Institutional innovation in urban governance: The case of climate change adaptation

Urban governance systems need to be adaptive to deal with emerging uncertainties and pressures, including those related to climate change. Realising adaptive urban governance systems requires attention to institutions, and in particular, processes of institutional innovation. Interestingly, understanding of how institutional innovation and change occurs remains a key conceptual weakness in urban climate change governance. This paper explores how institutional innovation in urban climate change governance can be conceptualised and analysed. We develop a heuristic involving three levels: (1) “visible” changes in institutional arrangements, (2) changes in underlying “rules-in-use”, and (3) the relationship to broader “governance dilemmas”. We then explore the utility of this heuristic through an exploratory case study of urban water governance in Santiago, Chile. The approach presented opens up novel possibilities for studying institutional innovation and evaluating changes in governance systems. The paper contributes to debates on innovation and its effects in urban governance, particularly under climate change.     

The design of decision-making: participatory budgeting and the production of localism

This paper examines participatory budgeting (PB) as an instrument of localism – the devolution of political governance with the aim to produce sustainable democratic communities. This will be achieved through a detailed exploration of the decision-making mechanisms for creating local governance through PB schemes designed and organised by the Cornwall Council (UK). First introduced in the UK by the previous Labour administration in 2008, PB has become a tool of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government and is central to the neoliberal ethos of Big Society and localism. In a time of rapid political change, we respond to Eaton's [2008. From feeding the locals to selling the locale: adapting local sustainable food projects in Niagara to neocommunitarianism and neoliberalism. Geoforum, 39, 994–1006, 996] suggestion that greater attention be paid to “the specificities of particular neoliberal projects” by focusing on the micro-politics of PB. We draw upon empirical evidence from PB pilot schemes run in rural Cornwall in 2008, examining the effect of “nudging” decision-making. Grounding this inquiry in the existing literature on neoliberal statecraft, this paper investigates the role of government technologies which seek to frame local governance using mechanisms of libertarian paternalism [Painter, J., 2008. European citizenship and the regions. European Urban and Regional Studies, 15, 5–19; Painter, J., 2010. Rethinking territory. Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, 42, 1090–1118; MacLeavy, J., 2008. Neoliberlising subjects: the legacy of new labour's construction of social exclusion in local governance. Geoforum, 39, 1657–1666]. We argue in this paper that neoliberal ideology has integrated the epistemology of behavioural economics. We draw conclusions commensurate with the outcomes of PB projects conducted in Latin America, namely that citizens can be steered towards making certain decisions. We assert that in order to direct decision-making successfully, governmental “top-down” frameworks and goals need to be married with local geographies and “bottom-up” local desires and aspirations, thereby enabling a “countervailing power” [Sintomer, Y., Herzberg, C. and Rocke, A., 2008. Participatory budgeting in Europe: potentials and challenges. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 32, 164–178] to develop. This power is exercised by a participating and scrutinising citizen that contribute towards, and balance, governmental practices of PB. With a wider governmental emphasis on designing or “architecting” choice in opportunities for local governing, there is now an even greater necessity to recognise the context of geography in local government community-orientated initiatives.     

Voice,power, and history: ensuring social justice for all stakeholders in water decision-making

Public participation in water decision-making is an accepted and expected practice. It is expected to lead to better decisions and ensure fairness by satisfying peoples' understanding of democracy and their “right” to participate in decisions that affect them. However, despite years of experience and “best practices”, governing bodies at all levels struggle to implement successful, genuine participation that leads to fair decisions. Ultimately, decision-making about natural resources such as water is a process that takes place in a wider power context where some groups have greater access to sources of power and entitlements. This research applies a “Social Justice Framework” (SJF) to examine the experiences of different stakeholder groups in making their voices heard during water reform processes in the Murray–Darling Basin in Australia. The experiences of croppers and graziers in two different floodplains show how historical advantages and disadvantages affect the power balance between different stakeholder groups and their ability to participate in and influence water decision-making. Applying the three components of the SJF, distributive, procedural and interactive justice, in water decision-making should lead to greater equity in distribution and underline the importance of good governance in decision-making processes.     

