Environmental governance

This review compares current normative models and political ecological critiques of environmental governance, taken in the sense of activities aiming to manage human-ecological relations at any scale through rules-based mechanisms. The perspective taken here follows on recent integrative approaches to environmental governance as a field encompassing relations among state, community, and market actors (Agrawal&Lemos2007; Lemos&Agrawal2006), but identifies the need to shift analysis toward exploration of the ways in which rules-oriented transactions position or create such actors. Although "environmental governance" may conventionally be thought to imply formal institutions and policies, a broader perspective suggests that governing rules may simultaneously have formal and informal characteristics, operate at various scales, function by coercion or by consensus, and be institutionally enforced while also being internalized by subjects. In this light, this review summarizes recent perspectives and models indicating the importance of a governance approach to natural resource management, focusing in turn on attempts to address the needs for large-scale coordination, democratic or participatory governance, and strenthened institutions. The second section of the review identifies less formal types of governance, as represented by network, market-based, and discursive models, discussing the capacity for such approaches to overcome the limitations of territorially-defined environmental governance in globalized market systems.

Governance of human-ecological systems: "wicked problems" and adaptive learning

Resource management theorists have increasingly recognized that the coordination of human-ecological relations can only succeed through linkages with broader forms of economic and social policy and governance (Berkes&Others2003; Berkes&Others1998; Folke&Others2009; Gunderson&Holling2002). Possibly the strongest case for a governance approach has been made through efforts to define natural resource management (NRM) issues as "wicked problems" (Jentoft&Chuenpagdee2009; Lachapelle&Others2003; Ludwig2001; Ludwig&Others2001), drawing on the concept developed by Rittell and Webber to describe social policy problems for which there is no clear definition or possibility of definitive solution, where competing positions are often values-based, and where responses cannot be tested as each attempt irrevocably changes the parameters of the problem (Rittell&Webber1973). It is argued that while common strategies for "taming" such problems are to reduce their complexity or divide them into technically-manageable components, doing so prevents holistic engagement with larger or related issues, which may consequently be exacerbated by the "solutions" proposed (Ludwig2001); such a perspective is consistent with current critiques of reductionist, steady-state models of ecosystems management (Berkes&Others2003; Berkes&Others1998; Folke&Others2009; Holling1973; Gunderson&Holling2002). Much of the general discussion of wicked problems has dealt with strategies for decision-making among diverse stakeholders, focusing on the development of non-linear, documentary or computer-mediated discussion and learning tools (Conklin2006; Conklin&Begeman1988; Okada&Others2008; Shum&Others2006). Given that such tools are often grounded in a dialectical strategy of separating "questions of fact" from "rhetoric" (Conklin2006; Kunz&Rittel1970; Norton2005), however, they may privilege technical understandings but downplay the significance of values differences, while potentially fostering conflict through an competitive/argumentative approach in the place of collaboration and compromise (Roberts2004).

Recent contributions on wicked problems in NRM have attempted to address these limitations by placing greater weight on social learning processes (Gonzalez&Meitner2005; Jentoft&Chuenpagdee2009; Measham2008; Pennington2008). The concept of "governance" is again useful in this context, through its implication of continuous adaptive learning and action in response to evolving conditions. The concern with adaptive learning is not new: the concept of "adaptive management" was developed in the late 1970s by Holling and Walters (Holling1978; Walters1986) as a strategy for coping with the uncertainty of complex ecological systems through ongoing, adaptive experimentation, conceived as a substitute for management by "deterministic optimal control models" (Walters&Hilborn1978). First implemented on a large scale in the Columbia River Basin (Lee1993) and in the Florida Everglades (Walters&Others1992), adaptive management has now largely become a mainstream approach, finding application by major governmental resource management agencies (Marmorek&Others2006; Stankey&Others2005; Williams&Others2009) as well as being codified in the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation (Conservation Measures Partnership2007) developed by a consortium of the world's largest environmental NGOs. Adaptive management is a major strategy within resilience theory (Berkes&Others2003) and, partly due to its focus on social learning, in approaches dealing with joint governance or participatory development drawing on the ecological knowledge of local and indigenous communities (Berkes&Others2000). Some current iterations of the theory have demonstrated a terminological and conceptual shift toward "adaptive governance" in response to climate change and other complex problems (Elbakidze&Others2010; Brunner2005; Brunner&Lynch2010). Most recently, the concept of "adaptive co-management" has emerged as a synthesis of adaptive management and co-management (see below), aiming to synthesize the "learning-by-doing" principle and community-state partnerships of the respective approaches (Armitage&Others2009; Armitage&Others2007).

