“社会—生态系统”治理研究的原型分析：概念、方法和展望

“社会—生态系统”治理的关键挑战是知识的积累和转移。一方面,“社会—生态系统”的情景依赖使得很难得出有关有效治理的一般结论;另一方面,通用的制度设计又可能由于过于抽象而无法应用于具体的问题。这看似是一个“无解”的问题。但是,比较分析现实中成功或失败的治理案例,为寻找“社会—生态系统”治理之道提供了可能。在“社会—生态系统”治理研究中,原型揭示了人与自然互动中反复出现的规律(pattern),成为一种新的研究方法。论文厘清了原型的概念与特征,阐述了原型分析的意义,梳理并评述了原型分析在“社会—生态系统”治理研究领域的进展。研究发现：① 原型分析在一个中间抽象层次上探索解释某个现象的重复模式,可视为案例中的“积木”;② 应将原型分析作为一种基于整体主义的方法论(methodological holism)来理解,而不是一种特定的方法、框架或理论;③ 原型分析能促进案例研究知识的积累与转移、“兼容”多种研究方法并在“社会—生态系统”治理中实现一定程度的预测性;④ 原型分析基于“类型—子类型”的多层次分析,有助于找到复杂“社会—生态系统”中的“强”因果关系;⑤ 原型不仅是研究的结果,也是研究的起点,对原型的测试、修正、完善和可信度检验是未来研究的重要方向。     

“一带一路”沿线地区隐含碳流动研究

随着全球各区域的连通性不断增强,碳流动以及碳泄漏在全球碳减排过程中扮演着越来越重要的角色。伴随全球产业跨境转移的过程,发达国家的高碳行业逐渐转移到发展中国家,并从这些国家进口成品用于自身最终消费。基于多区域投入产出分析,本文测算了“一带一路”沿线地区隐含碳流动,分析了生产碳及消费碳强度在全球的空间分布,并以此为基础探讨了“一带一路”沿线地区的生产者及消费者责任。结果显示,“一带一路”沿线地区的生产碳强度大都高于消费碳强度,且两者的差值大多高于“一带一路”区域外发达地区。全球95%以上的隐含碳净流出发生在“一带一路”沿线地区,美国、西欧等发达国家/地区的消费所引发的“一带一路”沿线主要区域直接碳排放占比约为30%。考虑到跨国贸易中的隐含碳排放,“一带一路”沿线地区整体承受了较大的碳排放压力。从消费者责任着手衡量各国家/地区在全球气候变化中的碳排放责任,并以包容性全球化为基础推进“一带一路”气候治理体系构建,可为长期难以达成协议的全球气候治理问题提供有效思路。     

Governing Large Carnivores—Comparative Insights from Three Different Countries

The governance of large carnivores is often surrounded by conflicts. Along with the difficulties of governing large carnivores through centralized, top-down governing and a general shift towards participatory approaches in natural resource governance, this has led many countries to establish various collaborative measures in large carnivore governance – often presented as a catch-all solution to problems of legitimacy, democratic deficit and effectiveness. However, the field of large carnivore governance currently lacks a coherent understanding of strengths and weaknesses of different kinds of collaborative arrangements. In this paper, we address this knowledge gap. Using the framework of modes of governance to categorize and compare the governance of large carnivores in Norway, Sweden and Finland, we discuss the potential and limitations of various governance modes and identify gaps in contemporary research literature. The main conclusion is that all three governance systems need to incorporate more interactive governance elements.     

Dilemmas of State-Led Environmental Conservation in China: Environmental Target Enforcement and Public Participation in Minqin County

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the acute socioecological crisis in the Minqin region of China’s Gansu province beginning in the 1980s and the multilevel, governmental response to that crisis in the first two decades of the 21st century. Drawing on extensive field research and interviews in the area, supplemented by analysis of available data, the paper presents a detailed case study of the development and implementation of the Shiyang River Watershed Restoration Plan in the period 2007–15. The case illustrates how conflicting policy objectives of the central state-led conservation project shaped patterns of interaction between local government officials, cadres, and farmers in Minqin County as well as ensuing outcomes and challenges in policy implementation. The study finds that top-level declaration of ecological and social issues in the watershed as a national security issue incentivized local government officials and cadres to overlook the Plan’s provision for local consultation, in favor of meeting binding ecological and economic targets. It contributes to scholarship on environmental authoritarianism, illuminating structural factors and institutional constraints that shape local government officials’ and cadres’ behavior in a centrally administered environmental policy context.     

Damming Knowledge Flows: POWER as a Constraint on Knowledge Pluralism in River Flow Decision-making in the Saskatchewan River Delta

Rivers and dams are increasingly contested venues where knowledge pluralism is critical for effective governance. To navigate change, decision-makers can adopt culturally-sensitive interventions to address the needs of diverse stakeholders and rights holders. Calls for Indigenous flows have become important as dam operators seek to renew their legal and social licenses to operate. Knowledge pluralism is needed to enhance decision-making about flows that better address complexity and change to Indigenous livelihoods and cultural practices. However, leveraging diverse knowledge types to inform these interventions is not simply a matter of changing management practice. Power relations can constrain knowledge pluralism. We contribute an empirical example that links power in a decision-making process about a dam in Saskatchewan, Canada, to the losses experienced by downstream Indigenous communities. This paper operationalizes power to illustrate its methodological utility and documents the interconnected losses, experienced by resources users, resultant from the marginalization of Indigenous knowledge.     

