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.     

Rethinking urban water management: Experimentation as a way forward?

There is widespread acceptance regarding the need to transition towards more sustainable urban water practices. Supporting such a transition requires new governance frameworks that can accommodate complexity and uncertainty, and organisational cultures that embrace experimentation and learning. This empirically focused research paper examines how eleven, alternative local-scale experiments were initiated while operating in an unsympathetic regime. Furthermore, the perceptions of more than 150 urban water practitioners across Australia are presented, regarding the importance of and difficulty in undertaking experimentation in the urban water sector, and the necessary mechanisms for influencing a step change to sustainable urban water management practices. Interviewees revealed perceived limitations in experimenting with new technologies and practices when operating within a hierarchical and market-based governance paradigm. Also, industry conservatism and the dominant risk-based management approach both operate as significant constraints to promoting an experimentation culture, and are closely related to concerns about public health and financial implications. Overall, the research highlights the Australian urban water sector is willing to embrace learning-by-doing; however, a stronger emphasis on promoting an organisational and industry-wide culture of experimentation and learning is required. Policy implications for future water governance are discussed.     

Public perceptions of geoengineering research governance: An experimental deliberative approach

Recent attempts to conduct experiments in climate ‘geoengineering’ have demonstrated the deeply controversial nature of this field of scientific research. Social scientists have begun to explore public perceptions of geoengineering, and have documented a significant degree of concern over the effective governance of research and experimentation in this area. Yet, public perception on what constitutes a legitimate geoengineering experiment and how it should be governed remains under-researched. In this article we report on a series of experimental deliberative workshops with members of the public designed to elicit and explicate diverse understandings of geoengineering experiments and their governance. In contrast to previous methods of invited public deliberation, which privilege egalitarian-consensual models of discourse and decision-making, we test a novel approach that places majoritarian, individualistic, and consensual forms of public deliberation on an equal footing. Our study suggests that the perceived controllability of experimental interventions is central to public views on their acceptability, but that controllability is itself a complex, multifaceted quality, drawing together a set of heterogeneous concerns about the purpose and repercussions of scientific work. The citizens who participated in our workshops employed four criteria to adjudicate the acceptability of geoengineering experiments: (1) the degree of containment; (2) the uncertainty surrounding experimental outcomes; (3) the reversibility of impacts; and (4) the scientific purity of the enterprise. We theorize that the public legitimacy of geoengineering experiments depends on variable, context-specific combinations of these criteria, and that technical determinations of the proper ‘scale’ or ‘location’ for geoengineering research will be poor predictors of the sorts of public concerns that will be triggered by further experimentation in this area.     

Governing community forests and the challenge of solving two-level collective action dilemmas—A large-N perspective

The effectiveness of forest governance practices has consequences that range from the local to the global level. In general, the study of community forest governance relies heavily on case-study materials. The strength of single case and small-N comparative studies is related to the ability to uncover the nuances of time and place specific particularities. A recognized weakness of this approach relates to the fact that results cannot easily be extrapolated. For my analysis, I use a large-N, cross-national dataset instead. What constitutes an effective local forest governance regime? I show that especially monitoring – and to a lesser extent, maintenance – is correlated with improving forest conditions. When are effective governance regimes likely to emerge? I show that social capital, organization, leadership and autonomy contribute to the development of institutions for collective action. How does competition between forest users affect governance? I provide empirical evidence that two-level collective action dilemmas hinder the emergence of effective governance regimes.     

