Inclusive approaches to urban climate adaptation planning and implementation in the Global South

As cities increasingly engage in climate adaptation planning, many are seeking to promote public participation and facilitate the engagement of different civil society actors. Still, the variations that exist among participatory approaches and the merits and tradeoffs associated with each are not well understood. This article examines the experiences of Quito (Ecuador) and Surat (India) to assess how civil society actors contribute to adaptation planning and implementation. The results showcase two distinct approaches to public engagement. The first emphasizes participation of experts, affected communities, and a wide array of citizens to sustain broadly inclusive programmes that incorporate local needs and concerns into adaptation processes and outcomes. The second approach focuses on building targeted partnerships between key government, private, and civil society actors to institutionalize robust decision-making structures, enhance abilities to raise funds, and increase means to directly engage with local community and international actors. A critical analysis of these approaches suggests more inclusive planning processes correspond to higher climate equity and justice outcomes in the short term, but the results also indicate that an emphasis on building dedicated multi-sector governance institutions may enhance long-term programme stability, while ensuring that diverse civil society actors have an ongoing voice in climate adaptation planning and implementation.

Policy relevance

Many local governments in the Global South experience severe capacity and resource constraints. Cities are often required to devolve large-scale planning and decision-making responsibilities, such as those critical to climate adaptation, to different civil society actors. As a result, there needs to be more rigorous assessments of how civil society participation contributes to the adaptation policy and planning process and what local social, political, and economic factors dictate the way cities select different approaches to public engagement. Also, since social equity and justice are key indicators for determining the effectiveness and sustainability of adaptation interventions, urban adaptation plans and policies must also be designed according to local institutional strengths and civic capacities in order to account for the needs of the poor and most vulnerable. Inclusivity, therefore, is critical for ensuring equitable planning processes and just adaptation outcomes.     

Engaging communities in climate adaptation: the potential of social networks

There has been a growing recognition regarding the use of social networks to engage communities in government actions. However, despite increasing awareness of social networks, there is very limited evidence for their application in relation to climate policy. This study fills this gap by assessing the potential of social networks for engaging local communities in climate adaptation policy, drawing on a case study of the Shoalhaven region in Australia. Participants from key representative groups were recruited using a purposive snowball sampling technique (N?=?24). By mapping knowledge acquisition and diffusion networks in relation to climate adaption at the local scale, this study identified key nodes within the networks. Findings demonstrate that although climate adaptation information was acquired from a diverse range of sources, the sharing knowledge networks were far more dispersed. Furthermore, although 165 knowledge sources were identified, three nodes had coverage cross the entire network, and as such acted as boundary spanners within the sharing network. This research demonstrates the utility of social network analysis to reveal the underlying knowledge networks and structures that influence community engagement pathways and in doing so outlines key implications in relation to engaging local communities in climate policy and action.

Policy relevance

The rapid development of adaptation as a mainstream strategy for managing the risks of climate change has resulted in the emergence of a broad range of adaptation policies and management strategies globally. However, the success of these initiatives is largely dependent on their acceptance and uptake by local communities, which to date remains a significant challenge. Accordingly, policy makers require novel approaches to overcome barriers to community engagement so as to enhance the likely success of community engagement pathways. This article demonstrates the value of using social network analysis to reveal the underlying knowledge network structures. This approach makes it possible to identify key individuals within a community who can disseminate adaptation information quickly across broad geographic ranges. By utilizing this approach, policy makers globally will be able to increase the extent to which adaption initiatives are accepted and adhered to by local communities, thus increasing their success.     

Emergence of co-management governance for Hawai‘i coral reef fisheries

Governance failures associated with top-down management have spawned a myriad of institutional arrangements to engage resource users in decision-making through co-management. Although co-management can take many forms and may not always lead to positive outcomes, it has emerged as a promising governance option available to meet social and ecological goals. Recent research on co-management of small-scale fisheries has used comparative approaches to test factors associated with social and ecological success. Less is known however, about how co-management institutional arrangements emerge and persist in the face of socioeconomic and environmental change. Here, we examine the emergence of co-management governance using a case study from coral reef fisheries in the Hawaiian Islands. We used a mixed methods approach, combining a robust policy analysis and a set of key respondent interviews to trace the evolution of this co-management arrangement. Our research uncovers a set of linked drivers and social responses, which together comprise the emergence phase for the evolution of co-management in this case study. Drivers include resource depletion and conflict, and social responses comprise self-organization, consensus building, and collective action. We share insights on key factors that affect these phases of emergence, drawing on empirical findings from our policy review and key respondent interviews. We conclude by describing ways that our findings can directly inform policy and planning in practice, including the importance of documenting the ‘creation story’ that spawned the new institutional arrangement, ensuring that enabling conditions are present, the complexity of defining community, the connection between process legitimacy and outcomes, and understanding the costs and timelines associated with co-management governance transitions.     

