Skip to content
University of Oxford
School of Geography and the Environment

 School of Geography and the Environment

IGS: Current and Recent Graduate Research

Kathleen Buckingham

Managing green gold: reconfiguring bamboo management for sustainability and to what extent certification creates an arena for change

Supervisor(s):
Contact Info:

Academic Profile

Kathleen is a D.Phil. candidate at the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford. Kathleen graduated from the University of Edinburgh with an MSc in Environmental Sustainability with distinction and received a certificate in Advanced Mandarin Chinese from Beijing Language and Culture University.

Kathleen has lived in China for five years, having worked for the International Network for Bamboo and Rattan (INBAR), Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the China Environment and Sustainable Development Reference and Research Centre (CESDRRC). Kathleen has also worked in Kuwait, South Korea and Malaysia.

Awards
  • 2009 - The University of California Berkeley Inter-University Programme (IUP) grant.
  • 2008 - The UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)/ British Inter-University China (BICC) Studentship (2008-2011); The Universities China Centre London (UCCL) Conference grant.
  • 2006 - The Thomas Wall grant; The Sir Richard Stapley Trust grant; The Allan & Nesta Ferguson Charitable Settlement grant; The Newby Trust grant; The Southdown Trust grant.
  • 2005 - The Great Britain-China Educational Trust Chinese language scholarship; The Gordon Foundation grant.
Conferences Attended
  • 2009 - Sustainable Bamboo Forum, INBAR, Zhejiang Forestry University, Lin'an, China.
  • 2009 - VII World Bamboo Congress, World Bamboo Organisation, Bangkok, Thailand.
  • 2009 - XXVII International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE) Congress, Beijing, China.
  • 2009 - X European Conference on Agriculture and Rural Development in China (ECARDC), University of Leeds, UK.

Current Research

Bamboo is the fastest growing plant on earth, able to grow on marginalised lands unsuitable for agriculture. With increasing threats to tropical forestry and associated biodiversity loss, bamboo represents a potential substitute resource to timber as well as providing numerous other uses such as textiles or food. Bamboo represents an important livelihood source for millions of small scale farming communities and land owners globally. Increasingly, ecosystems and biodiversity are being valued through certification and trading systems with Non Timber Forest Products (NTFP) occupying an important market. The aim of the research is to study the shift in practices and attitudes towards sustainability within natural resource management and to what extent institutional norms and practices within certification assemblages create arenas for learning through adaptation and co-production of knowledge at a local level.

The research focuses on sustainable bamboo management through fieldwork in China and India. The research draws on interdisciplinary theory from political economy, political ecology, social-ecological systems and Institutional Analysis and Development from the Bloomington School.

Publications

  • Buckingham, K., Jepson, P., Wu, L., Rao, I.V.R., Jiang, S., Liese, W., Lou, Y. and Fu, M. (2011) The potential of bamboo is constrained by outmoded policy frames. Ambio.
  • Buckingham, K.C., Henley, G. and Lou, Y.P (eds.) (2009) Certification of commodities: Opportunities and challenges for the rural poor. INBAR, CFC.
  • Lou, Y.P., Li, Y.X. and Buckingham, K.C. (2008) Feasibility study report on certification for sustainable bamboo management in China. Journal of Bamboo Research, 3. (In Chinese).