Governing for ecosystem health and human wellbeing

Governance arrangements and processes influence access to and benefits from ecosystem services, and therefore the potential for ecosystem services to alleviate poverty. Governance also then influences the health of ecosystems. This chapter learns from decades of governance-related research to identify how to make ecosystem governance more effectively ‘pro-poor’. It is informed by a systematic mapping of literature related to governance of ecosystem services and renewable natural resources for improved wellbeing and poverty alleviation, expert interviews and a workshop with government and non-government actors across a range of sectors from both North and South. The chapter is organised around the concept of trade-offs, considering first ecosystem-focused approaches, then rights-based approaches and lastly, participatory approaches to governance. The chapter further addresses the relevance of scale and multiple administrative levels (multi-level governance) and the importance of informal, or socially embedded, institutions. The chapter concludes that there is no single governance approach that can definitively deliver on improved ecosystem health and human wellbeing, that trade-offs are inevitable and governance is therefore an inherently political process

Accountability or participation? Disentangling the rationales for FOI access to deliberative material

[extract] This conference described our age as “the open government era”. The optimism apparent in this title is in many ways entirely justifiable. While open government has evolved slowly, and faced many challenges, half a century of statutory rights to access government documents has converged with information technology revolution to produce some remarkable results. When the United States Freedom of Information Act was passed in 1966, the idea of free online datasets, open to anyone anywhere in the world with access to a hand-held device, would have been unimaginable. When the Australian Federal freedom of information legislation was passed in 1982, leaks of government information like those now being disclosed over the Internet through Wikileaks were being printed in newspapers and monographs. The Hon. Michael Kirby, former Justice of the Australian High Court, once described the introduction of freedom of information (FOI) as a radical reform, given the long history of official secrecy, and “the attitudinal shift that FOI legislation demanded of ministers, departments, agencies and the public service [as] nothing short of revolutionary”.led the Federal Government to obtain High Court injunctions on the grounds of Crown copyright

In pursuit of rigour and accountability in participatory design

The field of Participatory Design (PD) has greatly diversified and we see a broad spectrum of approaches and methodologies emerging. However, to foster its role in designing future interactive technologies, a discussion about accountability and rigour across this spectrum is needed. Rejecting the traditional, positivistic framework, we take inspiration from related fields such as Design Research and Action Research to develop interpretations of these concepts that are rooted in PD׳s own belief system. We argue that unlike in other fields, accountability and rigour are nuanced concepts that are delivered through debate, critique and reflection. A key prerequisite for having such debates is the availability of a language that allows designers, researchers and practitioners to construct solid arguments about the appropriateness of their stances, choices and judgements. To this end, we propose a “tool-to-think-with” that provides such a language by guiding designers, researchers and practitioners through a process of systematic reflection and critical analysis. The tool proposes four lenses to critically reflect on the nature of a PD effort: epistemology, values, stakeholders and outcomes. In a subsequent step, the coherence between the revealed features is analysed and shows whether they pull the project in the same direction or work against each other. Regardless of the flavour of PD, we argue that this coherence of features indicates the level of internal rigour of PD work and that the process of reflection and analysis provides the language to argue for it. We envision our tool to be useful at all stages of PD work: in the planning phase, as part of a reflective practice during the work, and as a means to construct knowledge and advance the field after the fact. We ground our theoretical discussions in a specific PD experience, the ECHOES project, to motivate the tool and to illustrate its workings

Disentangling economic and political goals in the net neutrality debate

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A co-original approach towards law-making in the internet age

There is an increasing interest in incorporating significant citizen participation into the law-making process by developing the use of the internet in the public sphere. However, no well-accepted e-participation model has prevailed. This article points out that, to be successful, we need critical reflection of legal theory and we also need further institutional construction based on the theoretical reflection. Contemporary dominant legal theories demonstrate too strong an internal legal point of view to empower the informal, social normative development on the internet. Regardless of whether we see the law as a body of rules or principles, the social aspect is always part of people’s background and attracts little attention. In this article, it is advocated that the procedural legal paradigm advanced by Jürgen Habermas represents an important breakthrough in this regard. Further, Habermas’s co-originality thesis reveals a neglected internal relationship between public autonomy and private autonomy. I believe the co-originality theory provides the essential basis on which a connecting infrastructure between the legal and the social could be developed. In terms of the development of the internet to include the public sphere, co-originality can also help us direct the emphasis on the formation of public opinion away from the national legislative level towards the local level; that is, the network of governance.1 This article is divided into two sections. The focus of Part One is to reconstruct the co-originality thesis (section 2, 3). This paper uses the application of discourse in the adjudication theory of Habermas as an example. It argues that Habermas would be more coherent, in terms of his insistence on real communication in his discourse theory, if he allowed his judges to initiate improved interaction with the society. This change is essential if the internal connection between public autonomy and private autonomy in the sense of court adjudication is to be truly enabled. In order to demonstrate such improved co-original relationships, the empowering character of the state-made law is instrumental in initiating the mobilization of legal intermediaries, both individual and institutional. A mutually enhanced relationship is thus formed; between the formal, official organization and its governance counterpart aided by its associated ‘local’ public sphere. Referring to Susan Sturm, the Harris v Forklift Systems Inc. (1930) decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the field of sexual harassment is used as an example. Using only one institutional example to illustrate how the co-originality thesis can be improved is not sufficient to rebuild the thesis but this is as much as can be achieved in this article. In Part Two, the paper examines, still at the institutional level, how Sturm develops an overlooked sense of impartiality, especially in the derivation of social norms; i.e. multi-partiality instead of neutral detachment (section 4). These two ideas should be combined as the criterion for impartiality to evaluate the legitimacy of the joint decision-making processes of both the formal official organization and ‘local’ public sphere. Sturm’s emphasis on the deployment of intermediaries, both institutional and individual, can also enlighten the discourse theory. Intermediaries are essential for connecting the disassociated social networks, especially when a breakdown of communication occurs due to a lack of data, information, knowledge, or disparity of value orientation, all of which can affect social networks. If intermediaries are used, further communication will not be blocked as a result of the lack of critical data, information, knowledge or misunderstandings due to disparity of value orientation or other causes. The institutional impact of the newly constructed co-originality thesis is also discussed in Part Two. Landwehr’s work on institutional design and assessment for deliberative interaction is first discussed. This article concludes with an indication of how the ‘local’ public sphere, through e-rulemaking or online dispute resolution, for example, can be constructed in light of the discussion of this article

