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.     

An empirically derived taxonomy of pilot violation behavior

Violations occur when pilots deliberately break safety rules; they are a serious and vexing problem in aviation. Study one engaged cluster analysis, multidimensional scaling and Pathfinder network analysis on an experimentally derived similarity matrix of violation causes to discover the structure of violation reasoning. Using the insights so gained, a classification was constructed based on actor intent with four categories:

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Improvement. The intention is to increase safety or production, a desire to do better.

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Malevolent. The intention is to cause harm or reduce production, a desire to do damage.

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Indolent. The intention is to increase operator ease, a desire for lethargy.

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Hedonic. The intention is to increase operator excitement, a desire for sensation.

Study two tested the taxonomy for reliability by having aviation experts assign categories to six accident reports. The taxonomy was found to have a free-marginal multirater kappa of 0.82, which is considered excellent.     

An update of the Worldwide Integrated Assessment (WIA) on systemic insecticides. Part 2: impacts on organisms and ecosystems

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - New information on the lethal and sublethal effects of neonicotinoids and fipronil on organisms is presented in this review, complementing the...     

Policy entrepreneurs and strategies for change

Regional Environmental Change - Despite the fact that we currently witness an increasing interest in the study of the role of agency in policy dynamics, it remains in many respects a puzzle how...     

Montane Meadow Plant Community Response to Livestock Grazing

We examined long-term (10 years) meadow plant community responses to (1) livestock grazing under riparian grazing utilization limits; (2) suspension of livestock grazing; and (3) meadow site wetness and precipitation on the Inyo National Forest, California. Observed trends in meadow plant species richness, diversity, and frequency of soil stabilizing species were not significantly different between grazed (N = 16) and non-grazed (N = 9) study sites (P > 0.12 in all cases). Modest increases in richness and diversity were observed over the study period, but frequency of soil stabilizing species was constant. These results suggest that riparian conservation grazing strategies implemented during the study period neither degraded nor hampered recovery of meadow plant community conditions relative to non-grazed conditions. Meadow site wetness was negatively correlated to richness (P < 0.01) and diversity (P < 0.01), but was positively correlated to soil stabilization (P = 0.02). Precipitation was not a significant predictor for plant community responses.