Adaptive management has thus far been more successful as a theory than as a model for effective environmental governance (Gunderson1999; Lee1999). Given the high level of stochastic uncertainty in ecological systems, adaptive experimentation often proves unfeasible (Gregory&Others2006), or may simply be replaced by "passive" modelling techniques (Walters1997). While adaptive management guidelines prescribe iterative learning processes (Argent2009; Conservation Measures Partnership2007) consistent with the "learning by doing" principle of the underlying theory, such processes are not always distinguishable from "conventional" project management or scientific experimentation. In this sense adaptive management projects have been shown in many cases to privilege existing linear, scientific models at the expense of engagement with diverse stakeholder perspectives (McLain&Lee1996)—despite the positioning of early adaptive management experiments as efforts to address wicked problems through citizen science (Lee1993; Shindler&Cheek1999).

States and governance

Much discussion of environmental governance and environmental policy focuses on multilateral institutions or legal instruments (Bodansky1999; Kanie&Haas2004; Sand1991). Although high-level governmental and international organizations lie outside the conventional sites of ethnographic study, "studying up" in such institutions can provide insights into the workings of power and serve as a means of engaging in effective cultural critique (Forsythe1999; Gusterson1997; Marcus&Fischer1999; Nader1972), as suggested by some works in development anthropology (e.g., Ferguson1990; Mosse2004).

From a more theoretical perspective, international environmental governance is clearly essential insofar as many transnational resources require management beyond the level of the state; resources of this type include international commons such as fisheries, but also inland resources that span territorial boundaries—a prominent example being the Aral Sea Basin, which has had a dominant role in shaping state policy in Central Asia (Spoor1998; Weinthal2002). The limitations of current global environmental governance provide a useful point of analytical contrast to the issues and solutions identified by commons theory (see below), particularly with regard to debate on efforts to build international commons-type institutions such as a World Environmental Organization (Kanie&Haas2004). Unlike functioning community-scale institutions described by Ostrom and others, international treaties rely entirely on voluntary compliance due to the lack of excludability, and thus do not generally have the capacity to enforce much more than an existing consensus—a paradox described by Underdal's "law of the least ambitious program" (Sand1991; Underdal1980), which posits that international collaboration is restricted by the least enthusiastic party (but cf. Hovi&Sprinz2006).

At the state level, resource extraction quotas and protected areas constitute the dominant framework for environmental governance and conservation. The ineffectiveness of fixed resource quotas is a major issue raised within the resilience literature, while a growing body of political ecological work has challenged the "fortress" model of protected area conservation with reference to its binary conceptions of nature and culture (Adams&Hutton2007) and to the systematic exclusion of small-scale resource users (Brockington2001; Dressler2006; Escobar1999; Hughes2005; Igoe2003; Jim&Xu2003; Rao2002; Strickland-Munro&Others2010; Tambe&Rawat2009; Wallace&Diamente2005; West&Others2006), which often produces conflict over resource use (Castro&Nielsen2003). The failure of the state in achieving effective environmental governance has, in this sense, been linked to top-down institutional structures that impose uniform solutions without taking local knowledge and activities into account (Baland&Platteau1996; see also Scott1999). Efforts to "democratize" governance thus commonly involve some form of devolution of state power, as exemplified in discussions of "good governance" within the World Bank (Bortolotti&Perotti2007; e.g., Shah2006), but also in co-management, Community-Based Conservation (CBC), and Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) regimes.

