Conflicts and security in integrated water resources management

Water sector reforms based on the concept of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) are criticized for not considering context, local realities or legitimacy during the implementation of water sector reforms. Universal remedies of IWRM can thus lead to resistance, conflicts and ultimately failures of interventions. This paper examines how conflicts and disharmony can be addressed by IWRM's instruments. It conceptualizes institutional security as a highly relevant issue to be addressed during water management interventions. Further, the paper advocates a reform of the holistic concept of IWRM to incorporate ‘peace and security’ as a new pillar of water management based on a broad understanding of societal goals that are embedded in the principles of good governance and sustainable development. It also reviews recent criticism of and debates in IWRM and explains the advantages of expanding the normative idea behind it.     

Potential application of mediation to land use conflicts in small-scale mining

Small-scale or artisanal mining is a poverty-driven activity found mainly in remote areas of developing nations. It routinely generates land use conflicts with other stakeholders, primarily large mining companies. The scale of these disputes (occasionally involving armed conflict) is usually sufficient to have significant adverse impacts on the natural environment and the local population. After describing the small-scale mining sector, this paper outlines the characteristics, causes and costs of the land use conflicts with which this activity is often associated. It then discusses some of the more common initiatives that have been taken, primarily by mining companies, to attempt to manage these disputes. Since these approaches are incapable of fully reconciling the range of stakeholder’s interests involved in these conflicts, mediation is proposed as an effective mechanism to achieve their resolution. After an overview of mediation and its potential advantages, the need to apply this process to these disputes is established. Despite its advantages and considerable potential in this application, mediation is not a panacea for resolving all land use conflicts. Based on an extensive literature review, a set of 19 characteristics of disputes that may increase their amenability to mediation is compiled. By then demonstrating that small-scale mining disputes satisfy most of these criteria, the paper concludes that mediation has sufficient promise in this setting to warrant its experimental use.     

Institutional networks and adaptive water governance in the Klamath River Basin,USA

Polycentric networks of formal organizations and informal stakeholder groups, as opposed to centralized institutional hierarchies, can be critically important for strengthening the capacity of governance systems to adapt to unexpected social and biophysical change. Adaptive governance is one type of environmental governance characterized by the emergence of networks that stimulate adaptive capacity through increases in social-learning, communication, trust, public participation and adaptive management. However, detecting and analyzing adaptive governance networks remains elusive, especially given contexts of highly contested resource governance such as large-scale negotiations over water use. Research methods such as social network analysis (SNA) are often infeasible as they necessitate collecting in-depth and politically sensitive personal data from a near-complete set of actors or organizations in a network. Here we present a method for resolving this problem by describing the results of an institutional SNA aimed at characterizing the changing governance network in the Klamath River Basin, USA during a period of contested negotiations over water. Through this research, we forward a method of institutional SNA useful when an individual or egocentric approach to SNA is problematic for political, logistical or financial reasons. We focus our analysis on publically available data signaling changes in formal relationships (statutory, regulatory, contractual) between organizations and stakeholder groups. We find that employing this type of SNA is useful for describing potential and actual transitions in governance that yield increases in adaptive capacity to respond to social and biophysical surprises such as increasing water scarcity and changes in water distribution.     

Collaborative governance and adaptive management: Lessons from California's CALFED Water Program

Both for its technological and institutional innovations and for its history of conflicts, California's water system has been one of the most observed in the world. This article and this Special Issue on the CALFED Bay-Delta Program continue in this tradition. CALFED is likely the most ambitious experiment in collaborative environmental policy and adaptive management the world has seen to date. This Issue moves beyond the celebratory tone of other analyses of collaborative, adaptive management and looks closer into how collaborative networks work to produce innovation, and more importantly to reflect also on their inherent contradictions, limitations and “dark sides”. While collaborative governance enhances mutual understandings and can be a source of innovation, it appears ill-suited to resolve alone the distributive dilemmas at the core of many water – and other environmental – conflicts. A lacuna in existing research concerns the institutional design of effective boundaries and linkages between democratic politics, legitimate authority, and adaptive governance, i.e. the mix of institutions that can provide sufficient responsibility, accountability and democratic legitimacy, without choking off the self-organizing interaction, shared learning, and communication that is at the heart of collaboration. A painful realization in the Delta is that environmental conservation and further growth may be fundamentally at odds; efficient win–win solutions, institutional or technological, seem insufficient to satisfy the competing demands posed upon the system. Radical decisions and changes might be necessary, but they seem unlikely under current institutional arrangements and political conditions.     

