Regional Environmental Change最新文献

Natural resource management networks cohere due to mutual dependencies and fragment, in part, due to the perceived risks of interaction. However, research on these networks has tended to accept coherence a priori rather than problematizing dependence, and few studies exist on interorganizational risk perception. This article presents the results of a study operationalizing these concepts and measuring the distribution of three types of dependence (capital, legitimacy, and regulatory) and two types of perceived risk (performance and sanction) among nearly fifty stakeholder groups and organizations participating in the management of fisheries in the binational Gulf of Maine. The analysis reveals an organizationally diverse network with several stakeholder types participating, with communications clustered binationally, with low levels of perceived risk in interacting, and interdependencies cohering the network. The types of interorganizational dependence present varied across dyadic relationships, but legitimacy dependence, based on shared understandings that organizations should work together, was the most present and had the largest effect on collaboration-oriented network traits. Sanction risk was more common than performance risk but had the most substantial negative effect. The results suggest an opportunity for additional studies of interorganizational dependance and perceived risk to operationalize and measure the sources of network coherence and fragmentation and their effect on collaboration.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10113-024-02328-y.

Assessing how different users of a Marine Protected Area perceive environmental changes can contribute to design management strategies. We assess how locals and tourists perceive environmental changes in the Cap de Creus protected area (NW Mediterranean, Spain). To identify locally perceived changes, we first conducted semi-structured interviews with locals (n = 38). Reported environmental changes were then used to construct a survey applied to locals and tourists (n = 427). In semi-structured interviews, environmental changes were the least reported changes compared to economic and social changes; reports of negative environmental changes dominated over reports of positive environmental changes. Overall, all survey participants reported a decline of the health status of the local environment, with locals displaying higher levels of agreement with statements referring to coastal environmental deterioration than tourists. The predominance of responses reporting economic versus environmental changes can be explained by the recent radical transformation of the area towards tourism. Reports of coastal marine area deterioration are in line with available instrumental data. Higher levels of agreement with statements referring to environmental deterioration among locals than among tourists highlight the importance of people's connection with nature to assess change. Considering that Cap de Creus has been protected for more than two decades, our findings raise concerns regarding its ongoing deterioration and underscore the importance of monitoring the effectiveness of marine protection to modulate management strategies.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10113-024-02322-4.

Extreme weather events affect many areas around the world. How a country or region reacts to it can take many forms. In this article, we concentrate on policy responses, as typically found in laws, acts, or strategies. Recent research in climate change adaptation or environmental governance concluded that the degree of severity of extreme events is a crucial indicator that policy action should be taken. The event alone is a necessary, but insufficient condition for policies to be introduced. In this context, we ask: Which conditions must be at stake so that an extreme event is able to deploy its focal power and induce policy introduction or change? To answer this question, we studied more than two centuries of flood risk management in Switzerland. We relied on qualitative and quantitative data, as well as process tracing techniques, to relate event characteristics, media, political, and policy contexts to policy change in flood risk management. Results indicate that two conditions made floods turn into focusing events and support paradigm shift: high economic damage and a policy subsystem's actor constellation favorable to change. We are convinced that our results are also replicable for other natural disasters and other countries than only Switzerland.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10113-024-02316-2.