Environmental Policy and Governance最新文献

A confluence of concerns about tropical forest loss, global warming, and social inequality drive calls to transform land use governance. Yet there is widespread debate about what must be transformed, by whom, and how. The increasing equation of transformation with ambitious, quantitative global targets, such as “net zero emissions” or “zero deforestation” has gained widespread appeal as a means to inspire action and hold powerful actors to account. However presenting targets themselves as the end goals of transformation, obscures both the means of achieving them and the social and environmental values that legitimate them. The escalation of targets for land use, in particular, is disconnected from targeted geographies, lacks accountability to socially diverse knowledge and priorities, and is readily appropriated by powerful actors at multiple scales. This paper argues instead, for an equity-based approach to transformation that reveals how unequal power distorts both the ends and the means of global governance. We illustrate this argument with five case-study “vignettes” in Indonesia, Ghana, Peru, and Brazil that reveal how de-contextualized, target-based thinking has reinforced state and corporate control over resources at the expense of local access, while largely failing to deliver the promised environmental outcomes. We conclude that equity-focused, case study research is critical not only to unpack the local consequences of pursuing global targets, but also to make visible alternative efforts to achieve deeper socio-environmental transformations.

Mitigating climate change, preventing mass species extinctions, improving rural livelihoods, and disaster risk reduction are among today's most urgent challenges. To meet these challenges, a large number of social actors need to agree to engage and act collectively on Forest and Landscape Restoration (FLR), ensuring its dual goal of restoring ecological functionality and improving people's wellbeing. Although FLR has gained momentum globally, the experiences so far continue to face socio-economic and governance challenges associated with the design and realization of effective efforts. Social Innovation (SI) can be seen contemporarily as the process and the result of interaction between stakeholders in the construction of solutions to social needs and problems, including those tackled by FLR. Here, using a content analysis approach applied to existing literature, we propose five possible conceptual bridges between FLR and SI. The Social Innovative – Forest and Landscape Restoration (SI-FLR) process advocates that sustainable livelihood needs should be attended first to ensure the Social-Ecological Systems' resilience. These bridges are: (1) “Landscape as the main context”; (2) “Nature as social need”; (3) “Landscape stewardship groups”; (4) “Governance capabilities”; (5) “Adapting and transforming to enhance resilience.” Identifying these bridges, will help decision-makers and project managers to improve the FLR initiatives by supporting the potential of SI and sparking the interest of other researchers to explore the many possibilities of SI-FLR.

Social innovations are grassroots processes aiming to achieve impacts beyond an individual level and towards a broader societal good. The environmental dimension of impacts refers to any direct change to the environment resulting from social innovation activities, products, or services, which are not addressed by pre-existing systems. In this paper, we determine the role of social innovation in addressing environmental impacts by analyzing a database of social innovation examples in European and circum-Mediterranean rural areas, compiled within the H2020 Project SIMRA. We conceptualize the overall aim of environmentally-focused social innovation initiatives as furthering the sustainable development of their territories. To address the environmental impacts of initiatives in a structured way, we use the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) classification, to describe social innovation environmental impacts in relation to specific targets. We analyzed 238 initiatives from the SIMRA catalog and associated initiative websites to identify and classify their direct environmental impacts. Our results indicate that 68% of the cases have at least one direct environmental impact that aligns with a SDG target. The most common impacts are related to sustainable natural resource management (SDGs target 12.2), sustainable food production systems (2.4), and equal access to land (2.3). This SDG-based classification proved to be a useful analytical tool for categorizing internationally policy-relevant environmental impacts of social innovations.

