Jurisdictional Boundaries Research Articles

Co-Management During Crisis: Insights from Jurisdictionally Complex Wildfires

There is a general agreement within the disaster response community that exclusively top down approaches to policy making and management are limited and that we need to build governance capacity to cooperatively manage across jurisdictional boundaries. No more is this true than in the context of jurisdictionally complex wildfires that span multiple jurisdictional boundaries. Accordingly, the concept of co-management has grown in popularity as a theoretical lens through which to understand cooperative multi-jurisdictional response to wildland fires. However, definitional ambiguity has led to on-going debates about what co-management is. Further, there is limited understanding about the nature of co-management during crisis events. In this paper, we seek to address this question based on interviews with leaders engaged in the management of jurisdictionally complex wildfire incidents. Based on the integration of these three streams, we propose a multi-level framework for conceiving co-management as strategic efforts of individual actors to cooperatively manage perceived interdependencies with others through one or more formal or informal institutional arrangements. We then demonstrate the value of the proposed framework in its ability to organize a series of diagnostic questions for diagnosing co-management situations within the context of jurisdictionally complex wildfires.

Territorial approaches to a pandemic: a pathway to effective governance?

Pandemics, including COVID-19, highlight the issue of multilevel governance, where and how powers should be allocated, and the challenge of ensuring coherency. This issue comes clearly into focus in epidemiological units where internal jurisdictional boundaries exist, as in the case of the island of Ireland with the border between Northern Ireland/the United Kingdom and Ireland. This article evaluates the approaches to policy-making on the island of Ireland, and considers whether the two jurisdictions adequately addressed cross-border issues in light of the concept of subsidiarity. The core focus is on a COVID-19 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) agreed between Ireland and Northern Ireland in April 2020, with consideration also of proposals for a two-island approach. The article argues that subsidiarity would call for a centralised approach or at least substantial cooperation to facilitate effective policy implementation and coherency. The MOU reflects these ideas, through supporting substantial cooperation, but with some significant weaknesses that manifest in its implementation. Alternative issues arise when considering a potential two-island approach. Together, the MOU and the alternative of a two-island approach highlight that context is a crucial consideration for subsidiarity and evaluating the approaches to cross-border issues. It can make centralisation and substantial cooperation (and therefore coherency more generally) significantly more challenging and thereby also highlights the limits of subsidiarity.

A capitals framework for rural areas: ‘Place-planning’ the global countryside

Set in the context of debates over the future of rural areas, and the role of planning in co-delivering a sustainable, inclusive and resilient countryside, this article considers the value of a place capitals perspective for unpacking, firstly, ‘what makes’ rural places and, secondly, the ways that planning can ensure the protection, enhancement and sensitive use of those capitals. Rural places are presented as composites of built, economic, land-based and socio-cultural capitals and as possessing a ‘spatial energy’ that inheres in the linkages between capitals. Harnessing that ‘spatial energy’ is critical to co-producing better rural places. The paper aims towards a theorisation of rural places and planning that transcends jurisdictional boundaries and the peculiarities of planning systems. Building on existing scholarship, a ‘capitals framework’ is developed that has general applicability: it can be deployed flexibly as a means of understanding the ‘inner workings’ of rural place and as a guide for planning intervention.

Forest management effects on vegetation regeneration after a high severity wildfire: A case study in the southern Cascade range

Wildfires play a vital role in ecosystems and are one of the most significant natural processes that shape the northern Sierra Nevada and southern Cascade Mountain Ranges in northeastern California. At the same time, across the American West, a history of fire exclusion, timber salvage and harvest, and human-assisted reforestation has caused widespread changes in forest vegetation patterns over the past century. Federal agencies such as the National Park Service (NPS) and US Forest Service (USFS) have different missions and approaches to these land management activities, creating a mosaic of ecological conditions across managed landscapes both before and after wildfires. We studied vegetation recovery following a major fire that crossed jurisdictional boundaries to explore how management history (fire exclusion and timber harvest and salvage) and post-fire reforestation efforts may influence vegetation regeneration. Using both field-based data collection and remote sensing Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) analyses, we assessed differences in vegetation communities found in the NPS and USFS portions of the footprint of the 2012 Reading Fire in northeastern California. We found that a legacy of timber harvest combined with fire exclusion was associated with denser shrub regeneration and minimal sapling recovery. In this context, areas that were reforested post-fire returned a relatively diverse and abundant suite of mixed-conifer tree species to the landscape. In areas with a history of fire exclusion that regenerated without human interference after the fire, saplings did establish on their own but were predominantly white fir (Abies concolor), a shade-tolerant species that is known to increase wildfire severity.

