Common approaches for improving the mental health of the population in general and of vulnerable groups in particular include policies to address social determinants and the expansion of professional health services. Both approaches have substantial limitations in practice. A more promising option is actions that utilize resources that either already exist or can easily be generated in local communities. Examples are provided for various local initiatives with the potential to facilitate helpful interactions and relationships that are likely to benefit the mental health of significant parts of the population. Developing and implementing such initiatives is a challenge to communities, while their evaluation may require innovative methods in research.

This article aims to enrich the emerging, multi-coloured tapestry of ‘international law in context’ through a study of how international economic law operates in complex investment-related disputes. Focusing on the Eco Oro v. Colombia investor-state arbitration, and drawing on both doctrinal analysis and sociolegal research, the study investigates how different actors make sense of the issues, of the dispute, and of the law. Besides shedding light on the neglected multi-actor, multi-layered dimensions of investment disputes, and on tensions between often incommensurable values, juxtaposing arbitral proceedings and underlying social realities highlights how investor-state arbitration involves a socio-political process of re-presenting actors, territory, the environment, and livelihoods through the prism of international arrangements that are primarily designed to protect foreign investment. The findings provide policy pointers on the need for systemic reform of international investment law, moving away from the predominant emphasis on investment protection and investor-state dispute settlement, towards a governance model that effectively considers the social, political, and environmental dimensions of foreign investment projects.

This piece analyses the recent judgment from the Makhanda High Court in Sustaining the Wild Coast NPC v Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy setting aside the decision to grant Shell and Impact Africa an exploratory right. Shell and Impact Africa intended to conduct a seismic survey along South Africa’s Wild Coast. Such a survey stood to have a substantial impact on the rights and interests of several local communities residing along the coastline. Because Shell, Impact Africa and the Director-General of the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy failed to consider these rights and interests, the court decided to overturn the decision granting the companies their exploratory right. To this end, the judgment provides a powerful vindication of the rights of local communities, illustrating what is possible when regulatory schemes are applied purposively and not as a mere box-ticking exercise.

Pangolins have long been hunted for food and for their scales, but information on local hunting strategies in African range countries and the patterns of pangolin trafficking around sourcing areas is limited. Such knowledge is vital to inform monitoring approaches and conservation interventions. We administered questionnaires to 367 people from 20 villages around two national parks in Cameroon to gain insights into local hunting practices, and trading and trafficking patterns. We found that tracking was the preferred method of hunting pangolins. Trapping was also used, and setting traps on fallen logs and near burrows improved the likelihood of catching pangolins. The white-bellied pangolin Phataginus tricuspis was the most traded species, and the giant pangolin Smutsia gigantea was the most sought after. We found no evidence of trade in the black-bellied pangolin Phataginus tetradactyla. Most respondents stated that pangolin prices had increased over the last 5 years, and scarcity of pangolins was the primary reason given for this increase. We identified a pangolin scale trafficking network operating from rural communities to neighbouring cities. Although most respondents recognized that hunting pangolins is illegal, c. 30% indicated that they were engaged in pangolin hunting.

In the Bronze Age, warriors are probably the best-known social class. Evidence for warfare and other violent encounters links them to aggression and bloodshed that could be translated into social status. This made warriors a potential two-fold threat to the social cohesion of their communities: not only did they risk threatening the integrity of communities as agents of death but also they could challenge local authority and cause internal conflict. Here, the author presents evidence that suggests that internal conflict was a major concern for Nordic Bronze Age societies, in that warriors constituted an internal social challenge, and proposes that local communities may have mitigated this threat in rituals such as the sacrifice of weapons and the construction of social narratives through rock art.

