Browsing by Author "Lebel, Louis"

Now showing 1 - 11 of 11

Assessments of Ecosystem Services and Human Well-Being in Thailand Build and Create Demand for Coproductive Capacity
(2015) Lebel, Louis; Wattana, Suchada; Talerngsri, Pawin
"Assessments of ecosystem services have been proposed as one way of incorporating concerns about environmental change and ecosystem conditions into subnational development planning. In Thailand a policy window for such initiatives is opening because of a transition in national policy toward area-based planning combined with broader political reforms to expand public participation and encourage more evidence-based decision making. We explored three case studies in Thailand in which central and local government agencies and research organizations partnered to engage local communities and other stakeholders in assessments of ecosystem services and human well-being. The analysis focused on the role ecosystem assessments play in building and creating demand for coproductive capacity. By coproductive capacities we mean the ability to combine scientific resources and governance capabilities in ways that bring about informed social change. We found evidence that the assessments built capacities for governance actors to explore scientific and research-based evidence, to consult scientific experts, and then to evaluate existing policies and plans using this newly acquired information. At the same time, scientific experts also learned to explore public policy issues, to consult planners and decision makers in government, and based on this knowledge to evaluate scientific evidence and revise the scope and goals of their research and analytical activities to better meet policy needs and demands. Coproductive capacities were built when various stakeholders jointly engaged in compilation and interpretation of evidence. Doing so helped legitimize the assessment process with positive feedback on both governance and science capacities. We also found evidence, however, of significant cultural and institutional constraints to designing and making better use of ecosystem services assessments. These constraints included insufficient resources for both knowledge making and decision making. Power relations and organizational culture likewise had implications for capacities to govern and do science. Nevertheless, by creating demand for greater capacities, assessments contribute to improving the quality of evidence-based social change."
Coproductive Capacities: Rethinking Science-Governance Relations in a Diverse World
(2015) van Kerkhoff, Lorrae E.; Lebel, Louis
"Tackling major environmental change issues requires effective partnerships between science and governance, but relatively little work in this area has examined the diversity of settings from which such partnerships may, or may not, emerge. In this special feature we draw on experiences from around the world to demonstrate and investigate the consequences of diverse capacities and capabilities in bringing science and governance together. We propose the concept of coproductive capacities as a useful new lens through which to examine these relations. Coproductive capacity is 'the combination of scientific resources and governance capability that shapes the extent to which a society, at various levels, can operationalize relationships between scientific and public, private, and civil society institutions and actors to effect scientifically-informed social change.' This recasts the relationships between science and society from notions of 'gaps' to notions of interconnectedness and interplay (coproduction); alongside the societal foundations that shape what is or is not possible in that dynamic connection (capacities). The articles in this special feature apply this concept to reveal social, political, and institutional conditions that both support and inhibit high-quality environmental governance as global issues are tackled in particular places. Across these articles we suggest that five themes emerge as important to understanding coproductive capacity: history, experience, and perceptions; quality of relationships (especially in suboptimal settings); disjunct across scales; power, interests, and legitimacy; and alternative pathways for environmental governance. Taking a coproductive capacities perspective can help us identify which interventions may best enable scientifically informed, but locally sensitive approaches to environmental governance."
Functional Links Between Biodiversity, Livelihoods, and Culture in a Hani Swidden Landscape in Southwest China
(2009) Xu, Jianchu; Lebel, Louis; Sturgeon, Janet
"The landscape of Mengsong, southwest China, was biologically diverse until recently due to historical biogeographical processes overlain by the swidden-cultivation practices of the Hani who migrated there several centuries ago. Our research sought to understand how the Hani adjusted their livelihoods to new policies, markets, and technologies, and the consequences for biodiversity conservation. We combined landscape, plot, and household surveys, interviews, and reviews of secondary documents, to reconstruct the major changes and responses to challenges in the social–ecological system over previous decades. Significant changes from closed to open canopy of secondary-forest vegetation took place between 1965–1993 and from open-canopy to closed-canopy forest between 1993–2006, mostly explainable by changes in state land-use policies and the market economy. Most remaining swidden-fallow succession had been converted into tea or rubber plantations. Swidden-fallow fields used to contain significant levels of biological diversity. Until 2000, biodiversity served several important ecological and social functions in the Hani livelihood system. Indigenous institutions were often functional, for example, linked to fire control, soil management, and watershed protection. For centuries, the Hani had detailed knowledge of the landscape, helping them to adjust rapidly to ecological disturbances and changes in production demands. The Hani understood succession processes that enabled them to carry out long-term land-management strategies. Recent government policies and market dynamics have simplified livelihoods and landscapes, seriously reducing biodiversity, but greatly increasing the area of closed-canopy forest (including plantations) and undermining the usefulness of Hani knowledge and land-use institutions. Meeting both conservation and development objectives in this landscape will require new functional links between sustainable livelihoods, culture, and biodiversity, rather than seeking to recreate the past."
