The black box of power in polycentric environmental governance

Failure to address unsustainable global change is often attributed to failures in conventional environmental governance. Polycentric environmental governance—the popular alternative—involves many centres of authority interacting coherently for a common governance goal. Yet, longitudinal analysis reveals many polycentric systems are struggling to cope with the growing impacts, pace, and scope of social and environmental change. Analytic shortcomings are also beginning to appear, particularly in the treatment of power. Here we draw together diverse social science perspectives and research into a variety of cases to show how different types of power shape rule setting, issue construction, and policy implementation in polycentric governance. We delineate an important and emerging research agenda for polycentric environmental governance, integrating diverse types of power into analytical and practical models.     

Addressing knowledge gaps for transboundary environmental governance

Knowledge is widely considered a key ingredient for the effective and sustainable governance of the environment. In transboundary settings – i.e., where political boundaries cross natural resource system boundaries – there are considerable barriers to knowledge production and use. Resulting knowledge gaps can be barriers to governance. This research examines three case studies in which international river basin organizations, tasked with facilitating cooperation in transboundary river basins, recognized and addressed knowledge gaps to support governance of shared waters. We synthesize across the three case studies to develop a typology of knowledge gaps and the strategies used to address those gaps. In identifying common types of knowledge gaps and the on-the-ground strategies used to fill them, this research provides an important framework for assessing and theorizing knowledge at the transboundary scale, as well as useful recommendations and examples for practitioners seeking to develop that knowledge.     

Learning effects of interactive decision-making processes for climate change adaptation

Learning is gaining attention in relation to governance processes for contemporary environmental challenges; however, scholarship at the nexus of learning and environmental governance lacks clarity and understanding about how to define and measure learning, and the linkages between learning, social interactions, and environment. In response, this study aimed to advance and operationalize a typology of learning in an environmental governance context, and examined if a participatory decision-making process (adaptive co-management) for climate change adaptation fostered learning. Three types of learning were identified: cognitive learning, related to the acquisition of new or the structuring of existing knowledge; normative learning, which concerns a shift in viewpoints, values or paradigms, and relational learning, referring to an improved understanding of others’ mindsets, enhanced trust and ability to cooperate. A robust mixed methods approach with a focus on quantitative measures including concept map analysis, social network analysis, and self-reflective questions, was designed to gauge indicators for each learning type. A participatory decision-making process for climate change adaptation was initiated with stakeholders in the Niagara region, Canada. A pseudo-control group was used to minimize external contextual influences on results. Clear empirical evidence of cognitive and relational learning was gained; however, the results from normative learning measures were inconclusive. The learning typology and measurement method operationalized in this research advances previous treatments of learning in relation to participatory decision-making processes, and supports adaptive co-management as a governance strategy that fosters learning and adaptive capacity.     

Climate change and the transition to neoliberal environmental governance

What are the guiding principles of contemporary international governance of climate change and to what extent do they represent neoliberal forms? We document five main political and institutional shifts within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and outline core governance practices for each phase. In discussing the current phase since the Paris Agreement, we offer to the emerging literature on international neoliberal environmental governance an analytical framework by which the extent of international neoliberal governance can be assessed. We conceptualize international neoliberal environmentalism as characterized by four main processes: the prominence of libertarian ideals of justice, in which justice is defined as the rational pursuit of sovereign self-interest between unequal parties; marketization, in which market mechanisms, private sector engagement and purportedly ‘objective’ considerations are viewed as the most effective and efficient forms of governance; governance by disclosure, in which the primary obstacles to sustainability are understood as ‘imperfect information’ and onerous regulatory structures that inhibit innovation; and exclusivity, in which multilateral decision-making is shifted from consensus to minilateralism. Against this framework, we argue that the contemporary UNFCCC regime has institutionalized neoliberal reforms in climate governance, although not without resistance, in a configuration which is starkly different than that of earlier eras. We conclude by describing four crucial gaps left by this transition, which include the ability of the regime to drive adequate ambition, and gaps in transparency, equity and representation.     

