority in climate change mitigation. However, managing any one ecosystem on its own risks is ignoring important contextual drivers of carbon storage emerging from its place in the seascape. We consider how interactions between these coastal habitats directly or indirectly affect the amounts of carbon they can store. Recent Findings The export of carbon from seagrasses may occur over hundreds or thousands of kilometres, much further than reported for mangroves or tidal marshes. Seagrasses may buffer mangroves from wave impacts, assisting forest regeneration. Trophic cascades supported by contiguous blue carbon habitat may limit excessive herbivory and bioturbation in them but evidence is limited. Summary Direct transfers of carbon between blue carbon habitats are common and are likely to enhance total carbon storage, but our understanding of their contribution to carbon stocks at the seascape level is elementary. There is evidence for indirect enhancement of carbon storage at the seascape by close association of habitats, mostly through the creation and maintenance of propitious conditions by one ecosystem for another. Protection from waves of mangroves by seagrass and protection from excess nutrients and sediment of seagrass by mangroves and tidal marsh are key mechanisms. There is little evidence or theory suggesting negative effects on carbon storage of one blue carbon habitat on another
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    From Shiny Shoes to Muddy Reality: Understanding How Meso-State Actors Negotiate the Implementation Gap in Participatory Forest Management
    (Taylor and Francis Online, 2017-11) Kairu, Anne; Upton, C.; Huxham, M.; Kotut, Kiplagat; Mbeche, R.; Kairo, J.
    Recent research on participatory forest management (PFM) in the global south has highlighted the existence of a widespread “implementation gap” between the ambitious intent enshrined in legislation and the often partial, disappointing rollout of devolved forest governance on the ground. Here, through an ethnographic case study of forest officers (FOs) in Kenya, we draw on a framework of critical institutionalism to examine how key meso-level actors, or “interface bureaucrats,” negotiate and challenge this implementation gap in everyday forest governance. We go beyond consideration of institutional bricolage in isolation or as an aggregate category, to analyze how bricolage as aggregation, alteration, and/or articulation is variously driven, shaped, and constrained by FOs’ multiple accountabilities and agency. Our analysis highlights the locally specific, contingent, and mutually reinforcing nature of accountability, agency and bricolage, and their explanatory power in relation to the performance and nature of “actually existing” PFM.