Ecological and social aspects of biodiversity conservation on private lands

In recent decades, the growing need for biodiversity conservation and the different means of achieving it have been defined in international and national procedures regulated by governments and parliaments on the one hand, and in governance processes run by different stakeholders on the other. In local contexts, however, people perceive the abstract phenomenon of biodiversity conservation through the environment in which they live and through their social and cultural positions. We examine Finnish forest owners’ experiences and perceptions of biodiversity conservation, and consider the compatibility of these perceptions with national conservation policy. Our work is based on a survey of forest owners and the content analysis of national policy documents. We found that the perceptions of forest owners and the documents of nature conservation policy had elements that both overlapped and contradicted each other, thus reflecting different interpretations of forest ownership and biodiversity conservation. Moreover, the national Forest Biodiversity Program – an outcome of a multilateral governance process – was more successful in combining conservation policy with various perspectives of forest owners than was the authoritatively formulated Nature Conservation Act and Decree. This result indicates that governance processes can address conflicts of interest in the use of natural resources.     

Governing cities reflexively—The biocultural diversity concept as an alternative to ecosystem services

With the aim to embed ecology more forcefully into decision-making, the concept of Ecosystems Services (ES) has gained significant ground among policy-makers and researchers. The increasing recognition of the importance of urban green areas for the quality of life in growing cities has led proponents of ES approaches to argue for an uptake of the approach in urban environmental decision-making. However, the ES approach has been criticized for standing too much at a distance from local communities and their day-to-day practices and for insufficiently taking into account the potential trade-offs between different qualities or preferences. In this paper we argue that other concepts, doing other work, need to be added to the debate about futures of urban governance and research. Biocultural diversity is suggested as one such alternative concept. By its emphasis on diversity, biocultural diversity can account for the many ways in which people live with green areas in the urban landscape, acknowledges the different knowledges this involves, and can reveal conflicts and ambivalence that may be at stake. This sets up for a reflexive, transdisciplinary research process that questions and contextualizes knowledge and worldviews including those of researchers. A reflexive, transdisciplinary research, then, is a productive catalyst for forms of reflexive urban governance that recognise and respond to this diversity and provide platforms for contestation.     

重大生态工程规划设计的理论探讨

生态问题已成为阻碍我国经济社会可持续发展的主要屏障,解决生态问题的主要途径是实施生态治理工程。我国开展的诸多生态治理工程以退耕还林还草工程最为典型,由于相关理论研究长期滞后于生产实践需求导致该工程在推进过程中“边实施、边调整、边总结”。论文剖析了退耕还林还草工程不同阶段出现的问题以及国家采取的相应对策。通过理论分析指出生态问题是经济社会系统内部矛盾的外在表现,生态治理工程既要解决生态退化及危害,又要解决诱发生态问题的经济社会内部矛盾;生态工程设计需要生态学、经济学、社会学等相关学科的理论支撑。重大生态工程设计之初需要考虑技术储备、工程成本、成果稳定性（经济社会系统内部矛盾解决程度）、推广性、综合效益、政策及法律法规搭配等问题以达到“内外兼治”的效果,避免因“边实施、边调整、边总结”带来的工程风险和浪费,最终保障工程目标的实现。     