Good Law to Fight Bad Bugs: Legal Responses to Epidemics

Although epidemics are generally understood as lying within the domain of biomedicine, legal and social arrangements play crucial roles in determining whether or not infectious disease outbreaks grow into epidemics and even pandemics. Yet epidemics are challenging terrain for legal regulation. Because epidemics cross political borders and span jurisdictional boundaries, funding for epidemic prevention, preparedness, and response is always inadequate and coordination is difficult. Because epidemics require rapid and nimble responses, governments and international organizations often declare states of emergency, thereby evading some of the usual strictures of law. And because they involve massive uncertainty and rapidly evolving health crises, they require legal actors to work more quickly and with lower standards of proof than is common in law and to intrude on the turf of medical and scientific professionals. Legal contributions to pandemic management could be improved if legal measures such as global treaties and domestic public health law took account of these special features of epidemics.

LOCAL MANAGEMENT NETWORKS AS A FACTOR OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

The article determines that in many countries the challenges of sustainable development are solved by creating new institutional structures that form inter-organizational management networks, which are corporations of public actors representing different sectors and levels of government, as well as private actors. Such networks should contribute to the implementation of coordinated actions, which are necessary to solve the problems of sustainable development in certain areas. It is noted that the concept of sustainable development is based on three pillars: social, economic and ecological. But the institutions necessary to ensure sustainable development can be considered as its fourth pillar. Local management networks are one of such institutions. It is necessary to involve subjects who have certain resources or otherwise contribute to the solution of the relevant problems in the management of the network. In addition, there is a need to consider the interests of all stakeholders in order to achieve legitimacy. This is quite natural, but there are two challenges that must be taken into account. First, it is a challenge to involve all powerful actors in situations of asymmetric distribution of interdependencies, which leads to the fact that some of them will not consider the implementation of real cooperation in their interests. Second, it is a challenge caused by an asymmetric distribution of interests, where commercial resource extraction interests prevail among local private actors and local governments, who are also important resource owners, and environmental conservation interests prevail among external stakeholders, who are also stakeholders. Sustainable development policy crosses the boundaries of political sectors as well as the boundaries between the public and private sectors, i.e. sustainable development is cross-functional. It also crosses the boundaries of territorial jurisdictions, whether local, regional or national. So, the sustainable development goals are at the intersection of different jurisdictions, different sectors of governance, and different levels of governance. Thus, the realization of these goals represents a significant challenge for the coordination and integration of the actions of many actors, accordingly, it is necessary to create complex institutional structures such as management networks.

A scale dynamics approach to integrate landscape conservation within and across jurisdictional boundaries

A scale dynamics approach to integrate landscape conservation within and across jurisdictional boundaries

Professional Jurisdictions and Intraprofessional Identity Dynamics: Doctors of Osteopathic Medicine and the Doctors of General Medicine.

Professional jurisdictional boundaries change throughout time due to a myriad of factors such as scientific advances, social changes, or governmental requirements. Research on the negotiation of these jurisdictional changes has primarily focused on the relational dynamics between professions that affect these boundaries. We examine two physician groups that considered jurisdictional changes which were initially antithetical to their core professional identity. The DOs grappled with whether or not to incorporate drug therapy into their practice, and generalist MDs had to decide whether or not to become a specialty. We find that jurisdictional negotiations also occur within a profession, not just between them. We argue that for a profession to pursue a change in scope, members must settle on an interpretation of their professional identity congruent with the potential jurisdictional change.

Insurgent Asylum Policies in European Cities: A Multi-Level Governance Perspective

Cities worldwide operate on the frontlines to support forced migrants. Some of these cities even overstep their formal prerogatives by refusing to comply with, and at times overtly subverting, the prescriptions of national authorities. This article builds a conceptual framework to understand such forms of insurgent urban asylum policy-making. We argue that insurgency depends on how city governments mediate the constraints and opportunities that emanate from the horizontal and vertical dimensions of multi-level governance, which capture city-level political dynamics as well as intergovernmental interactions. To illustrate our framework, we compare asylum policy-making in Barcelona, Milan, and Munich during the 2010s “refugee crisis.” While Munich invested in rather uncontroversial integration programs, Milan and Barcelona overstepped their jurisdictional boundaries and supported migrants considered “illegal” by national governments. These insurgent responses were enacted as a “remedy from below,” stemming from a sense of urgency that was not as pressing for Munich’s policy-makers because of the greater capacity of Germany’s asylum system.

