Framing the change and changing frames:Tensions in participative strategy development

Participative strategy development serves to integrate the interests and perspectives of multiple stakeholders involved in today's complex environmental challenges, aiming at a better-informed strategy for tackling these challenges, increased stakeholder ownership, and more democratic decision making. Prior research has observed inherent tensions between the need for participative strategy to be open to stakeholders' input and the need for closure and guidance. We extend this reasoning using a framing perspective. Our evidence from the development of the England Peat Action Plan suggests that tensions can emerge between the necessary ambiguous initial framing of intended change and the persistence of stakeholders' different framings of this change as well as perceptions of lacking knowledge, guidance, and control. We argue that strategy openness can thereby impede stakeholders' willingness and ability to change and counteract the strategy's aim for major transformation. Interactive spaces help mitigate the tensions and facilitate stakeholders' willingness and ability for change. </p

IPBES : Don't throw out the baby whilst keeping the bathwater : Put people's values central, not nature's contributions

IPBES has replaced the term ‘ecosystem services’ with ‘nature's contributions to people’. This make-over does little to address the semantic problems associated with ecosystem services. The ‘new’ term still characterises the relation between nature and people as one-way and the value of nature as instrumental (as a provider of benefits), masking human agency and broader values. By replacing ecosystem services with a near-synonymous term, IPBES ditches the baby (the successful term ecosystem services), whilst keeping the dirty bathwater (the problems with the term). This distracts from the otherwise much-improved comprehensiveness of its valuation framework in terms of pluralism. To be genuinely inclusive, IPBES should use an altogether different headline terminology that centres around people's values and makes objects of value such as ecosystem services subsidiary. This allows diverse conceptions of human-nature relating and plural values of nature to genuinely stand on a par, whilst not ditching the baby. In the end, we can only integrate values in environmental governance, not services or contributions — ultimately it is the societal importance ascribed to nature that matters

Looking below the surface : The cultural ecosystem service values of UK marine protected areas (MPAs)

Acknowledgements This research was funded by the UK Natural Environment, Economic and Social, and Arts and Humanities Research Councils, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and the Welsh Government as part of the Shared, Plural and Cultural Values work package of the UK National Ecosystem Assessment follow-on-phase (www.lwec.org.uk/sharedvalues). Additional funding was provided by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation through the Marine Conservation Society. Many thanks to Althea Davies (University of Aberdeen, currently University of St. Andrews), Ros Bryce (University of Aberdeen, currently University of the Highlands and Islands), Mike Christie (Aberystwyth University), Mandy Ryan (University of Aberdeen), Susan Ranger, Jean-Luc Solandt and Calum Duncan (Marine Conservation Society), Sophie Rolls and Rebecca Clark (Natural England), Mansi Konar (Defra) and Kerry Turner (University of East Anglia) for advising on the research design, and Alison Dando (British Sub-Aqua Club) and David Mitchell (Angling Trust) for their indispensable help with mobilising respondents. We are also grateful to the participants of our online survey and focus groups for their time and effort.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Looking below the surface : The cultural ecosystem service values of UK marine protected areas (MPAs)

Acknowledgements This research was funded by the UK Natural Environment, Economic and Social, and Arts and Humanities Research Councils, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and the Welsh Government as part of the Shared, Plural and Cultural Values work package of the UK National Ecosystem Assessment follow-on-phase (www.lwec.org.uk/sharedvalues). Additional funding was provided by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation through the Marine Conservation Society. Many thanks to Althea Davies (University of Aberdeen, currently University of St. Andrews), Ros Bryce (University of Aberdeen, currently University of the Highlands and Islands), Mike Christie (Aberystwyth University), Mandy Ryan (University of Aberdeen), Susan Ranger, Jean-Luc Solandt and Calum Duncan (Marine Conservation Society), Sophie Rolls and Rebecca Clark (Natural England), Mansi Konar (Defra) and Kerry Turner (University of East Anglia) for advising on the research design, and Alison Dando (British Sub-Aqua Club) and David Mitchell (Angling Trust) for their indispensable help with mobilising respondents. We are also grateful to the participants of our online survey and focus groups for their time and effort.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Adaptation to climate change–related ocean acidification : An adaptive governance approach

