Disaster governance and community resilience: reflections on Typhoon Morakot in Taiwan

Typhoon Morakot triggered flooding and mudslides in various areas and devastated Aboriginal villages located near areas under construction by the Water Diversion Project in Kaohsiung County. This paper examines the controversy surrounding Typhoon Morakot in Taiwan from the perspective of disaster governance. This study provides competing perspectives regarding who was responsible for causing the disaster. Post-disaster reconstruction initiatives by the government tend to adopt a technical approach to risk, and do not incorporate the complex social and cultural dimensions of vulnerability and sustainability. This perspective reflects misrecognition problems, and the lack of empowerment and participation in governance by residents, as well as their exclusion in decision making. Aboriginal civic groups have various methods of interacting with local residents to alleviate the suffering of survivors, promoting tribal culture and building resilient communities. This continuing development of social interactions and new forms of engagement will effectuate transformation and contribute to broader reflections on the Morakot disaster and social capability and building resilience.     

Patience is a virtue: Problems of regulatory governance in the Indonesian mining sector

Mining investment in Indonesia has been at a standstill for a decade. Clearly. international mining companies regard the country as a high risk destination for capital. Yet Indonesia is one of the most highly mineralised countries in the world and has expressed a desire to increase investment in the sector in the coming years. As a first step in this direction the government has introduced a new mineral and coal mining law to replace the highly regarded Contract of Work system. The government argues that this new law will reinvigorate mining investment in the country. This paper suggests that the new mining law will do little to improve the situation. Indeed, it is unlikely that Indonesia will become a preferred destination for mining investment in the foreseeable future. Poor regulatory architecture, endemic corruption, and a lack of institutional capacity continue to be of concern to investors.     

From leaders to majority: a frontrunner paradox in built-environment climate governance experimentation

This paper seeks to better understand the possible paradox of frontrunners in experimental climate governance. This paradox refers to the situation where frontrunners are required to push boundaries in terms of developing governance innovations and to experiment with these, but where, at the same time, a too strong focus on frontrunners may result in a situation where lessons from these experiments and the innovations developed do not resonate with the majority. In such a situation, an innovation may not be capable of being scaled up or of being transferred to another context. This paper draws lessons from a series of nine experimental and innovative governance instruments for low-carbon building development and transformation in Australia. It points out that for these instruments the frontrunners paradox provides a partial explanation as to why they have not yet been able to scale up from a small group of industry leaders to the large majority.     

Contributions of green infrastructure to enhancing urban resilience

After briefly reviewing key resilience engineering perspectives and summarising some green infrastructure (GI) tools, we present the contributions that GI can make to enhancing urban resilience and maintaining critical system functionality across complex integrated social–ecological and technical systems. We then examine five key challenges for the effective implementation of GI that include (1) standards; (2) regulation; (3) socio-economic factors; (4) financeability; and (5) innovation. We highlight ways in which these challenges are being dealt with around the world, particularly through the use of approaches that are both context appropriate and socially inclusive. Although progress surmounting these challenges has been made, more needs to be done to ensure that GI approaches are inclusive and appropriate and feature equally alongside more traditional ‘grey’ infrastructure in the future of urban resilience planning. This research was undertaken for the Resilience Shift initiative to shift the approach to resilience in practice for critical infrastructure sectors. The programme aims to help practitioners involved in critical infrastructure to make decisions differently, contributing to a safer and better world.     

Environmental system management and governance needs in a developing country

Environmental governance in the twenty-first century in Bangladesh faces serious challenges in terms of improving service delivery. There are surfeits of laws, rules and regulations as well as institutions to manage and govern the environmental sector. The legal regime is quite comprehensive, yet little attempts have been made so far to iron out the contradictions and duplications among existing rules and regulations. Institutions continue to suffer because of a number of reasons. Coordination among different ministries and other agencies in the governmental and non-governmental sectors is poor. Inter-organizational meetings and other follow-up meetings are not regularly held and usually fail to achieve their intended objectives. Though attempts have been made to involve people at the formulation stage of action plans, seldom people are taken into confidence and consulted with when these plans are implemented. One of the consequences of such a situation is people’s lack of interest in government-sponsored environmental protection programs. The decision-making procedure/situation of different environmental development projects and policies did not follow the holistic or coordinated principles so that post-impacts of works appeared vast and diverse conflicts. This paper tries to search the history of environmental protection of Bangladesh, relevant environmental laws, rules, regulations and projects and major international conventions, treaties, and protocols signed or ratified by Bangladesh as well as investigates the current situation, mechanism and decision making regarding environment in the context of environmental governance, analyzing the problems and also explored the challenges for environmental management in Bangladesh and associated problems and risks of system and finally proposed some core guidelines of effective environmental governance and system management for Bangladesh.     