Natural resource "co-management" emerged specifically as a response to the failings of top-down NRM, as originally described in relation to British Columbia coastal fisheries (Pinkerton1989); the concept has since been widely used as a strategy for obtaining the involvement of resource-user communities in NRM through cooperation with state resource managers (Borrini-Feyerabend&Others2007; Carlsson&Berkes2005; Castro&Nielsen2001; Jentoft1989; Jentoft&Others1998; Paulson1998; Pinkerton1992; Pomeroy1995; Pomeroy&Berkes1997). "Devolved" and "participatory" forms of environmental governance have also been subject to critical attention by political ecologists, however, as the assumption of relatively homogeneous and docile "community" and "state" actors can mask or reinforce important power differences (Adger&Others2005; Gezon2006; Nadasdy1999; Nadasdy2003; Nadasdy2005a; Singleton2000; Greenough&Tsing2003; Gausset&Others2005), or create new ones (Béné&Others2009). In more practical terms, one of the ongoing challenges of governance is ensuring that knowledge of multi-scale issues is available at all levels at which decisions are being made; yet hierarchical forms of governance can be difficult to transform into multi-level institutions (Dowsley2007).

Similar issues have been discussed in relation to CBC and CBNRM. While some authors remain optimistic about the potential outcomes of community-based approaches in international development (Berkes2004), others have raised significant concerns as to whether such arrangements achieve their democratic claims (Nadasdy2007; Nelson&Agrawal2008; Brosius&Others2005). Initiatives such as the CAMPFIRE project in Zimbabwe—widely discussed as a model of successful CBNRM—have been described as reinforcing colonialist administrative models (Neumann2005), or of demonstrating partial success contingent on the character of local negotiations rather than on the nature of the project design (Alexander&McGregor2000; Murphree2005). These initiatives have also considered problematic insofar as their aim is to protect resources from, but not necessarily on behalf of, local communities; economic incentives often prove to be inadequate or less effective than traditional conservation measures, such as the designation of sacred sites (Byers&Others2001; Hughes2005). This area of debate touches on the somewhat broader concerns with the limitations of participatory development, which can be viewed as encompassing many CBNRM projects in developing countries (cf. Campbell&Vainio-Mattila2003). Critiques in this area are in effect substantively similar to those directed at co-management, in questioning the extent to which "participation" equates to power (Cooke&Kothari2001). Participatory rural appraisal methods, like resource monitoring strategies employed in co-management, may indeed be useful in capturing community knowledge or interests but largely relegate community members to a limited—and essentially powerless—consultative role. Participatory Action Research practitioners attempt to overcome these limitations by involving community members in the research design process (Brydon-Miller&Others2003; Kindon&Others2007), while some co-management advocates have sought, for similar reasons, to engage in long-term, collaborative ethnographic research projects (Austin2004; Davidson-Hunt&O'Flaherty2007). Nonetheless, there is currently little evidence of successful development projects of this nature being sustained on a large scale, possibly reflecting the difficulty of linking PAR projects to national or regional policy institutions and debates (Castellanet&Jordan2003).

Commons institutions

The conditions leading to effective community-level governance have been explored in depth by the literature on common property. Commons theory emerged as an attempt to formulate a response to the notion of the "tragedy of the commons" originally proposed by Hardin (Hardin1968), the central argument of which is that common-property resources are inherently at risk of overexploitation, since the individual benefits of appropriating a greater share of the resource outweigh the shared costs of its depletion. Hardin's suggestion that private property regimes or similar forms of allocation may be the only means of ensuring sustainable resource use has influenced privatization policies throughout the world (e.g., the Chinese rangelands enclosure policy, discussed further below). Attempts to discuss alternative solutions began in the 1980s, following the Conference on Common Property Resource Management (Bromley&Others1986) and the publication of a series of foundational volumes (Ostrom1990; McCay&Acheson1987; Berkes1989). Drawing heavily on neoclassical microeconomics, commons theorists have applied game theory and case study analysis to derive generalizations about the role of rules, incentives, and sanctions determining individual choice of resource use strategies; as such, the theory is limited by many of the same assumptions as neoclassical economics more generally—notably the premises of rational choice, the aggregability of individual decisions to the community level, and the dissociability of economic from social institutions (Johnson2004). The commons literature offers contributions beyond economic theory, however, in defining key concepts such as open access and common property regimes, the "free rider problem", and the types of rules that permit commons institutions to function effectively.