Old ways for new days: Australian Indigenous peoples and climate change

ABSTRACT

This paper explores how Australia's Indigenous peoples understand and respond to climate change impacts on their traditional land and seas. Our results show that: (i) Indigenous peoples are observing modifications to their country due to climate change, and are doing so in both ancient and colonial time scales; (ii) the ways that climate change terminology is discursively understood and used is fundamental to achieving deep engagement and effective adaptive governance; (iii) Indigenous peoples in Australia exhibit a high level of agency via diverse approaches to climate adaptation; and (iv) humour is perceived as an important cultural component of engagement about climate change and adaptation. However, wider governance regimes consistently attempt to “upscale” Indigenous initiatives into their own culturally governed frameworks - or ignore them totally as they “don't fit” within neoliberal policy regimes. We argue that an opportunity exists to acknowledge the ways in which Indigenous peoples are agents of their own change, and to support the strategic localism of Indigenous adaptation approaches through tailored and place-based adaptation for traditional country.     

Shale gas development and community response: perspectives from Treaty 8 territory,British Columbia

Northeast British Columbia (BC), Canada, is the site of a fast-growing shale gas industry that is a cornerstone of the current provincial government's economic policy. In this paper, we explore the perspectives of local First Nations (members of Treaty 8) regarding governance of this industry, focusing in particular on the experiences of the Fort Nelson First Nation (FNFN). Based on findings from 15 in-depth interviews with staff from four Treaty 8 First Nations, the Treaty 8 Tribal Association, oil and gas companies, and the Government of BC, we argue that current governance processes fail to adequately protect the environment and treaty rights. We also explore the diverse tactics that the FNFN is using to gain influence over shale gas development within its territories as the Nation seeks to achieve “balanced development” that protects the local ecology and treaty rights while maximising local economic benefits. Through an array of tactics and collaboration with diverse actors, the FNFN has been partially successful in challenging industry's social license to operate and has brought the provincial government back to the table to negotiate new decision-making arrangements on a “government to government” basis. Still, the regulation and management of a fast-paced global industry are a vast burden for a small community to bear. The FNFN's work has also shown the need for further research on how local efforts for equitable and environmentally sustainable approaches to shale gas regulation can be scaled up, institutionalised, and used to create political opportunities in other contexts.     

Multi-level water governance – the case of the Morsa River Basin in Norway

Management of fresh water resources meets a range of often conflicting interests. Waterways usually run across political and administrative borders and hence make management difficult and collective action politically challenging. In order to meet these challenges, multi-level bioregional approaches to water management have been called for. Such an approach is institutionalised in the EU's Water Framework Directive (WFD). This paper presents the experiences of the Morsa water sub-district in southern Norway, a pilot for implementing the WFD. The paper discusses Morsa in the light of four principles for multi-level water governance: management on a bioregional scale; polycentric governance; public participation; and an experimental approach to water governance. Contrary to widely held assumptions that collective action in polycentric networks will be difficult because actors will follow their own narrow interests, the findings demonstrate how this is not an absolute truth, and how social action cannot be fully explained by rational action theories. The analysis concludes that the relative success of Morsa relates to a complex of factors, including openness of practices and active involvement of key actors, strong but including leadership, and a knowledge based ‘hybrid’ type of multi-level network combining horizontal and vertical network governance.     

Mapping divergent concepts of sustainability: lay knowledge,local practices and environmental governance

This paper examines local sustainability concepts in Connemara, a predominantly rural region in the West of Ireland (in this paper, the term “Ireland” refers to the Republic of Ireland), to show how they are (re-)constituted through people's interactions with social and biophysical environments. We argue that these interactions produce diverse forms of lay environmental knowledge and expertise that encompass cognitive and emotional aspects, a fact that is frequently ignored in environmental policy-making which prioritises rational arguments over reactions rooted in people's sense of place and community. Local people's responses to this dominance of “official” rational-technical sustainability concepts are central to recent cases of environmental controversy and lack of compliance to environmental policies that have characterised the study area but that show many parallels to conflicts and disputes elsewhere. Drawing on rich qualitative evidence from interviews and ethnographic fieldwork, this paper demonstrates how communities' responses to environmental policies depend on how well (or poorly) sustainability concepts underpinning these policies match local people's social-ecological practices and related place-specific views of what should be sustained.     