A place-based approach to payments for ecosystem services

Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes are proliferating but are challenged by insufficient attention to spatial and temporal inter-dependencies, interactions between different ecosystems and their services, and the need for multi-level governance. To address these challenges, this paper develops a place-based approach to the development and implementation of PES schemes that incorporates multi-level governance, bundling or layering of services across multiple scales, and shared values for ecosystem services. The approach is evaluated and illustrated using case study research to develop an explicitly place-based PES scheme, the Peatland Code, owned and managed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s UK Peatland Programme and designed to pay for restoration of peatland habitats. Buyers preferred bundled schemes with premium pricing of a primary service, contrasting with sellers’ preferences for quantifying and marketing services separately in a layered scheme. There was limited awareness among key business sectors of dependencies on ecosystem services, or the risks and opportunities arising from their management. Companies with financial links to peatlands or a strong environmental sustainability focus were interested in the scheme, particularly in relation to climate regulation, water quality, biodiversity and flood risk mitigation benefits. Visitors were most interested in donating to projects that benefited wildlife and were willing to donate around £2 on-site during a visit. Sellers agreed a deliberated fair price per tonne of CO₂ equivalent from £11.18 to £15.65 across four sites in Scotland, with this range primarily driven by spatial variation in habitat degradation. In the Peak District, perceived declines in sheep and grouse productivity arising from ditch blocking led to substantially higher prices, but in other regions ditch blocking was viewed more positively. The Peatland Code was developed in close collaboration with stakeholders at catchment, landscape and national scales, enabling multi-level governance of the management and delivery of ecosystem services across these scales. Place-based PES schemes can mitigate negative trade-offs between ecosystem services, more effectively include cultural ecosystem services and engage with and empower diverse stakeholders in scheme design and governance.     

Linking multi-level governance to local common-pool resource theory using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis: Insights from twenty years of biodiversity conservation in Costa Rica

Understanding the relationship between multi-level institutional linkages and conditions influencing the likelihood of successful collective action has practical and theoretical relevance to sustainable local resource governance. This paper studies the relationship between multi-level linkages and local autonomy, a facilitating condition found to increase the likelihood of local successful collective action. A technique known as fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) was applied to a longitudinal comparative data set. In the context of the decentralization of a protected area system in Costa Rica (1986–2006), it traced the emergence and endurance of autonomy among local institutions for biodiversity conservation. The technique illustrates which set of multi-level linkages combined in different ways, and at different points in time, to reach the same outcome (local autonomy). The findings show that a unique set of combinations of multi-level linkages led to the emergence of local autonomy among institutions for biodiversity conservation governance. In contrast, a more diverse set was associated with the endurance of local autonomy over time, suggesting that institutional diversity may play a more prominent role in the maintenance of institutional robustness than in processes of institutional emergence.     

Knowledge exchange and policy influence in a marine resource governance network

Few case studies have considered the impact of network structure on the resilience of complex resource management systems that operate over large spatial scales. To help fill this knowledge gap our study examined two types of relational ties—knowledge exchange and policy influence—within a marine wildlife co-management network in Northern Australia. We conducted interviews and follow-up surveys with key-informant stakeholders in dugong and marine turtle management and used these data to perform social network analysis for the dugong and turtle co-management network. The network structure of this marine governance system supports extensive cross-scale information flow, but with a disproportionate amount of top-down policy influence compared with knowledge accumulation, an arrangement that may hinder evidence-based decision making. We developed a typological ‘map’ of stakeholder roles in the network to characterize each stakeholder's contribution of knowledge and ability to influence policy, helping to identify gaps or overlaps in network linkages. Improving communication links between knowledge producers and policy makers is important for evidence based decision making throughout the management network, while addressing overlapping management roles and functions should help decrease conflict in the system. These improvements would increase social-ecological resilience in the management network by providing better protection for marine species while meeting the needs of diverse stakeholders.     