Exploring earth system governance: A case study of floodplain management along the Tisza river in Hungary

This paper discusses a recently proposed conceptualisation of ‘earth system governance’ by applying it to floodplain management in the Hungarian Tisza river basin. By doing so it aims to improve our understanding of governance systems facilitating adaptation to a changing world. The conceptualisation of earth system governance consists of three elements: problem structure, principles and research challenges. These three elements are assessed using results from actor interviews and policy review. A regional example of natural resources management is found to be a valid case for earth system governance research. The proposed conceptualisation of earth system governance explains well the main problems, barriers and opportunities for adapting floodplain management to climate change in the Tisza region. Problem structure analysis highlights how previous socio-economic and political orders continue to shape expectations and patterns of conduct. Current barriers can be attributed to a lack of the key governance principles credibility, stability, inclusiveness and adaptiveness. Interviewees perceived the lack of credibility and effective cooperation between organisations as the largest barrier. The research challenges proposed for earth system governance agree well with opportunities identified for adapting Tisza floodplain management, calling for inclusion of actors beyond governments and state agencies, and equitable resource allocation in particular. The analysis suggests that an additional challenge for earth system governance is the prioritisation of actions to support an existing governance system and its actors in adapting.     

Co-productive governance: A relational framework for adaptive governance

Adaptive governance focuses our attention on the relationships between science and management, whereby the so-called ‘gaps’ between these groups are seen to hinder effective adaptive responses to biophysical change. Yet the relationships between science and governance, knowledge and action, remain under theorized in discussions of adaptive governance, which largely focuses on abstract design principles or preferred institutional arrangements. In contrast, the metaphor of co-production highlights the social and political processes through which science, policy, and practice co-evolve. Co-production is invoked as a normative goal (Mitchell et al., 2004) and analytical lens (Jasanoff, 2004a, Jasanoff, 2004b), both of which provide useful insight into the processes underpinning adaptive governance. This paper builds on and integrates these disparate views to reconceptualize adaptive governance as a process of co-production. I outline an alternative conceptual framing, ‘co-productive governance’, that articulates the context, knowledge, process, and vision of governance. I explore these ideas through two cases of connectivity conservation, which draws on conservation science to promote collaborative cross-scale governance. This analysis highlights the ways in which the different contexts of these cases produced very different framings and responses to the same propositions of science and governance. Drawing on theoretical and empirical material, co-productive governance moves beyond long standing debates that institutions can be rationally crafted or must emerge from context resituate adaptive governance in a more critical and contextualized space. This reframing focuses on the process of governance through an explicit consideration of how normative considerations shape the interactions between knowledge and power, science and governance.     

Approaches to evaluating model quality across different regime types in environmental and public health governance

A reliance on mathematical modelling is a defining feature of modern global environmental and public health governance. Initially hailed as the vanguard of a new era of rational policy-making, models are now habitually subject to critical analyses. Their quality, in other words, is routinely queried, yet what exactly is quality in this context? The prevailing paradigm views model quality as a multi-dimensional concept, encompassing technical dimensions (e.g. precision and bias), value judgments, problem-framing, treatment of “deep” uncertainties, and pragmatic features of particular decision contexts. Whilst those technical dimensions are relatively simple to characterise, the broader dimensions of quality are less easily formalised and as a result are difficult to take account of during model construction and evaluation. Here, we present a typology of governance regimes (risk-based, precautionary, adaptive and participatory) that helps make explicit what these broader dimensions of model quality are, and sketches out how the emphasis placed on them differs by regime type. We show that these regime types hold distinct positions on what constitutes sound evidence, on how that evidence should be used in policy-making, and to what social ends. As such, a model may be viewed within one regime as providing legitimate evidence for action, be down-weighted elsewhere for reflecting a flawed problem-framing, and outright rejected in another jurisdiction on the grounds that it does not cohere with the preferred ethical framework for decision-making. We illustrate these dynamics by applying our typology to a range of policy domains, emphasising both the disconnects that can occur, as well as the ways that modellers have adapted their practices to ensure that their evidence is brought to bear on policy problems across diverse regime types.     

The anticipatory governance of sustainability transformations: Hybrid approaches and dominant perspectives

Anticipation methods and tools are increasingly used to try to imagine and govern transformations towards more sustainable futures across different policy domains and sectors. But there is a lack of research into the steering effects of anticipation on present-day governance choices, especially in the face of urgently needed sustainability transformations. This paper seeks to understand how different perspectives on anticipatory governance connect to attempts to guide policy and action toward transformative change. We analyze perspectives on anticipatory governance in a global network of food system foresight practitioners (Foresight4Food) – using a workshop, interviews, and a survey as our sources of data. We connect frameworks on anticipatory governance and on transformation to analyse different perspectives on the future and their implications for actions in the present to transform food systems and offer new insights for theory and practice. In the global Foresight4Food network, we find that most foresight practitioners use hybrid approaches to anticipatory governance that combine fundamentally different assumptions about the future. We also find that despite these diverse food futures, anticipation processes predominantly produce recommendations that follow more prediction-oriented forms of strategic planning in order to mitigate future risks. We further demonstrate that much anticipation for transformation uses the language on deep uncertainty and deliberative action without fully taking its consequences on board. Thus, opportunities for transforming future food systems are missed due to these implicit assumptions that dominate the anticipatory governance of food systems. Our combined framework helps researchers and practitioners to be more reflexive of how assumptions about key human systems such as food system futures shape what is prioritized/marginalized and included/excluded in actions to transform such systems.     

