Re-mapping regulatory space: The new governance of Australian dairying

Despite questions currently raised about the future of neoliberalism, it remains embedded within Australian agricultural policy and practice. This paper explores the strengths and limitations of mechanisms contributing to neoliberalism’s survival through a close examination of the restructuring of Australian agricultural production and governance processes under the influence of both globalising impulses and adherence to neoliberal strategies. We trace the changes in governance flowing from the dismantling of regulatory structures in the Australian dairy industry, and the creation of new forms of governance that have both facilitated this transition and dealt with its adverse, often unintended, consequences. The changing governance of Australian dairying is analysed through the lens of three arenas of governance: state, industry and place. Drought has played an important part in re-spacialising dairying and re-shaping the balance between farmers and industry, demonstrating the contingency at play in emerging governance structures. This study of processes of change within the highly export-oriented dairy sector of Australia focuses attention on resistance and on some of the messy actualities of the interplay between state, place and industry - and nature - in neoliberal agri-food governance.     

The importance and quality of governance in the Chilean wine industry

The central theme of this paper is the issue of the governance of cooperation within the Chilean wine industry. The effects of the internationalization of this industry for the importance and the quality of governance of intra-cluster cooperation involving firms and other actors are analysed. Two questions stand central. First, what has been the relative importance of external and internal factors in improving the export performance of the Chilean wine industry over the past 20 years? Second, to what extent have collective actions and investments played a part in this growth, and what has been the quality of the various governance regimes dealing with the associated collective action problems? Empirical evidence suggests that world-market developments and upgrading efforts by individual wineries largely explain the good export performance of the Chilean wine industry until the year 2000. The evidence also shows that the industry’s success in world markets is stimulating cooperation between firms and other actors in areas where the industry needs to improve: marketing and promotion, internationalization, innovation and training. The enhanced cooperation has not only stimulated cluster development, but has also turned the quality of cluster governance into a central variable for future export growth. Nevertheless, several collective action problems await resolution before essential intra-cluster cooperation can develop. Overall, the evidence suggests that, in the case of the Chilean wine industry, industrial and cluster development do not automatically follow enhanced integration in world markets, but depend on the strategic skills of actors within the industry, in particular their ability to identify, prioritize, and realize collective investments while effectively managing the associated collective action problems. Internationalization stimulates firms to consider such investments, however, and provides them with an incentive to upgrade strategic skills at the local level as new opportunities arise and the pressure is there to exploit them in world markets.     

GIS and multi-criteria analysis to select potential sites of agro-industrial complex

The selection of the potential sites to the creation of an agro-industrial complex requires a large amount of spatial information. Geographical information systems are capable of managing this information, providing the ability to integrate multiple layers of information and deriving new ones. This study incorporates environmental, social, economic, geological and infrastructural data. A multi-criteria analysis is performed to select the potential sites to the creation of an agro-industrial complex in the city of Sfax (the southern coast of Tunisia). The comparison by pair method adopted in this paper, based on a linear combination pondered after having assigned to every factor of decision a coefficient of level-headedness, creates many scenarios among which we selected the sustainable development one. This scenario assigned the highest weight to the economical, environmental and social factors (0.3 for each factor), which shows the presence of nine suitable sectors for the creation of an agro-industrial complex. The ELECTRE method enabled us to make a site ordering for the identification of the most three appropriate sites.     

Contested claims over space and identity between fishers and the oil industry in Mexico

This essay examines neoliberal forms of resource governance and emerging struggles over control of sea space between coastal fishers, the para-statal oil industry and government authorities in the State of Tabasco, Mexico. The analysis focuses on the changing mechanisms of resource governance and networking related to contested claims over rights to offshore space. The study is based on material collected during ethnographic field research in Tabasco in 2011–2014. By linking a post-Foucauldian approach to governmentality with a Deleuzian perspective on networks, our research examines resource governance as a socio-political arena, constructed in negotiation between multiple governmental, private and civil society actors, including heterogeneous groups from local populations. The study demonstrates how hybrid techniques of resource governance lead to fishers’ socio-spatial displacement, marginalization in the fields of political representation and subjection to ideas of aquaculture entrepreneurship. The ensemble of private regulation and governmental control provides a venue for drawing fishers into clientelist practices of governing while it diffuses questions of responsibility. These modes of governance fragment the fishers’ efforts to mobilize politically, making them rely on less visible networks of contestation shaped by heterogeneous fishing groups, with varying access to resources and political representation. Recent transformations in environmental legislation and the fishers’ mobile tactics of networking may offer opportunities for them to reclaim their resource rights.     

