Cultivating collaboration: Lessons from initiatives to understand and manage cumulative impacts in Australian resource regions

Australia has experienced rapid development within its resource regions, with traditional mining sectors like coal, iron-ore and natural gas expanding and new industries such as coal seam gas emerging. As a result, there is an increasing prevalence and awareness of the cumulative impacts of the extractive resource industries on the society, environment and economy of these regions. Collaborative governance is emerging as a means of addressing cumulative impacts. This article undertakes an analysis of 30 case studies of collaborative governance in the resources sector of Australia. The initiatives analysed range from those focussed on information exchange and coordination to higher degrees of collaboration that involve shared resources and shared risks. The study demonstrates that there are challenges in using collaborative approaches to tackle cumulative impacts, but that significant benefits can be realised. The study highlights the need to nurture and cultivate collaborative relationships in order to provide the foundation for long-term solutions.     

GIS, modeling, and politics: on the tensions of collaborative decision support

A tension exists at the heart of efforts to support collaboration with GIS. Many scholars and practitioners seek to support two separate objectives: (1) problem solving and (2) the exploration of diverse problem understandings. GIS applications designed for problem solving often pre-define the problem space by structuring the kind of information that can be considered or the way in which the problem is conceptualized. In doing so, they necessarily privilege particular perspectives and understandings of the problem while marginalizing others. As a result, these initiatives undermine their second objective. This is problematic in the context of contentious environmental decisions which have broad-reaching impacts on people with diverse perspectives and interests. In such contexts, I argue that equitable collaboration is impossible without first emphasizing the exploration of diverse problem understandings. I support this argument theoretically by turning to the literatures on collaborative planning and spatial decision support, and empirically in my analysis of a case study of an effort to construct a GIS for supporting collaborative water resource management in rural Idaho. Reflecting upon the case, I provide a set of recommendations to those seeking to better negotiate the tensions of supporting collaboration with GIS in the context of contentious environmental and natural resource decisions.     

Reducing Nonpoint Source Pollution Through Collaboration: Policies and Programs Across the U.S. States

Nonpoint source (NPS) pollution has emerged as the largest threat to water quality in the United States, influencing policy makers and resource managers to direct more attention toward NPS prevention and remediation. In response, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) spent more than $204 million in fiscal year (FY) 2006 on the Clean Water Act’s Section 319 program to combat NPS pollution, much of it on the development and implementation of watershed-based plans. State governments have also increasingly allocated financial and technical resources to collaborative watershed efforts within their own borders to fight NPS pollution. With increased collaboration among the federal government, states, and citizens to combat NPS pollution, more information is needed to understand how public resources are being used, by whom, and for what, and what policy changes might improve effectiveness. Analysis from a 50-state study suggests that, in addition to the average 35% of all Section 319 funds per state that are passed on to collaborative watershed groups, 35 states have provided financial assistance beyond Section 319 funding to support collaborative watershed initiatives. State programs frequently provide technical assistance and training, in addition to financial resources, to encourage collaborative partnerships. Such assistance is typically granted in exchange for requirements to generate a watershed action plan and/or follow a mutually agreed upon work plan to address NPS pollution. Program managers indicated a need for greater fiscal resources and flexibility to achieve water quality goals.     

Enhancing climate technology transfer through greater public–private cooperation: Lessons from Thailand and the Philippines

This article contributes to debates about climate change policy and technology transfer by analyzing the success factors underlying collaboration between private companies and communities in developing countries. To date, much attention to capacity building for enabling environments — including public–private collaboration — under the climate change convention has focused on state‐led initiatives and on the innovation and development of technologies. This article, instead, focuses on how private‐sector investors and host communities may collaborate in the diffusion of technologies, by reducing the costs of technology transfer, and making technology more appropriate to developing countries. The article describes cases of collaboration concerning waste management and waste‐to‐energy in Thailand and the Philippines. The article argues that successful public–private partnerships between investors and communities depends on minimizing transaction costs, strengthening collaborative (or assurance) mechanisms, and in maximizing public trust and accountability of partnerships. Lessons are then drawn for enhancing capacity building for technology transfer under the climate change convention and applications such as the Clean Development Mechanism.     