Private equity,public affair: Hydropower financing in the Mekong Basin

Large-scale hydropower development is increasingly popular. Although international finance is a significant driver of hydropower market expansion, financial data is relatively obscure and literature remains scarce. This article tracks the financial process in hydropower development in the Mekong River Basin. It shows a shift in influence from traditional public international financial institutions to a diverse mix of private actors, who are enticed with attractive terms of trade and complete decision making power over water resource management. Traditional players have now taken on a more facilitating and regulatory role by providing guarantees and mitigating social and environmental impacts partly releasing the new global and regional private actors from these responsibilities. Because hydropower financing involves opaque processes and confidential documents public accountability is severely limited. While the private sector benefits from relatively short term returns, the public sector is left responsible for long term impacts.     

Transforming local natural resource conflicts to cooperation in a changing climate: Bangladesh and Nepal lessons

ABSTRACT

Since the 1990s, climate change impact discourse has highlighted potential for large scale violent conflicts. However, the role of climate stresses on local conflicts over natural resources, the role of policies and adaptation in these conflicts, and opportunities to enhance cooperation have been neglected. These gaps are addressed in this paper using evidence from participatory action research on 79 cases of local collective action over natural resources that experience conflicts in Bangladesh and Nepal. Climate trends and stresses contributed to just under half of these conflict cases. Nine factors that enable greater cooperation and transformation of conflict are identified. Participatory dialogue and negotiation processes, while not sufficient, changed understanding, attitudes and positions of actors. Many of the communities innovated physical measures to overcome natural resource constraints, underlying conflict, and/or institutional reforms. These changes were informed by improving understanding of resource limitations and indigenous knowledge. Learning networks among community organizations encouraged collective action by sharing successes and creating peer pressure. Incentives for cooperation were important. For example, when community organizations formally permitted excluded traditional resource users to access resources, those actors complied with rules and paid towards management costs. However, elites were able to use policy gaps to capture resources with changed characteristics due to climate change. In most of the cases where conflict persisted, power, policy and institutional barriers prevented community-based organizations from taking up potential adaptations and innovations. Policy frameworks recognizing collective action and supporting flexible innovation in governance and adaptation would enable wider transformation of natural resource conflicts into cooperation.

Key policy insights

• Climate stresses, policy gaps and interventions can all worsen local natural resource conflicts.

• Sectoral knowledge and technical approaches to adaptation are open to elite capture and can foster conflicts.

• Many local natural resource conflicts can be resolved but this requires an enabling environment for participatory dialogue, external facilitation, flexible responses to context, and recognition of disadvantaged stakeholder interests.

• Transforming conflict to greater cooperation mostly involves social and institutional changes, so adaptation policies should focus less on physical works and more on enabling factors such as negotiation, local institutions, knowledge, and incentives.

     

A conceptual framework for analysing adaptive capacity and multi-level learning processes in resource governance regimes

Governance failures are at the origin of many resource management problems. In particular climate change and the concomitant increase of extreme weather events has exposed the inability of current governance regimes to deal with present and future challenges. Still our knowledge about resource governance regimes and how they change is quite limited. This paper develops a conceptual framework addressing the dynamics and adaptive capacity of resource governance regimes as multi-level learning processes. The influence of formal and informal institutions, the role of state and non-state actors, the nature of multi-level interactions and the relative importance of bureaucratic hierarchies, markets and networks are identified as major structural characteristics of governance regimes. Change is conceptualized as social and societal learning that proceeds in a stepwise fashion moving from single to double to triple loop learning. Informal networks are considered to play a crucial role in such learning processes. The framework supports flexible and context sensitive analysis without being case study specific.First empirical evidence from water governance supports the assumptions made on the dynamics of governance regimes and the usefulness of the chosen approach. More complex and diverse governance regimes have a higher adaptive capacity. However, it is still an open question how to overcome the state of single-loop learning that seem to characterize many attempts to adapt to climate change. Only further development and application of shared conceptual frameworks taking into account the real complexity of governance regimes can generate the knowledge base needed to advance current understanding to a state that allows giving meaningful policy advice.     

