Environmental Governance Institutions Research Articles

Trustees of (Public) Reservations? U.S. Land Trusts and Neoliberalism as Bricolage

Land trusts are increasingly powerful institutions of U.S. environmental governance that deserve more critical scrutiny. As charitable conservation organizations, they enjoy the many advantages of nonprofit status under the claim that they provide broad public benefits. Critics, however, have recently challenged this claim, portraying land trusts as quintessential institutions of neoliberal privatization and hybrid governance. Through a conjunctural analysis of U.S. land trusts across the long twentieth century, and with specific attention to the first, the Trustees of Public Reservations (founded in 1893), this article argues that the treatment of land trusts as neoliberal institutions is both illuminating and limiting. As many critical analyses indicate, U.S. land trusts today tend to privatize governance and facilitate the use of public funds for projects with significant private benefit. I argue, however, that the conceptualization of land trusts as institutions of neoliberal environmental governance also obscures the fact that, across their long history, they are an expression of the contradictions of decentralized land-use planning under capitalism. Most broadly, I suggest that rigorous conjunctural analysis can help geographers refine their conceptualization of neoliberalism and move beyond its limits.

Multi-stakeholder Initiatives and Legitimacy: A Deliberative Systems Perspective

The legitimacy of multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) as institutions for social and environmental governance in the global economy has received much scholarly attention over the past years. To date, however, research has yet to focus on assessing the legitimacy of MSIs in their interactions with other actors within larger systems of deliberation. Drawing on the deliberative systems perspective developed within deliberative democracy theory, we theorise a normative framework to evaluate the roles of MSIs within the broader systems of governance they co-construct through their interactions with other initiatives, governments, non-governmental organisations, and other external actors. As we demonstrate in our evaluation of the illustrative case of the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety as a MSI in the context of the Bangladeshi garment industry, this framework can help researchers assess whether a MSI ultimately serves to enhance or undermine the deliberative legitimacy of the overall system of which it forms a part.

Struggles for recognitional justice through payments for ecosystem services contracts in Ecuador’s Andes

Programs based upon payments for ecosystem services may carry pervasive attitudes, ideas, and language that confront pre-existing institutional arrangements for land management and local concepts of socio-environmental relationships. Through an empirical case study of a water trust fund payments for ecosystem services model in the Ecuadorian Andes, this research examines contracts as an important component of conservation incentive projects that can reveal contention over the representation of human-environment relationships and environmental governance institutions. The study highlights how neoliberal visions of environmental management are challenged and reworked by communities in an effort to gain justice through recognition and visibility for pre-existing collective land management practices. While this analysis demonstrates how underlying neoliberal assumptions about socioenvironmental relationships may inform water trust fund conservation interventions, it also shows the role of local agency in co-constituting landscape management outcomes and underscore the unevenness of neoliberalism present in the various components of a payments for ecosystem services model operating at different sites and scales.

Mismatches in salmon social–ecological systems: Challenges and opportunities for (re)alignment in the Skeena River watershed

Mismatches between institutions and social–ecological systems (SESs) are one of the foremost challenges in natural resource management. However, while mismatches are often cited in the literature as a major challenge, empirical evidence of mismatches and their consequences is limited. This is particularly true for complex SESs, such as on the Pacific Coast of North America, where salmon drive interactions across multiple environments, jurisdictions, and scales. Here, I use the theoretical concept of fit to examine institutional alignment in a large-scale Pacific salmon SES, the Skeena River watershed in British Columbia, Canada. Utilizing Canadian federal environmental assessments as a proxy for colonial environmental governance institutions, I describe the common causes and consequences of mismatches between institutions and salmon SESs. This case study suggests that mismatches are threatening salmon sustainability and negatively affecting Indigenous People’s rights, livelihoods, and approaches to resource management and stewardship. I argue that improving social–ecological fit in salmon SESs will require new or revitalized forms of environmental governance that consciously fit the underlying social–ecological dynamics. While these findings are based on the Skeena River watershed, they may be generalizable to other salmon SESs in which mismatches between social and ecological processes and institutions exist.

Operationalising Indigenous data sovereignty in environmental research and governance

In the face of climate change, Western environmental research and governance processes and institutions are increasingly seeking to learn from and harness Indigenous peoples knowledges, perspectives, and practices of land and water management. There are both opportunities and risks for Indigenous groups seeking to exploit these opportunities to (re)connect with their homelands and reinvigorate dormant cultural practices. This article considers these issues by highlighting the barriers, risks, and opportunities, across three case environmental study sites – cultural burning, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping, and marine science. We offer Indigenous data sovereignty and Indigenous data governance as both guiding principles and a practical blueprint that can make safe these intercultural environmental collaborations by mitigating against perverse or unintended consequences of Indigenous knowledge theft, as well as maximising opportunities to foster sustainable self-determination and self-governance.