Bridging Disciplines, Knowledge Systems and Cultures in Pest Management

The success of research in integrated environmental and natural resource management relies on the participation and involvement of different disciplines and stakeholders. This can be difficult to achieve in practice because many initiatives fail to address the underlying social processes required for successful engagement and social learning. We used an action research approach to support a research-based group with a range of disciplinary and stakeholder expertise to critically reflect on their engagement practice and identify lessons around how to collaborate more effectively. This approach is provided here as a guide that can be used to support reflective research practice for engagement in other integration-based initiatives. This paper is set in the context of an integrated wildlife management research case study in New Zealand. We illustrate how multi-, inter- and trans-disciplinary approaches can provide a framework for considering the different conversations that need to occur in an integrated research program. We then outline rubrics that list the criteria required in inter- and trans-disciplinary collaborations, along with examples of effective engagement processes that directly support integration through such efforts. Finally, we discuss the implications of these experiences for other researchers and managers seeking to improve engagement and collaboration in integrated science, management and policy initiatives. Our experiences reaffirm the need for those involved in integrative initiatives to attend to the processes of engagement in both formal and informal settings, to provide opportunities for critical reflective practice, and to look for measures of success that acknowledge the importance of effective social process.     

Using Collaborative Technology in Environmental Strategy Development

This viewpoint explores, through a case study in Malawi, the application of collaborative technology tools to support National Environmental Strategy Development initiatives with the public and private sectors in Africa. A particular type of groupware, Group Support Systems, is introduced as a technology and approach that enables large groups of stakeholders to be involved in efficient and effective decision making. It helped the different ministries, community leaders, the private sector, NGOs, and different donors to find new and challenging opportunities for collaboration. The results of the case study show how an environmental strategy, including a prioritised plan of action, was developed and presented to the Ministry within three days. The most important lessons are identified. Participants to the presentation of the paper will be given hands-on experience using these tools.     

Catalyzing Collaboration: Wisconsin’s Agency-Initiated Basin Partnerships

Experience with collaborative approaches to natural resource and environmental management has grown substantially over the past 20 years, and multi-interest, shared-resources initiatives have become prevalent in the United States and internationally. Although often viewed as “grass-roots” and locally initiated, governmental participants are crucial to the success of collaborative efforts, and important questions remain regarding their appropriate roles, including roles in partnership initiation. In the midst of growing governmental support for collaborative approaches in the mid-1990s, the primary natural resource and environmental management agency in Wisconsin (USA) attempted to generate a statewide system of self-sustaining, collaborative partnerships, organized around the state’s river basin boundaries. The agency expected the partnerships to enhance participation by stakeholders, leverage additional resources, and help move the agency toward more integrated and ecosystem-based resource management initiatives. Most of the basin partnerships did form and function, but ten years after this initiative, the agency has moved away from these partnerships and half have disbanded. Those that remain active have changed, but continue to work closely with agency staff. Those no longer functioning lacked clear focus, were dependent upon agency leadership, or could not overcome issues of scale. This article outlines the context for state support of collaborative initiatives and explores Wisconsin’s experience with basin partnerships by discussing their formation and reviewing governmental roles in partnerships’ emergence and change. Wisconsin’s experience suggests benefits from agency support and agency responsiveness to partnership opportunities, but cautions about expectations for initiating general-purpose partnerships.     

Using Collaborative Technology in Environmental Strategy Development

This viewpoint explores, through a case study in Malawi, the application of collaborative technology tools to support National Environmental Strategy Development initiatives with the public and private sectors in Africa. A particular type of groupware, Group Support Systems, is introduced as a technology and approach that enables large groups of stakeholders to be involved in efficient and effective decision making. It helped the different ministries, community leaders, the private sector, NGOs, and different donors to find new and challenging opportunities for collaboration. The results of the case study show how an environmental strategy, including a prioritised plan of action, was developed and presented to the Ministry within three days. The most important lessons are identified. Participants to the presentation of the paper will be given hands-on experience using these tools.     