Standing in Cost‐Benefit Analysis: Where, Who, What (Counts)?

AbstractWhose costs and benefits should count in cost‐benefit analysis (CBA)? This is an important practical question requiring answers for analysts because most government agencies offer only permissive or vague guidance. Drawing primarily on foundational CBA principles, we present a conceptual framework for specifying standing to answer three important boundary questions: Where? Who? What? First, a standing framework requires a definition of jurisdictional boundaries (the “where” question), whether national, subnational, or supranational. Second, a framework should be clear about which persons within the jurisdiction have standing (the “who” question). For example, should undocumented residents have standing? Third, the framework requires clarity on the standing of certain individual preferences (the “what” question), such as for harmfully addictive private or public goods that express “moral sentiments,” or when choices do not maximize the value of consumption. We seek to provide guidance for CBA practice within this framework.

A Framework for Characterizing the Multilateral and Directional Interaction Relationships Between PM Pollution at City Scale: A Case Study of 29 Cities in East China, South Korea and Japan.

Transboundary particulate matter (PM) pollution has become an increasingly significant public health issue around the world due to its impacts on human health. However, transboundary PM pollution is difficult to address because it usually travels across multiple urban jurisdictional boundaries with varying transportation directions at different times, therefore posing a challenge for urban managers to figure out who is potentially polluting whose air and how PM pollution in adjacent cities interact with each other. This study proposes a statistical analysis framework for characterizing directional interaction relationships between PM pollution in cities. Compared with chemical transport models (CTMs) and chemical composition analysis method, the proposed framework requires less data and less time, and is easy to implement and able to reveal directional interaction relationships between PM pollution in multiple cities in a quick and computationally inexpensive way. In order to demonstrate the application of the framework, this study applied the framework to analyze the interaction relationships between PM2.5 pollution in 29 cities in East China, South Korea and Japan using one year of hourly PM2.5 measurement data in 2018. The results show that the framework is able to reveal the significant multilateral and directional interaction relationships between PM2.5 pollution in the 29 cities in Northeast Asia. The analysis results of the case study show that the PM2.5 pollution in China, South Korea and Japan are linked with each other, and the interaction relationships are mutual. This study further evaluated the framework's validity by comparing the analysis results against the wind vector data, the back trajectory data, as well as the results extracted from existing literature that adopted CTMs to study the interaction relationships between PM pollution in Northeast Asia. The comparisons show that the analysis results produced by the framework are consistent with the wind vector data, the back trajectory data as well as the results using CTMs. The proposed framework provides an alternative for exploring transportation pathways and patterns of transboundary PM pollution between cities when CTMs and chemical composition analysis would be too demanding or impossible to implement.

Dynamic Habitat Models Reflect Interannual Movement of Cetaceans Within the California Current Ecosystem

The distribution of wide-ranging cetacean species often cross national or jurisdictional boundaries, which creates challenges for monitoring populations and managing anthropogenic impacts, especially if data are only available for a portion of the species’ range. Many species found off the U.S. West Coast are known to have continuous distributions into Mexican waters, with highly variable abundance within the U.S. portion of their range. This has contributed to annual variability in design-based abundance estimates from systematic shipboard surveys off the U.S. West Coast, particularly for the abundance of warm temperate species such as striped dolphin,Stenella coeruleoalba, which increases off California during warm-water conditions and decreases during cool-water conditions. Species distribution models (SDMs) can accurately describe shifts in cetacean distribution caused by changing environmental conditions, and are increasingly used for marine species management. However, until recently, data from waters off the Baja California peninsula, México, have not been available for modeling species ranges that span from Baja California to the U.S. West Coast. In this study, we combined data from 1992–2018 shipboard surveys to develop SDMs off the Pacific Coast of Baja California for ten taxonomically diverse cetaceans. We used a Generalized Additive Modeling framework to develop SDMs based on line-transect surveys and dynamic habitat variables from the Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM). Models were developed for ten species: long- and short-beaked common dolphins (Delphinus delphis delphis and D. d. bairdii), Risso’s dolphin (Grampus griseus), Pacific white-sided dolphin (Lagenorhynchus obliquidens), striped dolphin, common bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus), sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus), blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus), fin whale (B. physalus), and humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae). The SDMs provide the first fine-scale (approximately 9 x 9 km grid) estimates of average species density and abundance, including spatially-explicit measures of uncertainty, for waters off the Baja California peninsula. Results provide novel insights into cetacean ecology in this region as well as quantitative spatial data for the assessment and mitigation of anthropogenic impacts.

Exchange of Human Data Across International Boundaries.