Local community participation in the revival of ancient theatres as venues in Greece shaped the dynamics of the cultural reception of inter-war performances at Delphi and Epidaurus. Here I analyse local involvement within and beyond the theatrical context of the Delphic Festivals, as well as the long-standing identification of the village of Ligourio with the theatre of Epidaurus. These relationships reflect distinctive dimensions of the clash between community-led and institutional archaeology, which dominated national discourse on authenticity and identity. At the same time, the prospects of economic development through tourism in such remote areas encouraged local receptiveness to the revival of ancient theatres.

Human–elephant coexistence remains a major conservation and livelihood challenge across elephant Loxodonta africana range in Africa. This study investigates the extent of elephant crop damage on 66 farms in the Selous–Niassa corridor (Tanzania), to search for potential management solutions to this problem. We found that the relative abundance of highly preferred crops (area covered by preferred crops divided by the total area of each farm) was by far the most important factor determining crop damage by elephants. Eighteen crop types were ranked according to their preference by elephants. Sweet potatoes, bananas, peanuts, onions, pumpkins and maize were the most preferred crops, with maize the most common crop among those highly preferred. On average elephants damaged 25.7% of the cultivated farmland they entered. A beta regression model suggests that a reduction in the cultivation of preferred crops from 75 to 25% of the farmland area decreases elephant crop damage by 64%. Water availability (distance to the nearest waterhole) and the presence of private investors (mostly hunting tourism companies) were of lower importance in determining elephant crop damage. Thus, damage by elephants increased with shorter distances to waterholes and decreased in areas with private investors. However, further studies are required, particularly of the perceived costs and benefits of elephants to local communities. Farm aggregation and the use of non-preferred crops that also require less water would potentially reduce elephant damage but would be a major lifestyle change for some local communities.

Throughout the past two decades, the number of studies examining the adaptive capacity of Arctic communities in the context of climate change has been increasing; however, little is known about Arctic communities’ ability to adapt to certain emerging changes, such as increased shipping activity. To address this knowledge gap, this study systematically analyses published scientific articles on community adaptive capacity in circumpolar Arctic, including articles published in Russian which may not be captured in English-only reviews. Throughout this review, the study focuses on three areas: the development of the adaptive capacity framework; the conditions that enable community adaption abilities; and the extent to which shipping developments are addressed in the literature. This study demonstrates that the adaptive capacity framework has been significantly developed both theoretically and methodologically and is broadly used to address new types of climatic and non-climatic changes. Though the impacts from the shipping development are discussed in some studies, there is a clear need for further examination of coastal communities’ ability to adapt to such changes. Additionally, the study reveals limitations in the application of the Western conceptual terminology when exploring community-based research by Russian scholars.

This study supplements spatial panel econometrics techniques with qualitative GIS to analyse spatio-temporal changes in the distribution of integrated conservation–development projects relative to poaching activity and unauthorized resource use in Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda. Cluster and spatial regression analyses were performed on data from ranger monitoring containing > 35,000 combined observations of illegal activities in Volcanoes National Park, against tourism revenue sharing and conservation NGO funding data for 2006–2015. Results were enriched with qualitative GIS analysis from key informant interviews. We found a statistically significant negative linear effect of overall integrated conservation–development investments on unauthorized resource use in Volcanoes National Park. However, individually, funding from Rwanda's tourism revenue sharing policy did not have an effect in contrast to the significant negative effect of conservation NGO funding. In another contrast between NGO funding and tourism revenue sharing funding, spatial analysis revealed significant gaps in revenue sharing funding relative to the hotspots of illegal activities, but these gaps were not present for NGO funding. Insight from qualitative GIS analysis suggests that incongruity in prioritization by decision makers at least partly explains the differences between the effects of revenue sharing and conservation NGO investment. Although the overall results are encouraging for integrated conservation–development projects, we recommend increased spatial alignment of project funding with clusters of illegal activities, which can make investment decision-making more data-driven and projects more effective for conservation.