Social Networks and Community-Based Natural Resource Management

We conducted case studies of three successful examples of collaborative, community-based natural resource conservation and development. Our purpose was to: (1) identify the functions served by interactions within the social networks of involved stakeholders; (2) describe key structural properties of these social networks; and (3) determine how these structural properties varied when the networks were serving different functions. The case studies relied on semi-structured, in-depth interviews of 8 to 11 key stakeholders at each site who had played a significant role in the collaborative projects. Interview questions focused on the roles played by key stakeholders and the functions of interactions between them. Interactions allowed the exchange of ideas, provided access to funding, and enabled some stakeholders to influence others. The exchange of ideas involved the largest number of stakeholders, the highest percentage of local stakeholders, and the highest density of interactions. Our findings demonstrated the value of tailoring strategies for involving stakeholders to meet different needs during a collaborative, community-based natural resource management project. Widespread involvement of local stakeholders may be most appropriate when ideas for a project are being developed. During efforts to exert influence to secure project approvals or funding, however, involving specific individuals with political connections or influence on possible sources of funds may be critical. Our findings are consistent with past work that has postulated that social networks may require specific characteristics to meet different needs in community-based environmental management.     

Collaboration between design and waste management: Can it help close the material loop?

In order to explore the current relationship between industrial design and waste management (WM), a semi-structured interview study was carried out with 25 professionals from WM and designers that have worked with waste. The main aim was to learn about the collaborative work between these two areas and to investigate whether collaboration could help to incorporate material resources into production. The study reveals that designers and WM professionals regard the relation between disciplines in different ways, being more or less centered in their own disciplines. The designers interviewed, however tend to have a wider impression of this relation. This, together with the lack of understanding of the other's role and a fundamental scale difference when dealing with material flows were identified as the main barriers to better and more frequent collaboration. Even though some examples of collaborative work were found, they were not significant enough to have any noticeable effect on the WM system. In order to facilitate future collaboration, the contribution of the presented work is to identify areas for collaboration and suggest initial solutions for overcoming the barriers encountered to help to close the material loop.     

Collaborative approaches to local climate change and clean energy initiatives in the USA and England

This paper analyses how 10 localities in the USA and England, recognised as leaders in clean energy and climate action, have used collaborative approaches to develop local climate change plans and energy conservation, efficiency, and renewable energy initiatives. It examines these planning and policy-making processes in the context of Margerum's [2008. A typology of collaboration efforts in environmental management. Environmental Management, 41 (4), 487–500] typology of “action”, “organizational”, and “policy-level” collaborations, as well as Gray's [1989. Collaborating: finding common ground for multiparty problems. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass] classification of collaboration in the “problem-setting”, “direction-setting”, and “implementation” phases. We conducted interviews with local elected officials, municipal staff, energy professionals, and citizen volunteers in each community, supplemented with an analysis of their adopted energy, climate change, and land-use plans. We find that despite the different government structures and political contexts between the two countries, there was a surprising amount of commonality in how the case study localities used collaborative planning to develop local climate plans and clean energy initiatives. These processes were most often initiated by local elected officials and/or high-level staff members, and then carried out in collaboration with local third-sector organisations and other community stakeholders. In the USA, collaboration was strongest at the policy level and in the direction-setting phase, with the distinguishing feature that citizen advisory boards or stakeholder working groups often took a more active role in shaping local plans and policies. The English localities had some of those same types of collaborations, but were more likely to also employ action collaboration, in the implementation phase, in which third-sector organisations coordinated with the locality to directly provide clean energy services.     

A Framework for Assessing Collaborative Capacity in Community-Based Public Forest Management

Community-based collaborative groups involved in public natural resource management are assuming greater roles in planning, project implementation, and monitoring. This entails the capacity of collaborative groups to develop and sustain new organizational structures, processes, and strategies, yet there is a lack of understanding what constitutes collaborative capacity. In this paper, we present a framework for assessing collaborative capacities associated with community-based public forest management in the US. The framework is inductively derived from case study research and observations of 30 federal forest-related collaborative efforts. Categories were cross-referenced with literature on collaboration across a variety of contexts. The framework focuses on six arenas of collaborative action: (1) organizing, (2) learning, (3) deciding, (4) acting, (5) evaluating, and (6) legitimizing. Within each arena are capacities expressed through three levels of social agency: individuals, the collaborative group itself, and participating or external organizations. The framework provides a language and set of organizing principles for understanding and assessing collaborative capacity in the context of community-based public forest management. The framework allows groups to assess what capacities they already have and what more is needed. It also provides a way for organizations supporting collaboratives to target investments in building and sustaining their collaborative capacities. The framework can be used by researchers as a set of independent variables against which to measure collaborative outcomes across a large population of collaborative efforts.     

