67 research outputs found
Surveying views on Payments for Ecosystem Services: implications for environmental management and research
No full textThe concept of Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) is globally of increasing interest. However, little is known about the views and expectations of professionals and practitioners expected to enable or implement this concept. Since these individuals design, select, shape and deliver environmental management, their views and expectations are critical to understanding how PES may play out in practice. Using the first survey on this topic, in the UK this research discusses the implications for future research and environmental management.
Responses indicate a range of views about PES and its potential effects. Most expect to see greater use of PES in future; and are cautiously positive about the environmental, social and economic consequences of doing so. Many hope PES may overcome existing challenges facing environmental management, subject to conditions or changes. The research also revealed tensions related to broader challenges in environmental governance – e.g. calls for standardisation may conflict with requests for adaptability. Meanwhile, other expectations – e.g. improved engagement with groups currently uninterested in the environment – indicate priorities that may be better addressed with other instruments. Varied views are likely in most countries and must be assessed to better understand the prospects and potential of PES
Does our current environmental monitoring support adaptive management?
No full textEuropean environmental and rural development policies require programmes of statutory monitoring using prescribed parameters - for example water quality parameters are monitored by all countries that implement the Water Framework Directive. These data are a significant resource that could potentially be used for adaptive (co-)management and governance. These approaches not only require the use of multiple forms of information to learn and update resource management, but can also imply a more holistic and participatory approach.
We have studied the monitoring regimes entailed for Water Framework Directive, Natura 2000 Directives and Agri-Environmental Schemes of the CAP Rural Development Programme across nine European cases in 6 member states and 3 regions. Building on established principles for monitoring socio-ecological systems (see Waylen et al. 2016), expert colleagues from across Europe have analysed published documents to see if the current monitoring schemes supported a move to the new paradigm of holistic, participatory and systemic management approaches.
Overall, data are focused on a narrow set of indicators that in turn enable only a partial perspective on ecosystem management. This matters because policy-driven monitoring may be the main source of information that can be used for formal statutory management. For example, social aspects or drivers of the socio-ecological system are nearly never monitored and incorporated into evaluation, particularly for older policies. The monitoring continues to describe the state of the environment -with great for some aspects - rather than assessing how an intervention has contributed to conservation or allowed sustainable use. This means we will struggle to understand socio-ecological systems, and learning from the effects of management actions. Furthermore, whilst the implementation of WFD, N2K and AES has evolved, there is no documented link to the use of the data in this process of change i.e. it is unknown if and how the monitoring programmes have influenced changed management. There were also positive findings - some member states offer open access to data; are working on integrated monitoring and reporting; and use citizen science to both monitor trends and engage people in learning about their environment.
Reappraising what is monitored could lead to a rebalancing of monitoring that could greatly assist future adaptive management. Many European policy-driven monitoring processes could be tweaked to make them more fit to improve ecosystem management. Our framing positions the work differently to the more conventional 'fitness' checks conducted recently: we can reflect on how our work contributes to these institutional evaluations in the discussion.
References:
Waylen, K.A. & Blackstock, K.L. In press. Monitoring for adaptive management or modernity? Lessons from recent initiatives for holistic environmental management Environmental Policy and Governance, DOI: 10.1002/eet.1758peerReviewedunknown accessibilityei tietoa saavutettavuudest
The dynamics of volunteer motivations for engaging in the management of invasive plants : Insights from a mixed-methods study on Scottish seabird islands
No full textAcknowledgments The authors thank the SOS Puffin volunteers and the Craigleith Management Group for their support in this research project. We also thank John Hunt (SOS Puffin), Anja Byg and Kerry Waylen (The James Hutton Institute), Norman Dandy (Plunkett Foundation), Michelle Pinard (University of Aberdeen), and four anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper. We acknowledge funding by the Natural Environment Research Council and the Rivers and Fisheries Trusts of Scotland. (NERC).Peer reviewe
Community water governance in Scotland : exploring meaning, practices, and order
No full textAmidst concerns about the global climate crisis, water allocation, management and governance have risen to the top of national and international agendas, including in countries traditionally viewed as having abundant water resources. Communities may – and some would argue should – be part of responding to these challenges. This research takes an interpretive approach to study how community involvement in water governance is understood and enacted. The research is set in the publicly managed and highly regulated context of water services, i.e., the activities associated with domestic drinking and wastewater provision and the avoidance and mitigation of harmful consequences of flooding in Scotland. This thesis provides a theoretically informed analysis of the role of communities in water governance using the concepts of meaning, practices and ordering derived from Emma Carmel’s Governance Analysis and grounded in wider interpretive policy theory. Building on data gathered from methods including interviews (walking and seated), observations, document analysis and systematic mapping, the study illustrates how governing takes place in real-life settings. The research provides much-needed insight into the practices and interactions of communities and practitioners, in particular, a subset of them called frontline workers. The thesis makes three contributions to scholarship. It deepens understanding of ‘community water governance’ based on multiple conceptual and empirical sources. Second, it presents new empirical insights into water services in Scotland, a setting which has received limited in-depth examination in academic literature. Finally, it enriches understanding of both communities and frontline workers and their contributions to addressing water challenges. The thesis shows that water governance is not solely a technical exercise but a social and political process of navigating social relations. Water governance needs to be understood first, as a contingent and relational practice in which communities and practitioners skilfully negotiate complex and ambiguous goals, and second, as having implications beyond the domain of water."I want to thank the Hydro Nation Scholars Programme. Not only for funding this PhD but for taking a chance to try something different and be open to what comes out in the end."--General acknowledgement