Narratives,narrations and social structure in environmental governance

Avoiding further aggravation of the consequences of global environmental change remains a complex governance challenge. Social relational structure among actors plays a key role for enhancing the capacity of collaborative approaches to environmental governance. We present an encompassing conceptual framework to advance understanding of the mechanisms that shape dynamics in environmental governance entities. Narrative theory is integrated with insights on group dynamics grounded in social network theory to contextualize local social complexities in governance processes. We assume that social relational structure between actors, and narrations they tell, co-produce narratives and dynamics at the group level. Three important mechanisms that influence dynamics are described: (1) the interplay between collaborative relationships and narrative congruence between individual actors, (2) the characteristics of actors, and (3) the actors’ embeddedness in the wider social structure. A set of testable hypotheses on the interplay between narration, narratives and social relational structure in environmental governance processes is presented. We conclude by discussing why we regard this framework useful to study local and regional governance entities in the context of addressing global environmental change.     

Knowledge integration in sustainability governance through science-based actor networks

Understanding how science, technology and innovation can best help to accelerate progress in achieving sustainable development remains a grand challenge for researchers and practitioners. In the context of the global consultation process for preparing a post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda, various science-based actor networks have emerged, aiming to translate research into political decision-making and to inform transformations towards sustainability. Over the last years, these networks seem to have taken an ever-growing role in structuring the science-policy interface in global sustainability governance. The question arises, however, how they understand and organize ‘scientific knowledge integration’ in sustainability politics.This study offers a structured comparison of twelve global science-based actor networks engaged in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. It shows that these networks use two types of strategies to foster scientific knowledge integration in sustainability governance. A new framework emerges, in which each strategy corresponds to two main approaches of scientific knowledge integration: The entrepreneurial strategy generally seeks to advance advice-oriented and solution-oriented knowledge processes, while assessment-oriented and learning-oriented processes in scientific knowledge integration are mainly promoted through a mediating strategy.     

Navigating climate crises in the Great Barrier Reef

A dramatic escalation of extreme climate events is challenging the capacity of environmental governance regimes to sustain and improve ecosystem outcomes. It has been argued that actors within adaptive governance regimes can help to steer environmental systems toward sustainability in times of crisis. Yet there is little empirical evidence of how acute climate crises are navigated by actors operating within adaptive governance regimes, and the factors that influence their responses. Here, we qualitatively assessed the actions key governance actors took in response to back-to-back mass coral bleaching – an extreme climate event – of the Great Barrier Reef in 2016 and 2017, and explored their perceptions of barriers and catalysts to these responses. This research was, in part, a product of collaboration and knowledge co-production with Great Barrier Reef governance actors aimed at improving responses to climate crises in the region. We found five major categories of activity that actors engaged with in the wake of recurrent mass coral bleaching: assessing the scale and extent of bleaching, sharing information, communicating bleaching to the public, building local resilience, and addressing global threats. These actions were both catalyzed and hindered by a range of factors that fall within different domains of adaptive capacity; such as assets, social organization, and agency. We discuss the implications of our findings as they relate to existing research on adaptive capacity and adaptive governance. We conclude by coalescing insights from our interviews and a participant engagement process to highlight four key ways in which the ability of governance actors, and the Great Barrier Reef governance regime more broadly, can be better prepared for, and more effectively respond to extreme climate events. Our research provides empirical insight into how crises are experienced by governance actors in a large-scale environmental system, potentially providing lessons for similar systems across the globe.     

