Brian R. Cook

The persistence of ‘normal’ catchment management despite the participatory turn: Exploring the power effects of competing frames of reference

Presented as a panacea for the problems of environmental management, ‘participation’ conceals competing frames of meaning. ‘Ladders of participation’ explain insufficiently why public engagement is often limited to consultation, even within so-called higher level partnerships. To explain how participation is shaped to produce more or less symmetric exchanges in processes of deliberation, this article distinguishes between (1) discourses/practices, (2) frames and (3) power effects. This article’s empirical focus is the experience of participatory catchment organisations and their central but under-researched role in integrated catchment management. In addition to an analysis of policy statements and other relevant documents, this article draws on qualitative interview and participant-observation data gathered in an international participatory knowledge exchange that we facilitated among four participatory catchment organisations (and various other agencies). Results suggest that while statements about legislation promise symmetric engagements, the mechanics of legislation frame participation as asymmetric consultation. In their own arenas, participatory catchment organisations deploy participation within a framework of grassroots democracy, but when they engage in partnership with government, participation is reshaped by at least four competing frames: (1) representative democracy, which admits, yet captures, the public’s voice; (2) professionalisation, which can exclude framings that facilitate more symmetric engagement; (3) statutory requirements, which hybridise participatory catchment organisations to deliver government agendas and (4) evidence-based decision-making, which tends to maintain knowledge hierarchies. Nevertheless, participatory catchment organisations proved capable of reflecting on their capture. We thus conclude that the co-production of science and society, and the power effects of framing, must become explicit topics of discussion in processes of environmental policy deliberation for participation to result in more symmetric forms of public engagement.

Flood risk management, an approach to managing cross-border hazards

River flooding is a serious hazard in the UK with interest driven by recent widespread events. This paper reviews different approaches to flood risk management and the borders (physical, conceptual and organisational) that are involved. The paper showcases a multi-method approach to negotiating flood risk management interventions. We address three fundamental issues around flood risk management: differences and similarities between a variety of approaches; how different approaches work across borders between professionals, lay people, organisations and between different planning regimes; and, whether the science evidence base is adequate to support different types of flood risk management. We explore these issues through a case study on the River Tweed using Q methodology, community mapping and focus groups, participatory GIS, and interviews, which enabled co-production of knowledge around possible interventions to manage flooding. Our research demonstrated that excellent networks of practice exist to make decisions about flood risk management in the Scottish–English borders. Physical and organisational borders were continually traversed in practice. There was an overwhelming desire from professional flood managers and local communities for an alternative to simply structural methods of flood management. People were keen to make use of the ability of catchments to store water, even if land needed to be sacrificed to do so. There was no difference in the desire to embrace natural flood management approaches between people with different roles in flood management, expertise, training or based in different locations. Thus conceptual borders were also crossed effectively in practice.

Geographies of the Anthropocene

Introduction If humans have become a rival to Nature, then the epic nomenclature of the great forces – the eras, periods, and epochs of geological time – have finally been reconciled with the social, something geographers might cheer or lament. For over a century, there have been calls to recognise human impact with its own geological epoch. The most recent of these calls – and the most significant given the unprecedented shift in Earth system functioning (Steffen et al., 2011) – proposes the name the Anthropocene (Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000). To date, the Anthropocene has been also the most successful in terms of its academic and popular reception. The proposal has led to an explosion of popular and academic debate among both scientific and social thinkers, and for both groups the proposal has refreshed long-standing exploration of the purported division between science and society (Rittel and Webber, 1973; Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1993). This paper introduces concepts and debates within a special issue of Geographical Research that deals with the Anthropocene. Our aim is to contribute to and help consolidate the rapidly expanding discourse that explores humanity as akin to a geological force, but with the added emphasis on geography and geographers. Geographers have a history of both being wary of ‘buzzwords’, only with hindsight to lament missed opportunities when those buzzwords are adopted by other disciplines and become the convention (see environmental studies). Is the ‘Anthropocene’ a fad, an important idea that should be embraced by geographers, or something altogether different? The notion of the Anthropocene is not so far settled that it cannot be influenced by the discipline of Geography, and there is reason to think that Geography has much to offer regardless of whether the concept becomes widely or popularly adopted or discarded. More important than the issue of its definition are the moral, cultural, and political challenges that the Anthropocene is amplifying. Geographers, then, have an opportunity to consider the concept during its ‘adolescence’ (cf Castree, 2014c) and to, simultaneously, consider whether and how the discipline might capitalise on what appears to be a rapid ascension. This ‘opportunity-challenge’ has been recognised and explored by geographers elsewhere (e.g. Dalby, 2007; Gibson-Graham, 2011; Yusoff, 2013b; Castree, 2014a; 2014b; 2014c; Johnson et al., 2014; Whitehead, 2014; Young, 2014), leading us to take up a promising and daunting issue to emerge from those Anthropocene-Geography discussions: whether and how this concept might present a ‘meeting place’ for the heterogeneous groups, framings, and sub-disciplinary specialisms that make up the discipline. The Anthropocene is a concept that is being adopted in wide and divergent ways. Our goal here is not in any way to establish consensus or impose direction, but to explore emergent themes in the context of Geography. The Anthropocene requires a sophisticated approach to space, time, knowledge, politics, social action, and, perhaps most of all, interactions between human and environmental systems, including the empirical and ontological blurring of these categories. As bs_bs_banner