Towards a new system of environmental governance

Summary Planning, the visible hand of government, is the resource allocation sphere that has the potential to prevent destructive conflict over resources, by creating a long term, rational, ethics-based and participatory decision-making process. Other public decision-making systems (the market, legal and political arenas), by their very nature, cannot adequately protect the environment or ensure sustainable development. However, as presently conceived, Planning⁺ cannot do so either. Reform has been impeded by an ideological bias which defines Planning as diametrically opposed to the market, such that creative alternatives to the two systems of social choice have not been developed.To address this problem, a new tri-partite structure of environmental governance is proposed. Based on an ecofeminist paradigm, it is primarily designed to constrain the potential for the abuse of power, and allow society to address environmental (ethical) as well as social (distributional) and economic (efficiency) issues. In a sense, it rationalises the social decision-making system by re-aligning rights, wants and needs with the appropriate decision-making forum (representative democracy, the market and Planning respectively). The model exposes the need to redesign all these institutions so that they better correspond to their logical functions within the resource allocation system. However, this paper focuses on the Planning system itself.Janis Birkeland was an attorney, architect and planner in San Francisco, USA. She now teaches at the Department of Architecture, University of Tasmania. This article is drawn from a longer 1990 paper Myths and Realities of Planning and Resource Allocation (Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Tasmania), which was presented at the Socialist Scholars' Conference, Melbourne, 18th July, 1991.     

Partnerships for local sustainability and local governance in a Tasmanian settlement

This research is concerned with effects and actions at the local level, where it is argued that local governing processes are key to developing sustainable communities. The roles of the citizen and of formal government are changing such that the implementation of sustainability praxis at the local level requires that citizens and governments reconsider both the meaning and techniques of governance. Indeed, how we are governed, participate in governing processes and internalise and accept the need for change will affect how local communities make constant and lasting a dynamic praxis of sustainability. Actors in local governments and communities may be crucial in this task—especially as facilitators, enablers, leaders and partners. In this paper we focus on the Huon Valley Council and some members of one of its communities. We examine how they are experimenting with partnerships as a form of governance to unify, control, mobilise and regulate the conduct of various actors, and how such partnerships may foster sustainability praxis in the Valley's diverse communities of place and interest.     

Partnerships for local sustainability and local governance in a Tasmanian settlement

This research is concerned with effects and actions at the local level, where it is argued that local governing processes are key to developing sustainable communities. The roles of the citizen and of formal government are changing such that the implementation of sustainability praxis at the local level requires that citizens and governments reconsider both the meaning and techniques of governance. Indeed, how we are governed, participate in governing processes and internalise and accept the need for change will affect how local communities make constant and lasting a dynamic praxis of sustainability. Actors in local governments and communities may be crucial in this task—especially as facilitators, enablers, leaders and partners. In this paper we focus on the Huon Valley Council and some members of one of its communities. We examine how they are experimenting with partnerships as a form of governance to unify, control, mobilise and regulate the conduct of various actors, and how such partnerships may foster sustainability praxis in the Valley's diverse communities of place and interest.     

Interindustry approaches to the analysis of a supply disruption of a critical resource

Estimating the impact of a disruption of the supply of a critical resource to an economy involves two tasks: estimation of the distribution of the diminished supply among the direct users of the resource and estimation of the effects on the rest of the economy of the direct user's reduced production. Input-output (I-O) analysis is well suited to these tasks, particularly the second, because of the model's industrial detail and general equilibrium framework. Under the assumption of fixed coefficients, alternative variants of the I-O model are considered and a recommendation made. Further, it is suggested that the scope for varying the model's coefficients, because of the potential for input substitution, be investigated on a case by case basis.     