Climate change-driven ocean acidification (OA) is causing rapid change to global ecosystems and poses a significant threat to marine life. However, predicting ecosystem effects remains highly uncertain and governance responses to OA are not yet forthcoming. Adaptive governance can provide a means to deal with this uncertainty and we consider its application to the polycentric governance of adaptation responses to OA in Scotland, focussing on the aquaculture industry as a vulnerable sector. A workshop was used to develop potential responses to OA and to gain information about present and potential capacity for adaptive governance at national and regional levels. Scottish legislation, policy and planning documents were subsequently analysed to enable description of how governance and management arrangements constrain or enable adaptation responses. Legislative and policy analysis indicates convergence across emerging mechanisms in support of adaptive governance and identified interventions. Recent advances in climate change adaptation in Scotland promotes integration of adaptation into wider Scottish Government policy development and functions, based on iterative and collaborative processes across scales. Alongside this, new models of coastal and marine governance, including a partnership-led regional marine planning process and devolution of seabed management rights under Crown Estate Scotland, seek to advance new models of locally-led and learning-based planning and management which can support adaptation responses. However, adaptation measures at operational scale requires flexibility in the aquaculture licensing regime which is currently of low adaptive capacity. Further, expansion of the industry faces social and ecological constraints which limit spatial measures, and are complicated by uncertainty in predicting local OA effects. Expanding the use of holistic and co-operative management tools such as Aquaculture Management Areas could support adaptation across wider spatial scales. Better integration across policy and planning instruments is also needed to enhance adaptive capacity, including between climate change adaptation, marine planning and aquaculture planning and management. This could be enabled by establishing links between existing and proposed collaborative groups to enhance development of adaptation responses and through co-ordination of monitoring and review processes to promote learning across scales

Ecosystem services as a post-normal field of science

The ecosystem services (ES) concept is increasingly being integrated in to policy and decision making at all scales of environmental governance. Yet ES assessments are often characterised by high levels of uncertainty, are heavily value-laden and seek to contribute towards time-critical decision making and policy development. We assess the suitability of post-normal science as a broad scientific framework to guide research practice in such situations. Results of a literature review on the current use of post-normal science in ES literature are presented, and we discuss how the framing can contribute to three emergent threads in ES assessment: managing uncertainty, participation and knowledge validation, and dealing with value plurality. We conclude by arguing for the adoption of a post-normal science posture within ES research, due to its broad applicability, consistent philosophical underpinning and in-built reflexivity. A short list of questions is presented to help guide the application of a post-normal approach to ES research

Deliberating Our Frames : How Members of Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives Use Shared Frames to Tackle Within-Frame Conflicts Over Sustainability Issues

Multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) have been praised as vehicles for tackling complex sustainability issues, but their success relies on the reconciliation of stakeholders’ divergent perspectives. We yet lack a thorough understanding of the micro-level mechanisms by which stakeholders can deal with these differences. To develop such understanding, we examine what frames—i.e., mental schemata for making sense of the world—members of MSIs use during their discussions on sustainability questions and how these frames are deliberated through social interactions. Whilst prior framing research has focussed on between-frame conflicts, we offer a different perspective by examining how and under what conditions actors use shared frames to tackle ‘within-frame conflicts’ on views that stand in the way of joint decisions. Observations of a deliberative environmental valuation workshop and interviews in an MSI on the protection of peatlands—ecosystems that contribute to carbon retention on a global scale—demonstrated how the application and deliberation of shared frames during micro-level interactions resulted in increased salience, elaboration, and adjustment of shared frames. We interpret our findings to identify characteristics of deliberation mechanisms in the case of within-frame conflicts where shared frames dominate the discussions, and to delineate conditions for such dominance. Our findings contribute to an understanding of collaborations in MSIs and other organisational settings by demonstrating the utility of shared frames for dealing with conflicting views and suggesting how shared frames can be activated, fostered and strengthened

The Effects of Aquaculture and Marine Conservation on Cultural Ecosystem Services : An Integrated Hedonic – Eudaemonic Approach

Understanding the cultural contributions of ecosystems is essential for recognising how environmental policy impacts on human well-being. We developed an integrated cultural ecosystem services (CES) valuation approach involving non-monetary valuation through a eudaemonic well-being questionnaire and monetary valuation through hedonic pricing. This approach was applied to assess CES values on the west coast of Scotland. The impact of scenic area and marine protected area (MPA) designations on CES values and potential trade-offs with aquaculture, an increasingly important provisioning ecosystem service in the region, were investigated. Results confirmed a eudaemonic well-being value structure of seven factors: engagement and interaction with nature, place identity, therapeutic value, spiritual value, social bonds, memory/transformative value, and challenge and skill. Visibility of, but not proximity to aquaculture negatively influenced housing prices. In contrast, proximity to MPAs and visibility of scenic areas increased property values. All eudaemonic well-being value factors were positively and significantly associated with scenic areas and a subset of these with MPAs. The integration of the two methods can provide decision-makers with a more comprehensive picture of CES values, their relation to conservation policies and interactions and trade-offs with other activities and services