Can community-based governance strengthen citizenship in support of climate change adaptation? Testing insights from Self-Determination Theory

Motivation plays a powerful role in guiding human decision-making and behaviour, including adaptation to climate change. This study aimed to determine whether community-based governance would increase behavioural support, in the form of donation behaviour, for a climate change adaptation trust fund. A sample of 548 Australians was randomly assigned to view one of two governance scenarios: (1) a community-based scenario in which community members were afforded a high level of autonomy in designing and allocating funding within a trust fund to help their community adapt to climate change, or (2) a government-centred scenario in which decision making regarding the trust fund remained with government officials. Path analysis revealed that the community-based scenario produced significantly higher levels of perceived autonomy support within the study’s participants. High levels of perceived autonomy support predicted higher levels of autonomous motivation (indicating stronger citizenship) and lower levels of amotivation, a motivational pattern, which, in turn, predicted greater willingness to donate to the climate change adaptation trust. Results are interpreted in terms of Self-Determination Theory and Motivational Crowding Theory.     

Lessons from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on inclusiveness across geographies and stakeholders

There have been many calls in policy and academia for more inclusiveness in science-policy interfaces, but there is as yet insufficient clarity as to what such inclusiveness means and how to achieve it in the context of international organisations. This paper analyses how inclusive the IPCC is across geographies and stakeholders. Building on the distinction between access and active participation, it examines the involvement of developing countries and NGOs in the Panel’s assessment process.The analysis shows that more inclusive institutional set-ups in international science-policy organisations do not automatically lead to greater credibility, salience and legitimacy of knowledge production processes (Mitchell et al., 2006). For instance, inclusive access does not per se guarantee active participation as the latter depends on a variety of factors including resources and the capacity of actors to engage. Furthermore, in institutional contexts the idea of inclusiveness is necessarily subject to operational interpretations. How these interpretations relate to the representativeness of those who participate in the process affects the relevance of knowledge to its users’ needs. Finally, there are political elements to inclusiveness as more powerful actors may be unwilling to renegotiate the balance of power to expand access to stakeholders.The paper concludes that these nuances should be taken into account in the IPCC and other international science-policy institutions. It also urges the Panel to address the developing country participation gap and explore institutional avenues for expanding access to non-state stakeholders in order to increase the credibility, salience and legitimacy of its processes and shift to solutions-oriented assessments.     

Impacts of climatic change on water and natural hazards in the Alps: Can current water governance cope with future challenges? Examples from the European “ACQWA” project

This paper reviews the possible future situation of the Rhone River in the Swiss part of its catchment. Physical processes in the Alps govern the behaviour of the Rhone from its source (Rhone Glacier) to the Lake of Geneva, and substantial changes are expected to occur in the amount and seasonality of precipitation, and in the response of snow and glaciers to a warming climate. As a result, discharge in the alpine part of the Rhone River is likely to undergo an increase in winter and early spring, but strongly decreases from late spring to late autumn. These changes in water regimes will certainly be accompanied by more frequent geomorphic hazards, related to increases in heavy precipitation events and the melting of permanently frozen grounds. The direct and indirect impacts of a warming climate will affect key economic sectors such as tourism, hydropower, and agriculture, while shifts in extreme events will have an impact on the vulnerability of infrastructure and a range of economic sectors and services. Projections of the future course of events can help in advance planning and decision making in order to alleviate some of the more negative consequences of climate and hydrological impacts on key economic sectors in the region. This paper will thus discuss issues related to current and future water governance in the region, whether water-related policies are sufficiently robust today to cope with what may be rapid changes in water availability and water use in coming decades, and to resolve possible rivalries between economic sectors that may be increasingly confronted with problems of water availability at critical times of the year.     

Panarchy and community resilience: Sustainability science and policy implications

How does the resilience concept of nested relationships (panarchy) contribute to sustainability science and policy? Resilience at a particular level of organization, the community level in our case, is influenced by internal processes at that level. But it is also impacted by actions at lower levels of organization (individuals, households), and by drivers of change originating at higher levels (national level policies, globalized market forces). We focus on community level social-ecological systems, looking upwards and downwards from there. Our objective is to explore the connections of the community to other levels, the ways in which community resilience is impacted, and the implications of this for sustainability. Conventional disciplines specialize at different levels, a barrier to investigating multi-level interactions. Use of the panarchy concept helps contribute to the interdisciplinary understanding of resilience at the community (and other levels) by drawing attention to cross-scale relationships. From the effect of individual leadership to the implication of pandemics that move swiftly across levels, examples illustrate a diversity of ways in which community resilience is shaped in a multi-level world.     

