Katarina Eckerberg

Multi-level Environmental Governance: a concept under stress?

The past decade has witnessed a change in the world order of environmental policy making. The strongholds of national environmental policy competence gave room for international regimes beginning in the 1980s, a development that reached a peak during the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. Since then the direction of governance patterns has partly been reversed. However, the trend is not back towards nation states, but towards sub-national units that are reforming environmental governance patterns directly with supra-national units, such as the EU, with nation states, with interand non-governmental organisations as well as with other sub-national governments. Additionally, increased networking across public and private actors and shifting responsibilities from the public to the private sector has emerged, leading to new forms of environmental governance regardless of formal hierarchies. This development is especially evident in the Baltic area, including the Nordic countries. The papers in this special issue of Local Environment aim at analysing this development. This editorial will review some of the literature in the field of multi-level governance, with a special focus on that which has earlier appeared in Local Environment. There will also be a brief comment on the way those issues were discussed in a workshop on Multi-level Environmental Governance at the 6th Nordic Conference on Environmental Social Sciences in June 2003 from which the papers in this issue originate.

A policy analysis perspective on ecological restoration

Using a simple stages model of the policy process, we explore the politics of ecological restoration using an array of examples drawn across sector, different size and scale, and from different countries. A policy analysis perspective reveals how, at both the program and project levels, ecological restoration operates within a complex and dynamic interplay between technical decision making, ideologies, and interest politics. Viewed through the stages model, restoration policy involves negotiating nature across stages in the policy making process, including agenda setting, policy formulation, implementation, and evaluation. The stages model is a useful heuristic devise; however, this linear model assumes that policy makers approach the issue rationally. In practice, ecological restoration policy takes place in the context of different distributions of power between the various public and private actors involved at the different stages of restoration policy making. This allows us to reiterate the point that ecological restoration is best seen not only as a technical task but as a social and political project.

Tourism and protected areas: motives, actors and processes

Following the paradigm shift in nature conservation policy towards the inclusion of local inhabitants in the planning and management of protected areas, tourism is emphasised as a means to achieve economic development in peripheral areas. Governance issues and the real impacts from tourism on development are thus often under scrutiny. This article focuses on the role of tourism in the political process of designating protected areas. How does the inclusion of the tourism argument affect designation processes? What kind of tourism is being promoted and how can it be conceptualised with regard to human views of the use of nature? An ecostrategic framework is presented to illustrate the essential land-use choices available. Three cases of protected area designation processes are used to address the issue of tourism: the failure of the Kiruna National Park proposal and the successful implementation of the snowmobile regulation area in Funäsdalen and Fulufjället National Park. The analysis shows that while tourism may increase local acceptance of protected areas, the power of this argument also depends on contextual and process factors.

Knowledge for local climate change adaptation in Sweden: challenges of multilevel governance

Adaptation to climate change is often perceived as a local concern; yet local stakeholders are influenced by knowledge and politics from international and national contexts. Based on a review of Swedish climate change adaptation policy and interviews and focus groups in the Stockholm region, this paper discusses how knowledge relevant to climate change adaptation has been institutionalised in Sweden and how this may affect the potential for learning. The results indicate that the institutionalising of knowledge and knowledge exchange has been weak, especially compared to the implementation of Local Agenda 21, which also calls for action at the local level. So far, Swedish adaptation policy has relied mainly on soft governance tools. Further, we conclude that there is need for improved mechanisms for feedback from the local to the national level in this rapidly evolving policy field.

Implementing agenda 21 in local government: The Swedish experience

Abstract Chapter 28 of the UNCED agreement ‘Agenda 21’ asks for implementing sustainable development at the local level of government. Sweden is amongst the fore‐running nations in having responded quickly to these demands. Virtually all of Swedens 288 municipalities have decided to embark on the Local Agenda 21 process. In this article, the progress so far and how LA21 has been interpreted at the local level are examined. The motives behind the process, the tensions between national and local policy making, and the role of municipal networks and NGOs are analysed. Four case studies of pioneer municipalities are used to illustrate how LA21 has sometimes inspired more far‐reaching goals at the local than at the national level, and the combination of economic development and marketing with environmental policy. It remains to be seen whether the most recent national government investment programme towards local projects for sustainable development will resolve the present conflicts between national goals an...

