Abstract
Students of social-ecological systems have emphasized the need for effective cross-scale governance. We theorized that discursive barriers, particularly between technical and traditional practices, can act as a barrier to cross-scale collaboration. We analyzed the effects of discursive divides on collaboration on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) policy development in Central Kalimantan, an Indonesian province on the island of Borneo selected in 2010 to pilot subnational REDD+ policy. We argue that the complexities of bridging local land management practices and technical approaches to greenhouse gas emissions reduction and carbon offsetting create barriers to cross-scale collaboration. We tested these hypotheses using an exponential random graph model of collaboration among 36 organizations active in REDD+ policy in the province. We found that discursive divides were associated with a decreased probability of collaboration between organizations and that organizations headquartered outside the province were less likely to collaborate with organizations headquartered in the province. We conclude that bridging discursive communities presents a chicken-and-egg problem for cross-scale governance of social-ecological systems. In precisely the situations where it is most important, when bridging transnational standards with local knowledge and land management practices, it is the most difficult.
Highlights
Interest in the challenges of cross-scale governance, understood as governance that encompasses multiple spatial extents and different levels of administrative authority, is strong and growing in the literature on social-ecological systems (Adger et al 2005, Cash et al 2006)
We analyzed the effects of discursive divides on collaboration on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) policy development in Central Kalimantan, an Indonesian province on the island of Borneo selected in 2010 to pilot subnational REDD+ policy
We test the claim that discursive divides impede cross-scale governance of social-ecological systems by analyzing Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) policy development in Central Kalimantan, an Indonesian province on the island of Borneo
Summary
Interest in the challenges of cross-scale governance, understood as governance that encompasses multiple spatial extents and different levels of administrative authority, is strong and growing in the literature on social-ecological systems (Adger et al 2005, Cash et al 2006). When discursive divides are the strongest, that is, when governance measures must address diverse ecologies, cultures, and land-use practices, effective exchange is likely to have the most value. These potential barriers raise an important question for students of social-ecological systems: to what extent do discursive divides limit cross-scale connections?. We test the claim that discursive divides impede cross-scale governance of social-ecological systems by analyzing Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) policy development in Central Kalimantan, an Indonesian province on the island of Borneo. In Central Kalimantan, REDD+ policy is a response to a complex history featuring waves of deforestation drivers operating at multiple scales. Forest loss from logging, mining, and the expansion of palm oil plantations continued through the 2000s, when Central Kalimantan had the highest deforestation rate in Indonesia (Sumargo et al 2009, Koh et al 2011)
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