Sociocarbon cycles: assembling and governing forest carbon in Indonesia

As Indonesia’s REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) program unfolds, it is transforming people and places in unexpected ways, and reconfiguring human and non-human processes. In this paper we recognize that forest carbon governance is about much more than carbon. Reflecting on observations from research in Indonesia, we develop the concept of sociocarbon cycles in an effort to move beyond the human-nature dualisms that characterize much work on REDD+. We see carbon governance as emergent sets of arrangements that are continually tested and challenged through the agency of diverse human and non-human actors. Drawing on insights from the literature on socionatures, and in particular on work on hydrosocial cycles, we approach carbon as a socionatural achievement, constituted through relations among institutions, carbon technologies, and C atoms. Our approach recasts REDD+ as an inherently political program, rather than a techno-scientific response to climate change. This, we contend, opens up new ways of conceptualizing and approaching carbon. A sociocarbon lens highlights the importance of social research in reconceptualising biophysical carbon cycles; brings questions of justice and power to the fore (who wins and who loses from carbon initiatives); and aids in understanding what carbon is, how it is made known, and how competing carbon claims are sustained. We suggest that a sociocarbon lens provides multiple points of entry to pursue more just geometries of power

Managing peri-urban floodplains and urban-rural connectivity: A case study in ecosystems governance following a disaster event

Peri-urban environments are critical to the connections between urban and rural ecosystems and their respective communities. Lowland floodplains are important examples that are attractive for urbanisation and often associated with the loss of rural lands and resources. In Christchurch, New Zealand, damage from major earthquakes led to the large-scale abandonment of urban residential properties in former floodplain areas creating a rare opportunity to re-imagine the future of these lands. This has posed a unique governance challenge involving the reassessment of land-use options and a renewed focus on disaster risk and climate change adaptation. Urban-rural tensions have emerged through decisions on relocating residential development, alternative proposals for land uses, and an unprecedented opportunity for redress of degraded traditional values for indigenous (Māori) people. Immediately following the earthquakes, existing statutory arrangements applied to many recovery needs and identified institutional responsibilities. Bespoke legislation was also created to address the scale of impacts. Characteristics of the approach have included attention to information acquisition, iterative assessment of land - use options, and a wide variety of opportunities for community participation. Challenges have included a protracted decision-making process with accompanying transaction costs, and a high requirement for coordination. The case typifies the challenges of achieving ecosystem governance where both urban and rural stakeholders have strong desires and an opportunity to exert influence. It presents a unique context for applying the latest thinking on ecosystem management, adaptation, and resilience, and offers transferable learning for the governance of peri-urban floodplains worldwide

Governance change and governance learning in Europe: Stakeholder participation in environmental policy implementation

Current European Union (EU) policies require policy-makers on different levels of government to engage with new forms of governance such as participatory planning, aiming to improve environmental policy delivery. We address the central issue of how policy-makers learn about the appropriateness of different modes of governance. By way of example, we examine recent innovations in EU water governance – primarily through the enactment of the Water Framework Directive (2000) and the Floods Directive (2007), and their requirements for stakeholder participation in the planning process. We discuss scope for policy-induced ‘governance learning’, wherein policy-makers draw on evidence and experience to learn about how to design and execute effective participatory planning and decision-making. In doing so, we aim to extend work on policy learning by focusing on the procedural dimensions of governance, and make a case for more coordinated and systematic approaches to gathering evidence and learning from ongoing EU environmental policy implementation

Learning in participatory environmental governance – its antecedents and effects. Findings from a case survey meta-analysis

Theory on participatory and collaborative governance maintains that learning is essential to achieve good environmental outcomes. Empirical research has mostly produced individual case studies, and reliable evidence on both antecedents and environmental outcomes of learning remains sparse. Given conceptual ambiguities in the literature, we define governance-related learning in a threefold way: learning as deliberation; as knowledge- and capacity-building; and as informing environmental outputs. We develop nine propositions that explain learning through factors characterizing governance process and context, and three propositions explaining environmental outcomes of learning. We test these propositions drawing on the ‘SCAPE’ database of 307 published case studies of environmental decision-making, using multiple regression models. Results show that learning in all three modes is explained to some extent by a combination of process- and context-related factors. Most factors matter for learning, but with stark differences across the three modes of learning, thus demonstrating the relevance of this differentiated approach. Learning modes build on one another: Deliberation is seen to explain both capacity building and informed outputs, while informed outputs are also explained by capacity building. Contrary to our expectations, none of the learning variables was found to significantly affect environmental outcomes when considered alongside the process- and context-related variable

The Environmental Performance of Participatory and Collaborative Governance: A Framework of Causal Mechanisms

Many have advocated for collaborative governance and the participation of citizens and stakeholders on the basis that it can improve the environmental outcomes of public decision making, as compared to traditional, top-down decision making. Others, however, point to the potential negative effects of participation and collaboration on environmental outcomes. This article draws on several literatures to identify five clusters of causal mechanisms describing the relationship between participation and environmental outcomes. We distinguish (i) mechanisms that describe how participation impacts on the environmental standard of outputs, from (ii) mechanisms relating to the implementation of outputs. Three mechanism clusters focus on the role of representation of environmental concerns, participants’ environmental knowledge, and dialogical interaction in decision making. Two further clusters elaborate on the role of acceptance, conflict resolution, and collaborative networks for the implementation of decisions. In addition to the mechanisms, linking independent with dependent variables, we identify the conditions under which participation may lead to better (or worse) environmental outcomes. This helps to resolve apparent contradictions in the literature. We conclude by outlining avenues for research that builds on this framework for analysis

