Reflexive capacity in local networks for sustainable development: integrating conflict and understanding into a multi-level perspective Transition Framework

ABSTRACT

One core element of reflexive governance is the reflexive capacity-building of actors involved in governance networks. A wider range of actors have to be empowered to understand and improve governance arrangements in order to create second-order reflexivity. As a contribution to this challenge, a heuristic framework is developed from two complementary approaches to reflexive governance: the multi-level perspective (MLP) and the conflict-orientated understanding (COU) approach. The new framework is applied to two case studies – water management and long-term climate adaptation – where it has helped to develop a participatory process to analyse and reflect on local networks and multi-stakeholder arenas. The two contrasting processes are analysed and their contribution to reflexive capacity building is assessed. Building on the findings, further advancements of MLP, COU, and the concept of reflexive governance are recommended.     

Reflexive governance: exploring the concept and assessing its critical potential for sustainable development. Introduction to the special issue

ABSTRACT

Elaborated in publications on transition management, sustainability governance and deliberative environmental governance, ‘reflexive governance’ addresses concerns about social-ecological vulnerabilities, flawed conceptualisations of human-nature relations fragmented governance regimes and conditions for a sustainability transition. Key barriers to reflexive government include unavoidable politics; the influence of broader discursive systems that shape actors’ strategic interests; and structural and deliberate limitations to the range of admitted epistemological understandings, normative perspectives and material practices. Against this background, the contributions to the special issue provide novel conceptual linkages between reflexive governance and boundary objects, intercultural dialogue, conflict management heuristics, discourse linguistics, theories of the policy cycle and reflexive law, network and learning theories, and Lasswell’s ‘developmental constructs’. Based on the contributions, we identify five inherent conceptual tensions of reflexive governance: between the openness of horizontal learning processes and the desired direction towards sustainable development; between reflexive governance as a normative or procedural concept; between expected learning orientations and other, strategic orientations; between governance as a precondition for reflexivity and reflexive learning as a precondition for reorganized governance structures; and between reflexivity as an open-ended, evolutionary process and the need to strategically defend the space for reflexivity against powerful groups with an interest in the status quo.     

Assessing Uncertainty in Estimates of Nitrogen Loading to Estuaries for Research, Planning, and Risk Assessment

Parametric (propagation for normal error estimates) and nonparametric methods (bootstrap and enumeration of combinations) to assess the uncertainty in calculated rates of nitrogen loading were compared, based on the propagation of uncertainty observed in the variables used in the calculation. In addition, since such calculations are often based on literature surveys rather than random replicate measurements for the site in question, error propagation was also compared using the uncertainty of the sampled population (e.g., standard deviation) as well as the uncertainty of the mean (e.g., standard error of the mean). Calculations for the predicted nitrogen loading to a shallow estuary (Waquoit Bay, MA) were used as an example. The previously estimated mean loading from the watershed (5,400 ha) to Waquoit Bay (600 ha) was 23,000 kg N yr⁻¹. The mode of a nonparametric estimate of the probability distribution differed dramatically, equaling only 70% of this mean. Repeated observations were available for only 8 of the 16 variables used in our calculation. We estimated uncertainty in model predictions by treating these as sample replicates. Parametric and nonparametric estimates of the standard error of the mean loading rate were 12–14%. However, since the available data include site-to-site variability, as is often the case, standard error may be an inappropriate measure of confidence. The standard deviations were around 38% of the loading rate. Further, 95% confidence intervals differed between the nonparametric and parametric methods, with those of the nonparametric method arranged asymmetrically around the predicted loading rate. The disparity in magnitude and symmetry of calculated confidence limits argue for careful consideration of the nature of the uncertainty of variables used in chained calculations. This analysis also suggests that a nonparametric method of calculating loading rates using most frequently observed values for variables used in loading calculations may be more appropriate than using mean values. These findings reinforce the importance of including assessment of uncertainty when evaluating nutrient loading rates in research and planning. Risk assessment, which may need to consider relative probability of extreme events in worst-case scenarios, will be in serious error using normal estimates, or even the nonparametric bootstrap. A method such as our enumeration of combinations produces a more reliable distribution of risk.     

构建生态环境技术服务体系的基本定位与主要对策

四个方面的情况表明,我国必须高度重视生态环境技术服务体系建设问题:一是随着污染防治攻坚战在向纵深推进过程中,地方政府"不会管"、企业"不会治"的问题比较普遍,且日益突出;二是目前各级生态环境部门,特别是市、县两级生态环境技术支持力量薄弱、专业化能力不足,难以支撑当地政府和企业治理环境污染的技术需求;三是目前的生态环境技术服务市场尚满足不了实际需求;四是无论是从结构还是从作用看,生态环境技术服务体系已成为生态环境治理体系和治理能力的短板。因此,构建生态环境技术服务体系是推进生态环境治理体系和治理能力现代化的重要内容,其作用是,在要求环境责任主体做什么的同时,帮助和指导他们怎么做,解决"不会管"和"不会治"的问题。现阶段,政府推动构建生态环境技术服务体系的重点任务:一是明确职能,系统谋划,做好顶层设计;二是强化相关能力建设;三是建立和完善生态环境标准和重大规划与行动计划的配套技术方案制度;四是培育、壮大和规范生态环境技术服务市场;五是以生态环境科技成果转化为抓手,牵引技术服务体系建设。     

