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Researchers using local and indigenous people's accounts of climate change in their scientific work often face scepticism regarding the value of such information. The critics' argument is that since local and indigenous people are often exposed to the global discourse on climate change, their observations and information may in fact be reproductions of science popularized through communication media. There are instances in which local people's accounts of climate change and impacts thereof may be influenced by how media frame and popularize scientific models and predictions. However, we propose several reasons why the influence of media reports and coverage of climate change is usually superficial. First, there are significant differences between the epistemologies employed by media and those of local people. Although media may be borrowing local environmental categories, they may be filling them with different content, leading to incoherence. Second, media accounts are often general and locally irrelevant, in contrast with the detailed local anchoring of the knowledge often held by people who rely on natural resources for their livelihoods. Their observations often rely on holistic ways of knowing their environments, integrating large numbers of variables, and the relationships between these. We propose that accounts based on such observations are probably not influenced by media framings and that uncovering their underlying ‘ways of knowing’ would provide valuable additional evidence in interdisciplinary studies of climate change. WIREs Clim Change 2013, 4:1–8. doi: 10.1002/wcc.199 This article is categorized under: Social Status of Climate Change Knowledge > Sociology/Anthropology of Climate Knowledge

Recently, an increa.sing number of development plans and strategies for pastoral conununities have failed to ensure the sought sustainability. especially in ecosystems characterised by fluctuating environmental conditions. Many of these strategies are centred on a policy of confining, controlling and .settling the nomadic herders. This article illustrates some of the principles and pitfalls of this approach with the ca.se of senii-nomadic reindeer herding in Northetn Norway. It juxtapo.ses the management views advocated by the herders with those expressed and implied hy the recent state policies for reindeer herding. The focus is placed on the changes in latid tenure and resource access. On the one hand, the state policy is founded on the assumptions of the tragedy-of-the-commons theory and argues for a formalised individual tenure regime as the only arrangement able to prevent/redress the alleged environmental degradation. On the other hand, the herders argue for a complex, and at times paradoxical, tenure and tnanagement regime, one that ensures both tenure security and flexibility, an adaptation of customary principles to the present situation. Our conclusion supports iticreasing evidence from elsewhere that gaps between the policy prescriptions and the pastoral management strategies have often resulted in negative social and environmental consequences. We argue for the need to include the experience and expectations of the herders in the design of legitimate and enduring co-management regimes as the only sustainable alternative.

Abstract:Reindeer herding in Finnmark has been widely perceived during the last few decades as a perfect example of the tragedy of the commons. The present article claims that this discourse relies on flawed assumption regarding land tenure. Our historical analysis of the term 'common' in relation to resources in Finnmark shows the term to reflect a misunderstanding of local categories, practices, and concerns related to pastures, territories, and natural resources more generally. In this sense, it exposes a case of 'mistaken identity' between the formal legal conception of 'commons' and the customary rules and thinking of reindeer herders. We turn to different strands of critical institutionalism to analyse the processes of institutional change that have allowed these errors and misunderstandings to be formalised and naturalised in the current governance system. We show that a process of institutional bargaining between the Norwegian Parliament, the Sámi Parliament, and the International Labour Organisation has recently re-enforced an alien conception of a 'commons' to which ambiguous groups of people have equivocal rights. In parallel, a process of institutional layering of new regulatory actors and rules on top of existing ones has taken place. This regulatory ratcheting has resulted in the blurring of the authorities and jurisdictions intrinsic in the customary tenure system. Moreover, the new layers of regulations have actively overemphasized the Sámi customary obligation of sharing resources to legitimize 1 The "Results" section of the present article is developed from our book chapter "Er Finnmarksvidda en allmenning?" forthcoming in Norwegian in Benjaminsen et al. (2015). 20Andrei Marin and Ivar Bjørklund the new, ambiguous, conception of commons. This process is explained as one of institutional bricolage based on naturalisation by analogy and authority processes that allow certain powerful actors to influence the production of institutional arrangements favourable to them. All three processes underline the negotiated, dynamic nature of institutional change. We propose this integrative analysis of institutional and general social dynamics is beneficial in studying commons as everyday practices affecting natural resource governance.

Pastoralism in Mongolia has increasingly been portrayed by two powerful and mutually reinforcing discourses. First, the neo-liberal discourse enthusiastically embraced and reproduced by most of the Mongolian political elite constructs pastoralism as backward and unproductive, in need of modernization, and sedentarization. Second, an increasingly powerful essentialist discourse argues for the preservation of 'traditional' Mongolian pastoralism. By presenting a stereotypical image of 'the nomadic culture' on the brink of extinction, outsiders (e.g. NGOs, the tourist industry) become stakeholders in the debate on Mongolian identity and the country's development path. They also help (unwillingly perhaps) reinforce the image of the pastoralist as obsolete and 'timeless'. The article shows that the realities of Mongolian pastoralists lie beyond these two constructs. The pastoralists have taken steps toward adapting to the new socio-economic realities: they use veterinary services, try to use the market system and social services. Yet their adaptive capacity is severely limited by unfavourable social and economic circumstance endorsed by the State.