Down to Earth: Contextualizing the Anthropocene

The ‘Anthropocene’ is now being used as a conceptual frame by different communities and in a variety of contexts to understand the evolving human–environment relationship. However, as we argue in this paper, the notion of an Anthropos, or ‘humanity’, as global, unified ‘geological force’ threatens to mask the diversity and differences in the actual conditions and impacts of humankind, and does not do justice to the diversity of local and regional contexts. For this reason, we interpret in this article the notion of an Anthropocene in a more context-dependent, localized and social understanding. We do this through illustrating examples from four issue domains, selected for their variation in terms of spatial and temporal scale, systems of governance and functional interdependencies: nitrogen cycle distortion (in particular as it relates to food security); ocean acidification; urbanization; and wildfires. Based on this analysis, we systematically address the consequences of the lens of the Anthropocene for the governance of social-ecological systems, focusing on the multi-level, functional and sectoral organization of governance, and possible redefinitions of governance systems and policy domains. We conclude that the notion of the Anthropocene, once seen in light of social inequalities and regional differences, allows for novel analysis of issue-based problems in the context of a global understanding, in both academic and political terms. This makes it a useful concept to help leverage and (re-)focus our efforts in a more innovative and effective way to transition towards sustainability.     

Environmental mega-conferences—from Stockholm to Johannesburg and beyond

The United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), held in Johannesburg in August 2002 was the fourth environmental ‘mega’ conference since the first held in Stockholm in 1972. Its aim was to discuss how much progress has been made since the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 and plan further action for the future. This paper first reviews the history and evolution of the environmental ‘mega conferences’ and outlines six core functions which they seek to perform. These are: setting global agendas; facilitating ‘joined-up thinking’; endorsing common principles; providing global leadership; building institutional capacity; and legitimising global governance through inclusivity. Using this evaluative framework, the outcomes, achievements and disappointments of the Johannesburg summit are discussed, along with an evaluation of the future role of such mega-conferences. The paper concludes that environmental mega-conferences do serve an important function in contemporary environmental governance, even though they are not the panaceas that some had originally hoped they might be. In many ways WSSD was a wasted opportunity for progress—politicians lacked the will for adopt ambitious action plans, which frustrated and disappointed participants in the vibrant civil society summit which accompanied the official meeting. The sustainable development agendas have now been set and consolidated, and the task facing politicians is to implement the agreements. This will be achieved and monitored in different fora to the mega-conferences that had originally opened the debates. The task now is for the UN to incorporate the views of citizen's groups and NGOs, and build on bottom-up activism, at the same time as top-down governmental decision-making.     

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.     

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.     

Resource depletion,peak minerals and the implications for sustainable resource management

Today's global society is economically, socially and culturally dependent on minerals and metals. While metals are recyclable, terrestrial mineral deposits are by definition ‘non-renewable’ over human timescales and their stocks are thus finite. This raises the spectre of ‘peak minerals’ – the time at which production from terrestrial ores can no longer rise to meet demand and where a maximum (peak) production occurs. Peak minerals prompts a focus on the way minerals can be sustainably used in the future to ensure the services they provide to global society can be maintained.As peak minerals approaches (and is passed in some cases), understanding and monitoring the dynamics of primary mineral production, recycling and dematerialisation, in the context of national and global discussions about mineral resources demand and the money earned from their sale, will become essential for informing and establishing mechanisms for sustainable mineral governance and use efficiency into the future. Taking a cross-scale approach, this paper explores the economic and productivity impacts of peak minerals, and how changes in the mineral production profile are influenced not only by technological and scarcity factors, but also by environmental and social constraints. Specifically we examine the impacts of peak minerals in Australia, a major global minerals supplier, and the consequences for the Asia-Pacific region, a major destination for Australia's minerals.This research has profound implications for local and regional/global sustainability of mineral and metal use. The focus on services is useful for encouraging discussion of transitions in how such services can be provided in a future more sustainable economy, when mineral availability is constrained. The research also begins to address the question of how we approach the development of strategies to maximise returns from mineral wealth over generations.     