Beyond accountability: alternative rationales for transparency in global trade politics

ABSTRACT

The conventional view of transparency is that it is a critical tool to combat corruption and ensure the democratic accountability of government. This article argues that the negotiation of mega-regional trade agreements (RTAs) and their content indicates the need distinguish different types of transparency. Trade activists that call for drafts of the text of a mega-RTA to be released while negotiations are ongoing are seeking deliberative transparency, which provides opportunities for meaningful public participation and consultation. The trade advisory systems that could provide opportunities for deliberation instead deliver technocratic transparency; the rationale is to increase the effectiveness of mega-RTAs rather than their democratic legitimacy. Frequent leaks of draft chapters of mega-RTAs provide opportunities for deliberation, but some actors involved in leaking are engaged in disruptive transparency where the aim is to complicate trade negotiations, making a final deal less likely. While these varieties of transparency emerge in the context of the negotiating process, disciplinary transparency – which often becomes a regulatory tool for multinational corporations to influence policy-making – is found in the text of mega-RTAs. Certain forms of transparency increase the likelihood that mega-RTAs will be compatible with strong environmental policy, while others may have a detrimental impact.     

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.     

Diversifying forest expertise: forest journals narrating policy change

ABSTRACT

During policy change, the role of the actors communicating the change to different audiences is accentuated. The media plays an increasing role, either as an actor or by providing a stage for other actors. In particular, specialised journals represent an influential, albeit understudied, sphere of policy studies. We use the narrative policy framework complemented with frame analysis to trace how specialised media can affect policy implementation through implicit suggestions for action. Using this combined approach, we analyse how specialised forest journals, which are the most important forest information source for Finnish forest owners, have conveyed the renewal of forest legislation in Finland. The core message of the journals is that forest owners should, despite their new freedom granted by the reform, rely on experts rather than experimenting when managing their forests. This suggests that the media contributes to a path-dependent continuation of a forest policy that is based on a rationalistic exploitation ethos. The innovative potential, which the policy change aimed at encouraging, is thereby partially undermined. However, the analysis of the narratives also reveals that forest expertise and professionalism are diversifying. This notion is important as diversity can eventually lead to narratives supporting more fundamental change in forests management.     

Realising local food policies: a comparison between Toronto and the Brussels-Capital Region’s stories through the lenses of reflexivity and co-learning

ABSTRACT

This paper revisits the development of Toronto and Brussels’ local food policies by analysing reflexivity and co-learning as important dimensions within a Hybrid Governance Approach (HGA); it approaches the interaction between four forms of governance (bottom-up, networked, state, market-led) and the tensions between them as hybrid dynamics. Within this approach, reflexivity refers to the positionality of agents, i.e. to the ways local food actors embody as well as reflect on and reconsider their principles and practices through time. Closely related to reflexivity, co-learning involves agential interactions to co-construct enabling food policy delivery systems. The HGA is mobilised to understand the ways in which reflexive capacities, as well as co-learning, take place in the two cases and how they lay the basis of particular modes of (de)institutionalisation. Learning from the two cases’ trajectories, this paper highlights: (a) the role of key governance tensions as triggers as well as breeding grounds for reflexivity and co-learning outcomes; (b) the challenges of food movement actors to surmount or valorise key tensions in order to build accountable modes of food policy delivery through time; (c) the struggles to build legitimacy and accountability in local food movements through the development of bottom-linked organisations and governance modes.     

浅论城市空间环境的空间治理

城市空间环境的含义丰富,也具有时代特点。传统的城市空间管理主要依靠城市政府实施规划准入管理,其本质上体现着对城市建设资金、地域空间资源的计划性配置理念。21世纪信息时代的发展特征要求我们重新审视城市空间环境的内容和特点,随着世界经济生产方式的空间性加强,既强调跨越边界、区域差异,又强调控制和协调,创新城市空间环境的管理方式势在必行。本文探讨了城市空间环境的概念及城市空间环境发展的特点,在数字城市建设的时代背景下,试分析城市空间环境新的治理理念——空间治理的必要性和主要任务。     

金沙江流域(云南部分)生态潜力及其变化

植被景观要素的生态潜力能够反映某区域内生态功能的综合潜力,研究植被景观要素的生态潜力可望为该区域的生态保护工作提供参考。金沙江流域是我国西部的生态脆弱区,因此选择本流域的云南省部分地区进行植被景观要素的生态潜力与变化研究。首先,对流域内各植被类型进行生态潜力的分级与打分;然后,采用1996与2006年的TM遥感数据,制作了流域内的两期植被分类图,并在此基础上,借助ArcGIS软件绘制了生态潜力图;最后,根据流域内10年期间的植被类型变化面积,计算出流域内生态潜力的变化量。分析得出,流域内生态潜力变化最大的为中、东部地区,而该地区正是人口分布比较集中的地区。研究成果一方面可望加强人们认识流域内植被的生态功能和保护价值,以及植被的发展和破坏趋势;另一方面为流域内植被的恢复方向和重点提供可靠的依据.