Multilevel selection and social evolution of insect societies

How sterile, altruistic worker castes have evolved in social insects and how they are maintained have long been central topics in evolutionary biology. With the advance of kin selection theory, insect societies, in particular those of haplodiploid bees, ants, and wasps, have become highly suitable model systems for investigating the details of social evolution and recently also how within-group conflicts are resolved. Because insect societies typically do not consist of clones, conflicts among nestmates arise, for example about the partitioning of reproduction and the allocation of resources towards male and female sexuals. Variation in relatedness among group members therefore appears to have a profound influence on the social structure of groups. However, insect societies appear to be remarkably robust against such variation: division of labor and task allocation are often organized in more or less the same way in societies with high as in those with very low nestmate relatedness. To explain the discrepancy between predictions from kin structure and empirical data, it was suggested that constraints—such as the lack of power or information—prevent individuals from pursuing their own selfish interests. Applying a multilevel selection approach shows that these constraints are in fact group-level adaptation preventing or resolving intracolonial conflict. The mechanisms of conflict resolution in insect societies are similar to those at other levels in the biological hierarchy (e.g., in the genome or multicellular organisms): alignment of interests, fair lottery, and social control. Insect societies can thus be regarded as a level of selection with novelties that provide benefits beyond the scope of a solitary life. Therefore, relatedness is less important for the maintenance of insect societies, although it played a fundamental role in their evolution.Dedicated to Prof. Ernst Mayr     

Collaborative governance versus constitutional politics: decision rules for sustainability from Australia’s South East Queensland forest agreement

Australia’s Regional Forest Agreements (RFAs) (1995–2000) involved a national program of bioregional assessment for native forest conservation and timber resource management. Eleven assessments covering 46 million ha or 6% of Australia, resulted in nine agreements (RFAs) between federal and state governments. While groundbreaking in some respects, however, the program had significant governance problems. Its main outcomes—intergovernmental agreements—were intended to overcome rather than resolve competing bodies of public opinion, and hence always risked entrenching rather than addressing underlying policy conflicts.This article reviews the problems inherent in the official approach, by contrasting it with the outcome reached in the major forest assessment not translated into an RFA. In September 1999, the South East Queensland assessment resulted in an agreement between lead timber production interests, key environmental NGOs and the state government, although rejected by the national government. Unique in Australia and rare in the world, this state-stakeholder agreement suggests the emergence of new decision rules for long-term resolution of biodiversity and natural resource conflicts. Consistently with other case studies, these centre on a fresh approach to integration of conflicting values, and the need for governments to accept more collaborative roles in environmental governance.     

环境治理投入对经济增长的异质性影响研究——基于城市化的视角

在城市化水平不断提高的背景下,探究环境治理投入促进还是阻碍了经济增长,城市化在两者关系中扮演什么角色具有重要的现实意义。论文基于中国大陆2003—2015年31个省份的数据,运用面板门槛模型、系统广义矩估计方法探究环境治理投入与经济增长之间的关系。结果表明：1）环境治理投入与经济增长之间存在参数异质性,具有显著的门槛效应;2）环境治理投入对省际经济增长的影响因环境治理投入量的差异分为前期影响不显著、后期促进两个阶段;3）适度的城市化水平可以提高环境治理投入的效率,从而促进经济增长。基于此,论文认为应在继续增加环境治理投入的同时提高城市化水平,以城市化助力环境治理投入取得环境和经济效益的双赢。     

Advancing adaptive governance of social-ecological systems through theoretical multiplicity

In recent years there has been rising scientific and policy interest in the adaptive governance of social-ecological systems. A systematic literature review of adaptive governance research during the period 2005–2014, demonstrates a vibrant debate taking place that spans a variety of empirical and theoretical approaches. The particular strength of adaptive governance is that it provides a theoretical lens for research that combines the analyses of novel governance capacities such as adaptive capacity, collaboration, scaling, knowledge and learning. As a way to give greater depth and analytical rigour to future studies over the next decade and beyond, we highlight the added value of theoretical multiplicity (i.e., focusing on the combination of theories to address complex problems). We argue that theoretical multiplicity can encourage stronger synergies between adaptive governance and other theoretical approaches and can help address epistemologically grey areas in adaptive governance scholarship, such as power and politics, inclusion and equity, short term and long term change, the relationship between public policy and adaptive governance.     

