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Public trust in water managers is often considered an important precondition for the effective implementation of sustainable water-management practices. Although it is well known that general public trust in government institutions is under pressure, much less is known in the literature on water governance whether such distrust also affects general and task-specific trust of the wider public in water managers. In addition, empirical studies on the determinants of such trust seem to be scarce. To fill those gaps, this study aims to measure general and task-specific public trust in water managers in the Netherlands and to assess how a selected group of potential determinants is related to general- and task-specific trust in water managers. To this end, we employ an original survey among a representative sample of the Dutch population (N = 2262). We find that trust in water managers in the Netherlands is generally high, but that it also comes with some task-specific variations. People have more trust in the flood-protection capacities of the water managers than in the capacities to successfully manage surface-water quality, nature conservation, and drought management. Using linear regression models, we subsequently find that individual-level variations in trust in water managers are best explained by one's general level of political trust. Additionally, we also show that both risk perceptions and self-evaluations of how informed people feel themselves about water management are important factors with (curvilinear) relations with trust in water managers. Overall, we conclude that water managers are under specific conditions able to build themselves well-established reputations and relatively high trust levels based on their performances. Nevertheless, trust development is far from entirely in the hands of the water managers themselves as we also conclude that trust evaluations of water managers are not immune from negative generalized political evaluations and public perceptions on water related risks.

The most critical question for climate research is no longer about the problem, but about how to facilitate the transformative changes necessary to avoid catastrophic climate-induced change. Addressing this question, however, will require massive upscaling of research that can rapidly enhance learning about transformations. Ten essentials for guiding action-oriented transformation and energy research are therefore presented, framed in relation to second-order science. They include: (1) Focus on transformations to low-carbon, resilient living; (2) Focus on solution processes; (3) Focus on ‘how to’ practical knowledge; (4) Approach research as occurring from within the system being intervened; (5) Work with normative aspects; (6) Seek to transcend current thinking; (7) Take a multi-faceted approach to understand and shape change; (8) Acknowledge the value of alternative roles of researchers; (9) Encourage second-order experimentation; and (10) Be reflexive. Joint application of the essentials would create highly adaptive, reflexive, collaborative and impact-oriented research able to enhance capacity to respond to the climate challenge. At present, however, the practice of such approaches is limited and constrained by dominance of other approaches. For wider transformations to low carbon living and energy systems to occur, transformations will therefore also be needed in the way in which knowledge is produced and used.

We identify four choice dimensions that determine the configuration and evolution of governance: formal-informal institutions, network-central steering, local-scientific knowledge and representation-participation. Choices on one dimension affect choices on the other dimensions, which naturally leads to historical dependency. We integrate these insights in a model of governance evolution that revolves around actor/institution configurations and power/knowledge configurations. In a case study of ice fishing villages on Minnesota's Lake Mille Lacs, we investigate one specific set of couplings between the choice dimensions. As we can study the local ice fishing tradition from its very beginning, the evolutionary paths of technology and institutions provide insights into how choices were made along the different dimensions and how they interacted. The case study illustrates how to apply the model, but also contributes to its further development as it draws attention to possible extensions: concepts of scale and identity. peerreview_statement: The publishing and review policy for this title is described in its Aims & Scope. aims_and_scope_url: http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=aimsScope&journalCode=cjep20 ispartof: Journal of Environmental Planning and Management vol:57 issue:8 pages:1122-1144 status: published

The application of the ecosystem services (ES) concept in land use planning has great potential to enhance the awareness of planning actors on their interactions. At the same time it can contribute to improve the linkage between the role of land use patterns and the understanding of land system functioning and its contribution to human well-being. The concept should be developed in a way that can be applicable in socio-ecological systems where nature and society are capable of enhancing their roles mutually. The objective of this paper is to suggest a standardized scheme and generalizable criteria to assess how successful the application of the ES concept contributed to facilitate participatory planning. We consider three potential advantages and three critical aspects for how to improve the applicability and relevance of the ES concept in planning. Hereon based, we present a balanced score card tool for which we broke down to advantages and risks into concrete questions. We illustrate the application of this approach with two case studies, representatives of two major governance schemes in relation to land use planning. We demonstrate that the balanced score card approach helps to reveal potential imbalances regarding the consideration of different ES groups. It supports testing the potential of the ES concept to enhance or not interactions of local and regional actors. We conclude that the framework should be reconsidered after a set of case studies to be developed into a monitoring tool for supporting planning practices.