Community-based commons institutions are not always successful in practice (Acheson2006). One of the primary limitations of the commons institution model is its requirement of overlapping, bounded, and relatively homogeneous resources and resource-user communities—characteristics that are evident in Ostrom's model of "boundary rules" and the core principle of "excludability" (Ostrom1990), implied also in depictions of successful commons institutions as occurring in closed corporate communities (e.g., Netting1976; Netting1981). These limitations become particularly apparent in the case of mobile resource users, whose extensive resource use strategies may overlap with intensive uses by more sedentary groups, and in the case of resource users whose activities are affected by non-local economic processes. Community heterogeneity may reduce trust and, by extension, limit the potential for community-based institutions to succeed (Ruttan2006)—yet there may be considerable diversity of resource users and economic strategies within a community (Basurto&Ostrom2009). Commons models currently remain inadequate to describe responses to demographic change, or to external pressures resulting from markets, technology, or state institutions (Agrawal2001; Agrawal2003). A more general concern applicable to all community-based institutional approaches is that they can limit the capacity to develop new resource-use strategies, either as a development goal or in adaptation to changing outside markets, by institutionalizing a specific property arrangement and resource extraction strategy (Goeschl&Igliori2006). Nonetheless, concerted attempts are being made within the commons field to account for complex social relations and non-coextensive social groups and resources (Berkes2009).

Governance beyond institutions

The globalization of commodity chains presents a serious challenge to governance theories and models that depend on territorially-defined authority, including the nation-state and the local community. Recent works on the anthropology of the state have questioned traditional conceptions of the state as a monolithic entity, arguing that the nation-state is profoundly transformed by transnational communities and flows of people, commodities, and ideas (Appadurai1996; Aretxaga2003; Ong1999; Trouillot2001; Tsing2000), or that the state itself is constituted by processes that undermine its own apparent centrality and sovereignty (Hansen&Stepputat2006; Ong2000; Das&Poole2004). In contrast to dichotomous models of state/community actors in governance, proponents of a relational approach suggest that power and environmental knowledge are produced in the sites of negotiation between state and non-state actors, which may also be areas of political contestation (Robbins2000). Some theorists have argued that governance must be seen as a dialogical, communicative relationship, whereby authority is "facilitative" in the sense of enabling citizens to govern themselves, while remaining negotiated (Bang2003; see also Kooiman2003).

Foucault's concept of "governmentality" brings considerable explanatory power to the dissipated yet pervasive forms of governance that have exist outside formal institutional structures. Governmentality has become one of the dominant theoretical frameworks in the anthropology of neoliberal governance and the state (Agrawal2005b; Berman Arévalo&Ros-Tonen2009; Ferguson&Gupta2002; Hanson2007; e.g., Ong2000; Sharma2006; Walker&Others2008), having been adopted notably in major recent anthropological works on environmental conservation and governance (Agrawal2005a; Li2007) and in contributions describing "green governmentality" or "environmentality" (Bäckstrand&Lövbrand2006; Luke1999; Rutherford2007; Yeh2005). As introduced by Foucault during his 1978 lectures at the Collège de France (Foucault2007), the term "governmentality" signifies "governmental rationality" or the "art of government", in the sense of a set of practices that allow various forms of control or guidance to be conceived and applied to the conduct of persons (Gordon1991). In Foucault's usage, "government" refers to the practices rather than the institutions of governance; Foucault effectively conceives of power and government as situated in the relations between individuals and institutions, rather than in an absolute authority such as the sovereign state or its laws. The importance of governmental strategies in the legal and penal spheres, for example, is not merely that they elaborate absolute parameters for permissible behaviour, but that they enable "a mode of political and economic management which exploits the difference between legality and illegalities" (Foucault1980). Whereas governmentality shares, in common with theories of hegemony (Althusser1971; Gramsci1971), an assumption of willing compliance of the subject with structures of power, Foucault rejects the "false consciousness" interpretation in favour of one in which the rationality of government is extended to its subjects—making government possible precisely because it is thinkable by the subject. Foucault's theory indeed explicitly requires individual agency, insofar as it conceives of government as aiming to shape and manage rather than control or limit subjects' voluntary actions (Foucault1982). Following on these insights, anthropological studies of governance have identified ways in which individuals construct themselves as governable subjects, through panoptical techniques of self-discipline and mutual surveillance (see Foucault1978), or self-documentation as a disciplining process that simultaneously contributes to the knowledge accessible for governance (e.g., Paxson2008)—suggesting that neoliberal governance constructs an apparent distance between the public and private spheres, while embedding itself in micro-level activities through the mediating practices of expert knowledge (Rose1993).