The role of collaboration in environmental management: an evaluation of land and resource planning in British Columbia

Recent literature on land-use planning proposes the use of innovative collaborative planning (CP) models to resolve planning disputes. This paper uses a participant survey based on 25 evaluative criteria to evaluate an application of CP to land-use planning in British Columbia, Canada. The results show that CP is an effective means of resolving environmental conflict and produces significant additional benefits such as improved stakeholder relations, skills, and knowledge. The case study evaluation also identifies the keys to successful CP management including factors related to process design and external circumstances.     

Developing a collaborative model for environmental planning and management

Methods for involving the public in natural resource management are changing as agencies adjust to an increasingly turbulent social and political environment. There is growing interest among managers and scholars in collaborative approaches to public involvement. Collaboration is conceptually defined and elaborated using examples from the natural resource management field. This paper then examines how collaboration theory from the organizational behavior field can help environmental managers to better understand those factors that facilitate and inhibit collaborative solutions to resource problems. A process-oriented model is presented that proposes that collaboration emerges out of an environmental context and then proceeds sequentially through a problem-setting, direction-setting, and structuring phase. Factors constraining collaboration are also specified, including organizational culture and power differentials. Designs for managing collaboration are identified, which include appreciative planning, joint agreements, dialogues, and negotiated settlements. Environmental managers need new skills to manage collaboration within a dynamic social and political environment. Further research is needed to test the propositions outlined here.     

司法的流域性——兼论我国长江经济带司法协同治理

推动长江经济带发展是中共中央作出的重大决策,是关系国家发展全局的重要战略。法治是长江经济带实现高质量发展的根本保障。2021年3月1日,我国第一部流域法律《长江保护法》正式施行。长江流域司法协同治理是实现《长江保护法》提出的统筹协调、系统保护机制的重要保障。当前,我国长江经济带司法治理呈现碎片化特征,流域生态系统在司法保护尺度内尚未统一。本文基于对司法空间属性的理论分析,结合美国流域司法治理相关案例的考察,提出从空间协同性和专业协同性两个角度构建我国长江司法协同治理机制。     

Typologizing Stakeholder Information Use to Better Understand the Impacts of Collaborative Climate Science

There is increasing interest among scholars in producing information that is useful and usable to land and natural resource managers in a changing climate. This interest has prompted transitions from scientist- to stakeholder-driven or collaborative approaches to climate science. A common indicator of successful collaboration is whether stakeholders use the information resulting from the projects in which they are engaged. However, detailed examples of how stakeholders use climate information are relatively scarce in the literature, leading to a challenge in understanding what researchers can and should expect and plan for in terms of stakeholder use of research findings. Drawing on theoretical, typological, and evaluation insights from the field of information use, we examine stakeholder use of climate information emerging from 13 collaborative climate science projects conducted in the western United States between 2012 and 2016. Three primary types of use emerge from our findings—conceptual, instrumental, and justification—reflecting common typologization of information use. Conceptual use was the most predominant. We suggest that researcher awareness of this typology can enable more systematic understanding of what project outputs stakeholders use and impacts of those outputs, giving way to new areas of inquiry and aiding in the conceptualization and design of climate information products for land and natural resource managers.     

