Jean-David Gerber

Postdoc researcher
Ph.D. Public Administration  –  University of Lausanne (UNIL), 2005
M.Sc. Environmental Sciences  –  Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich (ETHZ), 2001
Mail: 137 Mulford Hall, MC 3110    Desk: 10 Hilgard Hall
Berkeley, California 94720
jean-david.gerber@nature.berkeley.edu
T: 510-643-7243    F: 510-642-0598

Current Research     Extraprofessional interests     Publications    

After obtaining a MSc in environmental sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, and an advanced master in “Sustainable urban development, resource management and governance” at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, I wrote my PhD thesis at the Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration, studying the contribution of “landscape management organisations” (such as nature parks, traditional resource management structures, discussion platforms…) to the mitigation of rivalries arising from competitive uses of the landscape resource. The method used aims at understanding the combined effect of public policies (land use planning, agriculture, environmental protection, defence, infrastructure, etc.) and property right titles (full property, servitudes, easements, etc.) on the practical uses of the resource.

From 2006 until 2008, I was a postdoc researcher at the Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration (IDHEAP), University of Lausanne, where I participated in different projects on the sustainable management of natural and cultural resources. I worked on a project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, which aimed at describing the effects of the land-use strategies of the largest landowners in Switzerland on sustainable land planning. At the same time, I continued my research on the landscape resource in the framework of a project funded by the French Ministry of Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development and Land Use Planning.

My current research aims at better understanding the strategies of environmental conservation organisations in five different countries (United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany and Switzerland). Focusing on land, considered as a scarce resource, this research project postulates that the sustainable management of resources must be understood not only as resulting from public policies, but also from the formal property rights. The interest of highlighting these two mechanisms of regulation has to do with the fact that their interaction is far from being harmonious.

More specifically, this project aims at analyzing comparatively the landowner strategies used by private or para-public actors in charge of nature conservation and environment management in five countries, in order to highlight their specificities and similarities. By “landowner strategy” I refer to the choices made by these actors to have recourse to a given legal instrument to accomplish their legal or statutory mission. Following questions will be examined: (1) To what extent do nature conservation and environment management organizations use land property and/or political strategies to accomplish their legal or statutory mission? (2) How does the national conception of land property, revealed in concrete terms in the way that the regulative activity of the State is able to constrain property rights, contribute to explain the strategies followed by environmental management organizations? (3) How does the characteristics of the nature conservation organizations (legal form, structure, decision-making procedures, extent of land owned, etc.) and their political resources (political support, money, time, consensus, etc.) influence their strategies? (4) Which preliminary link is it possible to establish between the strategies of nature conservation organizations and the social, economic and ecologic sustainability of their uses of the resource land?

The methods used stem from public policy analysis. As a direct product of legislative activities of parliaments, public policies benefit from a great legitimacy. Thus their analysis is a reliable method to understand the characteristics of land tenure laws of a given country. Detailed case studies of the different environmental management organisms will be carried out in order to analyze how legislation is actually implemented in practice and how the concerned actors mobilize such or such legal disposition to defend their interests. During this research, I will be based in the team of prof. Lynn Huntsinger.

Tanzania. From 2003, I had the opportunity to spend several months in Tanzania, an East African country of which more than a quarter of the territory is protected (national parks, game reserves and forest reserves). This rich natural heritage attracts every year hundreds of thousand of visitors (the national parks recorded more than 500’000 visitors in 2004) who contribute significantly to the GDP of the land (746 million USD of foreign exchange earnings in 2004). The 14 national parks constitute a vital resource for the Tanzanian economy. This is the reason why a specialised administration has been created, the TANAPA (Tanzanian National Parks), whose task is to provide for their management. As I could see for myself in the context of the costal park of Saadani while setting up the official leaflet and webpage of the park, this task is complex, because the multiple interests are often conflicting. (For a detailed description of these difficulties, see the very comprehensive study by R.P. Neumann [1998] concerning in particular the Arusha national park). Similar webpage projects were carried out for Mahale Mountains National Park and Katavi National Park.

Culture of terrestrial orchids. Among the many species of orchids which grow in the temperate regions of the Earth, Lady’s Slipper Orchids (Genus Cypripedium) are often considered to be the most beautiful because of the large size of their flower, their showy colours and their characteristic shoe-shaped lip. Their appeal explains to a large extent their rarity; intensive digging out by unscrupulous collectors is responsible for the disappearance of the European Lady’s Slipper (C. calceolus) in many parts of its natural distribution area. Even if considerable progress has been made in the culture of these orchids for about fifteen years, it remains problematic in some respects. Indeed, like any orchid seeds, the ones from Lady’s Slippers can only be sown on a specific sterile culture medium which replaces artificially the symbiotic fungi that they need in nature. Once this first step is properly mastered, the second difficulty consists in taking the plantlets out of their sterile environment, acclimatizing and bringing them to maturity. This process takes between 7 and 10 years for the European species. After cultivating these plants for more than eight years, some of them have eventually flowered. They could be reintroduced in their native environment (Swiss Jura) in the framework of a project funded by the Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz herbarium in Basel. A similar project is underway in the Nature Park of Chasseral.

Photography. My trips abroad give me the opportunity to practice another hobby of mine which is photography. Personal practice of an activity allows one to better measure its difficulty and thus appreciate the true value of the work of the great masters of the domain.