A Foucauldian attention to discourse is evident in some radical perspectives on governance, which suggest the possibility of doing away with institutions altogether—as with Young's "stateless" environmental governance situated in para-organizational, discursive "regimes" (Young1994). Stated less provocatively, the form of governance institutions may be far less important, in overall terms, than the less structured discursive forms that define the problems and subjects of governance. Nonetheless, the discoursive fields presenting the strongest implications for environmental governance are often mediated by environmentalist, development, or indigenous rights organizations, which have redefined the terrain of governance by creating local-international networks that can alternatively include or bypass the state (Barbosa2003; Brown&Others2007; Fisher1997; Forbes1999; Garcia2001; Gezon2000; Hviding2003; Little1999; Mercer2002; Schuller2007; Walker&Others2007; Wallace&Others2007; Roué2003). International environmental NGO networks exercise considerable power through their capacity to define the problems and objects of development or conservation, while national NGOs in developing countries, as implementing organizations for international development projects, constitute a new bureaucracy that is unaccountable to citizens and that excludes rural aid recipients from its instutionalized practices (see also Brosius1999; Harsh&Others2010). Strong discourse-related claims have also been made by post-development theorists, who interpret development practice as hegemonic discourse constructing the backwardness of the Third World (Escobar1994; Kiely1999; Nustad2001; Pieterse1998; Ziai2004; Ziai2007).

Unlike governmentality and discursive approaches, network governance theory and social network analysis have achieved significant attention within NRM literature as part of attempts to understand non-institutional governance (VanBueren&Others2003; Tompkins&Adger2004; Newman&Dale2005; Bodin&Others2006; Janssen&Others2006; Carlsson2008; Weber&Khademian2008; Ernstson&Others2008; Sandström&Rova2010). The theory of "network governance" (Carlsson2008; Jones&Others1997; Provan&Kenis2008; O'Toole1997; Bogason&Musso2006) approaches modern governance as an adaptive yet persistent set of relations based on informal or implicit contracts between autonomous actors in a field of industry or government, in the place of institutionalized relations; it is considered to emerge under conditions of uncertainty and asset-specificity (Jones&Others1997), but does not derive from the same legal imperatives as organizations since networks lack formal legal status (Provan&Kenis2008). Social network analysis more generally has been applied in the social sciences as a means of describing "communities" (Wellman1979) or, more broadly, social groupings in the delocalized information society (Castells2000; Latour2005; Ong1999). Similarly, Actor-Network Theory (ANT) offers a useful framework for conceptualizing governance activities in a manner that does not require presupposed categories of agents, focusing instead on relationships between "actors" who may be individuals, groups, institutions, or even non-human beings (Latour2005; Law&Hassard1999; Rodger&Others2009).

Markets and governance

As mentioned above, governance strategies relying on territorially-defined units—such as the state or the primary resource itself—can be ineffective under conditions where natural resource extraction activities are embedded in regional or transnational commodity chains. Non-state market-driven (NSMD) governance approaches have consequently emerged as an attempt to govern commodity chains (Bernstein&Cashore2007; Biermann&Pattberg2008; Cashore2002; Cashore&Others2007; Chester&Moomaw2008; Pattberg2005), through forms of regulation embedded in market processes by way of voluntary labelling and certification measures. Prominent examples of NSMD governance presenting combined social and environmental aims include fair trade certification, organic labelling, and the ISO 9000 (Quality Management Systems) and ISO 14000 (Environmental Management Systems) families of standards, in addition to industry-specific codes of corporate conduct. Proponents argue that such standards can have a more reliable effect than state-level governance—particularly in the case of "weak" states possessing poor legal or enforcement infrastructure—insofar as they are enforced through trade relations, thus creating the possibility of tangible economic sanctions (Prakash&Potoski2006).