Political Economy of Global Environmental Governance Institutions: Future Collaborations between China and USA

Political Economy of Global Environmental Governance Institutions: Future Collaborations between China and USA

Bens comuns e desenvolvimento sustentável: As contribuições da Área de Proteção Ambiental Costa dos Corais

Common-use resources produce goods that combine characteristics of both private and public goods, making the management of these resources more complex. The Costa dos Corais Environmental Protection Area (APA) was established between the states of Alagoas and Pernambuco with the main objective of conserving coral reefs, seeking to organize economic activities that use common resources in its area of ​​influence. This paper presents an analysis of the contributions of APA Costa dos Corais to sustainable development in the North Coast region of Alagoas, which comprises the municipalities of Passo de Camaragibe, São Miguel dos Milagres, Porto de Pedras, Japaratinga and Maragogi, whose economies exploit the resources of the Beach Zone (ZP) and the Visitation Zones (ZV), better known as natural pools. In addition to the socio-economic and environmental characterization, we characterized the environmental governance organizations and institutions operating in the region, using secondary and primary data from semi-structured interviews. We conclude that the implementation of the APA Costa dos Corais generated a great benefit to local socio-biodiversity by regulating and disciplining socioeconomic activities, exerting a strong influence on the municipalities covered, in view of the role played by the main manager of the APA, ICMBio Costa of the Corals, for two reasons: the quality of its bureaucracy compensates the weakness of municipal and state governments in the environmental management of the region, and the polycentric nature of its management, shared with all socioeconomic segments involved, corroborated by the high degree of legitimacy of the agency expressed by the interviewees.

Navigating Shifting Regimes of Ocean Governance

Recent decades have seen a rapid increase in the diversity of ocean uses and threats, leading to the Anthropocene ocean: a place fraught with challenges for governance such as resource collapse, pollution, and changing sea levels and ocean chemistry. Here we review shifts in ocean governance regimes from the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the first legal regime for the global ocean, to Sustainable Development Goal 14 and beyond. This second period represents a merging of growing international interest in the ocean as part of the global sustainable development agenda—characterized by a focus on knowledge, collaboration, and the formation of alliances between diverse actors and institutions of environmental governance. To conduct this review, we analyzed literature on changing actors, regimes, and institutional arrangements for ocean governance over time. We conclude with a summary of challenges and opportunities for future ocean governance.

A conceptual framework for exploring voluntary stewardship programs for land managers as a tool of New Environmental Governance

ABSTRACTNew Environmental Governance describes the widening over the past five decades of the range of public and private instruments, institutions, and actors available to govern the environment. But implementing New Environmental Governance arrangements has been difficult. This article responds to the call for more context-specific empirical investigations to better understand how New Environmental Governance institutions work in practice, by focusing on one tool in the expanded array of options – non-government voluntary stewardship programs for private land managers. The article applies a conceptual framework to three working examples of voluntary stewardship using a qualitative methodology to tease out key elements of their operations and unpack the relationship amongst three groups of actors – land managers who participate in the programs, organisations that manage the programs, and stakeholders who have an interest in private land stewardship. Important tensions emerge from the research, which revolve around the lack of strategic alignment between land managers’ participation in programs and how stakeholders leverage their influence. These tensions limit the potential of stewardship programs as tools of New Environmental Governance arrangements.

Intergovernmental relations for environmental governance: Cases of solid waste management and climate change in two Malaysian States

Institutions for environmental governance evolve differently across sectors. They also vary in the same sector when governments at two levels (national and subnational) have different political alignments. As the policy environment becomes more complex, with global problems like climate change, and politics more dividing, better coordination among various levels of government is a tough governance challenge. Scholars and practitioners need to realize how best to build institutions to bridge the various levels of government in different political environments and environmental sectors. This research analyzes the influence of intergovernmental relations in two environmental sectors in two localities with contrasting political alignments between two levels of government. It draws lessons from solid waste management and climate policy in two Malaysian states (Johor and Penang). In an evolving State and new policy arenas, when formal institutions for intergovernmental relations may not be effectively in place, politics play an even larger role through the discretionary power of federal and subnational authorities. An open political process can help with the engagement of different political groups and civil society to bring legitimacy, resources and efficiency to environmental management, if it is done with robust intergovernmental institutions; otherwise, intergovernmental relations can also become a tool for zero-sum games, cronyism and patrimonialism, which can undermine policies, and result in inefficiencies and ineffectiveness in environmental management.

The politics of a natural laboratory: Claiming territory and governing life in the Galápagos Islands.