Governance and the Capacity to Manage Resilience in Regional Social-Ecological Systems
(2006) Lebel, Louis; Anderies, John M.; Campbell, Bruce; Folke, Carl; Hatfield-Dodds, Steve; Hughes, Terry; Wilson, James
"The sustainability of regional development can be usefully explored through several different lenses. In situations in which uncertainties and change are key features of the ecological landscape and social organization, critical factors for sustainability are resilience, the capacity to cope and adapt, and the conservation of sources of innovation and renewal. However, interventions in social-ecological systems with the aim of altering resilience immediately confront issues of governance. Who decides what should be made resilient to what? For whom is resilience to be managed, and for what purpose? In this paper we draw on the insights from a diverse set of case studies from around the world in which members of the Resilience Alliance have observed or engaged with sustainability problems at regional scales. Our central question is: How do certain attributes of governance function in society to enhance the capacity to manage resilience? Three specific propositions were explored: (1) participation builds trust, and deliberation leads to the shared understanding needed to mobilize and self-organize; (2) polycentric and multilayered institutions improve the fit between knowledge, action, and social-ecological contexts in ways that allow societies to respond more adaptively at appropriate levels; and (3) accountable authorities that also pursue just distributions of benefits and involuntary risks enhance the adaptive capacity of vulnerable groups and society as a whole. Some support was found for parts of all three propositions. In exploring the sustainability of regional social-ecological systems, we are usually faced with a set of ecosystem goods and services that interact with a collection of users with different technologies, interests, and levels of power. In this situation in our roles as analysts, facilitators, change agents, or stakeholders, we not only need to ask: The resilience of what, to what? We must also ask: For whom?"
Institutional Fit and River Basin Governance: A New Approach Using Multiple Composite Measures
(2013) Lebel, Louis; Nikitina, Elena; Pahl-Wostl, Claudia; Knieper, Christian
"The notion that effective environmental governance depends in part on achieving a reasonable fit between institutional arrangements and the features of ecosystems and their interconnections with users has been central to much thinking about social-ecological systems for more than a decade. Based on expert consultations this study proposes a set of six dimensions of fit for water governance regimes and then empirically explores variation in measures of these in 28 case studies of national parts of river basins in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa drawing on a database compiled by the Twin2Go project. The six measures capture different but potentially important dimensions of fit: allocation, integration, conservation, basinization, participation, and adaptation. Based on combinations of responses to a standard questionnaire filled in by groups of experts in each basin we derived quantitative measures for each indicator. Substantial variation in these measures of fit was apparent among basins in developing and developed countries. Geographical location is not a barrier to high institutional fit; but within basins different measures of fit often diverge. This suggests it is difficult, but not impossible, to simultaneously achieve a high fit against multiple challenging conditions. Comparing multidimensional fit profiles give a sense of how well water governance regimes are equipped for dealing with a range of natural resource and use-related conditions and suggests areas for priority intervention. The findings of this study thus confirm and help explain previous work that has concluded that context is important for understanding the variable consequences of institutional reform on water governance practices as well as on social and environmental outcomes."