Linkages between ecosystem services and human well-being are complex. These linkages are of particular significance to disadvantaged communities, commonly residing in marginalized rural areas, and having difficulties regarding biophysical factors, infrastructure, housing, and aging populations. In this paper, we focused on such a typical area in Southwestern China, where we examined the linkages between ecosystem services and human well-being, underpinning our investigation by the social innovation theory and a social-ecological system framework. Going beyond what has been done by other scientists, we considered the heterogeneity of beneficiaries and assessed human well-being as it was valued by people, on the ground. We did it with full realization that stakeholder evaluation is becoming a novel means and an important instrument for targeting sustainability. The identification of key stakeholders in the Wolong Nature Reserve was the first step in our research. We categorized and classified the stakeholders into groups based on their dependence on ecosystem services and their socio-economic characteristics. Significant differentiations among human well-being were found, and stakeholders with heterogeneous socio-economic characteristics had a varied dependence on specific ecosystem services. Further, the regression analysis performed revealed key factors that would mediate the level of human well-being at the local level. The factors identified included the dependence of people on regulating and cultural services, their level of education, knowledge and occupation. Our results have contributed to discerning key stakeholders for ecosystem management purposes and determining the driving factors mediating the linkages between ecosystem services and human well-being. Thus, in addition to contribution to science, the results have potential practical implications for steering a more sustainable governance of nature in areas that are similar to this typical socio-ecological system in China.

Social innovation literature focuses commonly on roles of cooperation in addressing co-evolution of civil society initiatives and state-based governance toward sustainable solutions. However, roles of conflicts in driving social change are scarcely addressed in social innovation literature. We elaborated a concept of bottom-linked environmental governance, which can take place either via collaboration, or by conflict, and which can progress toward socio-political innovations. We show this progression by examining two longitudinal cases on forest controversies in Northern Finland. These are the cases of Inari and Muonio. They are characterized by dynamic processes of conflicts and collaboration between state-based organizations (e.g., Finnish forestry enterprise of Metsähallitus), civil society actors (e.g., reindeer herders, nature-based tourism entrepreneurs and environmental nongovernmental organizations). We conducted a qualitative deductive-inductive content analysis on the study cases and uncovered a set of “going out to get in” strategies by civil society actors, emerging from frustration on state-based participatory processes, and consisting of open disputes and pressure strategies outside the participatory processes to gain a seat and power at negotiation tables. Metsähallitus often responded by seeking to maintain its control over forest decisions. The interplay between these strategies led to continuous open disputes and finally to socio-political innovations (e.g., comanagement arrangement). The findings lead us to discuss reasons for prolonged disputes, the question of whether sociopolitical innovations can benefit all, considerations on power relations, strategies, and counter responses, all being relevant more broadly, for both, social innovation research and decision-making enabling socio-political innovations.

The governance of nature is facing remarkable dynamics resulting from massive societal challenges in socio-ecological systems. These challenges include land use and climate change, food insecurity and carbon intensive production, biodiversity losses and increasing pressures on the natural environment and human health. To address the challenges, the European Green Deal (2019) brings in essential arguments to transform the former course of action towards designing and implementing a long-term strategy of living with nature and using it. This ambition would require substantial societal changes at various levels, and social innovation opens new prospects to foster these.

Social innovation includes new institutional environments (e.g., of formal and informal rules) and arrangements (spatial and procedural), related actors' relationships and interactions (e.g., new attitudes, collaborations, values, behaviours, skills, practices and learning processes) and new fields of activity (e.g., social entrepreneurship, social enterprises). It manifests itself in new social relationships and collaborations (e.g., processes, interactions, networks), while governance mechanisms based on these collaborations commonly advance social capital and can create new social innovations (SCU, 2014).

The project ‘Social Innovation in Marginalised rural areas’ (SIMRA) defines social innovation as ‘the reconfiguring of social practices, in response to societal challenges, which seeks to enhance outcomes on societal well-being and necessarily includes the engagement of civil society actors’ (Polman et al., 2017). The term ‘social innovation’ is applied to depict a broad range of activities designed to address inherent problems of society (Neumeier, 2016). Attention to social innovation has risen with respect to its potential to promote civic values and foster transformation changes (Baker & Mehmood, 2015; Castro-Arce & Vanclay, 2020; Haxeltine et al., 2017; Kluvánková et al., 2021; Pel et al., 2019) associated with the steering of sustainable development and promoting a more sustainable governance of nature (Gorizz-Mifsud et al., 2019; Melnykovych et al., 2018; Nijnik et al., 2022; Secco et al., 2021; SIMRA, 2016-2020; Weiss et al., 2021). The COVID-19 outbreak interconnected economic–climate–environmental–health crises and necessitated immediate and adequate societal responses to be strategic by nature but with actions to be taken steadily and at the local level (Nijnik et al., 2021; Pedrini & Zaccone, 2021).

