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The urgent need to revert the ecological and social equity crises of the current development model and realize the potential of sustainable development has led several disciplines to converge on the socioecosystem concept as the most appropriate theoretical framework for research and public policy. The socioecosystem approach recognizes that social systems are integrated with natural systems and seeks to adaptively comanage socioecosystem coevolution for the sustainable development of both systems. We hypothesize that incorporation of this approach into environmental policy in Mexico could help resolve many of the problems that currently undermine policy effectiveness. To find out to what extent policy professionals might concur with this hypothesis, and what the opportunities and obstacles to implementing socioecosystem-based policy might be, research was conducted to elicit the expert opinion of officials responsible for formulating and implementing environmental policy in Mexico. The principle opportunities consist in the fact that experts intuitively understand the socioecosystem approach, and that most perceive advantages in adopting it because its policy attributes can potentially help to resolve many of the factors they identify as limiting the success of current environmental policies. Obstacles to its adoption include institutional barriers and the vested interests that benefit from the status quo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecosystem services (ES) have become an important focus of the conservation movement but have yet to be mainstreamed into environmental policy and management, especially at the state and federal levels. Adoption of an ES approach requires agency personnel to have knowledge or experience in implementing an ES approach and metrics that link potential actions to impacts on ES. We characterize the degree to which ES considerations are taken into account in setting priorities for conservation acquisitions in the U.S. state of Minnesota. We assess two core dimensions of an ES approach: (1) multiobjective targeting and (2) measuring program benefits in terms of increases in human well-being. We assess the degree to which these two dimensions occur in statute and in conservation program decision making. We find that state statute provides clear support for an ES approach in conservation funding mechanisms. However, we find that many of the programs funded through those mechanisms have more traditional habitat-centric approaches. In contrast to statutory emphasis, water quality related metrics were not prominent. We recommend expanding current prioritization systems to include a broader suite of metrics that are linked to human well-being to further mainstream ES in Minnesota. These metrics can be generated from existing data and would allow program managers to better communicate the public benefits of conservation spending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adaptive comanagement is at an important cross-road: different research paths forward are possible, and a diagnostic approach has been identified as a promising one. Accordingly, we operationalize a diagnostic approach, using a framework, to set a new direction for adaptive comanagement research. We set out three main first-tier variables: antecedents, process, and outcomes, and these main variables are situated within a fourth: the setting. Within each of these variables, significant depth of study may be achieved by investigating second- and third-tier variables. Causal relationships among variables, and particularly related to the outcomes of adaptive comanagement, may also be investigated at varying depths using the diagnostic framework and associated nomenclature. We believe that the diagnostic approach we describe offers a unifying methodological approach to advancing adaptive comanagement research as well as similar approaches. There are significant benefits to be gained, including building a database of case studies using this common framework, advancing theory, and ultimately, improving social and ecological outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines the impact of three coordination dimensions on health sector adaptation to climate change in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta: cross-scale, cross-sectoral, and cross-boundary. While tasks are divided up between government ministries and departments in Vietnam, there is little collaboration on issues that span mandates. Similarly, while water flows in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta take resource management and health concerns across provincial boundaries, formal mechanisms for interprovincial collaboration are lacking. While decentralization efforts have sought to devolve authority and decision making to lower levels, there is continued state-centered top-down policy making, and this limits collaborative coordination across scales. All three of these issues inhibit health sector adaptation to climate change in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta, and though these coordination issues are recognized by the Vietnamese government, to date there has been little success in addressing them. The authors hope to stimulate further debate and discussion of coordination problems, and conclude that despite some significant challenges, the South West Steering Committee could play a facilitating role coordinating climate change responses in health and other sectors across the Vietnamese Mekong Delta. As an analysis of governance, this research is applicable to other areas and sectors in Vietnam, as well as to other parts of South East Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental problems are usually framed by a repertoire of arguments articulated by a network of individuals (scientists and policymakers) and their affiliated institutions. Given the complexity of this network, it is important to conduct network analyses on both individual and organizational levels to achieve a better understanding of the underlying political structure that influences science-policy communication. Through an empirical study of a policy network related to grassland management in China, our study examines the underlying political structure of the network as well as its political impact on the problem-framing processes. The analysis reveals that political polarization and power imbalances in the network, the product of existing institutional arrangements, have confined the framing of environmental problems to specific areas and impeded the development of comprehensive policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quantitative approaches to measure and assess resilience are needed to bridge gaps between