Environmental Subsidiarity as a Guiding Principle for Forestry Governance: Application to Payment for Ecosystem Services and REDD+ Architecture

This article describes and proposes the “environmental subsidiarity principle” as a guiding ethical value in forestry governance. Different trends in environmental management such as local participation, decentralization or global governance have emerged in the last two decades at the global, national and local level. This article suggests that the conscious or unconscious application of subsidiarity has been the ruling principle that has allocated the level at which tasks have been assigned to different agents. Based on this hypothesis this paper describes the principle of subsidiarity and its application to environmental policies within forest governance and proposes the “environmental subsidiarity” principle as a critical conceptual tool for sustainable resource management. The paper explains as an example how “environmental subsidiarity” is the key principle that can link payment for ecosystem services (PES) with environmental public policies and applies this principle with all its political consequences to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and enhancing forest carbon stocks in developing countries (REDD+) architecture. It concludes by showing how the adoption of “environmental subsidiarity” as a ethical principle could help to maximize benefits to all stakeholders involved in PES schemes such as REDD+.     

IMPROVING WATER RESOURCE ALLOCATION THROUGH DEMAND-ORIENTED WATER POLICY1

ABSTRACT. In the arid and semi-arid regions of the Western United States the water problem is generally perceived as one of “inadequate” supply. This conception of the problem engenders supply-oriented water policy, or policy focusing exclusively upon a single class of solutions–the various schemes for augmenting an area's water supply. In a more complete or balanced conceptualization, the water problem is viewed as one of “inadequate” supply and/or “excessive” demand. When the water problem is so conceived, water policy is broadened to include demand-oriented water policy, or policy aimed at reducing the quantity of water demanded in an area. The purpose of this paper is to describe and explain demand-oriented water policy. Basically it consists of changing the set of commodities produced by the economy, cutting back and/or eliminating goods requiring large quantities of water in their production and introducing and/or expanding goods which require little water. This paper also reports briefly on research undertaken to test demand-oriented policy in Arizona. Results indicate that such a policy can be extremely efficacious in solving a region's water problem.     

Re-examining the water affordability: A comparison of alternative measures

Water affordability is determined by the percentage of income households that must allocate to municipal water services, while factoring in essential or basic needs water use. With the rise in water prices reported in most areas of the country along with somewhat stagnant income growth—a combination that suggests ceteris paribus—more of a household's disposable income is being spent on water services. This paper adds to the discussion in three ways. First, given the lack of a consistent definition for “affordability” and the subjective connotation associated with such a term, we develop and compare five different water expenditure ratios, including two different measures of water for essential needs, as well as measures for indoor, efficient, and actual water use. Second, because of the granularity of our data, we illustrate how such “affordability” measures can vary significantly within a water district and thus highlight how using district- or county-level income measures can mask the degree to which affordability is an issue for households living in low-income block groups. Our results indicate that the choice of income measure and type of water service use can influence affordability measures substantially.     

Governmentality,environmental subjectivity,and urban intensification

This article delineates concepts of eco-modernisation and urban sustainability (including its associated discourses), elucidating Foucault's notion of governmentality and examining select moments of contested urban governance in the neighbourhood of Old Ottawa South, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It shows how intensification – a “compact city approach” to urban sustainability – as both policy and practice, serves to both discipline and regulate by “conducting the conduct” of environmental and entrepreneurial subjects. It reveals that zoning has more explicitly become a political technology (albeit a flexible one) for achieving “highest and best use” of private property, privileging intensification projects proposed by developers, through a hierarchical exercise of state power that privileges market processes, while undermining community values and priorities.     

