Staff profile

The trade-offs of win–win conservation rhetoric: exploring place meanings in community conservation on the Wild Coast, South Africa

Masterson, V.A., Spierenburg, M., Tengö, M.

2019 - Journal / article

In attempts to reconcile conservation and development for poverty alleviation by establishing protected areas, economic values of nature and compensation for loss of access to resources are often prioritized over cultural and personal values. Additionally, conservation interventions in local communities are often hindered by contested visions of sustainability. We explore the utility of place meanings to unpack diverse local ...

Revisiting the relationships between human well-being and ecosystems in dynamic social-ecological systems: Implications for stewardship and development

Masterson, V.A., Vetter, S., Chaigneau, T., Daw, T. et al.

2019 - Journal / article

We argue that the ways in which we as humans derive well-being from nature – for example by harvesting firewood, selling fish or enjoying natural beauty – feed back into how we behave towards the environment. This feedback is mediated by institutions (rules, regulations) and by individual capacities to act. Understanding these relationships can guide better interventions for sustainably improving well-being and alleviating pov...

Stewardship, care and relational values

West., S., Haider, J.L., Masterson, V. et al.

2019 - Journal / article

Stewardship is a popular term for describing action in pursuit of sustainability. There is growing interest in how relational values, such as care, animate stewardship action. In this paper we develop relational understandings of care in stewardship, in so doing infusing the relational values literature with modes of ‘relational thinking’ increasingly adopted in sustainability science. We use three theoretical perspectives — d...

Photovoice for mobilizing insights on human well-being in complex social-ecological systems: case studies from Kenya and South Africa

Masterson, V. A., S. L. Mahajan, and M. Tengö

2018 - Journal / article

 The value of diverse perspectives in social-ecological systems research and transdisciplinarity is well recognized. Human well-being and how it is derived from dynamic ecosystems is one area where local knowledge and perspectives are critical for designing interventions for sustainable pathways out of poverty. However, to realize the potential to enrich the understanding of complex dynamics for sustainability, there is a need...