ISO standards have been criticized on the grounds that they are established through non-democratic processes dominated by private industry (Clapp1998); others have pointed out that environmental standards cannot function independently of the state, but require national legislation and institutional capacity (Massoud&Others2010). Recent ethnographic studies have problematized ISO 9000 standards as discursively constructing non-industrial practices as "unsafe", and attempting to assimilate production into legible processes for governance through the imposition of documentation regimes as panoptical self-surveillance (Dunn2003; Dunn2005; Paxson2008). Various general arguments for and against standardization have been proposed (Brunsson&Jacobsson2000; see also Latour1993b; Power2003; Seddon2000; Caldwell2009). More importantly, international standards intentionally displace local knowledge and value systems in favour of Western technoscience, leaving very little room for negotiation (Dunn2005; Hatanaka2010). It is also clear that NSMD governance approaches do not always achieve what they set out to do. Research on existing ecolabels, for instance, has also shown that their effectiveness in promoting agrobiodiversity and sustainable development varies considerably (van Amstel&Others2007; Hatanaka2010; Valkila2009); anthropological studies are equally ambivalent about fair trade, recognizing the positive prospects of the movement but observing that fair trade producers remain disempowered within broader market processes, which continue to operate in a one-way fashion (Fridell2007; Lyon2007; Smith2007). A potentially more promising model of NSMD governance is found in the open source movement (Hofmoki2010; Kelty2008; Leach&Others2009; Schoonmaker2007), whose underpinning licensing arrangements construct an entitlements-based "moral economy" through terms of access governing common-pool information resources, and whose open development model is designed to foster open communication between and among producers and end-users. In contrast to fair trade labels, which are imposed by bodies representing downstream marketers and consumers, open source licenses are adopted by upstream producers and remain applicable throughout the commodity chain (see Free Software Foundation2007).

Similar approaches have been proposed for fisheries, through appeals for corporate responsibility, social justice, and ethics to augment ecosystem-based management (Bundy&Others2008). The model of "Interactive Governance" (IG), which arises from the theoretical works on governance of Kooiman (Kooiman2000; Kooiman2003; Kooiman1993) and developed through the Fisheries Governance Network (Bavinck&Others2005; Kooiman&Others2005), has been proposed as an integrative approach to resource management that incorporates values-based knowledge. Contributors to this model focus on the degree of "governability" (Chuenpagdee&Jentoft2009; Chuenpagdee&Others2008; Jentoft2007; Johnson2010a; Kooiman2003; Kooiman2008; Kooiman&Others2008; Mahon2008) of human-ecological systems as natural resource extraction systems, as affected by the factors of diversity, complexity, dynamics, and cross-scale interactions (Chuenpagdee&Jentoft2009; Chuenpagdee&Others2008; Jentoft&Others2007; Kooiman&Others2008). Interactive Governance can be described as a sharing some of the concerns of NSMD governance, insofar as the "system to be governed" in this model is defined, in application to fisheries, as the "fish chain" extending from catch to consumption (Kooiman2008). Unlike "pure" forms of NSMD, however, Interactive Governance assumes that market-situated measures must be complemented by state and non-state institutions engaged in the "learning by doing" of adaptive management (Jentoft2007).

Conclusions and future directions

This review has considered two distinct areas of literature. The first of these encompasses applied research within the fields of NRM and Human Ecology, involving the participation of biologists, economists, and anthropologists, aiming to develop and evaluate models and strategies for effective and sustainable natural resource management and conservation in human-ecological systems; the second encompasses political ecology and development anthropology, which bring a more critical perspective to contemporary instances of environmental governance and development projects. While very few political ecologists have critically examined the assumptions of contemporary NRM and environmental governance through engagement with NRM and Human Ecology debates, this is an area in which anthropologists can stand to make a significant and positive contribution. On a substantive level, anthropological perspectives suggest a need for governance models that focus to a greater extent on rules embedded in practices and discourses in addition to those associated with formal institutions, with particular attention to multi-sited social and economic networks.

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