Devolution, the governance of regional development and the Trade Union Congress in the North East region of England

The devolution and regionalisation of political and administrative structures following the election of New Labour in 1997 have changed the nature of the state and territorial development and governance in the UK. A regional and sub-national tier has opened up within the existing multi-layered governance system operating at the supra-national, national and local scales. This ‘new institutional space’ is increasingly open to the participation of social institutions--including trade unions--in economic and social governance. Drawing upon empirical analysis of the experience of the Northern Trade Union Congress (NTUC) in the North East region of England, the paper argues that the NTUC--in contrast to its national organisation--is beginning to engage with the emergent institutional structures but its role is inhibited by the centralised strategy and structure of the TUC nationally, its own need for upgrading, capacity building and greater financial resources and the interaction between the North East’s particular legacy of tripartite corporatism and the more pluralist modes of regional development governance emerging in the English regions. Unless such issues are addressed regional trade union centres--such as the NTUC--risk remaining relatively junior partners in the emergent regional governance structures.     

From rebel governance to state consolidation – Dynamics of loyalty and the securitisation of the state in Eritrea

This paper discusses Eritrea as a contemporary case of state-making grounded in war, a fact that has resulted in the emergence of one of the ‘hardest’ states in sub-Saharan Africa. The state-making process in Eritrea is looked at with a focus on the legacies of liberation movement governance in the changing dynamics of state consolidation from 1993 to this day. Those dynamics are analysed by reverting to Hirsch-man’s categories of ‘loyalty’, ‘exit’ and ‘voice’. Hirschman’s framework is chosen because the category of loyalty and resulting dynamics illuminate particularly well the transitions within the Eritrean state making process.It is shown that the parameters of war that have resulted in the creation of the Eritrean state have led to a particular kind of state characterised by a high degree of loyalty, visible in the propensity of large segments of the population to associate with state activities. Over time and partly based on military defeat in renewed warfare, the exit option has gained prominence particular among the young generation. This has resulted in a drive towards state securitisation combined with measures to make exit a pillar of power consolidation. Those dynamics have not considerably altered the loyalty of Eritrea’s transnational citizenry to the wider project of state consolidation. The paper concludes that state consolidation in Eritrea can thus far be analysed as a successful shift from fostering voice via politics of mobilisation to controlling exit and voice in ways that keep citizens tied to the state project.     

From public to private to … mutual? Restructuring water supply governance in England and Wales

A little over a decade after privatization, the water supply industry in England and Wales is undergoing a period of restructuring; many water companies have withdrawn from equity markets, some have separated asset ownership from operation and maintenance, and others have made proposals to return water supply infrastructure to public control through ‘mutuals’ or ‘customer corporations’. This paper situates the restructuring of the water industry within broader debates over ‘associative self-governance’ taking place in Britain. Underpinned by a conceptual framework drawing on insights from regulation theory, in which governance models are enacted through regulatory practice, the interrelationship between restructuring and re-regulation of the water supply industry is analyzed. The paper argues that the failure of the post-privatization regulatory model to contain the contradictions between stable returns and the efficiency imperative, on the one hand, and politically acceptable rates of return and the equity imperative, on the other, led to a re-regulation of the water supply industry, which was a key factor in restructuring. Restructuring has entailed multiple strategies (diversification, internationalization, vertical de-integration, mutualization, securitization), which are briefly analyzed. In contrast to analyses which depict restructuring as a ‘retreat of the market’, the analysis presented in this paper emphasizes the continuity of the commercial governance model applied in the water supply industry in 1989. In interpreting restructuring as an industry response to re-regulation of services provision, the paper interrogates the incentive structure underpinning current proposals for a ‘mutual’ future for public services in Britain.     