Disentangling participatory ICT design in socioeconomic development

Participatory design in socioeconomic development is an invariably political activity fraught with both political as well as ethical entanglements. ICT for development (ICTD) - often involved in contexts of great inequality and heteogeneity - places these in especially sharp relief. This paper draws attention to these entanglements as well as what they mean for the role and practice of designer-researchers practicing PD. We then draw upon our experiences in an active PD project to highlight approaches that serve as a partial response to these entanglements. These presents both limitations as well as orientations for our role as designer-researchers in engaging with and organising PD work in ICTD - providing a starting point for answering the question “who participates with whom in what and why?

Disentangling urban sustainability: the Flemish City Monitor acknowledges complexity

Nowadays, cities have to deal with complexity. In this article we argue that the City Monitor for Sustainable Urban Development in the Flanders (Belgium) acknowledges complexity. This set of almost 200 SDIs (Sustainable Development Indicators) contains actor-exceeding and policy-exogenous information. On that account this learning instrument is relevant for all actors involved in the urban (sustainable) development of their city and is able to enhance and to sharpen the quality of strategic urban debates and complex decision-making processes. Our intensive co-design approach of the City Monitor also succeeds to deal adequate with the tensions of complex catch-all terms such as (urban) sustainability

Amplifying Quiet Voices: Challenges and Opportunities for Participatory Design at an Urban Scale

Many Smart City projects are beginning to consider the role of citizens. However, current methods for engaging urban populations in participatory design activities are somewhat limited. In this paper, we describe an approach taken to empower socially disadvantaged citizens, using a variety of both social and technological tools, in a smart city project. Through analysing the nature of citizens’ concerns and proposed solutions, we explore the benefits of our approach, arguing that engaging citizens can uncover hyper-local concerns that provide a foundation for finding solutions to address citizen concerns. By reflecting on our approach, we identify four key challenges to utilising participatory design at an urban scale; balancing scale with the personal, who has control of the process, who is participating and integrating citizen-led work with local authorities. By addressing these challenges, we will be able to truly engage citizens as collaborators in co-designing their city

Unfolding participation over time: temporal lenses in participatory design

Participatory design (PD) research has historically strongly focused on the reporting of design events (e.g. workshops and prototyping activities with participants), where issues such as ‘involving users’, including the users’ point of view, and participation as a matter of mutual learning have been in the foreground. The need to further problematise and critically examine participation is nonetheless apparent. This special issue aims to shed light on participation as it unfolds over time during, between and beyond participatory events such as these. Here, we build an overview of existing directions taken by researchers to address the unfolding of participation in IT design over time. We do this by examining existing PD literature and the four contributions to this special issue. We identify two common temporalities in PD, the future-oriented and the project-based, and propose five lenses that may aid researchers in exploring and understanding the temporal dimensions of participation in their projects: the phasic, emergent, retrospective, prospective and longterm lenses. We end with propositions and opportunities for future research directions in PD, highlighting the multi-faceted nature of the temporality of participation

Local perspectives on humanitarian aid in Sri Lanka after the tsunami

Objectives: This case study examines the impact of humanitarian aid from the perspectives of local stakeholders in Sri Lanka following the tsunami disaster of December 2004. Study Design: Qualitative study using key-informant and focus group interviews. Methods: Key-informant and focus group interviews were conducted with tsunami survivors, community leaders, the local authorities and aid workers sampled purposively. Data collected was analysed using thematic analysis. Results: The study found that aid had aggravated social tensions and the lack of community engagement led to grievances. There was a perceived lack of transparency, beneficiary expectations were not always met and it was difficult to match aid to needs. Rapid participatory approaches to obtain beneficiary feedback in post disaster settings are possible but have limitations due to respondent bias. Conclusions: In order to mitigate adverse social impacts of their programmes, humanitarian aid agencies need to better understand the context in which aid is delivered. Beneficiary feedback is essential in disaster planning and response so that disaster response can be better matched to the needs of beneficiaries