Bridging conceptual “silos”: bringing together health promotion and sustainability governance for practitioners at the landscape scale

Environmental health issues are examples of “wicked problems” that require cross-sectoral collaboration at the community level, yet health practitioners and environmental stakeholders find it challenging to see how and why they could be working together. Supportive organisations have been identified as the most vital enabler for individual professionals to participate actively in cross-sectoral initiatives. Ability to justify inter-professional cooperation makes it easier for practitioners to gain the necessary approvals within their institutional mandates. This paper introduces a new conceptual framework that bridges health promotion and sustainability governance to facilitate practical cross-sectoral collaboration that targets complex health-related environmental and social-ecological challenges. The proposed framework integrates six concrete overlapping themes linking health promotion and sustainability governance. The framework also highlights examples of areas where the fields could benefit from one another. Moreover, children's environmental health is proposed as a desirable overall outcome and an attractive venue for potential collaboration, because of its critical role in the public health and well-being of future generations. As a determinant of adult health, children's environmental health emphasises the vital interdependencies between health and the environment.     

Victoria's emerging framework of regional governance for sustainability: the case of catchment management authorities and regional catchment strategies

The aim of this paper is to presents a progress report on how a subnational jurisdiction, the Australian state of Victoria, is attempting to implement regional governance for sustainability through its catchment planning framework. The paper examines the lessons learnt from a best practice approach to the implementation of network governance to see whether there are actions that can be taken to improve regional governance for sustainability in Victoria. The authors argue that Victoria is implementing a network governance approach to natural resource management (NRM) as a significant component of sustainability and that this has certain advantages. In particular the emergence of Regional Catchment Strategies developed by the State's ten statutory Catchment Management Authorities as 'regional sustainability blueprints' is bringing a significant level of maturity to the state's governance framework. Furthermore the state is currently working to complete its governance for sustainability through new statewide integrating frameworks—an Environmental Sustainability Framework as well as a statewide Catchment Management and Investment Framework. The paper concludes that taking a network governance approach could have transformative potential but there are significant challenges ahead: the complex task of aligning of national, state, catchment and local government strategies through an outcomes focus; the scarcity of mechanisms and tools to assist in translation of strategies into integrated investment priorities; gaps in knowledge and understanding of natural resource management problems; limitations in the capacity of regional and local bodies, including local government; and getting the policy tools right within the framework. However, as the best practice examples illustrate, taking a gradual approach to the development of the institutions—building on successive wins in capacity—is the best and only way to proceed.     

The role of rural communities in the transition to a low-carbon Scotland: a review

The Scottish Government is committed to carbon reduction targets which are the most ambitious across the devolved administrations of the UK. Whilst Scotland operates within broader international and UK policy contexts, it has developed particular programmes and approaches to engage communities in the transition towards low-carbon futures. Rural areas have a role in the transition to a low-carbon Scotland; however, beyond land use and agriculture contributions, little research has explored the “rural” dimension of “low-carbon” transitions. The paper presents a policy and literature review relating to the low-carbon agenda in Scotland. It reflects on Scottish low-carbon policy and governance, the positioning of “rural communities” within this, and the opportunities and challenges this might present. Based on this, we develop an understanding of how rural communities may contribute to a low-carbon Scotland and identify a future research agenda to explore in more detail the nature and relative effectiveness of diverse governance structures to support this.     

Football and climate change: strange bedfellows or a means of going beyond the usual suspects in encouraging pro-environmental behavioural change?

Academics and policy-makers claim that community-based organisations may be able to encourage individuals to adopt pro-environmental behavioural changes; however, at present, there is limited research-based evidence to support this assertion. This paper sets out to provide a contribution to the evidence base by examining the role that community can play in tackling climate change. It does this through a case study analysis of a community-based pro-environmental behavioural-change campaign – Ipswich Town Football Club's “Save Your Energy for the Blues” campaign. The paper examines existing theories on encouraging behavioural change based on a range of cognitive and contextual constraints. Based on the findings of this research, the paper goes on to suggest that by focusing on the individual as the appropriate unit of change, much current policy fails to incorporate the contextual constraints that may limit an individual's ability to adopt behavioural change regardless of their willingness to do so. The case study analysis indicates how framing of appropriate responses to climate change in a largely positive light, with a range of individual, collective and environmental benefits, is shown to have resonated strongly with many participants in the campaign, including a significant number whose participation was not based on pro-environmental values.     