From polygons to politics: Everyday practice and environmental governance in Veracruz,Mexico

This article argues that everyday practices can matter as much as organized social movements or outright resistance in environmental governance outcomes. While governance has become an important analytical category for understanding the institutional and epistemological systems through which resources are accessed and managed, existing characterizations of environmental governance are based on organized social movements and/or institutional re-scalings. This research reveals how state strategies to govern resources and reorder space were thwarted by the everyday practices of both farmers and state actors. Using a case study from a historic coffee-producing region in Veracruz, Mexico, this article presents ethnographic data to demonstrate how government attempts to control the environment are bound together in mutually constitutive processes of transformation with the actual places, peoples, and practices that make up the landscape.     

System dynamic modeling to assess the effect of subsurface drain spacing and depth on minimizing the environmental impacts

The excessive loss of soil nitrogen through drainage losses causes different environmental problems. The depth and spacing drain of drains play an important role in the quality and quantity of discharged drainage into the environment. In this paper, a simple but comprehensive model using system dynamic approach for water cycle and nitrogen dynamics was used to simulate the effect of drain depth and spacing on nitrate and ammonium losses in a sugarcane agro-industrial company. Twenty-four scenarios were modeled including the combination of four different drain depths and six drain spacing to compare the effect of drain depth and spacing on the nitrogen uptake by plant, denitrification, net mineralization, the amount of ammonium losses through runoff, nitrate and ammonium losses through drainage water, the sum of excessive water, the stress day index and the relative yield. The results indicated that optimal drainage system density is obtained in the depth of 1.1 m and spacing of 80 m, in a way that the total drainage losses would be reduced up to an acceptable level. The optimum designing of the drainage systems according to environmental criteria can control nitrogen pollution load at farm level and can therefore have appropriate results both in terms of economic and environmental considerations.     

Environmental impacts of shrimp farming with special reference to the situation in the continental United States

Shrimp culture technology has resulted in development of a major shrimp farming industry worldwide. Without the shrimp farming industry, increasing demands for shrimp by consumers could not be met, resulting in increased pressure on wild shrimp resources. Unfortunately, there are realized and potential adverse environmental effects on estuarine ecosystems as a result of shrimp farming. The effects can be categorized as wetland destruction for construction of shrimp farms, hypernutrification of estuarine ecosystems by shrim pond effluent, “biological pollution” of native shrimp stocks through escapement of aquaculture stocks, water use and entrainment of estuarine biota, and impacts of shrimp farm chemicals on estuarine systems. While the shrimp farming industry in the United States is small, the United States is effectively addressing all the realized and potential environmental impacts through regulation and research at the federal and state levels. Areas of regulation and research include stringent prohibitions on wetland destruction, regulation of effluents and support of research to eliminate and/or reduce effluents, escapement prevention technology and development of high-health stocks, minimizing entrainment of estuarine biota through water conservation and screening technology, and regulation of chemical use in the shrimp farming industry and support of research on shrimp pathology and environmentally safe disease control. Work is still in progress and not all problems have been resolved to the complete satisfaction of shrimp farmers and estuarine conservationists. However, the situation in the United States should serve as a model of how to encourage sustainable economic development through commercial shrimp farming while abating adverse environmental impacts on estuarine systems. To further improve the situation, the development and adoption of “best management practices” for shrimp aquaculture are recommended.     

Hybrid drinking water governance: Community participation and ongoing neoliberal reforms in rural Rajasthan,India

This paper examines a Rajasthan (India) drinking water supply project that relied on hybrid governance reforms in its original design. Decentralization and marketization, combined with a participatory approach, were intended to facilitate an empowering shift in state-citizen relationships. Paying citizens were expected to make quantity and quality demands of the state as consumers, not welfare beneficiaries. Research on the project 3 years after its completion revealed that although payment for water and community participation were intended to compel the state to provide clean water, they failed in this regard. The problem of an unreliable state supply was solved through small scale privatization, a decision ‘independently’ reached at the local scale, but one that served to further undermine the state’s ability to provide clean water.In this paper, we trace the shifts in regulation that evolved in the post-project phase at both the state and village scale that resulted in the delivery of contaminated water. Ethnographic research indicates that community participation was introduced as a set of institutions that would govern how villagers interacted with the state and its water supply, but villagers altered community participation by introducing reforms in water governance as a way of coping with an unresponsive state and increased work burden. Community participation evolved in contradictory ways as the impacts of neoliberal environmental governance were felt. The paper contributes to understandings of neoliberalization processes’ local impacts by analyzing their ongoing hybridization at multiple scales. It further calls into question foundational notions that community participation in resource governance is the appropriate solution to drinking water supply.     