Multi-scale Perspective on Conserving with Communities: Experiences from upper Tributary Watersheds in Montane Mainland Southeast Asia
(2008) Lebel, Louis; Daniel, Rajesh; Badenoch, Nathan; Garden, Po; Imamura, Masao
"Mountains provide habitat for human and non-human life as well as many ecosystem goods and services useful to society at multiple spatial levels. In this paper we show that adopting a multi-level perspective allows for a more nuanced understanding of the governance challenges arising in the management of upper tributary watersheds for conservation purposes. Rather than assuming that the correct and best levels are known we look at how discourses privilege certain levels over others and how decisions about levels are made. Social groups, resources, places and institutions have scale-like characteristics which can confound simplistic models for conserving with communities. Communities are heterogeneous, vaguely bounded and shift levels. People belong to multiple communities. Resources are used-up and services valued at different spatial levels from those at which they may be ruled and managed. Areas of jurisdictions, resource characteristics and capacities of authority at particular levels may not coincide very well. Integration and segregation of use and conservation is, in part, an issue of resolution and frequency with which a landscape is viewed. The multi-level perspective on conserving with communities described in this paper helps better understand why the expectations of different actors are hard to satisfy and projects are perceived as failures. Some of the differences are a result of looking at the system from different levels and others the failure to acknowledge important cross-level interactions. It suggests that there is no a priori reason to privilege one level to the exclusion of consideration of all others in setting conservation objectives, nor in finding ways to meet them. The burdens and benefits of conservation should not be borne by, or accrue to, just one level."
Political Economy of Tropical and Boreal Forests
(2000) Contreras, Antonio P.; Pas-ong, Suparb; Lebel, Louis; King, Leslie; Mathieu, Paul
"This paper outlines a framework and a set of research questions relating to the effects of institutions on human activities affecting boreal and tropical forests. The boreal forests of the Russian taiga, Fenno- Scandia, and the North American Subarctic and the tropical forests located around the equator in both the eastern and western hemispheres are among the planet's largest carbon sinks. The fate of these forests will constitute a major determinant of levels of greenhouse gases (GHGs) resident in the Earth's atmosphere during the 21st century. These forests, especially the tropical forests are also major repositories of biological diversity, a fact that makes it easy to understand why countries like Brazil and Indonesia rank among the top ten in all assessments of biodiversity. At the same time, rapid deforestation is a fact of life in the tropical forests. Pressures that could lead to deforestation in the Russian taiga are also mounting steadily. In institutional terms, what makes this topic particularly interesting is the opportunity it affords to study not only the performance of forest management regimes (e.g. the regime articulated in Indonesia's Basic Forest Act of 1967 and implementing regulations/decrees) as such, but also the interplay between regimes dealing specifically with forest management and broader political and economic institutions (e.g. Indonesia's changing political system, the international plywood market, the World Trade Organization) which operate as underlying causes of deforestation and aforestation. For this flagship activity, biogeophysical conditions in the boreal and tropical forests constitute the key dependent variables. The research puzzle, then, centers on an exploration of the role of interactions between specific forest management regimes and broader economic and political institutions as determinants of biogeophysical conditions prevailing in the forests."
The Politics of Scale, Position, and Place in the Governance of Water Resources in the Mekong Region
(2005) Lebel, Louis; Garden, Po; Imamura, Masao
"The appropriate scales for science, management, and decision making cannot be unambiguously derived from physical characteristics of water resources. Scales are a joint product of social and biophysical processes. The politics-of-scale metaphor has been helpful in drawing attention to the ways in which scale choices are constrained overtly by politics, and more subtly by choices of technologies, institutional designs, and measurements. In doing so, however, the scale metaphor has been stretched to cover a lot of different spatial relationships. In this paper, we argue that there are benefits to understanding--and actions to distinguish--issues of scale from those of place and position. We illustrate our arguments with examples from the governance of water resources in the Mekong region, where key scientific information is often limited to a few sources. Acknowledging how actors' interests fit along various spatial, temporal, jurisdictional, and other social scales helps make the case for innovative and more inclusive means for bringing multi-level interests to a common forum. Deliberation can provide a check on the extent of shared understanding and key uncertainties."