Forty-three years of Ramsar and urban wetlands

The Ramsar Convention is unquestionably the backbone of modern wetland management theory and practice. In the last four decades, it has mainstreamed wetlands in the environmental discourse and fostered the development of a comprehensive institutional framework for wetland governance. However, many of the wetlands that occur in human-dominated landscapes remain acutely threatened. The problem is most alarming in urban areas, especially in the fast expanding cities of the developing world, where unprecedented wetland destruction is leading to recurring environmental disasters. This triggers the question: are these failures in wetland governance purely induced by factors exogenous to Ramsar-based institutions or are they manifestations of conceptual drawbacks within Ramsar conceptual framework. Here, we investigate the success and failures of the application of the Ramsar framework's policy directives and management guidelines for urban wetlands using two rapidly expanding cities in South Asia as case studies – Colombo (Sri Lanka) and Kolkata (India). We conclude that despite its remarkable achievements over the past four decades, the Ramsar framework has several conceptual drawbacks that weaken its effectiveness in complex urban contexts. An inadequate recognition of the complex dynamics of urban social-ecological systems, an inadequate recognition of the political complexity of the policy processes, and a lack of an environmental justice perspective are the main shortcomings contributing to failures in urban wetlands governance. While we acknowledge that some solutions are contingent upon national and transnational level socio-political processes and reforms, we offer a set of technical and strategic modifications to the Ramsar framework that can significantly improve its effectiveness in urban wetlands governance.     

The role of social networks in natural resource governance: What relational patterns make a difference?

Resent research has identified the existence of social networks as a common and important denominator in cases where different stakeholders have come together to effectively deal with natural resource problems and dilemmas. It has even been shown that social networks can be more important than the existence of formal institutions for effective enforcement and compliance with environmental regulations. However, all social networks are not created equal. On the contrary, the structural pattern of relations (i.e. the topology) of a social network can have significant impact on how actors actually behave. This clearly has implications for actors’ abilities to manage environmental challenges. This review aims to add more precision to initial insights and pending hypotheses about the positive impacts of social networks on governance processes and outcomes, by reviewing and synthesizing empirically based literature explicitly studying structural characteristics of social networks in natural resource governance settings. It is shown that significant differences in governance processes and outcomes can be expected among networks experiencing structural differences in terms of density of relations, degree of cohesiveness, subgroup interconnectivity, and degree of network centralization. Furthermore, the review shows that none of these structural characteristics present a monotonically increasing positive effect on processes of importance for resource governance, and that favoring one characteristic likely occurs at the expense of another. Thus, assessing the most favorable level and mix of different network characteristics, where most of the positive governance effects are obtained while undesired effects are minimized, presents a key research and governance challenge.     

Seeing the forest and the trees: Facilitating participatory network planning in environmental governance

Governance processes to address environmental change involve many different actors from multiple spatial, temporal and socio-political scales, not all of whom are connected by hierarchy and whose actions cannot always be mandated. In the environmental governance literature, Social Network Analysis (SNA) has been found useful in understanding complex governance arrangements. In this paper we present and reflect on our experience with the Net-Map tool for participatory network mapping. The Net-Map tool was applied in three transdisciplinary case studies for three different purposes: (a) to contribute to an improved understanding of biodiversity knowledge flows in Europe, (b) to explore the interplay between actors with influence on water, agriculture, and energy developments at the Blue Nile in Ethiopia, and (c) to understand the challenges facing stakeholders engaged in conservation and economic development in a Southeast Asian mountain range. The case studies explore how network maps can serve as boundary objects to engage stakeholders of diverse points of view and jointly design strategies to address governance challenges. More specifically they show how network maps are used to gain a better understanding of governance situations, to help stakeholders identify strategies for navigation of the complex networks in which they are embedded and to support transdisciplinary research processes. We close with some reflections on the potential and limitations of the Net-Map tool in facilitating multi-stakeholder processes and disentangling complex governance arrangements.     

Technical characteristics of a solar geoengineering deployment and implications for governance

ABSTRACT

Consideration of solar geoengineering as a potential response to climate change will demand complex decisions. These include not only the choice of whether to deploy solar engineering, but decisions regarding how to deploy, and ongoing decision-making throughout deployment. Research on the governance of solar geoengineering to date has primarily engaged only with the question of whether to deploy. We examine the science of solar geoengineering in order to clarify the technical dimensions of decisions about deployment – both strategic and operational – and how these might influence governance considerations, while consciously refraining from making specific recommendations. The focus here is on a hypothetical deployment rather than governance of the research itself. We first consider the complexity surrounding the design of a deployment scheme, in particular the complicated and difficult decision of what its objective(s) would be, given that different choices for how to deploy will lead to different climate outcomes. Next, we discuss the on-going decisions across multiple timescales, from the sub-annual to the multi-decadal. For example, feedback approaches might effectively manage some uncertainties, but would require frequent adjustments to the solar geoengineering deployment in response to observations. Other decisions would be tied to the inherently slow process of detection and attribution of climate effects in the presence of natural variability. Both of these present challenges to decision-making. These considerations point toward particular governance requirements, including an important role for technical experts – with all the challenges that entails.

