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Abstract:
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"Biological invasions – in which non-native species become established and outcompete native flora and fauna – is one of a number of emergent '21st century' environmental problems whose complex characteristics make it difficult for policy makers and practitioners to develop durable and effective management solutions. Invasive species management shares several characteristics with problems like land use change and the spread of contagions like Ebola and Zika. Their effects are often debilitating for human and ecological communities if left unaddressed, but there is uncertainty regarding the timing and extent of consequences. Changing climatic conditions can exacerbate the challenge of predicting the timing and severity of consequences, making it difficult to rally public support in favor of preventive action (Brenner & Franklin 2017).
At the same time, many of these problems share characteristics that make collective action challenging. They tend to span jurisdictions, sectors, and governance levels. As a result, addressing them will generally require individual and collective action by heterogeneous actors who have divergent interests in prevention and mitigation, as well as different resources and capabilities to bring to bear on the problem. The actors who are most affected by a problem may not have the resources needed to mitigate it; and actors who are well-positioned to prevent or mitigate harms may have little reason to do so. Moreover, emergent problems that are new to a given jurisdiction may require cooperation between and among actors who have limited experience with each other, or there may be institutional and organizational barriers to effective cooperation.
Under these circumstances, traditional policy instruments and approaches – such as command and control, market-based, or community-based natural resource governance – are unlikely to achieve lasting, positive results. Instead, effective governance likely requires venues for cooperation and coordination that span jurisdictions and sectors, as well as a range of policy instruments that provide diverse actors with relevant incentives, motivation, information, and resources to undertake preventive action – before significant harms occur.
In this paper, we ask: how do existing and emerging governance arrangements encourage individual and collective action to manage invasive species? We focus our attention on a particular case – buffelgrass in the Sonoran Desert of southern Arizona. Like other 21st century problems, invasive buffelgrass poses an imminent and significant threat to the region: if left unaddressed, it will outcompete native species, eventually causing an ecological state change that will fundamentally alter the character and function of the region’s ecosystems; increase fire risk; undermine the tourism and outdoor recreation sectors of the southern Arizona economy; and reduce quality of life for citizens in the area. While ecologists and conservation biologists have long warned of the consequences of buffelgrass invasion, and while practitioners in the region have developed forums for information sharing and coordination, the diverse public and private land managers on the front lines of buffelgrass management have yet to undertake sufficient individual and collective action to keep the buffelgrass population in check. Here, we draw on interview data and archival documents to develop an in-depth case study of buffelgrass and buffelgrass management efforts in the region, and use the case to build theory about governance mechanisms that might prompt effective individual and collective action by land managers in the region."
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