Applying historical ecology to natural resource management institutions: Lessons from two case studies of landscape fire management

Understanding the linkages between social and ecological systems is key to developing sustainable natural resource management (NRM) institutions. Frequently, however, insufficient attention is paid to the historical development of NRM institutions. Instead, discussion largely focuses on models of economic efficiency at the expense of the cultural, historical, and ecological contexts within which institutions develop. Here we use the research program of historical ecology to explore the development, maintenance, and change of two contemporary fire management institutions in northern Australia and Colorado, USA, to demonstrate how social institutions and ecological systems change and resist change over time and how institutions interact across scales to negotiate contrasting goals and motivations. We argue that these NRM institutions are not strictly speaking evolutionary or adaptive, and that historical context is critical when evaluating how and why particular institutions and institutional relationships develop. As with ecosystems, the present characteristics of the NRM institutions are dependent on what has happened before and their efficacy can only be evaluated retrospectively. Therefore, an understanding of history is essential to questions of the desirability and feasibility of institutional change where such shifts are required from an ecological, social, or economic perspective. We further propose that institutional conflict arises from the differing goals and motives of resource management institutions at different scales. Our cases reveal that larger-scale institutions can be successful at achieving narrowly defined goals but often fall short of achieving socially desirable sustainable outcomes. Our findings support the use of narratives of community history, place, and being in considering the resilience and sustainability of social-ecological systems. We offer that historical ecology is complementary with institutional and economic approaches to the analysis of NRM institutions, and possesses a particular strength in linking ecology to the values and norms of small social groups.     

Factors affecting rural landholders’ adaptation to climate change: Insights from formal institutions and communities of practice

This study explores the factors affecting rural landholders’ adaptation to climate change from the perspectives of formal institutions and communities of practice. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with formal institutions (e.g. South Australian government agencies) and communities of practice (e.g. farm systems groups) within two natural resource management regions in South Australia. Both groups noted that rural landholders autonomously adapt to a variety of risks, including those induced by climate variability; however, the types and levels of adaptation varied among individuals as a result of variety of barriers to adaptation. The lack of communication and engagement processes established between formal institutions and communities of practice was one major barrier. The paper presents and discusses a model for transferring knowledge and information on climate change among formal institutions, communities of practice, trusted individual advisors and rural landholders, and for supporting the co-management of climate change across multiple groups in rural agricultural areas in Australia and elsewhere.     

Fixing marine governance in Fiji? The new scalar narrative of ecosystem-based management

Although there is widespread concern over degrading marine environments, there is debate within the global marine conservation agenda about the nature of the problem and appropriate solutions. At the center of this debate lie questions about the appropriate scale at which to plan and implement marine resource management. In the late 1990s, Fiji became recognized as one of the most successful examples of community-based marine resource management in the world. Recently, there has been a move to manage human–environment interactions at larger “natural” scales. We draw from the political ecology and “politics of scale” literatures, and a critical realist understanding of nature and politics, to explain the emergence of large-scale management and conservation in Fiji. We contribute to a “political ecology of scale” by developing the concept of a scalar narrative to show how social and ecological scales are reworked in the development of an ecosystem-based approach to marine management in Fiji. In doing so, we consider implications of the struggle to define the appropriate scale of marine management, which is closely bound to debates about the role of science and local participation. Our findings suggest that the struggle to define the scale at which marine management should be planned and implemented is inseparable from the struggle over who should define, inform, and conduct the governance process. We aim to clarify marine policy debates as policy actors worldwide move forward to implement ecosystem-based management, increase marine protected area coverage, and pursue sustainable development.     

Climate change policy responses for Canada's Inuit population: The importance of and opportunities for adaptation