Key policy insights

• Decisions about solar geoengineering deployment will be informed not only by political choices, but also by climate science and engineering.

• Design decisions will pertain to the spatial and temporal goals of a climate intervention and strategies for achieving those goals.

• Some uncertainty can be managed through feedback, but this would require frequent operational decisions.

• Some strategic decisions will depend on the detection and attribution of climatic effects from solar geoengineering, which may take decades.

• Governance for solar geoengineering deployment will likely need to incorporate technical expertise for making short-term adjustments to the deployment and conducting attribution analysis, while also slowing down decisions made in response to attribution analysis to avoid hasty choices.

     

Unpacking multilevel adaptation to climate change in the Great Barrier Reef,Australia

Multilevel governance is regarded as a promising approach to deal with the multidimensional nature of climate change adaptation. However, the policy context in which it is implemented is very often complex and fragmented, characterised by interacting climate and non-climate strategies. An understanding of multilevel decision-making and governance is particularly important, if desired adaptation outcomes are to be achieved. This paper examines how climate change adaptation takes place in a complex multilevel system of governance, in the context of Australia's Great Barrier Reef (GBR) region. It examines over one hundred adaptation strategies at federal, state, regional and local levels in terms of type, manifestation, purposefulness, drivers and triggers, and geographic and temporal scope. Interactions between strategies are investigated both at the same level of governance and across governance levels. This study demonstrates that multilevel approach is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition in responding to complex multiscale and multisector issues, such as climate change adaptation. Short-term adaptation measures; a predominant incremental, sectoral, top-down approach to adaptation; and the lack of a framework for managing interactions are major threats to effective climate adaptation in the GBR region. Coping with such threats will require long-term transformative action, establishing enabling conditions to support local adaptation, and, most important, creating and maintaining strategic interactions among adaptation strategies. Coordinating and integrating climate and non-climate strategies across jurisdictions and policy sectors are the most significant and challenging tasks for multilevel governance in the GBR region and elsewhere.     

Environmentalities of urban climate governance in Maputo,Mozambique

Interest in the role that cities can play in climate change as sites of transformation has increased but research has been limited in its practical applications and there has been limited consideration of how policies and technologies play out. These challenges necessitate a re-thinking of existing notions of urban governance in order to account for the practices that emerge from governments and a plethora of other actors in the context of uncertainty. We understand these practices to constitute adaptive governance, underpinned by social learning guiding the actions of the multiplicity of actors. The aim here is to unpack how social learning for adaptive governance requires attention to competing understandings of risk and identity, and the multiplicity of mechanisms in which change occurs or is blocked in urban climate governance. We adopt a novel lens of ‘environmentalities’ which allows us to assess the historical and institutional context and power relations in the informal settlements of Maputo, Mozambique. Our findings highlight how environmental identities around urban adaptation to climate change are constituted in the social and physical divisions between the formal and informal settlements, whilst existing knowledge models prioritise dominant economic and political interests and lead to the construction of new environmental subjects. While the findings of this study are contextually distinct, the generalizable lessons are that governance of urban adaptation occurs and is solidified within a complex multiplicity of socio-ecological relations.     

Theories of practices: Agency, technology, and culture : Exploring the relevance of practice theories for the governance of sustainable consumption practices in the new world-order

Within the environmental social sciences, theories of practices are used by an increasing number of authors to analyze the greening of consumption in the new, global order of reflexive modernity. The use of practices as key methodological units for research and governance is suggested as a way to avoid the pitfalls of the individualist and systemic paradigms that dominated the field of sustainable consumption studies for some decades. With the help of practice theory, environmental governance can be renewed in three particular ways: First, the role and responsibilities (not) to be assigned to individual citizen-consumers in environmental change can be specified. Secondly, objects, technologies and infrastructures can be recognized for their crucial contribution to climate governance without lapsing into technological determinism. Third, the cultural framing of sustainability can be enriched by looking into the forms of excitement generated in shared practices of sustainable consumption. We conclude by discussing the need to investigate the globalization of practices from a post-national perspective in both science and policy.