The digital frontiers of fisheries governance: fish attraction devices,drones and satellites

ABSTRACT

High seas fisheries remain one of the least transparent global production practices. Distance from shore, coupled with the highly mobile nature of fish stocks, has put attention on new monitoring, control and surveillance technologies to collect spatially referenced data on the location of fishing vessels, gears and even fish stocks and eradicate illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing activity. Faced with their nascent implementation, research is yet to address how these technologies are reconfiguring the roles and responsibilities of public and private actors involved in fisheries management, including who collects and controls fisheries related information. In this paper, we compare three monitoring, control and surveillance technologies that are gaining traction in fisheries; the use of private fish attraction devices in oceanic tuna fisheries, unmanned public drones for marine surveillance and global satellite monitoring of fishing vessels. In doing so, we question how different configurations of actors are structuring flows of information and with what effect on sustainability performance of high seas fisheries. We also explore how these technologies configure new (and imagined) geographies of high seas fisheries which challenge existing modes of fisheries management.     

Democratising planetary boundaries: experts,social values and deliberative risk evaluation in Earth system governance

ABSTRACT

Recent debates about the concept of planetary boundaries recall longstanding concerns about whether ecological limits are compatible with ecological democracy. The planetary boundaries framework (originally set out in Rockström et al., 2009a, 2009b) defines values for key Earth-system processes such as climate change and biodiversity that aim to maintain a ‘safe’ distance from thresholds or levels that could endanger human wellbeing. Despite having a significant impact in policy debates, the framework has been criticised as implying an expert-driven approach to governing global environmental risks that lacks democratic legitimacy. Drawing on research on deliberative democracy and the role of science in democratic societies, we argue that planetary boundaries can be interpreted in ways that remain consistent with democratic decision-making. We show how an iterative, dialogical process to formulate planetary boundaries and negotiate ‘planetary targets’ could form the basis for a democratically legitimate division of labour among experts, citizens and policy-makers in evaluating and responding to Earth-system risks. Crucial to this division of evaluative labour is opening up space for deliberative contestation about the value judgments inherent in collective responses to Earth-system risks, while also safeguarding the ability of experts to issue warnings about what they consider to be unacceptable risks.     

Between environmental and ecological democracy: theory and practice at the democracy-environment nexus

ABSTRACT

Concepts of ecological and environmental democracy seek to reconcile two normative ideals: ensuring environmental sustainability while safeguarding democracy. These ideals are frequently conceived as being in conflict, as democracy is perceived as too slow and cumbersome to deliver the urgent large-scale collective action needed to tackle environmental problems. Theories addressing the democracy-environment nexus can be situated on a spectrum from theories of ecological democracy that are more critical of existing liberal democratic institutions to theories of environmental democracy that call for reforming rather than radically transforming or dismantling those institutions. This article reviews theoretical and empirical scholarship on the democracy-environment nexus. We find continued theoretical and empirical diversity in the field, as well as vibrant debates on democratising global environmental politics, local material practices, and non-human representation. We argue for stronger dialogue between environmental political theory and empirical, policy-oriented research on democracy and sustainability, as well as further exploration of complementarities between ecological and environmental democracy. We identify four main areas of challenge and opportunity for theory and practice: public participation and populism; technocracy and expertise; governance across scales; and ecological rights and limits.     

Contesting neoliberal knowledge politics in restoration governance: the restorationist’s dilemma

ABSTRACT

The success of ecological restoration efforts is tightly coupled with the effectiveness of many U.S. environmental policies. Yet scholars have raised questions about the ability of restoration to produce intended results. We use a case study of tidal wetland restoration planning in Oregon to examine how neoliberal environmental governance exercises influence through a set of knowledge politics that produces subpar outcomes. We present three main findings: (1) restoration policies produce a restoration economy based on a conception of wetland as commodity (2) practitioners in this restoration economy exhibit competitive behavior resulting in a piecemeal rather than a landscape approach to restoration; and (3) limited monitoring prevents changes to existing policies. Practitioners offer insight into the challenge of treating wetlands as a commodity and call for more monitoring to challenge the assumptions of hegemonic knowledge practices that reinforce a neoliberal environmental governance regime. The divergent ideas of reflexive practitioners, though not yet manifest as action, show where changes to restoration governance might be possible.     

Urban contractual agreements as an adaptive governance strategy: under what conditions do they work in multi-level cooperation?

ABSTRACT

The Norwegian urban growth agreement (UGA) is a governance platform combining transport-infrastructure development with land-use and transport policy. It is a policy package of measures involving network cooperation between national, regional and local government levels established to coordinate transport and land-use development. Shared responsibility for goal achievement, autonomy and learning and adaptation as new knowledge and experience arise are clear prerequisites for the UGAs. This makes it relevant to investigate the conditions for the UGAs to work as an adaptive governance strategy because their central features are in line with the attributes of adaptive governance. Further, adaptive governance is an approach to handle complex problems like transport development issues. The study shows that UGAs have several strengths in terms of autonomy and learning. However, the multi-level cooperation in the UGAs is framed by complex underlying structures of roles and powers, which challenge the working and legitimacy of the governance structures. Multi-level adaptive governance processes like the UGAs require attention to issues of power and legitimacy. Securing transparency and democratic anchorage is paramount in bringing such processes in line with the intended benefits of adaptive governance.     