水电开发与规划环评

"十二五"规划纲要提出在做好生态保护和移民安置的前提下积极发展水电,并明确"十二五"期间要开工建设1.2亿千瓦水电的目标,我国需要加强水电开发管理,促进水电健康发展。2009年10月实施的《规划环境影响评价条例》要求在发展规划和决策中考虑环境影响,以实现具有环境相容性的人类活动的目的。在我国各种社会经济建设领域中,水利水电建设是最早开始建设项目环境影响评价和规划环境影响评价的领域之一。本文分析了现行规划环境影响评价制度框架下解决水电开发生态问题的五大难点,认为尚难破解水电规划开发生态难题,在此基础上提出了完善规划环境影响评价机制以解决水电开发中生态环境问题的对策,以期为落实"十二五"规划纲要所提出的在做好生态保护和移民安置的前提下积极发展水电提供决策参考。     

水电开发与规划环评

“十二五”规划纲要提出在做好生态保护和移民安置的前提下积极发展水电,并明确“十二五”期间要开工建设1．2亿千瓦水电的目标,我国需要加强水电开发管理,促进水电健康发展。2009年10月实施的《规划环境影响评价条例》要求在发展规划和决策中考虑环境影响,以实现具有环境相容性的人类活动的目的。在我国各种社会经济建设领域中,水利水电建设是最早开始建设项目环境影响评价和规划环境影响评价的领域之一。本文分析了现行规划环境影响评价制度框架下解决水电开发生态问题的五大难点,认为尚难破解水电规划开发生态难题,在此基础上提出了完善规划环境影响评价机制以解决水电开发中生态环境问题的对策,以期为落实“十二五”规划纲要所提出的在做好生态保护和移民安置的前提下积极发展水电提供决策参考。     

Indigenous people and co-management: implications for conflict management

Co-management agreements among indigenous people, state agencies, and other stakeholders offer substantial promise as a way of dealing with natural resource conflicts in a participatory and equitable manner. However, experience shows that co-management regimes can set into motion new conflicts or cause old ones to escalate. In practice the result may not be power sharing but rather a strengthening of the state's control over resource policy, management, and allocation. Instead of contributing to local empowerment, such arrangements may further marginalize communities and resource users. We use case material, primarily from northern Canada and South Asia, to explore the pervasive role of conflict in generating, shaping, and influencing the performance of co-management regimes. The paper analyzes the divergent interests and motives of state agencies in planning and implementing co-management arrangements. It highlights the cultural, political, and legal obstacles encountered by indigenous people and other rural communities in trying to negotiate co-management arrangements. We also explore the conflicts that can arise in co-management regimes where local participation in decision making is very limited. General lessons and recommendations are drawn from our analysis.     

传统农区粮食生产转型机制及其安全效应——基于乡村空间治理视角

转型期乡村空间利用问题成为影响粮食安全的重要因素,开展乡村空间综合治理成为推动粮食生产有序转型的重要动力。系统分析乡村空间治理导向的粮食生产转型机制及其安全效应,有益于完善粮食安全的理论和实践分析。本文以乡村空间治理导向的粮食生产转型内在机制分析为突破,结合平原农区典型案例进行实证研究,并探讨了乡村空间治理与粮食安全的内在关系。主要结论如下：（1）乡村空间的不合理利用是限制粮食生产高效运转的重要因素。（2）乡村空间“物质—权属—组织”治理,通过改变粮食生产所需的基础条件达到优化粮食生产的目的,推动粮食生产朝着规模化、高效化、绿色化和公正化转型。（3）香埠村空间治理显著改善了该村粮食生产条件,有效协调粮食安全保障与乡村转型发展的交互作用关系。（4）乡村空间治理能力现代化是提升粮食安全保障能力的重要手段和途径。传统农区开展乡村空间“物质—权属—组织”的综合治理,有利于保障转型期粮食安全,落实“藏粮于地”战略,具有现实意义。     