There is a need to share personal data across jurisdictional boundaries. However, the laws regulating such transfers are not harmonized, and sometimes even conflict, causing challenges and occasional data stalls. This review describes the legal landscape for transfer of human data across international boundaries. The European Union's data protection legislation is used as the starting point for illustrating the legislation of countries across the world, how these diverge, and one's options for exchanging human data internationally in a legally compliant manner.

Institutional barriers to integrated marine spatial planning on the island of Ireland

Achieving sustainability goals in shared marine ecosystems is often undermined by different nation state marine governance systems, conflict over jurisdictional boundaries, and geopolitical differences. Moreover, Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) is politically charged in cross-border areas resulting in institutional fragmentation. Decision-making processes are embedded in different legislative approaches, cultures, fiscal, and administrative procedures which are unable to adequately consider the specificities of these areas. Greater integration is required to deliver sustainable outcomes. However, academic literature regarding integration in MSP fail to incorporate the co-evolution of institutions and this remains a wholly undeveloped area of MSP research. This paper contributes to the emerging MSP discourse by revisiting the understanding of institutional barriers to effective MSP implementation. The island of Ireland is selected as a case study to demonstrate how MSP legislation, policies and plans are emerging with limited coherence contrary to requirements under the EU MSP Directive 2014/89/EU and the UK Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009. Findings from series of interviews with key stakeholders on the island of Ireland are discussed. The analysis focuses on key barriers identified by utilising Ansong et al.’s ‘Wheel of Integration and Adaptation’ [1] under the themes of structural alignment, community and self-action, decision making, collaborative learning, leading structured intervention, and collaborative capacity. The paper concludes by presenting different intervention pathways to addressing the management and planning of contested marine areas.

Breaking down barriers to consistent, climate‐smart regulation of invasive plants: A case study of US Northeast states

AbstractEfforts to prevent the introduction and spread of new invasive plants are most effective when regulated species are consistent across jurisdictional boundaries and proactively prohibit species before they arrive or in the earliest stages of invasion. Consistent and proactive regulation is particularly important in the northeastern United States, which is susceptible to many new invasive plants due to climate change. Unfortunately, recent analyses of state regulated plant lists show that regulated species are neither consistent nor proactive. To understand why, we focus on two steps leading to invasive plant regulation across six northeastern states (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont): which sets of species are evaluated and how risk is assessed. Our analysis confirms previous findings that invasive plant regulations are inconsistent and reactive. Of the 128 plants regulated by one or more states, 54 were regulated by a single state and only 16 were regulated by all six states; regulated species tended to be widespread across the region (not proactive). These outcomes are largely driven by different sets of evaluated species. For example, neighboring states Vermont and New Hampshire evaluated 92 species in total, but only 26 overlapped. In addition, states rarely evaluated species that were absent from the state. Risk assessment protocols varied considerably across states, but consistently included criteria related to ecological impact, potential to establish, dispersal mechanisms, and life history traits. While none of the assessments explicitly consider climate change, they also did not contain language that would preclude regulating species that have not yet arrived in the state. To increase consistency and proactivity, states would benefit from (1) evaluating species identified as high risk by neighboring states and high‐risk, range‐shifting invasive species, both of which we compiled here, and (2) explicitly considering climate change when assessing “potential distribution” or “potential impact” of target species. Additionally, a mechanism for sharing knowledge and risk assessments regionally would benefit states with fewer resources to address invasive species threats. Presenting a unified defense against current and future threats is critical for reducing impacts from invasive species and is achievable with better state‐to‐state coordination.

Mapping local food self-sufficiency in the U.S. and the tradeoffs for food system diversity

The demand for ‘local food’ by U.S. consumers has grown markedly over the last several decades, accompanied by confusion over how to define local food. Is ‘local’ food defined by the location of the farm, food processing factory, distribution warehouse, or all three? Is ‘local’ food defined by geographic, political, or biophysical boundaries? Is ‘local’ solely farm-to-table or can it include factories? This study evaluates food commodity flow ‘localness’ using jurisdictional boundaries and physical distance to investigate the potential for food system transformation and the tradeoffs inherent to ‘localizing’ food production. We take a supply chain approach by making data-driven distinctions between farm-based flows of food and industrial, energy and nonfood (IENF) crops, and manufacturing/distribution flows of food and agriculturally-derived industrial inputs. We analyze the diversity, distance (a proxy for environmental impact), political boundaries, population, weight, and price (net selling value) of food commodity flows. The diversity of a community's food supply has an optimal range of zero to four-hundred miles. We find tradeoffs between food system diversity and local food sourcing, sustainability, and self-sufficiency. As communities look to improve food system resilience, they will need to balance food-miles and the other values associated with local food.