We use a new dataset from war-torn Burundi to explore how various institutional proxies affect investments in soil conservation. We “unbundle” institutions and distinguish between various proxies for tenure security and social norms. While we find significant correlations between certain proxies for tenure and social norms on the one hand, and investments in erosion management on the other, this is not true for all proxies. Using local conflict measures as instruments for institutional quality, we find tentative evidence of a causal effect of tenure security on erosion management, but not on investments improving short-term soil fertility.

This paper reports and reflects on the contributions of land use models to societal problem solving. Its purpose is to inform model development and application and thus to increase chances for societal benefit of the modelling work. The key question is: How, when, and for what reasons does land use modelling contribute to societal problem solving? Addressing this question, we rely on a synthesis of three studies, reported more extensively elsewhere. Our research experience, as demonstrated by the three studies used as examples, implies that the impacts of using land use models are diverse. These impacts are not limited to learning about a land system, but extend to learning about the views, norms and values of other actors. Also, land use modelling work may enhance mediation of conflicts between stakeholders and contribute to community-building. The synthesis suggests that we need to anticipate the relatively fluid and fuzzy features of social contexts and problem solving processes to harness land use modelling for societal problem solving. To capture these features, we developed a conceptual framework that links five important factors for understanding the contribution of modelling to societal change. Four contextual factors are distinguished and a set of processes that are important for these four factors to become fruitfully matched. The four contextual factors are: problem solving dynamics; model types; boundary arrangements; roles of models. The matching consists of contextualization and network building. In view of these findings we conclude that in designing a modelling strategy equal attention should be paid to the requirements for model development and the embedding of the work in a given/intended societal context. For those who pursue the use of science-based land use models, a number of activities seem particularly relevant: 1. Exploration of the possible and desired impacts of the land use model; 2. Network building of modellers, potential users and stakeholders; 3. Model contextualization, i.e. the explication of values and aspirations underlying the modelling work, fitting the model to a social and biophysical context and interpretation of modelling results in relation to other knowledge sources such as expert knowledge; 4. Fostering feelings of interdependency between the participants in the problem solving process.

Assessing the sustainability of a regional agricultural system is complex, because in different decision-making contexts stakeholders can use different criteria and methodologies, thus arriving at different and contrasting judgments. One way of dealing with the complexity of measuring the concept of sustainability is to adopt a multidimensional perspective, which recognizes the presence of an economic dimension which requires feasibility, a social dimension which requires acceptability, and an environmental dimension which requires carrying capacity. Many approaches for measuring sustainability face the difficulty to reconcile this multidimensional perspective with the necessity to come up with a "synthetic" and one-dimensional assessment measure that could be used for both policy-making and methodological purposes. The goal of this paper is to contribute to the development of a methodological approach that can simplify the assessment procedure of sustainability of agricultural systems, while considering the multidimensional perspective. We used the three dimensions of sustainability to define two economic indicators, two social indicators, and four environmental indicators of sustainability. Then we used Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to partition 252 European agricultural regions into a subset of DEA-efficient regions and a subset of non-efficient regions under five scenarios. The scenarios reflect preferences with respect to the importance of the three dimensions of sustainability. Impact of model choices such as constant versus variable returns to scale, input versus output orientation, and balancing constraints is shown. The combination of multidimensional perspective and DEA allowed to operationalize the complex and sophisticated concept of sustainability. Applying DEA at the EU regional level enabled analysis of the heterogeneity of performances within each EU Member State and among them. This heterogeneity is a fundamental research topic in the domain of assessment of sustainability of agricultural systems. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

In Critical Systems Thinking, the notion of boundary judgements represents a constructionist view on knowing as the bounding of components of reality into knowable objects. Cognitive boundary judgements determine observations (facts) and evaluations (values), which knowers appreciate and act in relation to. Werner Ulrich’s method of dialogical boundary critique and the framework of Critical Systems Heuristics (CSH) are intended to enable citizen participation in Western democracies through acknowledgement of legitimate competencies in public and corporate dialogues. This paper investigates the application of this methodology in Philippine coastal resource management. The conclusions are based on stakeholder-based action planning carried out between November 2007 and May 2008 in the Babuyan group of islands, bounded by the Balintang and Babuyan Channels. It argues that dialogical boundary critique requires significant adaptation if it is to provide a liberating language for participants in Philippine resource management dilemmas shaped by multiple and conflicting knowledge claims under conditions of significant controversy