Co‐Producing (a Fearful) Anthropocene

The Anthropocene is not amenable to the senses but, like many modern concepts, must be made visible. We explore the ‘Great Acceleration’ imagery as an immutable mobile to explore how this human-made geological epoch is constituted through the aggregation of disparate elements of extreme complexity. Our analysis explores how disparate issues such as ‘telephone use’ and ‘coastal zone biogeochemistry’ can be associated and enrolled into the same argument. We write as concerned observers, who are concerned with the way that recognition for phenomena is enrolled into a fear-based narrative. This risks reproducing the governance structures at the heart of the Great Acceleration and, if so, we ask what this might mean. Using fear is a risky strategy that is as likely to lead to relatively poor behaviours as it is to some ‘awakening’. We make this case as a way of contributing to the Anthropocene debate, challenging those promoting the idea to consider the co-productive relationship between the knowledge they are proposing and the governance that knowledge entails.

Geographies of the A nthropocene

Introduction If humans have become a rival to Nature, then the epic nomenclature of the great forces – the eras, periods, and epochs of geological time – have finally been reconciled with the social, something geographers might cheer or lament. For over a century, there have been calls to recognise human impact with its own geological epoch. The most recent of these calls – and the most significant given the unprecedented shift in Earth system functioning (Steffen et al., 2011) – proposes the name the Anthropocene (Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000). To date, the Anthropocene has been also the most successful in terms of its academic and popular reception. The proposal has led to an explosion of popular and academic debate among both scientific and social thinkers, and for both groups the proposal has refreshed long-standing exploration of the purported division between science and society (Rittel and Webber, 1973; Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1993). This paper introduces concepts and debates within a special issue of Geographical Research that deals with the Anthropocene. Our aim is to contribute to and help consolidate the rapidly expanding discourse that explores humanity as akin to a geological force, but with the added emphasis on geography and geographers. Geographers have a history of both being wary of ‘buzzwords’, only with hindsight to lament missed opportunities when those buzzwords are adopted by other disciplines and become the convention (see environmental studies). Is the ‘Anthropocene’ a fad, an important idea that should be embraced by geographers, or something altogether different? The notion of the Anthropocene is not so far settled that it cannot be influenced by the discipline of Geography, and there is reason to think that Geography has much to offer regardless of whether the concept becomes widely or popularly adopted or discarded. More important than the issue of its definition are the moral, cultural, and political challenges that the Anthropocene is amplifying. Geographers, then, have an opportunity to consider the concept during its ‘adolescence’ (cf Castree, 2014c) and to, simultaneously, consider whether and how the discipline might capitalise on what appears to be a rapid ascension. This ‘opportunity-challenge’ has been recognised and explored by geographers elsewhere (e.g. Dalby, 2007; Gibson-Graham, 2011; Yusoff, 2013b; Castree, 2014a; 2014b; 2014c; Johnson et al., 2014; Whitehead, 2014; Young, 2014), leading us to take up a promising and daunting issue to emerge from those Anthropocene-Geography discussions: whether and how this concept might present a ‘meeting place’ for the heterogeneous groups, framings, and sub-disciplinary specialisms that make up the discipline. The Anthropocene is a concept that is being adopted in wide and divergent ways. Our goal here is not in any way to establish consensus or impose direction, but to explore emergent themes in the context of Geography. The Anthropocene requires a sophisticated approach to space, time, knowledge, politics, social action, and, perhaps most of all, interactions between human and environmental systems, including the empirical and ontological blurring of these categories. As bs_bs_banner

Communities of knowledge: Science and flood management in Bangladesh

This paper traces the integration of a particular set of knowledge claims into flood management in Bangladesh following the instigation and collapse of the Flood Action Plan. Using the work of Goodbred and Kuehl (1998) as an entry point and partially in response to Nicholls and Goodbreds (2004) call for integrated assessments to improve understanding and management, we explore the incorporation of sedimentation and subsidence knowledge claims into flood management. We approach this issue from a ‘scholarly’ perspective, tracing the citations and cross-references within academic publications, and from a ‘government’ perspective, exploring recent policy to determine the degree of consideration for sedimentation, subsidence and their related phenomena (i.e. lateral river erosion, river avulsions, river conveyance). Despite mutual recognition of relevance and widespread support for holistic or interdisciplinary knowledge management, our findings suggest an isolation between the natural and social science communities concerned with flood management. Furthermore, the exploration suggests a similar isolation between government and the sciences. Drawing upon Barry et al.s (2008) analysis on interdisciplinarity, the findings suggest that different ‘logics’ might account for the isolation and associated sequestration of knowledge, raising the possibility of improved communication and collaboration among those interested in this increasingly complex and important issue.