Expectations and experiences of diverse forms of knowledge use: the case of the UK National Ecosystem Assessment
No full textAssessments of environmental issues are often expected to tackle the perceived disconnect between scientific knowledge and environmental policy making. However, their actual influence on processes of knowledge communication and use remains understudied. We provide one of the first studies of the UK National Ecosystem Assessment (NEA), itself one of the first national-level assessments of ecosystem services. We explore expectations, early experiences, and implications for its role in promoting knowledge use, drawing on both documentary evidence and qualitative analysis of interviews with NEA authors and potential users. Many interviewees expected instrumental use; that is, facts directly assisting problem solving. This matches the rhetoric surrounding the NEA’s creation. However, we found more early evidence of interacting conceptual uses (learning), and strategic uses (sometimes deemed misuse). Such uses depend not only on assessment outputs, such as reports, but also on the processes of communication and interaction by which these are created. Thus, planning and analysis of such assessments should deemphasise instrumental use and instead focus on the complex knowledge ‘coproduction’ processes by which diverse and interacting forms of knowledge use may be realised
Assessing community-based conservation projects: A systematic review and multilevel analysis of attitudinal, behavioral, ecological, and economic outcomes
No full textAbstract Background Community-based conservation (CBC) promotes the idea that long-term conservation success requires engaging with, and providing benefits for local communities. Though widespread, CBC projects are not always successful or free of controversy. With criticisms on all sides of the conservation debates, it is critical to have a better understanding of (1) whether CBC is an effective conservation tool, and (2) of the factors associated with the success or failure of CBC projects, and the scale at which these factors operate. Recent CBC reviews have typically examined only a single resource domain, have limited geographic scope, consider only one outcome, or ignore the nested nature of socioecological systems. To remedy these issues, we use a newly coded global comparative database of CBC projects identified by systematic review to evaluate success in four outcome domains (attitudes, behaviors, ecological, economic) and explore synergies and tradeoffs among these outcomes. We test hypotheses about how features of the national context (H-NC), project design (H-PD), and local community characteristics (H-CC) affect these four measures of success. Methods To add to a sample of 62 projects that we used from previous systematic reviews, we systematically searched the conservation literature using six terms in four online databases. To increase the number of projects for each country in order to conduct a multilevel analysis, we also conducted a secondary search using the Advancing Conservation in a Social Context online library. We coded projects for 65 pieces of information. We conducted bivariate analyses using two-dimensional contingency tables and proportional odds logistic regression and conducted multivariate analyses by fitting reduced form proportional odds logistic regression models that were selected using a forward stepwise AIC approach. Results The primary and secondary searches produced 74 new projects to go along with the 62 projects from previous reviews for a total of 136 projects. The analyses suggest that project design, particularly capacity building in local communities, is critical in generating success across all outcomes. In addition, some community characteristics, such as tenure regimes and supportive cultural beliefs and institutions, are important for some aspects of project success. Surprisingly, there is less evidence that national context systematically influences project outcomes. Conclusions Our study supports the idea that conservation projects should be carefully designed to be effective and that some characteristics of local communities can facilitate success. That well-designed projects can prevail over disadvantages relating to the pre-existing national and local context is encouraging. As the evidence base on CBC grows, it will be useful to repeat this analysis with additional search terms, and consider additional variables related to national context to further evaluate the role of broader socio-political and economic contexts.</p
The role of metrics in the governance of the water-energy-food nexus within the European Commission
No full textAbstract Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus in both academia and policy. This concept draws attention to the link between different environmental and societal domains, and potentially entails substantive shifts in governance processes. As a consequence, policy-makers and scientists have started to develop metrics to make these interactions and ‘trade-offs’ visible. However, it is unknown if current framings of the nexus and relevant quantified metrics either reinforce or challenge existing governance structures. This paper explores relationships between framings of the nexus, metrics and models of governance based on discussions with staff within the European Commission. Although narratives around the need for new metrics are situated in a conventional script about the use of evidence to change policy, our data indicate processes of co-production, by which the use (or non-use) of any new metrics is dependent on existing institutional practices; and will reflect dominant political orderings. In doing so we provide a critical analysis of the role of metrics in environmental governance, and direct attention to the discursive, institutional and political arrangements in which they are embedded and with which they are co-constitutive. Focusing on the cultural and institutional settings in which they are established and used, our study suggests that the question of metrics in the water-energy-food nexus needs to be explored as a problem of establishing a legitimate policy objective in the European Commission and EU policy-making more broadly
Monitoring for Adaptive Management or Modernity: Lessons from recent initiatives for holistic environmental management
No full textCOMET-LA Ethics Guidelines [also in Spanish as "Lineamientos eticos; COMET-LA]
No full textNo abstract available
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