Interdisciplinary problem-solving: Next steps in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem

The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, a 7.6-million-hectare region in the Central Rocky Mountains of the United States, is used to illustrate both the challenges and means to improve problem solving in the natural resources arena. The challenges in this world-famous region are contextual (rapid change, growth, pluralism, complexity, state/federal conflicts, and lack of a common perspective), institutional (multiple organizations with overlapping authority and control and disparate mandates, uneven leadership, lack of creativity in problem solving, and resistance to change), and human (diverse perspectives and values and epistemological limitations). To overcome these challenges, an interdisciplinary method that integrates knowledge to improve policy making is briefly described. It provides a framework with a comprehensive set of categories to use in investigating and analyzing problems and inventing alternatives for substantive, process, and structural improvements. Five programs or interventions, all of which are based on this method, are suggested to address the challenges facing Greater Yellowstone: (1) workshops for capacity building, (2) leadership, staff development, and student internships, (3) case analyses and appraisals for policy learning, (4) problem-solving exercises and decision seminars, and (5) prototyping exercises to improve interdisciplinary and interagency coordination. These are described, examples given, and benefits outlined.     

FOSTERING COOPERATION AND DIALOGUE

The Xi-Obama summit provides a chance for frank discussion on how to improve bilateral ties The meeting between President Xi Jinping and President Barack Obama at Sunnylands,the former Annenberg estate in Rancho Mirage,California,on June 7-8 was unprecedented in its relatively informal     

Operationalising participatory research and farmer-to-farmer extension: the Kamayoq in Peru

While rural poverty is endemic in the Andean region, structural adjustment programmes have led to a dismemberment of agricultural research and extension services so that they are unable to serve the needs of smallholder farmers. The NGO Practical Action has been working in the Andes to address farmers' veterinary and agriculture needs. The work has included the training of farmer-to-farmer extension agents, known locally as Kamayoq. The Kamayoq have encouraged farmer participatory research, and local farmers pay them for their veterinary and crop advisory services in cash or in kind. The Kamayoq model is largely an unsubsidised approach to the provision of appropriate technical services and encouragement of farmer participation. The model also illustrates that, in the context of encouraging farmer participation and innovation, NGOs have advantages over research organisations because of their long-term presence, ability to establish trust with local farmers, and their emphasis on social and community processes.     

Distributive Justice Norms and Family Work: What Is Perceived as Ideal,What Is Applied,and What Predicts Perceived Fairness?

Members of married couples rated how ideal communal, exchange, and equality rules were for their marriages. They also reported on whether they and their spouses followed each norm in general in their marriages and in the domains of housework and child care. Both men and women considered a communal norm to be more ideal than the other norms and reported that they and their spouse followed a communal norm to a greater extent than an exchange or equality rule, both in general and in the domains of housework and child care. In addition, links between reports of actual division of labor in each domain, as well as reports of norm use, and perceived fairness of the division of family work were examined. Greater inequalities in the division of labor were linked to decreased perceptions of fairness. Controlling for reports of division of labor, women's reports of the self and of the spouse following a communal norm were linked with increased perceptions of fairness as were women's reports of the spouse following an equality rule. In contrast, and again after controlling for reports of division of labor, women's reports of the self following an exchange rule and men's reports of the self and of the spouse following an exchange rule were associated with greater perceived unfairness of the division of family work.