We identify and examine how policy intervention can help Canada's Inuit population adapt to climate change. The policy responses are based on an understanding of the determinants of vulnerability identified in research conducted with 15 Inuit communities. A consistent approach was used in each case study where vulnerability is conceptualized as a function of exposure-sensitivity to climatic risks and adaptive capacity to deal with those risks. This conceptualization focuses on the biophysical and human determinants of vulnerability and how they are influenced by processes and conditions operating at multiple spatial-temporal scales. Case studies involved close collaboration with community members and policy makers to identify conditions to which each community is currently vulnerable, characterize the factors that shape vulnerability and how they have changed over time, identify opportunities for adaptation policy, and examine how adaptation can be mainstreamed. Fieldwork, conducted between 2006 and 2009, included 443 semi-structured interviews, 20 focus groups/community workshops, and 65 interviews with policy makers at local, regional, and national levels. Synthesizing findings consistent across the case studies we document significant vulnerabilities, a function of socio-economic stresses and change, continuing and pervasive inequality, and magnitude of climate change. Nevertheless, adaptations are available, feasible, and Inuit have considerable adaptive capacity. Realizing this adaptive capacity and overcoming adaptation barriers requires policy intervention to: (i) support the teaching and transmission of environmental knowledge and land skills, (ii) enhance and review emergency management capability, (iii) ensure the flexibility of resource management regimes, (iv) provide economic support to facilitate adaptation for groups with limited household income, (v) increase research effort to identify short and long term risk factors and adaptive response options, (vi) protect key infrastructure, and (vii) promote awareness of climate change impacts and adaptation among policy makers.     

The global uranium rush and its Africa frontier. Effects,reactions and social movements in Namibia

Uranium mines are the often forgotten source of nuclear power. This article studies impacts and social movements at a uranium mining frontier looking at the interaction between the global social metabolism, industrial dynamics and local ecologies of resistance. Namibia, the world's fourth largest producer of uranium, stands at the vanguard of the global uranium rush with 66 granted prospecting licenses and two operating mines. We focus on three generic attributes that help to explain the emergence and intensity of resistance by local communities to uranium mining: the ecology and geography of the resource; the degree and type of political and economic marginalisation of the community; and crucially, the connection and integration of local concerns with broader social movements and political demands. We show with the use of empirical material how these factors play out differently in five Namibian communities that have been, or stand to be, affected by uranium mining, and explain how local ecologies of resistance shape, or fail to shape, the global uranium rush. Our work offers an example of an integrative approach for the analysis of the global–local dynamics of environmental change in relation to the extraction and flow of the essential materials that fuel industrial economies.     

Integrating agriculture and climate change mitigation at landscape scale: Implications from an Australian case study

Rural and regional hinterlands provide the ecosystem service needs for increasingly urbanised communities across the globe. These inter-related ecosystem services provide key opportunities in securing climate change mitigation and adaptation. Their integrated management in the face of climate change, however, can be confounded by fragmentation within the complex institutional arrangements concerned with natural resource management. This suggests the need for a more systemic approach to continuous improvement in the integrated and adaptive governance of natural resources.This paper explores the theoretical foundations for integrated natural resource management and reviews positive systemic improvements that have been emerging in the Australian context. In setting clear theoretical foundations, the paper explores both functional and structural aspects of natural resource governance systems. Functional considerations include issues of connectivity, knowledge use and capacity within the natural resource decision making environment. Structural considerations refer to the institutions and processes that undertake planning through to implementation, monitoring and evaluation.From this foundation, we review the last decade of emerging initiatives in governance regarding the integration of agriculture and forests across the entire Australian landscape. This includes the shift towards more devolved regional approaches to integrated natural resource management and recent progress towards the use of terrestrial carbon at landscape scale to assist in climate change mitigation and adaptation. These developments, however, have also been tempered by a significant raft of new landscape-scale regulations that have tended to be based on a more centralist philosophy that landowners should be providing ecosystem services for the wider public good without substantive reward.Given this background, we explore a case study of efforts taken to integrate the management of landscape-scale agro-ecological services in the Wet Tropics of tropical Queensland. This is being achieved primarily through the integration of regional natural resource management planning and the development of aggregated terrestrial carbon offset products at a whole of landscape scale via the Degree Celsius initiative. Finally, the paper teases out the barriers and opportunities being experienced, leading to discussion about the global implications for managing climate change, income generation and poverty reduction.     

Sustainable urban water management and integrated development in informal settlements: The contested politics of co-production in Santo Domingo,Dominican Republic

Given the implications of global climate change, including higher likelihood of extreme weather events, and the increasing urban density coupled with reduction in permeable surfaces in the Global South, Sustainable Urban Water Management (SUWM) has emerged as a preferred paradigm for stormwater management. However, the implementation of SUWM, which is premised on using vegetation or engineered capture technologies to control runoff at its source in an effort to replicate natural hydrology, is limited by a lack of institutional integration, not merely between administrative organs with responsibility for stormwater management but also between infrastructure departments, planning institutions, communities, and civil society organizations. This is particularly true in informal settlements in the humid tropics, where excessive impermeable surfaces and a lack of adequate solid waste collection exacerbate municipal limitations in stormwater management. This article discusses an effort to integrate local communities, civil society organizations, and local and regional authorities to improve drainage services within the framework of integrated development in the informal settlement of Los Platanitos, Santo Domingo Norte, Dominican Republic. In order to address the drainage and flooding issues in Los Platanitos while also fostering economic development, representatives of community groups, NGOs, local government, and state agencies have developed a participatory planning structure known as a mesa de concertación, or “cooperating table.” The mesa, which was established in 2014, has succeeded in bringing neighborhood, civil society, and government actors to the same “table” as a mechanism for addressing the community’s drainage challenges within the broader context of integrated community development.     