Size does matter: City scale and the asymmetries of climate change adaptation in three coastal towns

Globally, it is smaller urban settlements that are growing most rapidly, are most constrained in terms of adaptive capacity but increasingly looked to for delivering local urban resilience. Data from three smaller coastal cities and their wider regional governance systems in Florida, US; West Sussex, UK and São Paulo, Brazil are used to compare the influence of scale and sector on city adaptive capacity. These tensions are described through the lens of the Adaptive Capacity Index (ACI) approach. The ACI is built from structuration theory and presents an alternative to social-ecological systems framing of analysis on adaptation. Structuration articulates the interaction of agency and structure and the intervening role played by institutions on information flow, in shaping adaptive capacity and outcomes. The ACI approach reveals inequalities in adaptive capacity to be greater across scale than across government, private and civil society sector capacity in each study area. This has implications for adaptation research both by reinforcing the importance of scale and demonstrating the utility of structuration theory as a framework for understanding the social dynamics underpinning adaptive capacity; and policy relevance, in particular considering the redistribution of decision-making power across scale and/or compensatory mechanisms, especially for lower scale actors, who increasingly carry the costs for enacting resilience planning in cities.     

The realm of freedom in new rural governance: Micro-politics of democracy in Sweden

Voluntary associations are at the heart of Swedish rural policy and strategies for governance as partners in bringing about ‘development from below.’ Examining the implications of this new responsibility being placed on the civil society in new modes of multilevel governance, I ask: do these changes presage greater political space for individuals vis à vis the state or is Swedish rural policy premised on ideas about an institutional context that might be disappearing? In comparative research in rural Sweden, I discuss state and civil-society relations at the macro level in light of the gendered micro-politics of associational life on the ground. Through ethnographic research with people involved in development work of different kinds, I examine how ideas about community associations are used to mobilize rural policy. I analyze its’ political implications and argue for the importance of analyzing macro in relation to the micropolitics on the ground for a better theoretical understanding of democracy and power in rural governance, in particular its gendered implications. I argue that past collaborative relations between the civil society and the state’s administrative apparatuses as well as the current focus of rural policy have enabled the state to hand over service functions to the civil society and diluted their ‘voice,’ incongrously endangering the institutional basis of rural policy itself. Further, attention to the gendered micropolitics of associational life makes apparent cleavages within civil society and its underlying relations of gender and power that challenge current conceptualizations on the neoliberalization of rural policy.     

Adaptive governance: Livelihood innovation for climate resilience in Uganda

Adaptive governance is the use of novel approaches within policy to support experimentation and learning. Social learning reflects the engagement of interdependent stakeholders within this learning. Much attention has focused on these concepts as a solution for resilience in governing institutions in an uncertain climate; resilience representing the ability of a system to absorb shock and to retain its function and form through reorganisation. However, there are still many questions to how these concepts enable resilience, particularly in vulnerable, developing contexts. A case study from Uganda presents how these concepts promote resilient livelihood outcomes among rural subsistence farmers within a decentralised governing framework. This approach has the potential to highlight the dynamics and characteristics of a governance system which may manage change. The paper draws from the enabling characteristics of adaptive governance, including lower scale dynamics of bonding and bridging ties and strong leadership. Central to these processes were learning platforms promoting knowledge transfer leading to improved self-efficacy, innovation and livelihood skills. However even though aspects of adaptive governance were identified as contributing to resilience in livelihoods, some barriers were identified. Reflexivity and multi-stakeholder collaboration were evident in governing institutions; however, limited self-organisation and vertical communication demonstrated few opportunities for shifts in governance, which was severely challenged by inequity, politicisation and elite capture. The paper concludes by outlining implications for climate adaptation policy through promoting the importance of mainstreaming adaptation alongside existing policy trajectories; highlighting the significance of collaborative spaces for stakeholders and the tackling of inequality and corruption.     