Alternative approaches to flood mitigation: a case study of Bangladesh

Floods were by far the most damaging type of natural disasters during the 1990s, in terms of both human impacts and socio-economic losses. Vulnerability to flooding disasters around the world is almost always differentiated by the socio-economic conditions of different income groups in the disaster area. In general, the poorer the income group (or the country) the more vulnerable it is likely to be to the adverse impacts of floods. The article argues that Bangladesh is the world's most flood-prone developing country in terms of the relative socio-economic impacts of floods. While conventional flood control strategies tend to be based on structural engineering approaches—such as the construction of large-scale embankments, diversion canals and dams—this article argues that more emphasis should be given to alternative, non-structural measures. The main lesson from recent flooding disasters in Bangladesh is that, in the absence of expensive structural measures, many non-structural ones can go a long way towards reducing vulnerability to and mitigating the impacts of floods.     

Multiple-criteria decision-aiding framework to analyze and assess the governance of sustainability

Past and present disasters and scandals, such as the BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, the Servier Mediator (Benfluorex) scandal in 2009 and the Enron collapse in 2001, have uncovered weaknesses in governance issues. The authors argue that there is a need to develop methods and tools to diagnose and assess the governance of organizations with respect to Sustainable Development (SD). However, this task remains difficult due to the fact that it is difficult to appraise the quality of governance. The authors propose a protocol to diagnose and analyze the governance of SD and explore the use of multiple-criteria decision-aiding methods to achieve this task. Two aggregation methods to assess the global governance are proposed: (1) The identification of a final governance index for an Organization. This method helps in establishing a global diagnosis of the quality of the governance of an Organization with respect to SD challenges. The governance index is based on the calculation of three indexes: the partial opportunity index, the partial risk index and the partial equilibrium index. (2) The ranking of a set of Organizations according to their governance of SD. This method aims at assessing a set of Organizations based on a pairwise comparison according to a set of criteria that represents the seven domains of the ISO 26000 norm (ISO 26000—Guidance on social responsibility, 2010). This method is based on the outranking aggregation approach ELECTRE III. A practical example is used to illustrate two methods of governance assessment.     

Transparency in global sustainability governance: to what effect?

ABSTRACT

Transparency in environmental governance is no longer an uncontroversial answer to problems of accountability and effectiveness. How to design effective transparency systems and in what policy contexts they are effective remain contested issues. This special section, consisting of this introduction and four research articles, interrogates complex and potentially conflicting links between transparency, accountability, empowerment and effectiveness in environmental governance. Building on existing literature and the four contributions, we discuss persisting diversity in varieties of transparency, the evolving dynamics of commodity chain transparency, and the consequences of emerging novel forms of digitalized transparency. As we show, the contributions to this special section interrogate in novel ways the transformative potential of transparency, through shedding light on the performative effects of transparency in ever more complex environmental governance contexts. These contexts may include, inter alia, the growing ubiquity of traceability in transnational commodity chains, the need for ever more anticipatory (ex-ante) forms of environmental governance, and an ever-broadening quest for digitally monitored environments. In particular, the impacts of the real-time ‘radical’ transparency engendered by use of novel digital technologies remain under-analyzed in the sustainability domain. We conclude by raising several critical concerns that deserve further scientific research and policy debate.     

Transparency,accountability and empowerment in sustainability governance: a conceptual review

ABSTRACT

This paper offers a conceptual examination of the power-effects of transparency, as information disclosure, on those making accountability claims against actors deemed to be causing significant environmental harm. Informed by Lukes’s ([2005]. Power: A radical view (second edition). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.) multi-dimensional theory of power, I review recent scholarship to interrogate four hypotheses positing empowerment for accountability claimants arising from the disclosure of sustainability information. Across public and private governance forms, academic research suggests that information disclosure promotes the communication of the sustainability interests of affected parties, and in some cases enhances the capacity of these parties to evaluate justifications provided by relevant power-wielders. However, evidence is weaker that disclosure of sustainability information empowers accountability claimants to sanction or otherwise steer those responsible; and there is little support that transparency fosters wider political interrogation of the configurations of authority producing environmental harm. Differentiating between behavioural and non-behavioural understandings of power allows an evaluation of these research findings on the power-related effects of information disclosure.     

Coming to the table: collaborative governance and groundwater decision-making in coastal California

Collaborative governance is on the rise in the United States. This management approach brings together state and non-state actors for environmental decision-making, and it is frequently used in California for decisions regarding local groundwater management. This study examines groundwater decision-making groups and practices in a central California coastal community to understand whether groups meet specific collaborative governance criteria and whether and why certain subsets of the population are excluded from groundwater decision-making practices. It also identifies actions for better group inclusion. We find that small farmers, the Hispanic/Latino community, and the general public are often excluded from groundwater decision-making groups and practices due to unawareness, mistrust, and insufficient resources. Education and awareness as well as incentives could help increase inclusion. This study provides insights into more equitable groundwater decision-making groups and practices, and also calls for more critical examination of the current stakeholder approach to decision-making.     

