Interests: "I have tried to do my research in a way that gives voice and skills to local people," says Professor Louise Fortmann, who specializes in how natural resource use and management affect, and are affected by, local communities. She spent 11 years in Tanzania, Botswana, Kenya and Zimbabwe, working with villagers to better understand the interrelationships between natural resources and people living in resource-dependent households.

"You can be natural resource–dependent in two ways," Fortmann says, "indirectly, from the wages you receive from a natural resource industry, or directly, by growing crops yourself or otherwise making your living directly off the land. In Africa, many people do make a living off the soil—usually through farming—while in places like Northern California people are more dependent upon commercial natural resource–extraction industries such as timber harvesting." In Africa, Fortmann found that gender relations affect how people use and manage natural resources. She has extensively studied the roles of women and the obstacles they face in natural resource management. "In rural Zimbabwe, if you’re a woman and you get divorced, you lose everything but the clothes on your back and your cooking pots; widows may also lose their property," she says. She describes her findings in "Fruits of Their Labors: Gender, Property Rights and Tree Planting in Two Zimbabwe Villages," an article she coauthored with Nontokozo Nabane and Camille Antinori (a graduate student in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics), published in a 1997 issue of Rural Sociology. "In the research with my Zimbabwean colleague, we found that women were less likely than men to plant trees on their homesteads," Fortmann says. "Why? Because they’re going to lose them in a divorce or widowhood." In her courses, Fortmann works to raise the level of her students’ understanding of natural resource issues overseas. She also has raised foundation money to bring people from natural resource–dependent communities throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America and North America to campus to discuss their experiences at academic conferences. "This is a very powerful way of helping policy makers grasp the magnitude of what happens to people at the local level," she says.

Selected publications:
In Press. Ballard, Heidi and Louise Fortmann. "Collaborating Experts: Integrating Civil and Conventional Science to Inform Management of Salal (Gaultheria shallon)" Kevin Hanna and D. Scott Slocombe (editors) Fostering Integration: Concepts and Practice in Resource and Environmental Management. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

In Press Louise Fortmann. "What We Need is a Community Bambi: The Perils and Possibilities of Powerful Symbols" in Peter Brosius, Anna Tsing and Charles Zerner (editors) Representing Communities

(with Peter Walker) Whose Landscape? : A Political Ecology of the 'Exuban' Sierra  Cultural Geographies  10: 469-491, 2003.

(with Peter Walker and Sarah Marvin) "Landscape Changes in Nevada County Reflect Social and Ecological Transitions" California Agriculture 57 (4): 115-121, 2003.

(with Peter Berck, Chris Costello, and Sandra Hoffman) "Poverty and Employment in Forest Dependent Counties"  Forest Science 49(5): 15, 2003.

(with C. Nhira) "Local Management of Trees and Woodland Resources in Zimbabwe: A Tenurial Approach." OFI Occasional Papers no. 43. Oxford: Oxford Forestry Institute. 36 pp., 1992;

(with C. Nhira) "Local Woodland Management: Realities at the Grassroots" in P. N. Bradley and K. McNamara (eds.) Living with Trees: Policies for Forestry Management in Zimbabwe . Washington, D. C.: World Bank Technical Paper Number 210: 139-155, 1993;

(with J. Bruce) "Tenure and Gender Issues in Forest Policy" in P. N. Bradley and K. McNamara (eds.) Living with Trees: Policies for Forestry Management in Zimbabwe . Washington, D. C.: World Bank Technical Paper Number 210:199-210, 1993;

(with E. Roe) "On Really Existing Communities--Organic or Otherwise" Telos 95:139-146, 1993; "Tree Tenure and Agroforestry with Reference to South Asia" in William Bentley, Prem K. Khosla, and Karen Seckler (eds.) Agroforestry in South Asia: Problems and Applied Research Perspectives. New Delhi: Oxford and IBH Publishing Company Pvt. Ltd.: 175-190, 1993;

(with J. Bruce and C. Nhira) "Tenures in Transition, Tenures in Conflict: Examples from the Zimbabwe Social Forest". Rural Sociology: 58 (4): 626642, 1993;

(with N. Peluso and C. Humphrey) "The Rock, the Beach and the Tidepool: People and Poverty in Natural Resource-Dependent Areas" Society and Natural Resources. 7:23-38, 1994.