Contesting expertise: The politics of environmental knowledge in northern Indian groundwater practices

The world is facing a severe water crisis. According to the UN, by 2025 50% of the world’s population will face water scarcity. In India, where 70% of irrigation and 80% of domestic needs are met with groundwater, demand for this resource is expected to exceed supply by 2020. This has led to recent calls for groundwater governance reforms within India, and specifically within the state of Rajasthan, where no regulation exists today. The success of these reforms hinges on the interaction of the state and its agents with local users and managers of groundwater resources. Underpinning these encounters, though, are tensions between local and state forms of groundwater knowledges. The question analyzed here is in what ways do conflicting environmental knowledges adversely affect the management of overexploited groundwater resources in water-scarce India? To address this question, I examine the coevolution of pre-colonial, colonial, and post-independence groundwater and irrigation knowledges and technologies in Rajasthan, India to expose the ways that they are produced, contested, legitimated, and hybridized. The paper argues the following three claims. First, the relationship between the state and local producers of groundwater knowledge practices is non-linear and porous. For instance, the way that state subjects experience the state is uneven because within and in-between historical moments the state may attempt to assimilate, reorganize, plagiarize, or disparage local knowledge. Second, these attempts produce or exacerbate existing historically rooted tensions between farmers and state groundwater engineers. But in response, farmers often seek out non-state avenues of expertise, such as tubewell drilling firms. This results in the further hybridization of knowledge practices and also in the present-day marginalization of the state. Third, the relationship between farmers and the state is further strained because of a current lack of state visibility in the study area and also because the state continues to “see like a state”. These shifting meanings and power relations around groundwater and irrigation knowledges produce tensions that will undoubtedly negatively impact future groundwater governance strategies.     

Governing jurisdictional fragmentation: Tracing patterns of water governance in Ontario,Canada

This article examines how jurisdictional fragmentation has been addressed in Ontario’s governance of the Great Lakes Basin from 1912 to 2012. The water resources literature has frequently lamented fragmentation in water governance and called for integration; however, it infrequently specifies how and what to integrate. By examining key moments in water quality and quantity governance, this study provides insight on how the presence or absence of particular institutional arrangements in the context of jurisdictional fragmentation produced different governance patterns and outcomes. Specifically, to determine governance patterns the study focused on four elements: an institution that facilitates coordination, agreement on roles and responsibilities, agreement on the issue management plan, and the scope of the issue. Combinations of these elements can produce governance patterns that are cooperative, conflictual or reactive and outcomes that are innovative, stagnant, or piecemeal. The study results suggest that when governing in the context of jurisdictional fragmentation efforts may best be directed at particular institutional arrangements. Further, it suggests that jurisdictional fragmentation be understood as a feature of the institutional complexity of water management that can be mobilized to develop unique solutions to multi-scalar water governance challenges.     

Social license to operate: Not a proxy for accountability in water governance

With the emergence of more collaborative, watershed governance arrangements and the engagement of various actors in decision-making processes, new questions emerge about the potential roles for these organizations and agencies in both upholding accountability, and in being held accountable. Therefore, this study explores the intersection between alternative collaborative watershed governance approaches, and the simultaneous emergence of the concept of social license as an accountability instrument in relation to water governance. Based on an empirical analysis of a case study in southeast British Columbia, where water quality contamination is primarily the result of coal mining, this study seeks to: (1) examine how social license is understood by a range of watershed actors; (2) better understand whether social license may be useful as a watershed-based or community accountability instrument as new collaborative modes of watershed governance emerge; and, (3) explore how social license may be enforced or enabled. Findings show how industry efforts to earn social license have created benefits, such as enabling community-based water monitoring, thereby building capacity for deeper community engagement in governance processes and a greater ability for the community to uphold accountability. However, we confirm that social license is not a proxy or silver bullet for enhancing accountability in collaborative watershed governance. Our findings reveal four specific limitations regarding the use of social license as a principle for accountability in collaborative watershed governance.     