The Galápagos Islands are often called a natural laboratory of evolution. This metaphor provides a powerful way of understanding space that, through scientific research, conservation and tourism, has shaped the archipelago over the past century. Combining environmental histories of field science with political ecologies of conservation biopower, this article foregrounds the territorial production of the archipelago as a living laboratory. In the mid-twentieth century, foreign naturalists used the metaphor to make land claims as they campaigned to create the Galápagos National Park and Charles Darwin Research Station. Unlike earlier 'parks for science', these institutions were not established under colonial rule, but through postwar institutions of transnational environmental governance that nonetheless continued colonial approaches to nature protection. In the following decades, the metaphor became a rationale for territorial management through biopolitical strategies designed to ensure isolation by controlling human access and introduced species. This article's approach extends the scope of what is at stake in histories of field science: not only the production of knowledge and authority of knowledge claims, but also the foundation of global environmental governance and authority over life and death in particular places. Yet while the natural laboratory was a powerful geographical imagination, analysis shows that it was also an unsustainable goal.

THE FIRST ANTROPOCENE UTOPIA

Abstract This article proposes an aggiornamento of the “sustainable development” ideal. It addresses four controversial terms, which enable us to foresee that “sustainable development” will very likely become the first utopia of the Anthropocene epoch. Taking into account the Agenda 2030, if the decision criteria are based on the rhetoric of international relations, particularly as used within the framework of the United Nations, it can certainly be concluded that sustainable development has already become the great contemporary utopia. However, if global governance is used as the criterion, this may not be the case, since environmental governance institutions are not yet comparable to development governance institutions. Strictly speaking, there is no global governance of sustainability, unless this notion is restricted to environmental issues.

Cultural resources and public trust shape attitudes toward climate change and preferred futures—A case study among the Norwegian public

Since climate change mitigation likely will affect most sectors of society, adapting to climate change essentially requires the public to envision and adjust to alternative futures. There is a need for more studies on the social basis for climate change asking why people hold the attitudes they do, rather than the dominant tendency to ask how to change attitudes and behavior. Research in different fields show that fundamental life values and worldviews are shaped through life and heavily influenced by early life socialization and culture, which in turn can shape attitudes toward specific phenomena like climate change. We surveyed a representative sample of the Norwegian public and examined how cultural resources and trust in environmental governance institutions are related to attitudes toward climate change. High levels of trust are associated with a tendency to perceive climate change as human caused, and low levels of trust correspond with stronger beliefs that climate change are natural phenomena. High levels of cultural resources are found among climate change deniers as well as believers, indicating that groups with different political, professional and intellectual orientations, as well as life histories, may not trust climate change science. We argue that improved knowledge about the social basis for climate change is an imperative part of futures-oriented expertise.

Evaluation of environmental performance based on SBM-Tobit two-stage model

Governments are the main institutions of environmental governance, but the investment-output results of environmental governance differ across different governments. This paper uses the SBM model to measure the static performance of environmental governance in eastern China from 2008 to 2014, and then uses Tobit regression analysis to identify factors influencing environmental performance. The results show that the environmental performance of seven provinces has a relatively large variation, and the proportion of environmental governance investment in GDP has the greatest impact on environmental performance.

Evaluation of environmental performance based on SBM-Tobit two-stage model

Governments are the main institutions of environmental governance, but the investment-output results of environmental governance differ across different governments. This paper uses the SBM model to measure the static performance of environmental governance in eastern China from 2008 to 2014, and then uses Tobit regression analysis to identify factors influencing environmental performance. The results show that the environmental performance of seven provinces has a relatively large variation, and the proportion of environmental governance investment in GDP has the greatest impact on environmental performance.

Mind the gap: institutional considerations for gender-inclusive climate change policy in Sub-Saharan Africa

ABSTRACTThis paper positions climate change against the backdrop of gender, premised on the understanding that neither climate change impacts nor responses are gender neutral, therefore institutions need to respond accordingly. Institutions play a central role in facilitating policy effects and forming major nodes of interaction as well as determining the accentuation of risk. Drawing on examples from different parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, the paper seeks to elucidate why women should be placed at the heart of climate change interventions. Establishing the appropriate connections between gender and climate change will enhance the opportunities for problem-solving and can increase the efficiency and effectiveness of policy-making. The gendered aspects of climate change and environmental relations are analysed by using an African feminist approach as the theoretical framework to expand and expound upon this position. This paper also investigates institutional matters pertaining to the management of environmental resources and highlights some of the constraints that need to be overcome in order to ensure the inclusion and empowerment of women in the management of these resources. It concludes by calling for a thorough understanding of the gender-based power relations in the agendas and activities of environmental governance institutions at all levels in society.