Constraints,multiple stressors,and stratified adaptation: Pastoralist livelihood vulnerability in a semi-arid wildlife conservation context in Central Kenya

The focus of this study is on how changes in formal and informal institutions have differential impacts across populations in terms of vulnerability of livelihoods to drought, and the unequal processes that shape adaptation to new conditions. Drought vulnerability occurs as a result of exposure and sensitivity to interrelated economic, social, political, and ecological dynamics. There is a need for approaches that can evaluate how the ability to reduce these exposures and sensitivities becomes socially stratified. Building on our understanding of institutional and biophysical constraints in one pastoralist group ranch, we use an approach that draws on quantitative and qualitative data to combine analyses of entitlements, access, and adaptive capacity. We asked how, in a context of changing herding institutions, the ability to adapt to drought and other stressors, is differentiated among actors. We found that herders with higher livestock wealth are more likely to have entitlement sets that include factors that enable access to secure cattle grazing on private wildlife conservation lands, and access to more distant areas with herds of sheep and cattle – two key means of reducing exposure to drought vulnerability, leading to greater coping ability during drought. Those with lower livestock wealth rely disproportionately on illicit, precarious access to external grazing resources. Higher livestock wealth families experienced disproportionately lower sensitivity to drought with smaller losses of cattle, and likely have decreased sensitivity to drought-related market fluctuations, while others are primarily reliant on small stock and/or precarious access pathways. However, rather than naturalize this differential ability as merely increased adaptive capacity for some that are better able to adapt to novel, local conditions, we argue this instead reflects the unequal footing that households find themselves on, in a shifting institutional landscape of structural and relational access constraints and reconfigurations of reciprocity, that are intertwined with interventions by state and non-state actors.     

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.     

Catching sea cucumber fever in coastal communities: Conceptualizing the impacts of shocks versus trends on social-ecological systems

Research on vulnerability and adaptation in social-ecological systems (SES) has largely centered on climate change and associated biophysical stressors. Key implications of this are twofold. First, there has been limited engagement with the impacts of social drivers of change on communities and linked SES. Second, the focus on climate effects often assumes slower drivers of change and fails to differentiate the implications of change occurring at different timescales. This has resulted in a body of SES scholarship that is under-theorized in terms of how communities experience and respond to fast versus slow change. Yet, social and economic processes at global scales increasingly emerge as ‘shocks’ for local systems, driving rapid and often surprising forms of change distinct from and yet interacting with the impacts of slow, ongoing ‘trends’. This research seeks to understand the nature and impacts of social shocks as opposed to or in concert with trends through the lens of a qualitative case study of a coastal community in Mexico, where demand from international seafood markets has spurred rapid development of a sea cucumber fishery. Specifically, we examined what different social-ecological changes are being experienced by the community, how the impacts of the sea cucumber fishery are distinct from and interacting with slower ongoing trends and how these processes are affecting system vulnerability, adaptations and adaptive capacity. We begin by proposing a novel framework for conceptualizing impacts on social systems, as comprised of structures, functions, and feedbacks. Our results illustrate how the rapid-onset of this fishery has driven dramatic changes in the community. New challenges such as the ‘gold-rush-style’ arrival of new actors, money, and livelihoods, the rapid over-exploitation of fish stocks, and increases in poaching and armed violence have emerged, exacerbating pressures from ongoing trends in immigration, overfishing and tourism development. We argue that there is a need to better understand and differentiate the social and ecological implications of shocks, which present novel challenges for the vulnerability and adaptive capacity of communities and the sustainability of marine ecosystems.     