Resilience Management in Social-Ecological Systems: A Working Hypothesis for a Participatory Approach
(2002) Walker, Brian H.; Carpenter, Stephen; Anderies, John M.; Abel, Nick; Cumming, Graeme S.; Janssen, Marco A.; Lebel, Louis; Norberg, Jon; Peterson, Garry D.; Pritchard, Rusty
"Approaches to natural resource management are often based on a presumed ability to predict probabilistic responses to management and external drivers such as climate. They also tend to assume that the manager is outside the system being managed. However, where the objectives include long-term sustainability, linked social-ecological systems (SESs) behave as complex adaptive systems, with the managers as integral components of the system. Moreover, uncertainties are large and it may be difficult to reduce them as fast as the system changes. Sustainability involves maintaining the functionality of a system when it is perturbed, or maintaining the elements needed to renew or reorganize if a large perturbation radically alters structure and function. The ability to do this is termed 'resilience.' This paper presents an evolving approach to analyzing resilience in SESs, as a basis for managing resilience. We propose a framework with four steps, involving close involvement of SES stakeholders. It begins with a stakeholder-led development of a conceptual model of the system, including its historical profile (how it got to be what it is) and preliminary assessments of the drivers of the supply of key ecosystem goods and services. Step 2 deals with identifying the range of unpredictable and uncontrollable drivers, stakeholder visions for the future, and contrasting possible future policies, weaving these three factors into a limited set of future scenarios. Step 3 uses the outputs from steps 1 and 2 to explore the SES for resilience in an iterative way. It generally includes the development of simple models of the system's dynamics for exploring attributes that affect resilience. Step 4 is a stakeholder evaluation of the process and outcomes in terms of policy and management implications. This approach to resilience analysis is illustrated using two stylized examples."
Shooting the Rapids: Navigating Transitions to Adaptive Governance of Social-Ecological Systems
(2006) Olsson, Per; Gunderson, Lance; Carpenter, Stephen; Ryan, Paul; Lebel, Louis; Folke, Carl; Holling, C.S.
"The case studies of Kristianstads Vattenrike, Sweden; the Northern Highlands Lake District and the Everglades in the USA; the Mae Nam Ping Basin, Thailand; and the Goulburn-Broken Catchment, Australia, were compared to assess the outcome of different actions for transforming social-ecological systems (SESs). The transformations consisted of two phases, a preparation phase and a transition phase, linked by a window of opportunity. Key leaders and shadow networks can prepare a system for change by exploring alternative system configurations and developing strategies for choosing from among possible futures. Key leaders can recognize and use or create windows of opportunity and navigate transitions toward adaptive governance. Leadership functions include the ability to span scales of governance, orchestrate networks, integrate and communicate understanding, and reconcile different problem domains. Successful transformations rely on epistemic and shadow networks to provide novel ideas and ways of governing SESs. We conclude by listing some ?rules of thumb' that can help build leadership and networks for successful transformations toward adaptive governance of social-ecological systems."
State, Commerce and Commons: Conservation with Communities in Upper Tributary Watersheds
(2006) Lebel, Louis; Daniel, Rajesh; Badenoch, Nathan
"In this review we explore these questions for upper tributary watersheds in montane mainland Southeast Asia, covering Northern Thailand, and parts of Vietnam, Lao PDR, Cambodia, Myanmar/Burma and Yunnan province of China. "Four rights - to timber, land, forests, and water - have been at the core of most conflicts about how conservation objectives might be achieved in broader regions which must also support livelihoods. Their histories are intertwined. Changes to formal property rights, especially for land, timber and forest products have since colonial times been tools for exploitation rather than securing livelihoods or meeting conservation objectives. New rules and regulations frequently bundle goods and services obtained from land that were previously separate. Forests provide many common pool resources. "The institutional, cultural and political context in which rights to goods and services from watersheds are defined, defended and reformed are critical to both conservation and social justice in development objectives (Daniel & Lebel 2006; Lebel 2005). Rights of access and use to goods and services from forest ecosystems often depended on more fundamental entitlements such as citizenship, political voice, safety and access to markets and employment themselves. "The main body of this review is organized as follows. Section two steps through several common models for conservation illustrating each with experiences from watersheds in montane mainland southeast Asia. In doing so it highlights some of the variety of roles of state, firms and communities in management. Sections three, four and five focus more specifically on what theory and practice have to say about the roles of scale, heterogeneity and uncertainty on various ways of involving communities in conservation. The paper concludes with some practical suggestions for strengthening approaches to conservation and development in upper tributary watersheds. (Agrawal & Ostrom 2001) (Steins 2002; Steins & Edwards 1999)"