Competing paradigms of flood management in the Scottish/English borderlands

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how flood management practitioners rationalise the emergence of sustainable flood management. Key to this analysis are differences rooted in assumptions over what flood management is and should do. Design/methodology/approach – The popularity of natural flood management offers a case with which to explore how a dominant framing persists and how individuals at the government-public interface negotiate different visions of future flood management. The authors draw on the perceptions of flood experts, elucidating a deep hold amongst a professional community “grounded” in science and economics, but also their desire to innovate and become more open to innovative practices. Findings – The authors show how the idea of “sustainable” and “natural” flood management are understood by those doing flood management, which is with reference to pre-existing technical practices. Research limitations/implications – This paper explores the views of expert decision making, w...

Active learning through online quizzes: better learning and less (busy) work

Abstract Active learning is increasingly promoted within institutions of higher education to assist students develop higher order thinking and link knowledge to meaning. In this paper, the authors evaluate the use of weekly online quizzes based on prescribed preparatory material as a tool to incentivize preparatory reading in order to enable and encourage active learning. The study is based on mixed data sources, including three years of student-evaluation data, to understand student perceptions of the role and value of online quizzes. The study shows a high level of student engagement with the quizzes and positive assessment of their role in encouraging the completion of prescribed reading. Online quizzes were found to be an effective mechanism for incentivizing student completion of preparatory work, enhancing active learning (such as through in-class discussions), and were relatively time efficient from the perspective of the educator.

Water, risk and vulnerability in Bangladesh: Twenty years since the FAP

Issues surrounding water, risk and vulnerability in Bangladesh have captivated managers and researchers for centuries. The region represents one of the most complex sociophysical interfaces on Earth and is often characterized as ‘extreme’, including references to income, wealth and land distribution, sediment load, population density, seasonal water fluctuations and the resilience of indigent floodplain inhabitants. Within this context, climate, population and socio-economic projections suggest that future environmental management will face unprecedented challenges (IPCC, 2007). In particular, both government and academic authors prescribe the need for integrated or interdisciplinary understandings in order to overcome the growing complexity of water-related problems. At issue is the development and the quality of life for what will potentially become a population of more than 250 million by 2050 (UN, 2003). Such a future both discourages and calls forth contemplation, study and action. Embracing this challenge, the authors assembled for this theme issue draw upon what Whatmore (2009, p. 588) calls a ‘knowledge controversy’ and share her view that such contexts create ‘opportunities to arouse a different awareness of the problems and situations that mobilize us’. This theme issue was born out of recognition that the twentieth anniversary of the flood action plan (hereafter FAP) represented an ideal opportunity to reflect on the present state of water, risk and vulnerability in Bangladesh. Keeping in mind the controversy that ensnared the plan, we have asked a diverse collection of authors involved in water-related research to present their research, if at all possible, with reference to the FAP. In part, the rationale for assembling these authors is to reinvigorate critical debate over water, risk and vulnerability management; simultaneously, we are engaging with the widespread advocacy – within both government and academic literatures – for integrated ‘solutions’ to waterrelated ‘problems’ (GoB, 1999, 2001; Brammer, 2004; Höfer and Messerli, 2006). Thus, the authors of this issue have come together with the purpose of arousing a refreshed and historically informed awareness of the multiple water, risk and vulnerability issues facing Bangladesh. We hope that a sampling of the interrelated issues may spark further, and more critical, consideration for the issues surrounding integrated research in Bangladesh and beyond.

Localising climate change: heatwave responses in urban households

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical insights into urban household perceptions and (in)action towards the perceived impacts of climate change, based on a case study in Kensington, Victoria, Australia. This case utilises households as sites of active agency, rather than as passive recipients of climate change or associated governance. Design/methodology/approach This research trialled an approach to engaging a community in the context of disaster risk reduction (DRR). It involved a two-stage quantitative door-knocking survey (reported elsewhere), followed by a qualitative interview with interested households. In total, 76 quantitative surveys contextualise 15 qualitative interviews, which are the focus of this analysis. The findings are presented comparatively alongside the current literature. Findings Heatwaves are understood to be the most concerning hazard for the households in this sample who associate their increasing frequency and severity with climate change. However, subsequent (in)action is shown to be situated within the complexities of day-to-day activities and concerns. While respondents did not consider themselves to have “expert” knowledge on climate change, or consider their actions to be a direct response to climate change, most had undertaken actions resulting from experience with heatwaves. These findings suggest there may be an under-representation of DRR, which includes climate change adaptation actions, within the existing research. Research limitations/implications While this sample justifies the arguments and conclusions, it is not a representative sample and therefore requires follow-up. It does however challenge traditional approaches to risk management, which focus on awareness raising and education. The research highlights the unique contexts in which households perceive and act on risk, and the need for risk “experts” to consider such contexts. Originality/value This research provides empirical evidence of urban household responses to perceived climate change-related risk, an often-neglected dimension of heatwave and adaptation studies in Australia. The findings also suggest promise for the methodological approach.