The European Union has provided an essential leverage capacity for the emergence of social innovation (Hubert, 2017). Social innovation is a product of policy discourses and a means of delivering support to loc

In this paper, we determine the role of knowledge in the development and consolidation of social innovation (SI) on the revitalisation of traditional farming in marginalised rural settings. We seek to address the following questions: (i) how the co-production of knowledge in SI initiatives for the revitalisation of traditional farming might influence its development path, and (ii) how the networking of local and external actors accelerates knowledge co-production and triggers the reconfiguration of social practices towards sustainability transformation. To answer these questions, we applied mixed-method approach by investigating the example of SI initiative (the case of Vlkolínec UNESCO site in Slovakia). We conducted a focus group, semi-structured and structured interviews, historical analysis and social network analysis with the actors involved in the SI. Based on the empirical results we revealed how mix of local and external knowledge and knowledge co-production can enhance the development of SI through the networking of numerous local stakeholders, particularly science and policy representatives. This knowledge sharing and knowledge co-production strengthened the development path of the SI in seeking to initiate effective measures for local people to return to traditional small-scale farming, supporting traditional crafts, creating new green jobs and conditions for improving the quality of life for local people, and new services for sustainable tourism. Our results highlight the importance of external knowledge in the expansion of bonding social capital, and the establishment of a regional knowledge network of local and external actors to trigger SI in rural areas. The analyses reveal that multi-actor networks that support knowledge exchange play an important role in SI development paths.

Blue–green infrastructure (BGI) is often promoted for its co-benefits and multifunctionality. However, this infrastructure is repeatedly planned, implemented and researched almost entirely based on the goals of stormwater management. Thus, more knowledge is required about how co-benefits are perceived and actioned by planning actors. By investigating co-benefits from a value perspective, this paper will contribute to the ongoing debate on how stormwater planning actors address the potential co-benefits and conflicts in the planning and implementation of BGI. The data are derived from policy document analyses and interviews with municipal and private planning actors in Bergen and Tromsø, Norway. The paper argues that municipal water actors are motivated to implement BGI beyond stormwater management goals and approach co-benefits and holistic stormwater management as an ideal in stormwater planning. However, the tensions and conflicts between the co-benefits become more evident in the actual implementation of BGI. The paper finds that when holistic BGI implementation is initiated by the municipal water actors, the stormwater management aspects dominate the BGI implementation. Finally, the paper concludes that even though blue and green values and interests are often conflicted in the implementation of BGI, urban stormwater planning is in the process of developing a blue–green value set based on the potential synergies of co-benefits. The paper therefore empirically illustrates how collective values and interests can develop and unfold across sectors and professional disciplines in BGI planning.

There has been growing interest in collaborative approaches such as co-creation and co-design for strategic energy planning and energy policy design. However, existing analyses have conceptualized collaboration in rather vague terms, have focused primarily on the involvement of industrial actors and have been set in Western Europe. In this paper, we assess an inclusive energy transition policy co-design experiment in Ida-Virumaa, a region in Estonia historically dominated by the oil shale industry and with scarce experience of cross-sector collaboration to date. The experiment had a twofold purpose: (1) to establish a network of people interested in renewable energy and energy efficiency in the region, (2) to develop and validate proposals for policies that could accelerate the energy transition. We found that expectation alignment, social learning, resource mobilization and developmental evaluation can be used to create synergy among participants and can lead to innovative policy proposals. However, collaboration increases the time needed for policy development, the existence of alternative venues can undermine the collaborative process, fluid roles can create confusion around implementation and there might not be many resources to build on in old industrial regions. We conclude that it is still relatively easy to co-design energy policy or a strategic energy plan even in a setting that does not enjoy a well-developed collaborative culture but it is much more challenging to co-create a strong network of committed actors with clear roles in the implementation of policies and plans.