The governance of private residential land in cities and spatial effects on tree cover

Trees in cities supply ecosystem services, including cooling, storm water quality management, habitat, visual screening and softening of built form. There is an expanding interdisciplinary field encompassing biodiversity, ecosystem services, and stewardship networks in cities. However most of this work focuses on public greenspace. While much work has been done to demonstrate that trees on private land are an important complement to the public urban forest, and to understand the social drivers of such, less is known about the governance of private greenspace in cities. Private land contributes to a significant component of a city’s tree cover, particularly in cities characterised by low-density residential suburbs. It is important to understand the mechanisms that govern private tree cover, given the pace and scale of urbanisation globally. We combined policy and spatial analysis to examine the influence of larger and denser forms of residential development on suburban tree cover and the scope of contemporary governance measures. We interrogated tree cover patterns in the rapidly densifying and consolidating city of Brisbane, Australia, to show that private residential tree cover is explained by dwelling density, housing age, terrain slope, high school education, and household income. Results show significantly (30%) less tree cover in low-density residential suburbs developed since the early 1990s. We develop five governance principles for reversing the decline of urban trees on private residential property that may be transferable to other rapidly developing cities in around the world.     

The participation of experts and knowledges in the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)

This paper examines the participation opportunities and role of nominated experts from the Eastern European region in the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). The governance of international knowledge-making spaces and events occurs through standardised institutional rules and expectations that affect experts as well as define accepted forms of knowledge. Within IPBES, experts may participate through United Nations Regional Groupings, which are regions that have complex geopolitical legacies and features. Between regions, experts have variable financial, networking and institutional capacities that in turn affect the operations and outputs of their contributions to science-policy interfaces. For IPBES, regional and localised environmental assessments and ecosystem services valuations require existing place-specific knowledge that may not be ‘available’, as well as understandings that are frequently in conflict with the standardised, homogenising practices of international environmental knowledge-making.     

The Lost Creek Fire: managing social relations under disaster conditions

This paper examines some of the social processes associated with disaster conditions. Utilising an asset‐based perspective of community capacity, it focuses on four types of normative systems to interpret the ability of communities to manage disasters through market‐, bureaucratic‐, associative‐, and communal‐based norms. Drawing on experience of a wildfire in the Crowsnest Pass region of southwest Alberta, Canada, in 2003, the tensions and compatibilities among these normative systems are evaluated through interviews with 30 community leaders. The results confirm the contributions of all types of social capital to resiliency, the necessity for rapid use of place‐based knowledge, and the importance of communication among all types and levels of agents. In addition, they point to the value of identifying and managing potential conflicts among the normative systems as a means to maximising their contributions. The integration of local networks and groups into the more general disaster response minimised the impacts on health and property.     

Mediated Modeling in Water Resource Dialogues Connecting Multiple Scales

We observe a paradigm shift toward collaborative, multi‐level (from local to global) water management and suggestions for scale‐related design principles in the literature. Decision‐support tools are needed that can help achieve scale design principles. Mediated modeling (MM) refers to model building with people, rather than for people. This tool belongs to a family of participatory, systems oriented tools. This article explores their suitability for addressing challenges and principles that arise at multiple‐scales. MM can promote the understanding of cross‐level and cross‐scale links, creating salient, credible, and legitimate knowledge and encouraging boundary functions. Prerequisites for successful MM processes include an openness and willingness to collaborative learning. As new “meso‐level” institutions emerge to address complex challenges in water management collaboratively, tools like MM may play an important role in structuring dialogues, developing adaptive management capacity and advance an ecosystem services approach.     

Barriers to implementing sustainability locally: a case study of policy immobilities

This study aims to contribute to the field of urban planning by applying policy mobilities and transfer theories to a case study of the Capital Regional District and its 13 municipalities in British Columbia, Canada, in order to analyse and understand the dynamics of how sustainability is governed locally, with a special focus on barriers to sustainability policy mobility. The empirical material is primarily based on interviews with key stakeholders who guide policy development and creation in the region to inform an understanding of how sustainable development initiatives are developed and shared. This study finds that while there is interest and demand in sustainability, policy-makers are frustrated with their lack of success in implementing sustainability programmes. While there are some instances of policy sharing and transfer among municipalities in the region, there is a clear desire for more exchanges which would allow municipalities to respond more effectively to the demands placed upon them. Significant barriers to policy mobility are also identified, in particular, an unclear understanding of sustainability, a culture of competition and hostility among municipalities, difficulty with the process of transfer itself, and a lack of time, money and resources. These barriers are in part a result of a broken governance structure which does not provide clear leadership to the municipalities, sets municipalities to be competitive with each other and provides ineffective support for municipalities through an unwieldy regional administrative body which is not well regarded by the municipalities.     

Governance approach to China''s environmental challenges:Towards a theoretical synthesis

This paper reviewed recent research in environmental governance as a response to environmental challenges at various spatial, temporal and administrative scales. It documented the shift of approach from regulation to governance, and attempted to provide a comprehensive understanding why and how the transformation occurred. It also described major factors and forces of environmental governance, and discussed research advance in environmental governance theory. Finally, this paper summarized recent research findings on environmental governance in China, and listed policy recommendation for enhancing the governance.