Managed and unmanaged whale mortality in the California Current Ecosystem

Whales serve important biological and cultural functions in the California Current ecosystem (CCE). Due to concerns regarding anthropogenic impacts on whales, the California Ocean Protection Council articulated a goal to achieve zero mortality for CCE whales, with a target of creating a statewide plan by 2022. Achieving zero mortality is a laudable but difficult goal as success depends on understanding the existing sources of mortality, the opportunities for policy change, and coordination of activities across the entire CCE. This review synthesizes the available research on drivers of mortality for nine whale species in the CCE and existing policy that addresses those drivers. Five main threats contribute to whale mortality in the CCE and are currently targeted through relevant policy responses: entanglement, vessel strikes, noise, water quality, and marine debris. Three threats remain largely unaddressed in management, despite their contribution to lethal and sublethal impacts on whales: nutritional stress, disease, and predation. Ultimately, sources of whale mortality are interconnected and their impacts span both geographic and jurisdictional boundaries, necessitating a holistic approach to managing whale mortality in the CCE.

Confronting Power Asymmetries in Partnerships to Address Grand Challenges

Much of the literature on multistakeholder partnerships that addresses grand challenges has extolled the virtues of such partnerships as a means of reducing uncertainty, acquiring resources, and solving local and global wicked problems. These virtues include opening up “access and agendas to wider participation” (Gray, 1989, p. 120), coordinating across jurisdictional boundaries, mobilizing diverse and heterogeneous actors, and generating novel solutions to address these complex problems. Yet partnerships are not panaceas, and the reasons they fall short of their stated aspirations remain underexplored. We argue that attention to the political landscape, and particularly who has power and who does not, can account for the shortfalls of many partnerships. Theory and practice can improve by considering power dynamics in the institutional field that shapes the context in which partnerships unfold and influences the problems partnerships are designed to affect. We consider four field conditions that differ with respect to the degree of power and alignment of goals among actors in the field. We discuss four trajectories of change originating from each of these field conditions that describe shifts in field-level power or alignment of goals: collaboration, contention, consciousness raising, and compliance. We explore the dynamics associated with each trajectory to show how fields may shift toward or away from conditions conducive to building and sustaining collaborative partnerships around grand challenges.

Climate refugia for Pinus spp. in topographic and bioclimatic environments of the Madrean sky islands of México and the United States

Climate refugia, or places where habitats are expected to remain relatively buffered from regional climate extremes, provide an important focus for science and conservation planning. Within high-priority, multi-jurisdictional landscapes like the Madrean sky islands of the United States and México, efforts to identify and manage climate refugia are hindered by the lack of high-quality and consistent transboundary datasets. To fill these data gaps, we assembled a bi-national field dataset (n = 1416) for five pine species (Pinus spp.) and used generalized boosted regression to model pine habitats in relation to topographic variability as a basis for identifying potential microrefugia at local scales in the context of current species’ distribution patterns. We developed additional models to quantify climatic refugial attributes using coarse scale bioclimatic variables and finer scale seasonal remote sensing indices. Terrain metrics including ruggedness, slope position, and aspect defined microrefugia for pines within elevation ranges preferred by each species. Response to bioclimatic variables indicated that small shifts in climate were important to some species (e.g., P. chihuahuana, P. strobiformis), but others exhibited a broader tolerance (e.g., P. arizonica). Response to seasonal climate was particularly important in modeling microrefugia for species with open canopy structure and where regular fires occur (e.g., P. engelmannii and P. chihuahuana). Hotspots of microrefugia differed among species and were either limited to northern islands or occurred across central or southern latitudes. Mapping and validation of refugia and their ecological functions are necessary steps in developing regional conservation strategies that cross jurisdictional boundaries. A salient application will be incorporation of climate refugia in management of fire to restore and maintain pine ecology. Una versión en español de este artículo está disponible como descarga.

Fiscal competition and state pension reforms

AbstractFiscal competition literature emphasizes the need to consider fiscal implications of the flow of labor and capital across jurisdictional boundaries. This open‐economy consideration raises issues for the analysis of fiscal policies, ranging from taxation and expenditure policies to the structure of intergovernmental relations and interjurisdictional competition. Using data on state population movement and pension reforms (2002−2015), this study examines whether the adoption of pension reforms was motivated by state government competition for the mobile tax base. The findings suggest that interstate migration has an influence on states’ enactment of pension reform, and the effect differs by state population density.