上海市环境污染第三方治理研究

环境污染第三方治理打破了传统的污染治理模式,是环境污染治理的一项重大改革.从中央到地方,各级政府出台了一系列环境污染第三方治理的相关政策文件.目前上海已在七大领域对第三方治理进行试点,在对金山区的调研基础上,分析了上海市环境治理现状,从治理模式以及治理绩效等角度对上海市环境污染第三方治理进行探讨,分析发现了污染企业治污积极性不高,环保企业生存压力大等问题,并从政府,污染企业和环保企业三个方面提出了相关建议.     

中国国土空间规划法律体系：问题检视与框架重构

通过对现行空间规划法律规范的体系性检视,发现由于立法策略、部门立法以及规划立法依附性等原因,其存在顶层立法付之阙如、外部结构冗杂扁平、内部规范碎片冲突等问题。遵循领域法、发展法以及体系化逻辑,国土空间规划立法应以现实问题与治理现代化为导向,在突破部门法壁垒的同时注重法制发展的接续性,力求实现国土空间规划法律体系的形式协调与价值融贯。构建国土空间规划法律体系,对内应确立国土空间规划法的基本法地位并辅之以配套立法,对外应注重与国土空间开发保护法等相关立法、国土空间政策与技术标准的衔接,最终构架起一个主轴明确、层次严密、差序有别的圆锥状国土空间规划法律体系。     

Regulation of sexual development in the basal termite Cryptotermes secundus: mutilation, pheromonal manipulation or honest signal?

Social insect colonies are not the harmonious entities they were once considered. Considerable conflicts exist between colony members, as has been shown for Hymenoptera. For termites, similar studies are lacking, but aggressive manipulations have been claimed to regulate sexual development, and even to account for the evolution of workers. This study on a basal termite, Cryptotermes secundus (Kalotermitidae), suggests that the importance of aggressive manipulations in termites has been overemphasized. Wing-bud mutilations, a means proposed to regulate the development of dispersing sexuals (alates), seem to be artifacts of handling conditions that cause disturbance. Aggressive behaviors never occurred unless colonies were disturbed. Theoretical considerations further showed that the potential for intense conflict among termite nestmates is low compared to hymenopteran societies. Strong conflicts are only expected to occur over the replacement of natal reproductives that died, while less intense conflicts should exist over the development into alates when food in the colony becomes limiting. Accordingly, intracolonial aggressive interactions over replacement are common, whereas nestmates seem to manipulate alate development via proctodeal feeding when food resources decline. However, the latter is rather an honest signal than a manipulation because only the most competent prospective dispersers can impede the development of nestmates.     

Socio-environmental conflicts on hydropower: The São Luiz do Tapajós project in Brazil

Economic expansion and related resource and infrastructure needs provoke an increase of socio-environmental conflicts worldwide, and methodologies for their comprehensive analysis and understanding are necessary. The present paper suggests a methodology for the analysis of socio-environmental conflicts on hydropower, developed from a case study on the São Luiz do Tapajós project in Brazil. On the basis of qualitative semi-structured interviews, a stakeholder definition and conflict analysis were carried out. The analysis shows that at least five different sub-conflicts, each one with its own characteristics, can be distinguished, and that negotiation on many of these conflicts is difficult. Confrontation processes are therefore likely to occur. The current strategy of conflict treatment falls short of the situation; instead solutions must be sought looking at the underlying conflict causes. A restructuring of the energy policy and the approach to traditional populations is a necessary precondition if robust and comprehensive solutions on the current socio-environmental conflicts on hydropower in the Amazon were to be found.