ISO 14000 and information systems—where's the link?

Two of the most frequently heard questions from environmental managers are “What should my company do about ISO 14000?” and “How can I use computer systems to reduce my staff's paperwork burden?” There are experts available to answer each of these questions, but thus far there has been little attention paid to how the two intersect and reinforce each other. This article explores this intersection and helps environmental managers implement information systems that have lasting value and, at the same time, support the ISO 14000 effort.     

A green garden on red clay: creating a new urban common as a form of political gardening in Cologne,Germany

In March 2012, a brownfield site in Cologne was transformed into “a green garden on red clay”, when a community garden called NeuLand (new land) was created. This paper investigates in how far NeuLand is typical for a new form of political engagement 2.0, focused on local problems at people's doorstep rather than global critiques of political systems, which finds its expression in direct actions typical for the networked society, e.g. “green flash mobs.” Its potential to provide a blueprint for imagining and enacting alternative futures and new ways for citizens to claim their “right to the city” is being assessed. NeuLand provides an experiment with new forms of (urban) commons and possibly a (re)turn to the “liveable city” to replace the current neoliberal ideal of the “entrepreneurial city” [Harvey, D., 1989. From manageralism to entrepreneuralism: the transformation of urban governance in late capitalism. Geografiska Annaler, Series B, Human Geography, 71 (1), 3–17], developing new solutions to problems of urban management and city development that extend beyond the voluntary engagement of citizens within the logic of the neoliberal “big society.” Extending the scope beyond the analysis of urban gardening projects as examples of sustainable food production, or as vehicles for fostering community cohesion, integration or social capital, the NeuLand experiment is linked to wider debates of alternative and more sustainable socio-ecological futures than those currently practised in the newly “neoliberalizing cities” of Germany.     

Turning the tide: Enabling sustainable development for Africa's mobile pastoralists

Sustainable development for Africa's mobile pastoralists is slowly becoming a reality. Success depends to a large extent on understanding the dynamics of drylands environments, accepting the logic of customary mobile livestock keeping, and enabling effective governance. Appropriate investment in pastoralism requires a clear understanding of the values that are attached to it and innovative approaches to marketing of the goods and services that emanate from the system. To make development truly sustainable it is imperative that the environmental services of pastoralism are recognised, rewarded and promoted. Constraints to sustainable pastoral development include low and misdirected public and private investment, weak security of resource rights, low human capital, weak pastoral voice and poor governance. Successful and sustainable development is observed in pastoral regions where customary governance has been legitimized, resource rights secured and economic development of the pastoral sector, as opposed to transformation of livestock keeping, has prevailed. This article presents state‐of‐the‐art knowledge on sustainable pastoralism, gathered through the GEF/UNDP/IUCN World Initiative for Sustainable Pastoralism (WISP), with data and case studies taken from three recently published WISP reports: “Global Economic Review of Pastoralism”, “Pastoralism as Conservation in the Horn of Africa”, and “Policy Impacts on Pastoral Environments”.     

ECONOMIC GROWTH THROUGH WATER RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT: INDIA1

ABSTRACT India's multidimensional water development programs have contributed significantly to the promotion of the country's economic growth. Rapid growth of irrigation has substantially increased agricultural production. Hydro power generation has doubled during the last two decades, and this has accelerated industrialization and extended rural electrification. Minor irrigation has taken on a new importance in the Fourth Five Year Plan, signifying a departure from the earlier Plans. “Green Revolution” owes a large measure of its success to the availability of assured water supplies. Water development projects have also generated tremendous employment opportunities. Despite its pronounced impact on the economy, India's water planning strategy has some glaring weaknesses: the failure to incorporate “indirect benefits” in cost-benefit calculations; the under-utilization of water potential; and, the progressive increase in the cost of irrigating an acre of land. The prevailing institutional structure in India constitutes a major deterrent to the diffusion of the benefits of water development. There are stubborn psychological factors which render the adoption of innovative irrigation practices difficult. There is thus an overwhelming need to revamp India's institutional framework. On balance, however, water development in India has made its impact felt on India's myriads of villages. And from the arid “dust bowls” of India new life has emerged.