Tuesday, September 19, 2006

New HOORC programme: Competing Claims on Natural Resources

A new research programme at HOORC will look at the issue of competing claims on natural resources from a multidisciplinary perspective, addressing ecological, economic and social issues. Twelve young MSc scientists will be awarded PhD fellowships within this programme to use a comparative approach to examine the different drivers of resource use dynamics and the interacting claims of multiple stakeholders on these resources in four southern African countries: Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.

The Botswana specific component of the project will cover two areas of study: one, supervised by HOORC Professor Larry Swatuk, will investigate the interrelationship between competing claims on land and the formal, export-oriented cattle industry. The second student, supervised by HOORC Professor Susan Ringrose, will look at predicting consumption of resources along gradients of nutrients and moisture. The programme commences October 2006.

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