Governance for Sustainable Development in Sweden: The Experience of the Local Investment Programme

Abstract This article examines the role of central government in enhancing local capacity for promoting sustainable development. Building upon a series of evaluation studies, it examines a major central government funding initiative in Sweden, called the Local Investment Programme for Ecological Sustainability (LIP). The Programme formed part of a new governance approach towards the promotion of sustainable development. It was designed to promote both ecological sustainable development and create new ‘green jobs’, while at the same time stimulating innovative ways of thinking among local actors about the relationship between economy, ecology and society. Substantial material environmental effects were achieved and ‘green jobs’ created by LIP. However, allocation was skewed towards environmental leader municipalities and LIP was never fully integrated into other sustainable development initiatives. Further, few public/private partnerships were developed. Hence, despite the magnitude of the Programme, we question whether it produced lasting capacity-building effects at the local level.

Comparing the local use of environmental policy instruments in Nordic and Baltic countries ‐ the issue of diffuse water pollution

International agreements for the North and Baltic Seas set the goal to reduce by 50 per cent the loading of nitrogen and phosphorus from 1987 to 1995. Not surprisingly, this goal has not been achieved. Different strategies to combat diffuse source water pollution from agriculture and forestry are analysed from the perspective of local implementation, using six case studies in the riparian countries to compare how different policy instruments are used in areas of high pollution. Available policy instruments include regulative, economic and communicative instruments, which are often perceived to be on a scale from ‘hard’ to ‘soft’. Even the regulations are, however, used softly in practice. Voluntary measures dominate. The most successful implementation occurs where economic incentives are significant. Most likely, the future will bear increasing political conflicts over which instruments are required to live up to the agreed policy goals.

Political science and ecological restoration

Ecological restoration has taken on a new significance in the face of climate change and biodiversity loss. Despite its growing policy salience, however, the social and political sciences have paid limited attention to the study of ecological restoration policy and practice. By drawing upon the political science study of multilevel governance, institutions, power relations, and place-based politics, a flavour is given of what a political science engagement might contribute to the rich tapestry of analysis that has already been produced by other disciplines on ecological restoration. As the use of restoration grows, it is increasingly likely that it will give rise to social dispute and be brought into conflict with a variety of environmental, cultural, economic, and community interests. Restoration policy and projects encounter professional and institutional norms as well as place-specific interests and values. There is urgent need to investigate how and in what ways some interests become winners and others losers in these activities, and how this in turn can influence ecological restoration outcomes. A political science lens could help build new criteria for evaluating the success of ecological restoration, ones that combine both process- and product-driven considerations.

Institutionalization or wither away? Twenty-five years of environmental policy integration under shifting governance models in Sweden:

Snapshot views of environmental policy integration (EPI) practices fail to consider the stability of EPI over time – both as aspiration and performance. This paper reviews the evolution of EPI over more than two decades at the national level in the agriculture and energy sectors in Sweden – an EPI pioneer. We study how the extent of EPI stability can be explained partly by shifting political priorities by governments and partly by underlying governance models (actors and organizational landscape and policy instruments used). Comparing the two sectors, the institutionalization of EPI appears to be stronger in the energy sector. In the agricultural sector, the current reform of the Common Agricultural Policy seems to imply decreasing prominence of EPI – due to shrinking budgets for environmental targets along with greater policy goals complexity. Overall, observed shifts in governance have been mildly conducive to EPI by providing an infrastructure, but further enhancements require clear political priority awarded to the environment.

Incentives for Collaborative Governance: Top-Down and Bottom-Up Initiatives in the Swedish Mountain Region

Governance collaborations between public and private partners are increasingly used to promote sustainable mountain development, yet information is limited on their nature and precise extent. This article analyzes collaboration on environment and natural resource management in Swedish mountain communities to critically assess the kinds of issues these efforts address, how they evolve, who leads them, and what functional patterns they exhibit based on Margerums (2008) typology of action, organizational, and policy collaboration. Based on official documents, interviews, and the records of 245 collaborative projects, we explore the role of the state, how perceptions of policy failure may inspire collaboration, and the opportunities that European Union funds have created. Bottom-up collaborations, most of which are relatively recent, usually have an action and sometimes an organizational function. Top-down collaborations, however, are usually organizational or policy oriented. Our findings suggest that top-down and bottom-up collaborations are complementary in situations with considerable conflict over time and where public policies have partly failed, such as for nature protection and reindeer grazing. In less contested areas, such as rural development, improving tracks and access, recreation, and fishing, there is more bottom-up, action-oriented collaboration. State support, especially in the form of funding, is central to explaining the emergence of bottom-up action collaboration. Our findings show that the state both initiates and coordinates policy networks and retains a great deal of power over the nature and functioning of collaborative governance. A practical consequence is that there is great overlap—aggravated by sectorized approaches—that creates a heavy workload for some regional partners.