A three-tiered approach to participatory vulnerability assessment in the Solomon Islands

Greater recognition of the seriousness of global environmental change has led to an increase in research that assesses the vulnerability of households, communities and regions to changing environmental or economic conditions. So far, however, there has been relatively little attention given to how assessments can be conducted in ways that help build capacity for local communities to understand and find their own solutions to their problems. This paper reports on an approach that was designed and used to work with a local grass roots organization in the Solomon Islands to promote inclusivity and participation in decision-making and to build the capacity of the organization to reduce the vulnerability of communities to drivers of change. The process involved working collaboratively with the organization and training its members to conduct vulnerability assessments with communities using participatory and deliberative methods. To make best use of the learning opportunities provided by the research process, specific periods for formal reflection were incorporated for the three key stakeholders involved: the primary researchers; research assistants; and community members. Overall, the approach: (1) promoted learning about the current situation in Kahua and encouraged deeper analysis of problems; (2) built capacity for communities to manage the challenges they were facing; and (3) fostered local ownership and responsibility for problems and set precedents for future participation in decision-making. While the local organization and the communities it serves still face significant challenges, the research approach set the scene for greater local participation and effort to maintain and enhance livelihoods and wellbeing. The outcomes highlight the need for greater emphasis on embedding participatory approaches in vulnerability assessments for communities to benefit fully from the process.     

Turning conflicts into cooperation? The role of adaptive learning and deliberation in managing natural resources conflicts in Nepal

ABSTRACT

Conflicts over natural resources are likely to escalate under changing socio-economic contexts and climate change. This paper tests the effectiveness of what we term Adaptive Learning and Deliberation (ALD) in understanding and addressing conflicts over the local management of forests and water, drawing on experimental work in Nepal. Based on a three-year action research project, the paper offers policy and practical insights on how complex and protracted conflicts can be addressed through the researcher-facilitated enquiry and deliberative processes that form the core of the ALD approach. The conflicts included in the study are a result of diverse environmental, political and economic factors. We analyze experimental practices in two sites, where our research team facilitated the ALD process, gathering evidence in relation to conflicting institutional issues, all of which was then fed into researcher-mediated and evidence-informed deliberations on conflict management. The analysis shows that the ALD process was helpful in rearranging local institutions to accommodate the interests of the conflicting groups and, to some extent, to challenge some of the underlying exclusionary provisions of forest and water institutions in Nepalese society. We also identify three key limitations of this approach – transaction costs, the need for strong research and facilitative capacity within the research team, and researchers’ engagement with the conflicting stakeholders.

Key policy insights

• Natural resource-based conflicts are intensifying in Nepal in recent years, due to heavy reliance of people on these resources for livelihoods, poor governance, and protection-oriented policies.

• Improved ways to facilitate cooperation among conflicting stakeholders are needed, as standard methods have often failed to address socio-environmental drivers of conflicts.

• The ALD approach can potentially help mitigate conflict and foster cooperation in natural resource management.

     

Climate change diffusion: While the world tips, business schools lag

The influence of business schools on business practitioners is considerable. An important proportion of corporate leaders hold a degree in business administration or an MBA, if not both. In the context of climate change, this influence matters: greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from a selection of global 500 companies approximate that of the USA and the EU15 combined. Not only do corporations have a significant climate footprint, but the impact of climate change on the business landscape is already noticeable. Yet, meeting the managerial challenges that climate change brings requires knowledge only moderately addressed in business education and scholarship today. Climate change tends to be discussed in electives - hence reaching only a fraction of students - and tends to be treated alongside a myriad of other corporate social responsibility issues. Moreover, from 1992 to 2008, only seven articles with titles containing climate change or global warming were published in the top-30 peer-reviewed management journals (this paper, see also Goodall, 2008). In this paper, by mapping the diffusion of climate change within press media and academic peer-reviewed publications, I argue that understanding the existing lag in business scholarship engagement requires a fundamental understanding of processes that either hinder or lead to the diffusion of new ideas. To do so, I present a simple yet novel approach for the quantification of climate change or global warming (CCorGW) coverage relative to population size. My results on the diffusion of the climate change idea over time show: (a) an overall increase in proportional coverage in all databases (b) tipping points around the late 1980s and circa 2005 and (c) delays in adoption between press categories. I explicate the occurrence of these tipping points as well as the existence of delays by theoretically unifying my analyses with results from previous studies under the umbrella of the diffusion of innovation paradigm. I suggest that the following key factors have contributed in slowing the diffusion within business scholarship: (a) corporate values, beliefs and operational modes (b) social structures and incentives prevailing within academia and finally (b) academia's valued research communication channels. I conclude by elaborating key recommendations to facilitate the diffusion of this idea to business scholars and other influential audiences.