Back to nature: new urban policy and environmental governance in Canada's capital

Drawing on a growing literature on the integration of environmental discourses into urban development schemes, this paper charts the urban development of LeBreton Flats, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. An industrial neighbourhood expropriated as part of a post-war urban renewal project, LeBreton Flats is being redeveloped in line with green, mixed-use urban planning principles. The paper investigates how national narratives are intertwined within urban development practices and argues that historically and geographically embedded expressions of national nature first used to justify post-war expropriation are being adapted as part of urban neo-liberal naturalised practices of central-city redevelopment.     

Collaborative environmental governance and transaction costs in partnerships: evidence from a social network approach to water management in France

Several studies attempt to explain how collaborative environmental governance processes operate, but the question of why collaboration relationships form has received much less attention. Motivated by this need, this paper provides insights to the broad question: why does collaborative river basin management in France depend so heavily on partnerships made up around a few actors? Accordingly, our analytical framework develops a transaction cost explanation for the extent to which participatory procedures help stakeholders to identify partners and initiate collaboration, and for the causal link between the attributes of these stakeholders and their partnerships. The p2 model is implemented to investigate partnership networks of the key actors that govern the management of the Gironde estuary, the study case. The results provide evidence that environmental institutions bring together heterogeneous actors who might not be ready for collaboration, thereby actors’ perceived power similarity; their geographical proximity and co-presence in formal fora limit transaction costs.     

Emergent publics and affects in environmental governance

Drawing on the wide social scientific literature on emotions and affects, we highlight the value and potential contribution of the affect theory for understanding public engagement in environmental policy and planning. We suggest that such theorization complements political ontologies that envision concerned publics to arise as citizens are attached to objects and other beings in their everyday life. Focus on emotions and affects enables in-depth exploration of the corporeality of these attachments, increasing understanding about how affected publics get driven for action and how new sensibilities and horizons for action are created. Based on the discussion of affect theory and case examples, we argue that emotions and affects should be treated as crucial carriers of knowledge about transformation of political subjects and their concerns. They also direct analytic gaze beyond public participation procedures and encourage the development of novel, more inclusive settings for public engagement.     

Local energy governance in post-Fukushima Japan: a survey of citizen willingness to participate in local energy policy deliberations

Employing a social survey, this paper examines citizen attitudes towards local energy governance in the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake and the subsequent nuclear power plant accident. The survey found that public comment and random sampling citizen deliberation led to a greater willingness to participate in discussions of municipal heating and power (energy) policy for a resilient community than did conventional citizen committee membership. The former mechanisms provided opportunities for individuals with considered viewpoints to participate in a public dialogue on energy and environment issues in post-disaster Japan. Respondents who did not have clear ideas about a roadmap for nuclear power generation showed a lower willingness to participate in local energy policy formulation processes.     

Participatory and multi-level governance: applications to Aboriginal renewable energy projects

As provinces across Canada seek to diversify their domestic electricity supply and cope with the accelerating effects of anthropogenic climate change, new models of sustainability-focused economic development are being pursued. One critically important emerging paradigm involves First Nation (a Canadian term for indigenous) collaboration and leadership in renewable energy projects. In this comparative case study analysis, we consider two different governance approaches pursued in distinct renewable energy project contexts: the clean energy projects of the Ojibway Pic River First Nation band in northwestern Ontario and the NaiKun Offshore Wind Project proposed in the ocean territory of the Haida Nation off the coast of British Columbia (BC). Focusing on themes of participation and multi-level governance, the case studies highlight the importance of authority and control in decision processes, the primacy of ensuring that scale and quality of design are carefully scoped, and the shaping role of inclusiveness in planning for wholly sustainable energy futures. Taken together, these cases illustrate that fluid governance arrangements which exploit the particular capacities of each actor may give rise to trust that ultimately forms the foundation of a co-produced model of renewable energy governance. We argue that while collaboration might aim to be inclusive of all interested actors, it is important to consider the extent to which a project design might sufficiently incorporate a community's long-term vision. We conclude that truly sustainable renewable energy development requires a project design that reflects community values, incorporates community control, and incentivises indigenous ownership.