Publications

Venter, Z.S., Shakleton, C.M., Van Staden, F., Selomane, O., Masterson, V.A. 2021. Green Apartheid: Urban green infrastructure remains unequally distributed across income and race geographies in South Africa. Landscape and Urban Planning Volume 203, November 2020, 103889, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2020.103889

Urban green infrastructureprovides ecosystem services that are essential to human wellbeing. A dearth of national-scale assessments in the Global South has precluded the ability toexplore how political regimes, such as the forced racial segregation in SouthAfrica during and after Apartheid, have influenced the extent of and access togreen infrastructure over time. We investigate whether there are disparities ingreen infrastru...

Venter, Z.S., Shackleton, C.M., Van Staden, F., Selomane, O., Masterson, V.A. 2020. Green Apartheid: Urban green infrastructure remains unequally distributed across income and race geographies in South Africa. Landscape and Urban Planning Volume 203, November 2020, 103889, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2020.103889

Urban green infrastructure provides ecosystem services that are essential to human wellbeing. A dearth of national-scale assessments in the Global South has precluded the ability to explore how political regimes, such as the forced racial segregation in South Africa during and after Apartheid, have influenced the extent of and access to green infrastructure over time. We investigate whether there are disparities in green infr...

Malmer, P., Masterson, V., Austin, B., & Tengö, M. 2020. Mobilisation of indigenous and local knowledge as a source of useable evidence for conservation partnerships. In W. Sutherland, P. Brotherton, Z. Davies, N. Ockendon, N. Pettorelli, & J. Vickery (Eds.), Conservation Research, Policy and Practice (Ecological Reviews, pp. 82-113). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108638210.006

Mobilising indigenous and local knowledge systems has the potential to make their critical knowledge about landscapes and biodiversity meaningful as evidence in conservation and governance. Collaborative approaches to conservation must be equitable and just to be effective in the long term. The Multiple Evidence Base (MEB) is an inclusive approach to combining diverse sources of evidence. We review uptake of the MEB approach a...

Jacobs, S. Zafra-Calvo, N., Gonzalez-Jimenez, Guibrunet, L., Benessaiah, K., et.al. 2020. Use your power for good: plural valuation of nature – the Oaxaca statement. Global Sustainability, Volume 3, 2020, e8. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2020.2

Decisions on the use of nature reflect the values and rights of individuals, communities and society at large. The values of nature are expressed through cultural norms, rules and legislation, and they can be elicited using a wide range of tools, including those of economics. None of the approaches to elicit peoples’ values are neutral. Unequal power relations influence valuation and decision-making and are at the core of most...

Shackleton, S., Masterson, V., Hebinck, P., Speranza, C., I., Spear, D., Tengö, M. 2019. Editorial for Special Issue: “Livelihood and Landscape Change in Africa: Future Trajectories for Improved Well-Being under a Changing Climate”. Land 2019, 8(8), 114; https://doi.org/10.3390/land8080114

Rural people’s livelihoods are intimately linked to the landscapes in which they live and are particularly vulnerable to changes in these landscapes (Suich et al. 2015 [ 1 ]). At the same time changes in livelihood activities may have negative feedbacks on landscapes and the ecosystem services they provide. In much of Africa, rural landscapes are subject to increasing pressures from environmental and socio-economic change. T...

Masterson, V.A., Spierenburg, M., Tengö, M. 2019. The trade-offs of win–win conservation rhetoric: exploring place meanings in community conservation on the Wild Coast, South Africa. Sustainability Science May 2019, Volume 14, Issue 3, pp 639–654

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 ...

Masterson, V.A., Vetter, S., Chaigneau, T., Daw, T. et al. 2019. Revisiting the relationships between human well-being and ecosystems in dynamicsocial-ecological systems: Implications forstewardship and development. GlobalSustainability 2, e8, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1017/S205947981900005X

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...

West., S., Haider, J.L., Masterson, V. et al. 2018. Stewardship, care and relational values. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability. Available online 5 November 2018. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2018.10.008

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...

Haider, L.J., Hentati-Sundberg, J., Giusti, M. et al. 2017. The undisciplinary journey: early-career perspectives in sustainability science. Sustain Sci. 13: 191. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-017-0445-1

The establishment of interdisciplinary Master’s and PhD programs in sustainability science is opening up an exciting arena filled with opportunities for early-career scholars to address pressing sustainability challenges. However, embarking upon an interdisciplinary endeavor as an early-career scholar poses a unique set of challenges: to develop an individual scientific identity and a strong and specific methodological skill-s...

Masterson, V. A., S. L. Mahajan, and M. Tengö. 2018. Photovoice for mobilizing insights on human well-being in complex social-ecological systems: case studies from Kenya and South Africa. Ecology and Society 23(3):13.https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10259-230313

 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...