science, policy, and management. In this paper, we suggest a quantitative framework for assessing ecological resilience. Ecological resilience as an emergent ecosystem phenomenon can be decomposed into complementary attributes (scales, adaptive capacity, thresholds, and alternative regimes) that embrace the complexity inherent to ecosystems. Quantifying these attributes simultaneously provides opportunities to move from the assessment of specific resilience within an ecosystem toward a broader measurement of its general resilience. We provide a framework that is based on reiterative testing and recalibration of hypotheses that assess complementary attributes of ecological resilience. By implementing the framework in adaptive approaches to management, inference, and modeling, key uncertainties can be reduced incrementally over time and learning about the general resilience of dynamic ecosystems maximized. Such improvements are needed because uncertainty about global environmental change impacts and their effects on resilience is high. Improved resilience assessments will ultimately facilitate an optimized use of limited resources for management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The long-term character of climate change and the high costs of adaptation measures, in combination with their uncertain effects, turn climate adaptation governance into a torturous process. We systematically review the literature on climate adaptation governance to analyze the scholarly understanding of these complexities. Building on governance literature about long-term and complex policy problems, we develop a conceptual matrix based on the dimensions knowledge and power to systematically study the peer-reviewed literature on climate adaptation governance. We find that about a quarter of the reviewed journal articles do not address the knowledge or power dimension of the governance of climate change adaptation, about half of the articles discuss either the knowledge or the power dimension, and another quarter discuss both knowledge and power. The articles that do address both knowledge and power (1) conceptualize the governance of climate adaptation mainly as a complex system of regulatory frameworks and technical knowledge, (2) assume that regulatory systems can be easily adapted to new knowledge, (3) pay little attention to fluid or unorganized forms of power, e.g., negotiation, and knowledge, e.g., learning, and (4) largely neglect the interplay between the two. We argue that more research on this interplay is needed, and we discuss how puzzling and powering are a promising pair of concepts to study this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adaptive comanagement (ACM) is often suggested as a way of handling the modern challenges of environmental governance, which include uncertainty and complexity. ACM is a novel combination of the learning dimension of adaptive management and the linkage dimension of comanagement. As has been suggested, there is a need for more insight on enabling policy environments for ACM success and failure. Picking up on this agenda we provide a case study of the world famous Venice lagoon in Italy. We address the following questions: first, to what extent are four institutional prescriptions typically associated with ACM currently practiced in the Venice system? Second, to what extent is learning taking place in the Venice system? Third, how is learning related to the implementation or nonimplementation of the prescriptions of ACM in the Venice system? Our analysis is based on interviews with stakeholders, participatory observation, and archive data. This paper demonstrates that the prescriptions of ACM are hardly followed in the Venice lagoon, but some levels of cognitive learning do take place, albeit very much within established management paradigms. Normative and relational learning are much rarer and when they do occur, they seem to have a relatively opportunistic reason. We propose that in particular the low levels of collaboration, because the governance system was deliberately set up in a hierarchical and mono-centric way, and the limited possibilities for stakeholder participation are implicated in this finding because they cause low levels of social capital and an incapacity to handle disagreements and uncertainty very well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contribution of soft institutional change to improve freshwater governance in the coastal zone will be examined. Freshwater management seeks to reduce losses due to overexploitation of the common-pool resources provided by river catchments and their associated ecosystems. Due to the complexity of the governance system, improving the performance of one coastal social-ecological system means searching for the appropriate "soft" institutional change. In the Pertuis Charentais region, increasing scarcity of freshwater in summer threatens the health of the coastal ecosystem and the sustainability of human activities, which depend on the use of natural resources. The allocation of freshwater among competing uses or concerns is a core issue for integrated coastal zone management. To address this issue, we have constructed an analytical framework that combines the ecosystem services approach with the institutional analysis of common-pool resources, and have developed an integrated simulation tool based on the system dynamic modeling approach. Freshwater scarcity generates three kinds of user conflict: (1) conflict between two extractive uses of freshwater (irrigation and drinking water), (2) conflicts between extractive uses (provisioning services) and other services (support, regulatory, and cultural) provided by freshwater, and (3) competition within a given activity sector (agriculture or shellfish farming). Participation by local managers led to the identification of realistic soft institutional changes that might mitigate conflicts and improve the governance system. These possible institutional changes were then integrated as fixed exogenous parameters in the simulation model. The simulated scenarios suggest that innovative collective arrangements involving farmers could be an alternative to other more restrictive top-down measures. This participatory experiment also illustrates the potential of social-ecological modeling for exploring acceptable new institutional arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable development has become an overall policy objective in Europe. The sustainability transition is seen as the process of coming to terms with sustainability in all its ecological, social, economic, and institutional dimensions. This challenging process is as much about new ways of knowing as it is about resource management and product innovation. I analyzed how scientific tools