Leadership and Trade-Offs Between Social–Ecological Outcomes in Community-Governed Forests

I explore the effect of leadership on the trade-off between social and ecological outcomes of community driven efforts in governing forests globally. I do so by using logistic regression and QCA (qualitative comparative analysis) for the analysis of cross-sectional data from the International Forestry Resources and Institutions (IFRI) research program. While the net effect of leadership on the trade-off in forestry outcomes is significant, there are multiple causal paths via which various factors influence the trade-off in forestry outcomes. Some of these paths take place in the presence of leadership, while the presence or the absence of leadership is irrelevant for the rest of the paths. This finding indicates that leaders often play an important role in the decisionmaking process during the governance of forests, especially when hard decisions need to be taken.     

Feeling the pulse of the city: racial liberalism and the political geographies of tension in postwar Detroit

Recent work in urban and political geography has explored how affective life is becoming intertwined with security apparatuses. This paper situates this interest within a longer history by exploring how affect–specifically “tension”–emerged as an object of political concern and intervention in US cities during the postwar era. Focusing on Detroit, we trace how northern liberals responded to an escalation in racial unrest by developing programs that sought to detect and locate a change in the city’s atmospheric charge. They also created various measures to try and combat a rise in tension or aggression before it led to violence. However, while these efforts were framed in terms of collective security, we argue that they actually reproduced racialized differences across the city. They also helped to construct material and ideological support at the local-level for the national backlash against racial liberalism marked by the election of Nixon in the late-1960s     

Mediating science and action across multiple boundaries in the Coral Triangle

This study seeks to refine literature on boundary work by exploring how stakeholders in the Coral Triangle Initiative, an international agreement between six countries in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, are forging relations across various domains and governance levels, and the outcomes of this process. We do this in an effort to increase its relevance to multi-level environmental governance, and understand the challenges that face such governance. We are also interested in the pathways leading to policy outcomes that are perceived as salient, credible, and legitimate to all stakeholders involved in governance. The study shows that boundary work is challenged by resource inequalities resulting in limited knowledge diversity, blurred boundaries between science and politics, and misaligned scales. We conclude that boundary work has an important temporal dimension that has often been neglected, and that literature on boundary work must provide a conceptual guide to understand tradeoffs arising as a result of stakeholders’ various strategies to engage in boundary work.     

Climate governance,justice, and transnational civil society

Justice dilemmas associated with climate change and the regulatory responses to it pose challenges for global governance, arguably hampering progress and raising concerns over efficacy and relevance. Scholarly literature suggests that transnational civil society groups can help address problems of governance and injustice that cross borders and pit states against each other. Findings of a comparative, qualitative study of climate justice advocacy suggest, however, that civil society groups' work in the US and EU is significantly shaped by institutional factors specific to those regimes, limiting advocates' broader impact. Moreover, political opportunities for the pursuit of climate action, and justice particularly, have diminished in those settings. By contrast, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) provides greater opportunities for discussions of justice, although civil society actors are significantly constrained within it. It is argued that greater roles for civil society in the UNFCCC could prove constructive in the face of current challenges connected with justice issues. Three themes in civil society advocacy linking principles of global justice with current climate policy debates are summarized. Finally, it is suggested that the first iteration of the UNFCCC Periodic Review provides timely opportunities to more fully draw upon civil society's potential contributions toward a fair and effective global climate regime.

Policy relevance

The roles of civil society organizations in climate governance were examined in three policy contexts: the UNFCCC, the US, and the EU, with special attention to advocacy addressing issues of equity and justice, identified as key challenges for a post-2012 global agreement. Findings suggest that (1) civil society roles are significantly constrained in each context, and (2) political opportunities for climate advocacy have diminished since 2009 in the US and EU, underlining (3) the continued salience of the UNFCCC as a forum for engagement and the construction of effective and equitable climate policy. Potential exists for increased civil society involvement at the UNFCCC to help resolve obstacles based in divergent national priorities. Three areas of justice-focused civil society activity are reviewed for current negotiation topics and the governance structure of the institution. The current UNFCCC Periodic Review is identified as an opportunity to increase civil society involvement.     

African Inland Fisheries: Experiences with Co-Management and Policies of Decentralization

Most countries in Africa have promoted some form of decentralized fisheries management either as discrete co-management projects or as a component of broader decentralization processes that cut across other sectors. These initiatives were shaped by an international policy narrative that emphasises participation in decision making and development. A review of fisheries decentralization experiences in Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria, and Malawi reveals marked differences in purpose, strategy, and performance. In general, co-management projects are limited by their ability to scale up new practice and to maintain viable and representative management institutions. In other cases, the decentralization process is not well supported politically or locally or does not articulate with fisheries policy. Experiences of decentralization in other sectors provide useful lessons. Acknowledging the informal institutional environment or realpolitikof fisheries and the rural economy could provide opportunities to better manage and review the process of decentralization.