Producing hybrid forests in the Congo Basin: A political ecology of the landscape approach to conservation

Environmental conservation is increasingly operated through partnerships among state, private, and civil society actors, yet little is known empirically about how such collectives function and with what livelihood and governance outcomes. The landscape approach to conservation (known also as the ecosystem approach) is one such hybrid governance platform. Implemented worldwide over the past decade by international NGOs, the landscape approach employs the ‘ecosystem principles’ of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). In spite of its prominence as a conservation and development strategy, little political ecology scholarship has considered the landscape approach. This article offers a case study of a conservation landscape in the Congo Basin, the Tri-National de la Sangha (TNS), which connects tropical forests in Cameroon, Republic of Congo, and Central African Republic. Led by NGOs, the TNS has since 2001 relied on partnerships among logging companies, safari hunters, the state, and local communities. Although the landscape approach purports to facilitate re-negotiations of user rights, resource access patterns in the TNS appear to have molded to pre-existing power relations. Rather than incorporating local concerns and capabilities into management, local knowledge is discredited and livelihoods are marginalized. As a result, management occurs through spatially-demarcated zones, contrasting the fluidity of interactions among diverse groups: both human (loggers, hunter-gatherers, safari guides, NGOs) and non-human (trees, elephants). These findings are situated within a burgeoning literature on neoliberal environmental governance, and suggest that ensuring ecologically and socially positive outcomes will require careful and iterative attention to linkages between ecological processes and evolving power dynamics.     

Trans-scalar embeddedness and governance deficits in global production networks: Crisis in South African fruit

The governance of labour in global production networks (GPNs) has become a critical area of concern amongst academics and policymakers alike. To date, GPN research has focused on the role of private company codes and multi-stakeholder ethical initiatives primarily driven by lead-firms. Other GPN studies highlight the critical role of civil society organisations (CSOs) in challenging lead-firm purchasing practices and shaping regulatory outcomes at local production sites. However, GPN research has not sufficiently incorporated the role of nation states in regulating work through legislative frameworks and enforcement regimes, often referred to in the literature as ‘state’ or ‘public’ governance. This is despite a ‘regulatory renaissance’ taking place across certain developing countries, seeking to strengthen their national regulatory labour institutions (Piore and Schrank, 2008:1).The GPN framework provides an analytical lens through which to conceptualise cross-cutting strands of trans-scalar governance regimes, involving complex networks of state, private and civil society actors operating at multiple scales. Notions of territorial and societal embeddedness are used to elucidate how global ethical standards derived from particular country contexts become enmeshed in national regulatory frameworks and local societal relations, shaping governance outcomes for precarious workers incorporated into GPNs. The paper draws attention to the ‘trans-scalar embeddedness’ of labour governance regimes which interact across geographical scales and, in the case of South African fruit, reflect a ‘trans-scalar governance deficit’ for precarious workers. It is argued that the influence of national regulatory regimes should be more fully incorporated into analytical frameworks for understanding governance outcomes in GPNs.     

Coping with Complexity: Adaptive Governance in Desert Australia

Governance in Aboriginal settlements in desert Australia is changing at an unprecedented rate. Aboriginal leaders and community managers describe the change as bewildering, with ever-revolving agents and agencies and increasing quantities of administration. Governments are preoccupied with finding linear ‘solutions’ to new conceptualisations of the ‘problem’ and packaging these for top-down implementation. However, governance in practice involves multi-dimensional interactions of a complex system, which are difficult to predict, let alone to control for outcomes. Through the lens of complex adaptive systems (CAS) theory, this paper argues that there is potential to improve governance as an adaptive system through three principles that enhance local feedback: (1) application of the subsidiarity principle to different levels in the governance system would realise a better match between decentralised functions and local capacity; (2) connectivity would improve information flows and relationships between agents in the system, as a necessary precursor for informed decision-making; and (3) accountability, when taken beyond simplistic notions of financial reporting, would identify power relationships across the system and indicate where agents may exercise greater influence in the system. Consideration of these principles will help promote a shift from the perspective that assumes the system to be linear and manageable from the top-down to a perspective that embraces the notion of adaptive governance as a means of recognising the capacity of agents to influence the system that they inhabit.