Environmental Governance of China's Belt and Road Initiative

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched in 2013, is rapidly subsuming much of China's political and economic involvement abroad. As a far-reaching infrastructure development and investment strategy, officially involving more than 130 countries, the expansion of the BRI raises important questions about its environmental impacts and its implications for environmental governance. This article examines how China is actively and rapidly developing an institutional architecture for its envisioned “green BRI,” considering the key actors, policies, and initiatives involved in the envi ronmental governance of the BRI. We find that the current institutional architecture of the “green BRI” relies on voluntary corporate self-governance and a multitude of international and transnational sustainability initiatives. The effectiveness of the envi ronmental governance of the BRI not only hinges on China's priorities and commit ments, but also on the political willingness and capacity of BRI partner countries to maintain, implement, and enforce stringent environmental laws and regulations. We conclude by outlining several environmental governance challenges and an agenda for future research

Governing global telecoupling toward environmental sustainability

Telecoupling constitutes a particular class of globalized environmental issues that are neither local-cumulative, nor transboundary, nor concerning global commons, but that arise because of specific linkages between distal regions. Such telecoupled issues, e.g., associated with global commodity chains, waste flows, or migration patterns, have been receiving increasing attention from scholars of global land change science. Although governance research has mostly studied existing institutional responses to these issues, telecoupling opens up a problem-oriented perspective on issues of environmental sustainability that occur regionally, but that arise because of global linkages, and raises novel questions about how such issues are and could be governed in a global architecture. We draw insights from existing literature on globally interconnected phenomena to advance our understanding of governing telecoupling toward environmental sustainability. We first identify and discuss five particular challenges that telecoupling poses to global environmental governance: knowledge deficits, divergent interests, high transaction costs of cooperation, the weak legitimacy base of current governance arrangements, and policy incoherence and fragmentation. Second, we review conceptual literature that meaningfully address the governance of telecoupling, while utilizing differing terminologies, for example, through reference to "flows," "chains," or "multiscalar" issues. Building on this, we elaborate on how currently debated governance approaches respond to the identified challenges. We conclude with a brief note on where we believe the discussion on governance of telecoupling stands, and where we see directions for future research

What is governance in global telecoupling?

The concept of telecoupling is increasingly used as a framework to understand globally distant interconnections and their sustainability implications. Although there is a growing research focus on issues of governance related to global telecoupling, there appears little consensus over the meaning of “governance” in this respect. Papers in the recent Ecology and Society special feature titled “Telecoupling: A New Frontier for Global Sustainability” reveal quite different understandings of the telecoupling-governance relationship. We want to suggest that greater clarity and a common understanding of how governance figures in telecoupled systems will aid constructive dialogue on how to govern telecoupling toward more sustainable pathways in the face of pressing global social and environmental issues. This response, though not aiming to define a single, definitive framework of governance as it pertains to telecoupling, seeks to identify three distinct perspectives applied to governance in the context of global telecoupling: (1) governance by states or other actors that induces or fosters telecoupling in the first place, often irrespective of its sustainability implications; (2) governance mainly by private companies that coordinates telecoupled flows; and (3) governance by states, nonstate actors, and hybrid or multistakeholder initiatives that aims to address the negative externalities of telecoupling. By distinguishing these perspectives, we aim to make underlying understandings of governance explicit, and to foster further constructive exchange on the topic

Contextualizing certification and auditing: Soy certification and access of local communities to land and water in Brazil

The massive expansion of soy production in Brazil has contributed to a loss of access for local communities to land and water, particularly in highly dynamic frontier regions in the Cerrado. Soy certification standards like the Roundtable on Responsible Soy (RTRS) contain principles that are supposed to prevent such problems. In this paper, we examine the extent to which certification and auditing have served to protect local communities’ access to land and water in western Bahía state in the Cerrado's Matopiba region. We draw on findings from field research in Brazil and western Bahía, 72 semi-structured interviews with corporate, state and civil society actors, and a systematic analysis of audit reports from RTRS-certified farms in Bahía. We find that auditing practices are not effective in protecting the rights and access of local communities to land and water due to three inter-related sets of factors: 1) the business-dominated nature of the drafting and content of the RTRS standard, 2) the structural limitations and everyday practices of auditing, and 3) domestic and local contextual factors in Brazil and western Bahía. This study aims to contribute to a re-thinking and re-assessment of certification and auditing practices and suggests that new approaches are required to govern global commodity chains in a more environmentally just way. We advocate for a locally embedded and community-sensitive perspective in research on certification and auditing, to complement previous research in the fields of critical political economy and sustainability governance

Environmental governance in globally telecoupled systems: Mapping the terrain towards an integrated research agenda

Environmental governance is increasingly challenged by global flows, which connect distant places through trade, investment and movement of people. To date, research on this topic has been dispersed across multiple fields and diverse theoretical perspectives. We present the results of a systematic literature review of 120 journal articles on the environmental governance of global flows and their environmental impacts, employing the notion of telecoupling as a common analytical lens. Six themes emerged, which can guide a comparative and policy-relevant research agenda on governing global telecoupling: (1) advancement of problem-centered research (as opposed to studying existing governance arrangements), (2) displacement of environmental burdens from Global North to South from a telecoupling perspective, (3) environmental governance of telecoupling between Global South countries, (4) policy coherence in governing global flows, (5) cross-scalar interactions between private and public governance and (6) combinations of governance arrangements to effectively address environmental problems in telecoupled settings