such as environmental, socioeconomic, and integrated models have been developed and used to provide a solid foundation for sustainable policy objectives. I used a scoping study to compare current impact assessment exercises and research policy cases within the European Commission (EC). Although the EC is recognized as having supported environmental policy integration for more than three decades, updated insight is relevant because the current impact assessment system within the EC is highly dynamic, involving frequent new policy commitments and institutional initiatives to strengthen its practice and quality within the last three years. In addition, a broad range of research projects have been initiated to support this process by developing new concepts and tools and linking them with actual policy initiatives. Finally, the focus on design and use of scientific tools will contribute to a better understanding of what hinders the tools from being relevant, accurate, and legitimate. For example, while being simplifications of reality, many scientific models remain so complex that they are seen as black boxes instead of transparent analytical tools. Consequently, research outcomes do not fully reach policy makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participation is a prominent feature of many decision-making and planning processes. Among its proclaimed benefits is its potential to strengthen public support and involvement. However, participation is also known for having unintended consequences which lead to failures in meeting its objectives. This article takes a critical perspective on participation by discussing how participation may influence the ways in which citizens can become involved. Participation unavoidably involves (1) restrictions about who should be involved and about the space for negotiation, (2) assumptions about what the issue at stake is, and (3) expectations about what the outcome of participation should be and how the participants are expected to behave. This is illustrated by a case study about the Dutch nature area, the Drentsche Aa. The case study demonstrates how the participatory process that took place and the restrictions, assumptions, and expectations that were involved resulted in six forms of citizen involvement, both intended and unintended, which ranged between creativity, passivity, and entrenchment. Based on these findings, the article argues that participation does not merely serve as a neutral place in which citizens are represented, but instead creates different categories of citizens. Recognizing this means reconceiving participation as performative practice. Such a perspective goes beyond overly optimistic views of participation as a technique whose application can be perfected, as well as pessimistic views of participation as repression or domination. Instead, it appreciates both intended and unintended forms of citizen involvement as meaningful and legitimate, and recognizes citizenship as being constituted in interaction in the context of participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the face of apparent failures to govern complex environmental problems by the central state, new modes of governance have been proposed in recent years. Network governance is an emerging concept that has not yet been consolidated. In network governance, processes of (collective) learning become an essential feature. The key issue approached here is the mutual relations between network structure and learning, with the aim of improving environmental management. Up to now, there have been few attempts to apply social network analysis (SNA) to learning and governance issues. Moreover, little research exists that draws on structural characteristics of networks as a whole, as opposed to actor-related network measures. Given the ambiguities of the concepts at stake, we begin by explicating our understanding of both networks and learning. In doing so, we identify the pertinent challenge of individual as opposed to collective actors that make up a governance network. We introduce three learning-related functions that networks can perform to different degrees: information transmission, deliberation, and resilience. We address two main research questions: (1) What are the characteristics of networks that foster collective learning in each of the three dimensions? To this end, we consider SNA-based network measures such as network size, density, cohesion, centralization, or the occurrence of weak as opposed to strong ties. (2) How does collective learning alter network structures? We conclude by outlining a number of open issues for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collaborative and adaptive approaches to environmental management have captured the attention of administrators, resource users, and scholars. Adaptive co-management builds upon these approaches to create a novel governance strategy. This paper investigates the dynamics of the adaptive comanagement process and the variables that influence it. The investigation begins by summarizing analytical and causal models relevant to the adaptive co-management process. Variables that influence this process are then synthesized from diverse literatures, categorized as being exogenous or endogenous, and developed into respective analytical frameworks. In identifying commonalities among models of the adaptive comanagement process and discerning influential variables, this paper provides initial insights into understanding the dynamic social process of adaptive co-management. From these insights conjectures for future inquires are offered in the conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the first of a series of papers that review the state of knowledge and practice regarding compensation and rewards for environmental services in the developing world. The paper begins with an assessment of the historical development of compensation and reward mechanisms within a broader context of changing approaches to nature conservation and environmental policy. The assessment shows that greater interest in compensation and reward mechanisms has emerged within a policy context of changing approaches to nature conservation and flexible multi-stakeholder approaches to environmental management. In the developing world, an even greater variety of perspectives has emerged on the opportunities and threats for using compensation and rewards for environmental services. Within that background, the paper clarifies key concepts-including the distinction between compensation and reward -and presents a conceptual framework for typifying and characterizing different types of mechanisms that link ecosystem stewards, ecosystem service beneficiaries, and intermediaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]