This proposal examines the process of forestry restructuring in South Africa taking place within the new forest policy of the African National Congress (ANC) government. Under the apartheid regime, forest policy focused mainly on industrial forestry and served the interests of a small group of white industrialists. The black rural communities were subjected to land dispossession and displacements to give way for plantation forestry. Moreover, plantation forestry in South Africa has been understood to pose several negative environmental impacts such as reduction in groundwater levels, destruction of riparian zones and alteration of the natural landscape (Bethlehem, 1994; Department of Water Affairs and Forestry, 1996). The new forest policy has moved away from this narrow focus to include issues of sustainability encompassing social, economic and ecological development of the sector (White Paper for Sustainable Forestry, 1996). Thus, the major challenge facing post-apartheid forestry is the reconciliation of commercial forestry, community forestry and conservation forestry. It is imperative to maintain and even increase competitiveness of the forest sector but at the same time to involve the formerly excluded sectors of society and minimize negative impacts on environment and biodiversity. Against this background, the government has embarked on a nation-wide privatisation of its forest assets in conformity with South Africas existing macro-economic policy framework. The almost paradoxical situation now is that while the government transfers its assets to private entities to improve the sectors economic performance, it is through the same privatisation that it hopes to contribute to the social and economic empowerment of local black communities, emerging black businesses and environmental demands. The great question then is how these policy ideals work out in practice, and how the key actors (government, large white corporations, black emergent enterprises and black communities) solve their dilemmas between short-term economic efficiency, long-term sustainability, bussiness alliances and ethnic solidarity. The geographic focus of the research will be on the Eastern Cape province, where the restructuring of the forestry sector is the most advanced. One prime case study will be ongoing process around the Eastern Cape Forestry Consortium, which is one of the few in which black communities rather than black companies play a major role. Other case studies will present themselves along the way, and be selected for relevance for the development of the emergent insights of the research. The prime research method will be open and semi-structured interviews with all relevant actors and qualitative, multi-perspective analysis.

This research will examine women?s activism within the South African trade union movement from the period 1973 through to 2003. It wants to investigate the factors that contributed to the mobilisation of women into the trade union movement during the period under study and to understand how their activism influenced their gender consciousness. This research will move from the premise that in order to fully understand the mobilisation of women into trade union activities, comprehension of the extent to which the socio-political surrounding influenced women?s political consciousness and then subsequently their working class consciousness, is important. Therefore, one of the objectives of this research is to look at women?s activism within their communities. To what extent were women involved in their community organisations or struggles within their communities and how has this involvement influenced their trade union activism? Central in this research is the issue of gender consciousness and how women created opportunities for demanding gender equality and that women?s rights in the workplace be regarded as trade union issues. Thus by looking at women?s activism within trade unions as well as community organisations, the research aims to examine the importance of such interaction in the development of their gender consciousness, which was in turn central in their struggles for gender equality within the unions and the broader society, particularly during the transition to a democratic society. In 1992 after the formation of the Women?s National Coalition, women activists ensured that women workers? rights were guaranteed in the Constitution of a democratic South Africa. Indeed the period after the democratisation of South Africa presented a different context for women?s activism and certainly new opportunities. The research will analyse this period and examine the new challenges faced by women trade unionists and how they have addressed those new challenges. Information for the study will be gathered through various methods. These will include reviewing primary and secondary research material as well as in-depth oral interviews with women who have been activists during the period understudy. The interviews will be conducted in the Gauteng region as it is one of the main areas where most of the political activities took place during the period understudy.

Our research focuses on significantly improving investigations into poaching and illegal wildlife trade by developing advanced forensic techniques specifically designed to tackle these activities. We utilize body temperature dynamics to estimate the time of death and conduct chemical analyses of bodily fluids to determine the time since poaching. This is crucial for reconstructing the timeline of events, verifying alibis, and establishing targeted search strategies. By adapting these advanced and legally applicable methods for crime scene investigations after poaching incidents, we aim to introduce new advanced methods for forensic research in addressing this large-scale wildlife crime.

This project focuses on mine closure and responsible mining in South Africa. The goal is to create a discourse of toxic commons, run by a synthetic perspective that solves residual infrastructure and altered water systems on a regional scale, which also impacts the local energy and food systems. Extraction (mining) results in significant, irreversible change, in which the degradation of the environmental and human (local) recourses is not adequately acknowledged. The overall environmental degradation and the marginalized communities are also excluded from alternative futures. This geographical misbalance between local quality and global commodities is fundamental to the problem.

The project is an exercise in South-South collaboration, involving researchers from India and South Africa. Although its main focus is India, important comparative insights are drawn from changing approaches to wildlife conservation in South Africa, which has pioneered several innovative approaches to the preservation of indigenous populations living in wildlife conservation areas. This project will identify and assess competing development visions for the Tansa wildlife sanctuary in Mumbai, notably those of the tribal people linving in the forest, local governement in Maharastra state, the Thane Wildlife division, local business people and industrialists. Of foremost concern are the local tribal people about whom very little is known. The project aims to learn more about their way of life, particularly their use of forest and non-forest products, and to unpack the "hidden economies" of the forest. This will alow us to explore options for some form of Joint Forest Management, whereby forest resources are exploited in an co-operative rather than competing manner. Such a strategy will have to be expored in light of the largely conflicting development visions articulated by the local state and economic elite, and informed by experiences of Joint Forest Management elsewhere in India. The main "hypothesis" is that a developmental vision that links local beliefs, resources, institutions and perceptions of social reality to the broader political and social economy of Maharatra will have greater welfare enhancing characteristics than one based on the marginalisation and restriction of local economic practices. Transactions costs will be lowered and incentives for co-operation (from all sides) will de enhanced. Joint Forest Management offers one possible framewordk for the articulation of such a shared developmental vision.