SMART social science? Examining the nature and role of social scientific expertise in institutional design

Daniel Bromley argues against Oran Young’s FIT model as a basis for environmental governance, on the grounds that humans cannot manage nature and that attempts to do so are based on a scientistic, modernist conceit. At issue is the role of natural and social scientists in adjudicating questions about what we ought to do to close governance gaps and address unsustainable behaviors. If Bromley is right, then the lessons of the American pragmatist tradition recommend against attempts to “fit” social institutions to the natural world. The first objective of this paper is to argue that Bromley’s view is not in keeping with the pragmatism of C. S. Peirce and John Dewey, which actually places a high value on natural and social scientific modes of inquiry in the service of social ends. I argue that Young’s proposal is in fact a development of the pragmatist idea that social institutions must be fit in the sense of fitness, i.e., resilient and able to navigate uncertainty. Social institutions must also evolve to accommodate the emerging values of the agents who operate within them. The second objective of this paper is to examine the role of social science expertise in the design of social policies. Governance institutions typically rely on the testimony of natural scientists, at least in part, to understand the natural systems they operate within. However, natural systems are also social systems, so it seems pertinent to ask whether there is a role for social systems experts to play in helping to design environmental governance institutions. I argue that social scientists can make a unique contribution as experts on social institutions, and as such, are necessary to bring about a transformation of the unsustainable institutions that are preventing us from achieving stated sustainable development goals.

Human rights and the environment in the Anthropocene

Human rights are considered ethical demands that operate at an elevated juridical level. They have become popular legal constructs that contribute to the traditional instrumentalist and the more esoteric functions of law. While there is often considerable criticism leveled against human rights, as creatures of law and as legal mechanisms possessing unique characteristics, they are also uniquely situated and able to perform a singular mediating role in the human–environment interface. The recent mushrooming of rights to a healthy environment, environmental-related procedural rights and other substantive political and socio-economic rights bearing on environmental interests, is testimony to their increasing popularity. Yet, despite their prevalence in the environmental regulatory domain, the arrival of the Anthropocene is possibly set to require a complete rethink of the way in which we use human rights to mediate the human–environment interface. This is because the Anthropocene presents an urgent call for dramatic regulatory interventions of a kind hitherto unseen. Accepting the continuing prevalence of human rights as part of the environmental regulatory domain, this article argues that there is every reason to believe that their traditional role, nature, objectives and construction should change because of the Anthropocene. The article carries this argument by discussing the Anthropocene and its features that might influence conceptions of human rights and the environment as they are currently embedded in the social institutions of environmental law and governance. The argument then uses climate change as a useful explanatory context to identify and to understand the different types of rights issues that might arise in the Anthropocene. The next part of the discussion then takes stock of human rights in the environmental context by evaluating the way in which they currently mediate the human–environment interface. The article concludes with suggestions founding a re-imagination of the relationship between human rights and the environment in the Anthropocene.

“Much in Blood and Money”: Necropolitical Ecology on the Margins of the Uganda Protectorate

AbstractIncreasingly, political ecologists invoke the concept of “green grabbing” to refer to the ways in which processes of accumulation by dispossession articulate with various imperatives for environmental protection. This paper traces these contemporary processes to their roots in the colonial era, focusing on how dispossession in the name of environmental protection intersects with complex historical geographies of state formation and internal territorialisation. Drawing upon the case of Mount Elgon in Britain's Uganda Protectorate, in particular, we reconstruct the ways in which the interrelated “birth” of both conservation and transcontinental agrarian markets were intimately connected to the emergence and normalisation of the colonial state itself. In doing so, we propose the term necropolitical ecology as a framework to encompass the ways in which contemporary “green grabs” partially emerge from racialised modes of colonial appropriation, the violence of which often still lingers in agencies and institutions of environmental governance in the contemporary postcolony.

Governing the ice. Ice fishing villages on Lake Mille Lacs and the creation of environmental governance institutions

We identify four choice dimensions that determine the configuration and evolution of governance: formal-informal institutions, network-central steering, local-scientific knowledge and representation-participation. Choices on one dimension affect choices on the other dimensions, which naturally leads to historical dependency. We integrate these insights in a model of governance evolution that revolves around actor/institution configurations and power/knowledge configurations. In a case study of ice fishing villages on Minnesota's Lake Mille Lacs, we investigate one specific set of couplings between the choice dimensions. As we can study the local ice fishing tradition from its very beginning, the evolutionary paths of technology and institutions provide insights into how choices were made along the different dimensions and how they interacted. The case study illustrates how to apply the model, but also contributes to its further development as it draws attention to possible extensions: concepts of scale and identity.