Pretend Participation: Procedural Injustices in the Madeira Hydroelectric Complex

Energy infrastructure projects have long been associated with a lack of participation by impacted, local populations—this history is evident in the case of hydropower projects in the Global South. Ever since the World Commission on Dams’ Report (WCD 2000), there has been substantive evidence, and numerous recommendations, that have called on governments, financial agencies and construction companies to increase community engagement and participation in dam construction and in their governance thereafter. Further, community groups, activists, and scholars have long articulated the need for participatory governance in energy projects. In this analysis, we evaluate participation in institutionalized mechanisms provided by dam builders—such as public meetings and negotiations—in Brazil’s Madeira hydroelectric complex. We evaluate how perceptions of positive and negative impacts, among other factors, predict engagement, estimating a series of logit models based on a social survey of 673 households carried out in 2019/20. Perceptions of negative and positive impacts of the dams before construction are related to participation in the meetings promoted by dam builders. Yet our results also imply that participation was rare, fleeting, and insufficient and points to the need to ensure community engagement and governance to ensure energy justice in future dam projects in Brazil and elsewhere.     

Experiences of host communities with carbon market projects: towards multi-level climate justice

The literature on equity and justice in climate change mitigation has largely focused on North–South relations and equity between states. However, some initiatives (e.g. the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation programme (REDD), and voluntary carbon markets (VCMs)) are already establishing multi-level governance structures that involve communities from developing countries in global mitigation efforts. This poses new equity and justice dilemmas: how the burdens and benefits of mitigation are shared across various levels and how host communities are positioned in multi-level governance structures. A review of the existing literature is used to distill a framework for distinguishing between four axes of climate justice from the perspective of communities. Empirical evidence from African and Asian carbon market projects is used to assess the distributive and procedural justice implications for host communities. The evidence suggests that host communities often benefit little from carbon market projects and find it difficult to protect their interests. Capacity building, attention to local power relations, supervision of business practices, promotion of projects with primarily development aims and an active involvement of non-state actors as bridges between local communities and the national/international levels could potentially contribute towards addressing some of the key justice concerns.Policy relevance International negotiations on the institutional frameworks that are envisaged to govern carbon markets are proceeding at a rather slow pace. As a consequence, host countries and private-sector actors are making their own arrangements to safeguard the interests of local communities. While several standards have emerged to guide carbon market activity on the ground, distributive as well as procedural justice concerns nevertheless remain salient. Four empirical case studies across Asia and Africa show that within the multi-scale and multi-actor carbon market governance, local-level actors often lack sufficient agency to advance their claims and protect their interests. This evidence suggests that ameliorating policy reforms are needed to enhance the positioning of local communities. Doing so is important to ensure future acceptability of carbon market activity in potential host communities as well as for ensuring their broader legitimacy.     

The impacts of cocaine-trafficking on conservation governance in Central America

This research is motivated by the compelling finding that the illicit cocaine trade is responsible for extensive patterns of deforestation in Central America. This pattern is most pronounced in the region's large protected areas. We wanted to know how cocaine trafficking affects conservation governance in Central America's protected areas, and whether deforestation is a result of impacts on governance. To answer this question, we interviewed conservation stakeholders from key institutions at various levels in three drug-trafficking hotspots: Peten, Guatemala, Northeastern Honduras, and the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica. We found that, in order to establish and maintain drug transit operations, drug-trafficking organizations compete with and undermine conservation governance actors and institutions. Drug trafficking impacts conservation governance in three ways: 1) it undermines long standing conservation coalitions; 2) it fuels booms in extractive activities inside protected lands; and 3) it erodes the territorial control that conservation institutions exert, exploiting strict “fortress” conservation governance models. Participatory governance models that provide locals with strong expectations of land tenure and/or institutional support for local decision-making may offer resistance to the impacts on governance institutions that we documented.     