Collaborative Implementation for Ecological Restoration on US Public Lands: Implications for Legal Context,Accountability, and Adaptive Management

The Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP), established in 2009, encourages collaborative landscape scale ecosystem restoration efforts on United States Forest Service (USFS) lands. Although the USFS employees have experience engaging in collaborative planning, CFLRP requires collaboration in implementation, a domain where little prior experience can be drawn on for guidance. The purpose of this research is to identify the ways in which CFLRP’s collaborative participants and agency personnel conceptualize how stakeholders can contribute to implementation on landscape scale restoration projects, and to build theory on dynamics of collaborative implementation in environmental management. This research uses a grounded theory methodology to explore collaborative implementation from the perspectives and experiences of participants in landscapes selected as part of the CFLRP in 2010. Interviewees characterized collaborative implementation as encompassing three different types of activities: prioritization, enhancing treatments, and multiparty monitoring. The paper describes examples of activities in each of these categories and then identifies ways in which collaborative implementation in the context of CFLRP (1) is both hindered and enabled by overlapping legal mandates about agency collaboration, (2) creates opportunities for expanded accountability through informal and relational means, and, (3) creates feedback loops at multiple temporal and spatial scales through which monitoring information, prioritization, and implementation actions shape restoration work both within and across projects throughout the landscape creating more robust opportunities for adaptive management.     

Food production in the city: (re)negotiating land,food and property

This paper addresses issues of access to land for food production in Toronto by offering fresh perspectives on urban agriculture in the neo-liberal city of the global north. It examines attempts to scale up urban agriculture that emphasise changing the relationships between land access, property and new collaborative relationships among different stakeholders. These initiatives involve renegotiating access to land for growing food between private property owners and landless growers, concomitant shifts in control over valued resources and commercialisation. These shifts are often based on relations of trust within a sharing economy rather than public battles over political decisions to develop urban agriculture lands. Growing food on private lands in the city is political in challenging taken-for-granted ideas and practices of property and urban agriculture. New approaches offer options for training and income, as well as expanding the land base for urban agriculture. Small-scale farming projects are affirmative political manoeuvres. They challenge urban residents to consider land for food production across the categories of public and private property. We document three approaches that challenge current property relations: temporary use of a development site through “soft” squatting; redesignating suburban backyards for farmer training and community-based and private food production; and garden sharing of private home backyards for urban food production and commercial growing. Such initiatives articulate alternative visions of sustainability and food security that rely on principles of collaboration and a sharing economy that challenge prevailing notions of property ownership and food security.     

A Case History of the Science and Management Collaboration in Understanding Hypoxia Events in Long Bay, South Carolina, USA

Communication of knowledge between the scientific and management communities is a difficult process complicated by the distinctive nature of professional career goals of scientists and decision-makers. This article provides a case history highlighting a collaboration between the science and management communities that resulted from a response to a 2004 hypoxia, or low dissolved oxygen, event in Long Bay, off Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. A working group of scientists and decision-makers was established at the time of the event and has continued to interact to develop a firm understanding of the drivers responsible for hypoxia formation in Long Bay. Several factors were found to be important to ensure that these collaborative efforts were productive: (1) genuine interest in collaboratively working across disciplines to examine a problem; (2) commitment by agency leadership, decision-makers, and researchers to create successful communication mechanisms; (3) respect for each others’ perspectives and an understanding how science and management are performed and that they are not mutually exclusive; (4) networking among researchers and decision-makers to ensure appropriate team members are involved in the process; (5) use of decision-maker input in the formulation of research and monitoring projects; and (6) commitment of resources for facilitation to ensure that researchers and decision-makers are communicating effectively.     

Adaptation in Collaborative Governance Regimes

Adaptation and the adaptive capacity of human and environmental systems have been of central concern to natural and social science scholars, many of whom characterize and promote the need for collaborative cross-boundary systems that are seen as flexible and adaptive by definition. Researchers who study collaborative governance systems in the public administration, planning and policy literature have paid less attention to adaptive capacity specifically and institutional adaptation in general. This paper bridges the two literatures and finds four common dimensions of capacity, including structural arrangements, leadership, knowledge and learning, and resources. In this paper, we focus on institutional adaptation in the context of collaborative governance regimes and try to clarify and distinguish collaborative capacity from adaptive capacity and their contributions to adaptive action. We posit further that collaborative capacities generate associated adaptive capacities thereby enabling institutional adaptation within collaborative governance regimes. We develop these distinctions and linkages between collaborative and adaptive capacities with the help of an illustrative case study in watershed management within the National Estuary Program.