BASSETT CREEK WATERSHED MODEL1

ABSTRACT: A synthetic hydrograph method was utilized in the development of a watershed model for a small urbanizing watershed. The model was applied to the watershed and the largest flood of record was accurately reproduced. Because the model would be utilized for design of flood control plans with complete urbanization, the method was also applied to an urbanized watershed and reproduced a measured event with good results. The method does not require extensive hydrologic data for its implementation, can be applied to watersheds in various stages of urbanization, and permits consideration of natural or potential floodwater storage.     

Exogenous factors in collective policy learning: the case of municipal flood risk governance in the Netherlands

ABSTRACT

Conceptualizing and analyzing collective policy learning processes is a major ongoing theoretical and empirical challenge. A key gap concerns the role of exogenous factors, which remains under-theorized in the policy learning literature. In this paper, we aim to advance the understanding of the role that exogenous factors play in collective learning processes. We propose a typology of exogenous factors (i.e. material, socioeconomic, institutional, discursive), and subsequently apply this in a comparative study of flood risk policymaking in two municipalities in the Netherlands. We find that exogenous factors are indeed essential for understanding collective learning in these cases, as the combined influence with endogenous factors can steer similar learning processes towards different learning products. We conclude our contribution by identifying two opportunities for further developing the collective learning framework, namely regarding the distinction of varying learning products, and the dynamics of exogenous factors over time.     

Leveraging the power of learning to overcome negotiation deadlocks in global climate governance and low carbon transitions

ABSTRACT

Learning among actors within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations helped transferring climate policies across countries and changed negotiation positions. Together with group pressure and leadership by key governments and non-national actors, experience, knowledge and belief-based learning types altered the UNFCCC negotiation dynamics and facilitated the Paris Agreement. Governments, the UNFCCC secretariat and NGOs created opportunities for government representatives to explore policy options and learn from each other’ successes of designing and implementing low carbon policies. These experience exchanges during and beyond the UNFCCC meetings were established to help countries share their experiences with low carbon economic development plans to address climate change while decoupling economic growth. Based on elite interviews, participant observation and document analysis, this contribution examines how learning facilitated breakthroughs in international climate negotiations. It finds that structured experience exchange of and reflection on other countries’ and non-national actors’ successful policy experiences can modify national interests as policymakers increasingly understand that climate action can support economic growth. This resulted in a higher willingness to take on more ambitious climate action commitments. Sharing experiences with climate policies can facilitate other actor’s learning how they can adapt successful policies to their specific framework conditions.     

Analysis of Sediment Retention in Western Riverine Wetlands: The Yampa River Watershed,Colorado, USA

We quantified annual sediment deposition, bank erosion, and sediment budgets in nine riverine wetlands that represented a watershed continuum for 1 year in the unregulated Yampa River drainage basin in Colorado. One site was studied for 2 years to compare responses to peak flow variability. Annual mean sediment deposition ranged from 0.01 kg/m² along a first-order subalpine stream to 21.8 kg/m² at a sixth-order alluvial forest. Annual mean riverbank erosion ranged from 3 kg/m-of-bank at the first-order site to 1000 kg/m at the 6^th-order site. Total sediment budgets were nearly balanced at six sites, while net export from bank erosion occurred at three sites. Both total sediment deposition (R² = 0.86, p < 0.01) and bank erosion (R² = 0.77, p < 0.01) were strongly related to bankfull height, and channel sinuosity and valley confinement helped to explain additional variability among sites. The texture and organic fraction of eroded and deposited sediment were relatively similar in most sites and varied among sites by watershed position. Our results indicate that bank erosion generally balances sediment deposition in riverine wetlands, and we found no distinct zones of sediment retention versus export on a watershed continuum. Zones of apparent disequilibrium can occur in unregulated rivers due to factors such as incised channels, beaver activity, and cattle grazing. A primary function of many western riverine wetlands is sediment exchange, not retention, which may operate by transforming materials and compounds in temporary sediment pools on floodplains. These results are considered in the context of the Hydrogeomorphic approach being implemented by the U.S. government for wetland resource management.     

Economic and Ecological Transformation Processes in East German Water Management Regimes: The Role of Property Rights and Governance Structures

As in many fen land regions in East Germany, long-standing intensive arable farming—enabled by reclamation—has caused soil deterioration and high water runoff in the Schraden region. The more than ten years of economic and political transformation that followed the breakdown of the socialist regime has worsened the situation and even added new problems. The visible consequences are droughts in the summer, waterlogged plots in the spring, and worn-down water management facilities that operate in an uncoordinated or even unauthorized way. Given the local public-good character of some features of the fen land, the common-pool character of the ecosystems intermittently scarce resource water, and the conflicting interests of regional stakeholders, it is argued that the reallocation of property rights over reclamation systems, together with ineffective coordination mechanisms, have caused the physical and institutional failure of the water management system and so impeded appropriate land use. Note: This version was published online in June 2005 with the cover date of August 2004.