Transitions toward co-management: The process of marine resource management devolution in three east African countries

Communities are increasingly empowered with the ability and responsibility of working with national governments to make decisions about marine resources in decentralized co-management arrangements. This transition toward decentralized management represents a changing governance landscape. This paper explores the transition to decentralisation in marine resource management systems in three East African countries. The paper draws upon expert opinion and literature from both political science and linked social-ecological systems fields to guide exploration of five key governance transition concepts in each country: (1) drivers of change; (2) institutional arrangements; (3) institutional fit; (4) actor interactions; and (5) adaptive management. Key findings are that decentralized management in the region was largely donor-driven and only partly transferred power to local stakeholders. However, increased accountability created a degree of democracy in regards to natural resource governance that was not previously present. Additionally, increased local-level adaptive management has emerged in most systems and, to date, this experimental management has helped to change resource user's views from metaphysical to more scientific cause-and-effect attribution of changes to resource conditions.     

Experimentalist governance in climate finance: the case of REDD+ in Brazil

One of the most significant impacts of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has been the establishment of a participatory process for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+). We analyse the case of Brazil, the country whose land-use emissions from deforestation and forest degradation have declined the most. Through semi-structured interviews with 29 country policy experts – analysed in full text around 7 categories of activities that existing literature identifies as central elements of an effective governance system – we find weak links between the international REDD+ system and what actually happens on the ground inside Brazil. The greatest weaknesses are rooted in the absence of any formal learning system, which prevents higher-level efforts from obtaining useful feedback from lower-level entities responsible for implementation. Analytically our approach is rooted in the idea of ‘experimentalist governance’ in which local policy experiments map the space of what is possible and effective with transformative land policy. These experiments provide information to broader international initiatives on how local implementation shapes the ability and strategy to reach global goals. The Brazilian experience suggests that even when international funding is substantial, local implementation remains a weak link. REDD+ reforms should focus less on the total amount of money being spent and much more on how those funds are used to generate useful local policy experiments and learning.

Key policy insights

• A nascent system of experimentalist governance to implement REDD+ is taking shape in Brazil. However, the potential for experimentalism to improve policy reforms within Brazil is far from realized;

• Experimentalist problem-solving approaches could have a big impact on REDD+ with stronger incentives to promote experimentation and learning from experience;

• Reforms to REDD+ incentive schemes should focus less on the total amount of money being spent and more on whether those funds are actually generating experimental learning and policy improvement – in Brazil and in other countries struggling with similar challenges.

     

Analyzing the (mis)fit between the institutional and ecological networks of the Indo-West Pacific

Critical to improving environmental governance is understanding the fit (alignment) between institutional arrangements and key ecological processes. This is particularly true for biodiversity hotpots and ecologically sensitive areas that are subject to significant impacts from human activities. Here, we have developed an innovative approach to quantify ecological-institutional alignment across an environmentally and politically complex large-scale marine social-ecological system. We mapped the trans-boundary networks of marine population dispersal corridors, and intersected these with estimates of cross-country institutional linkages related to marine management and conservation. In integrating large-scale ecological-institutional networks, we identify geopolitical fit and misfit between a region's ecological processes and its governance. We have demonstrated this approach in the Indo-West Pacific region, a global marine biodiversity hotpot in the Indo-West Pacific. We present region-specific institutional and ecological networks, highlight current challenges, and suggest future directions to refine the proposed approach to quantify alignment between ecological processes and governance arrangements. Ultimately, our method has the potential to assist management efforts in prioritizing and strengthening governance to effectively safeguard ecological processes across multiple jurisdictions.     

On Multi-Level Thinking and Scientific Understanding

Professor Duzheng YE's name has been familiar to me ever since my postdoctoral years at MIT with Professors Jule CHARNEY and Norman PHILLIPS, back in the late 1960 s. I had the enormous pleasure of meeting Professor YE personally in 1992 in Beijing. His concern to promote the very best science and to use it well, and his thinking on multi-level orderly human activities, reminds me not only of the communication skills we need as scientists but also of the multi-level nature of science itself. Here I want to say something(a) about what science is;(b) about why multi-level thinking—and taking more than one viewpoint—is so important for scientific as well as for other forms of understanding; and(c) about what is meant, at a deep level, by "scientific understanding" and trying to communicate it, not only with lay persons but also across professional disciplines. I hope that Professor YE would approve.