With much fanfare, Ghana's Jubilee Oil Field was discovered in 2007 and began producing oil in 2010. In the six coastal districts nearest the offshore fields, expectations of oil-backed development have been raised. However, there is growing concern over what locals perceive to be negative impacts of oil and gas production. Based on field research conducted in 2010 and 2015 in the same communities in each district, this paper presents a longitudinal study of the impacts (real and perceived) of oil and gas production in Ghana. With few identifiable benefits beyond corporate social responsibility projects often disconnected from local development priorities, communities are growing angrier at their loss of livelihoods, increased social ills and dispossession from land and ocean. Assuming that others must be benefiting from the petroleum resources being extracted near their communities, there is growing frustration. High expectations, real and perceived grievances, and increasing social fragmentation threaten to lead to conflict and underdevelopment.

Deforestation is one of the most important conservation problems in tropical developing countries, even though cost–benefit analyses consistently show that forest conservation is economically beneficial. In Madagascar, deforestation continues at alarming rates despite numerous initiatives of international donors to increase incentives for local households to support forest conservation. In this literature review, we contrast cost–benefit analyses for forest conservation with: (1) the actual burdens and (2) the actual gains of forest conservation for rural households, generated mainly in the context of conservation projects. We show that approaches to generating direct benefits deliver less value than expected for rural communities; the benefit transfer mechanisms are insufficient as the majority of benefits are captured by other stakeholders, and increased benefit transfer is limited by structural and institutional limitations in local communities, valuation chains and in terms of governance failure at higher levels.

Territorial reforms in South Africa, undertaken in order to address the legacy of apartheid, have proven to be a contested terrain. This article considers three case studies and argues that in order to understand these territorial disputes, it is important to pay attention to the material conditions of the affected communities, disparities between provinces in terms of resources and governance efficiency, and perceptions that the preferred province is better positioned to serve the interests of the community. The article highlights the role of party political interests and also reflects on the relevance of the South African experience to other African countries.

This opinion note explores some aspects of the relationship between humanitarian non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and extractive industries. Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders, MSF) has endorsed a policy of non-engagement with the corporate sector of the extractive industries, particularly when it comes to financial donations. This is coherent with MSF being first and foremost a medical organisation, and one that adheres to the humanitarian principles of independence and neutrality. For humanitarian actors, the prospect of future environmental disasters and environmental conflicts calls for the anticipation of novel encounters, not only with environmental organisations but also with the extractive sector. Unlike environmental organisations, extractive industries are prone to generating or perpetuating different forms of violence, often putting extractive companies on a par with the parties to armed conflicts. In situations where a dialogue with extractive companies would be needed to optimise care and access to victims, humanitarian organisations should carefully weigh pragmatic considerations against the risk of being co-opted as medical providers of mitigation measures.

Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation with the help of the emerging REDD+ mechanism provides an opportunity to combine climate protection with biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation. However, one of the crucial questions is how the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities will be protected in REDD+ implementation. This article depicts the challenges involved in protecting the rights of local communities in the case of Mozambique. The study finds that constraints regarding property and participation rights arise, in particular, from incomplete procedures of delimitation and titling, corruption, lack of rights awareness, lack of democratic structures within the community or poor infrastructure. Because many states with a REDD+ potential are not able to guarantee sufficient rights protection, the REDD+ mechanism itself needs to be endowed with strong safeguards for the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities.

Waterholes are a limited resource vital to the conservation of biodiversity in arid ecosystems. Given the rarity of natural waterholes in deserts and their presumed importance to Vulnerable Nubian ibex Capra nubiana, we examined the influence of landscape characteristics and anthropogenic factors on ibex presence at waterholes. Our results suggest that anthropogenic factors play a larger role in waterhole use than landscape characteristics. Ibex used waterholes regardless of maximum waterhole diameter, maximum water depth or width of the valley in which the waterhole was located. However, ibex were significantly more likely to use waterholes that were far from human dwellings and that had not been visited recently by feral donkeys. Waterhole and ibex conservation will require working with local communities to protect, and ensure sustainable use of, this vital resource.