Collaborative Governance Assessment

This is the report of APFIC/FAO Regional Consultative Workshop, "Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries: Bringing together responsible fisheries and social development", held at theWindsor Suites Hotel, Bangkok, Thailand, 6-8 October 2010. The 72 participants came from a cross section of fisheries sector stakeholders including from 20 countries and 12 Regional Fisheries Bodies and Regional Organizations and 14 fish workers' organizations, disaster preparedness and response agencies, and other civil society organizations. The workshop's objectives were to receive guidance from regional and national stakeholders on the nature, principles and key thematic areas of a possible international instrument to plan, implement and report on securing sustainability in small-scale fisheries. The workshop was further tasked to develop high priority actions and identify potential gaps in the implementation of good governance practices in small-scale fisheries and related assistance needs

Planning, implementation and effectiveness in Indigenous health reform

The Planning, Implementation and Effectiveness in Indigenous Health Reform (PIE) project, funded by the Lowitja Institute and the Australian Research Council, carried out by the University of Melbourne, arose from concerns by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that despite the importance of participation and investment in collaborative governance, little research focused on capturing current practice and identifying best practice is being done. The advent of the National Indigenous Reform Agreement (NIRA) and the Indigenous Health National Partnership Agreements (IHNPAs) has led to further development/application of collaborative approaches to governance through committees and forums at national, State and regional levels. The activities associated with these committees and forums are referred to throughout this report as collaborative governance. This report focuses on building the evidence base around best practice based on case studies of collaborative governance in relation to the NIRA. A policy brief highlighting the policy recommendations of this report is also available

Governance of a complex system: water

This paper sets out a complex adaptive systems view of water governance. Overview Fresh water is a life - enabling resource as well as the source of spiritual, social and economic wellbeing and development. It is continuously renewed by the Earth’s natural recycling systems using heat from the sun to evaporate and purify, and then rain to replenish supplies. For thousands of years people have benefited from these systems with little concern for their ability to keep up with human population and economic development. Rapid increases in population and economic activity have brought concern for how these systems interact with human social and economic systems to centre stage this century in the guise of a focus on water governance. What do we mean by governance and how might we better understand our water governance systems to ensure their ongoing sustainability? This paper sets out a complex adaptive systems view of water governance. It draws on the academic literature on effective governance of complex systems and effective water governance to identify some principles for use in water governance in New Zealand. It illustrates aspects of emerging water governance practice with some examples from New Zealand which have employed a multi-actor, collaborative governance approach. The paper concludes with some implications for the future evolution of effective water governance in New Zealand. Collaborative governance processes are relatively unfamiliar to New Zealand citizens, politicians and other policy actors which makes it more important that we study and learn from early examples of the use of this mode of governance

Collaborative action research for the governance of climate adaptation - foundations, conditions and pitfalls

This position paper serves as an introductory guide to designing and facilitating an action research process with stakeholders in the context of climate adaptation. Specifically, this is aimed at action researchers who are targeting at involving stakeholders and their expert knowledge in generating knowledge about their own condition and how it can be changed. The core philosophy of our research approach can be described as developing a powerful combination between practice-driven collaborative action research and theoretically-informed scientific research. Collaborative action research means that we take guidance from the hotspots as the primary source of questions, dilemmas and empirical data regarding the governance of adaptation, but also collaborate with them in testing insights and strategies, and evaluating their usefulness. The purpose is to develop effective, legitimate and resilient governance arrangements for climate adaptation. Scientific quality will be achieved by placing this co-production of knowledge in a well-founded and innovative theoretical framework, and through the involvement of the international consortium partners. This position paper provides a methodological starting point of the research program ‘Governance of Climate Adaptation’ and aims: · To clarify the theoretical foundation of collaborative action research and the underlying ontological and epistemological principles · To give an historical overview of the development of action research and its different forms · To enhance the theoretical foundation of collaborative action research in the specific context of governance of climate adaptation. · To translate the philosophy of collaborative action research into practical methods; · To give an overview of the main conditions and pitfalls for action research in complex governance settings Finally, this position paper provides three key instruminstruments developed to support Action Research in the hotspots: 1) Toolbox for AR in hotspots (chapter 6); 2) Set-up of a research design and action plan for AR in hotspots (chapter 7); 3) Quality checklist or guidance for AR in hotspots (chapter 8)

Collaborative governance for the sustainable development goals

The advent of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals has refocused global attention on the roles of business and other nonstate actors in achieving global goals. Often, business involvement takes the form of collaborations with the more traditional actors—governments and non‐governmental organizations. Although such partnerships for development have been seen before, the scale and expectations are new. This paper explores how and why these cross‐sector collaborations are evolving, and what steps can or should be taken to ensure that partnerships create public and private value. The arguments are illustrated with reference to cases of market‐driven partnerships for agriculture in Southeast Asia that are intended to engage marginalized smallholder farmers in global value chains in agriculture. The aims of these cross‐sector collaborations coincide with several targets of the Sustainable Development Goals such as poverty alleviation, decreasing environmental impact, and achieving food security. This is a hard case for mechanisms intended to protect public interests, given that the target beneficiaries (low‐income smallholder farmers and the environment) are unable to speak effectively for themselves. We find that structures and processes to align interests in ways that protect the public interest are both necessary and feasible, though not easy to achieve