"Scale issues are an increasingly important feature of complex sustainability issues, but they are mostly taken for granted in policy processes. However, the scale at which a problem is defined as well as the scale at which it should be solved are potentially contentious issues. The framing of a problem as a local, regional, or global problem is not without consequences and influences processes of inclusion and exclusion. Little is known about the ways actors frame scales and the effect of different scale frames on decision making processes. This paper addresses the questions that different scale frames actors use and what the implications of scale frames are for policy processes. It does so by analyzing the scale frames deployed by different actors on the establishment of a so-called new mixed company or mega farm and the related decision making process in a Dutch municipality. We find that actors deploy different and conflicting scale frames, leading to scale frame mismatches. We conclude that scale frame mismatches play an important role in the stagnation of the decision making process."

In the Philippines, Integrated Coastal Management (ICM) represents the dominant response to narratives of ecosystem decline. However, there are persistent challenges to implementation, manifested in continued resource degradation, questioning of the exercise of stakeholder involvement and rising resource conflicts. This paper examines the implementation process and how the assumptions embodied in the ICM regime meet the local reality in one group of islands in the Philippine archipelago. The evidence shows how the transformation towards a supposed equilibrium state of coastal ecosystems is undermined in the face of diverging stakeholder agendas. Expected actors are disempowered by the incoherence between the policy owners' worldview and reality, paving the way for unethical influence from elite alliances. This is coupled with a deepening of the dominance of state, international development banks, foreign aid agencies, and NGOs in promoting their respective interests. In localities such as the Babuyan Islands, when assumptions of ICM collapse it has destructive consequences for fisherfolk and the coastal environment. We conclude that if ICM is to foster an effective and equitable correction of current unsustainable exploitation patterns, then there is a need to institute improved accountability mechanisms in the devolved governance system as well as taking seriously the espoused commitment to stakeholder involvement in determining the goals and assumptions of ICM.

Modeling has emerged as a key technology in analysis of social–ecological systems. However, the tendency for modeling to focus on the mechanistic materiality of biophysical systems obscures the diversity of performative social behaviors and normative cultural positions of actors within the modeled system. The fact that changes in the biophysical system can be culturally constructed in different ways means that the perception and pursuit of adaptive pathways can be highly variable. Furthermore, the adoption of biophysically resilient livelihoods can occur under conditions that are subjectively experienced as the radical transformation of cultural systems. The objectives of this work are to: (1) highlight the importance of understanding the place of culture within social–ecological systems, (2) explore the tensions between empirical and normative positions in the analysis of social–ecological resilience, and (3) suggest how empirical modeling of social–ecological systems can synergistically interact with normative aspects of livelihoods and lifeways.

Modeling has emerged as a key technology in analysis of social–ecological systems. However, the tendency for modeling to focus on the mechanistic materiality of biophysical systems obscures the diversity of performative social behaviors and normative cultural positions of actors within the modeled system. The fact that changes in the biophysical system can be culturally constructed in different ways means that the perception and pursuit of adaptive pathways can be highly variable. Furthermore, the adoption of biophysically resilient livelihoods can occur under conditions that are subjectively experienced as the radical transformation of cultural systems. The objectives of this work are to: (1) highlight the importance of understanding the place of culture within social–ecological systems, (2) explore the tensions between empirical and normative positions in the analysis of social–ecological resilience, and (3) suggest how empirical modeling of social–ecological systems can synergistically interact with normative aspects of livelihoods and lifeways.

Scale issues are an increasingly important feature of complex sustainability issues, but they are mostly taken for granted in policy processes. However, the scale at which a problem is defined as well as the scale at which it should be solved are potentially contentious issues. The framing of a problem as a local, regional, or global problem is not without consequences and influences processes of inclusion and exclusion. Little is known about the ways actors frame scales and the effect of different scale frames on decision making processes. This paper addresses the questions that different scale frames actors use and what the implications of scale frames are for policy processes. It does so by analyzing the scale frames deployed by different actors on the establishment of a so-called new mixed company or mega farm and the related decision making process in a Dutch municipality. We find that actors deploy different and conflicting scale frames, leading to scale frame mismatches. We conclude that scale frame mismatches play an important role in the stagnation of the decision making process