Can islands of effectiveness thrive in difficult governance settings ? the political economy of local-level collaborative governance

Many low-income countries contend with a governance syndrome characterized by a difficult combination of seeming openness, weak institutions, and strong inter-elite contestation for power and resources. In such countries, neither broad-based policy nor public management reforms are likely to be feasible. But are broad-based approaches necessary? Theory and evidence suggest that in such settings progress could be driven by"islands of effectiveness"-- narrowly-focused initiatives that combine high-quality institutional arrangements at the micro-level, plus supportive, narrowly-targeted policy reforms. This paper explores whether and how local-level collaborative governance can provide a platform for these islands of effectiveness. Drawing on the analytical framework developed by the Nobel-prize winning social scientist Elinor Ostrom, the paper reviews the underpinnings of successful collaborative governance. It introduces a simple model for exploring the interactions between collaborative governance and political economy. The model highlights the conditions under which coordination is capable of countering threats from predators seeking to capture the returns from collaborative governance for themselves. The relative strength in the broader environment of two opposing networks emerges as key --"threat networks"to which predators have access, and countervailing"trumping networks"on which protagonists of effective collaborative governance can draw. The paper illustrates the potential practical relevance of the approach with three heuristic examples: the governance of schools, fisheries, and road construction and maintenance. It concludes by laying out an agenda for further empirical research, and suggesting what might be the implications of the approach for future operational practice.Governance Indicators,National Governance,Public Sector Corruption&Anticorruption Measures,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Policy, Institutions and Governance

Environmental governance: Participatory, multi-level - and effective?

Current international and European Union environmental policies increasingly promote collaborative and participatory decision-making on appropriate and multiple governance levels as a means to attain more sustainable policies and a more effective and lasting policy implementation. The entailed shifts of geographical scale of governance can be exemplified by the EU Water Framework Directive in that higher-level policies are devolved not only to the member states but to local collaborative decision-making bodies on natural as opposed to territorial scales. To date, empirical evidence and theoretical considerations have remained ambiguous about the environmental outcomes of such modes of governance. At the same time, the relationship between multi-level governance and non-state actor involvement remains a largely uncharted terrain. Accordingly, a twofold research agenda is mapped out: How does public participation work in different governance contexts? And what potential do multi-level governance environments have to foster the effectiveness of participatory governance? Drawing on scholarly literature on multi-level governance, policy implementation, public participation and complex systems, we develop five sets of hypotheses on how the number of policy levels and geographical rescaling affect citizen participation, actor interests and policy outcomes. We present empirical results based on a comparative meta-analysis of 47 case studies in environmental governance in North America and the EU, combining qualitative and quantitative methods. --Civic participation,multi-level governance,re-scaling,policy implementation,institutional fit,meta-analysis,case survey

Collaborative stewardship in multifunctional landscapes: Toward relational, pluralistic approaches

Landscape stewardship offers a means to put social-ecological approaches to stewardship into practice. The growing interest in landscape stewardship has led to a focus on multistakeholder collaboration. Although there is a significant body of literature on collaborative management and governance of natural resources, the particular challenges posed by multifunctional landscapes, in which there are often contested interests, require closer attention. We present a case study from South Africa to investigate how collaborative stewardship can be fostered in contested multifunctional landscapes. We conducted this research through an engaged transdisciplinary research partnership in which we integrated social-ecological practitioner and academic knowledge to gain an in-depth understanding of the challenges of fostering collaboration. We identified five overarching factors that influence collaboration: contextual, institutional, social-relational, individual, and political-historical. Collaborative stewardship approaches focused on the development of formal governance institutions appear to be most successful if enabling individual and social-relational conditions are in place. Our case study, characterized by high social diversity, inequity, and contestation, suggests that consensus-driven approaches to collaboration are unlikely to result in equitable and sustainable landscape stewardship in such contexts. We therefore suggest an approach that focuses on enhancing individual and social-relational enablers. Moreover, we propose a bottom-up patchwork approach to collaborative stewardship premised on the notion of pluralism. This would focus on building new interpersonal relationships and collaborative capacity through small collective actions. Taking a relational, pluralistic approach to fostering collaborative stewardship is particularly important in contested, socially heterogeneous landscapes. Drawing on our study and the literature, we propose guiding principles for implementing relational, pluralistic approaches to collaborative stewardship and suggest future research directions for supporting such approaches

Fisheries policies for a new era

This Guidance Note presents a simple approach to analyzing the governance context for development of aquatic agricultural systems; it is intended as an aid to action research, and a contribution to effective program planning and evaluation. It provides a brief introduction to the value of assessing governance collaboratively, summarizes an analytical framework, and offers practical guidance on three stages of the process: identifying obstacles and opportunities, debating strategies for influence, and planning collaborative actions

E-Government Partnerships Across Levels of Government

E-government Partnerships across Levels of Government, is an overview of the challenges and approaches to creating a collaborative and cooperative partnership across levels of government for e-government development and implementation.E-Governance; cooperative partenership; decentralization; federalism