Po Garden

Scale and Cross-Scale Dynamics: Governance and Information in a Multilevel World

The empirical evidence in the papers in this special issue identifies pervasive and difficult cross-scale and cross-level interactions in managing the environment. The complexity of these interactions and the fact that both scholarship and management have only recently begun to address this complexity have provided the impetus for us to present one synthesis of scale and cross-scale dynamics. In doing so, we draw from multiple cases, multiple disciplines, and multiple perspectives. In this synthesis paper, and in the accompanying cases, we hypothesize that the dynamics of cross-scale and cross-level interactions are affected by the interplay between institutions at multiple levels and scales. We suggest that the advent of co-management structures and conscious boundary management that includes knowledge co-production, mediation, translation, and negotiation across scale-related boundaries may facilitate solutions to complex problems that decision makers have historically been unable to solve.

Linking knowledge with action in the pursuit of sustainable water-resources management

Managing water for sustainable use and economic development is both a technical and a governance challenge in which knowledge production and sharing play a central role. This article evaluates and compares the role of participatory governance and scientific information in decision-making in four basins in Brazil, Mexico, Thailand, and the United States. Water management institutions in each of the basins have evolved during the last 10–20 years from a relatively centralized water-management structure at the state or national level to a decision structure that involves engaging water users within the basins and the development of participatory processes. This change is consistent with global trends in which states increasingly are expected to gain public acceptance for larger water projects and policy changes. In each case, expanded citizen engagement in identifying options and in decision-making processes has resulted in more complexity but also has expanded the culture of integrated learning. International funding for water infrastructure has been linked to requirements for participatory management processes, but, ironically, this study finds that participatory processes appear to work better in the context of decisions that are short-term and easily adjusted, such as water-allocation decisions, and do not work so well for longer-term, high-stakes decisions regarding infrastructure. A second important observation is that the costs of capacity building to allow meaningful stakeholder engagement in water-management decision processes are not widely recognized. Failure to appreciate the associated costs and complexities may contribute to the lack of successful engagement of citizens in decisions regarding infrastructure.

Management into the Development Strategies of Urbanizing Regions in Asia: Implications of Urban Function, Form, and Role

The way urbanization unfolds over the next few decades in the developing countries of Asia will have profound implications for sustainability. One of the more important opportunities is to guide urbanization along pathways that begin to uncouple these gains in well‐being from rising levels of energy use. Increasing energy use for transport, construction, climate control in houses and offices, and industrial processes is often accompanied by increasing levels of atmospheric emissions that impact human health, ecosystem functions, and the climate system. Agriculture, forestry, and animal husbandry alter carbon stocks and fluxes as carbon dioxide, methane, and black carbon. In this article we explore how carbon management could be integrated into the development strategies of cities and urbanizing regions. In particular, we explore how changes in urban form, functions, and roles might alter the timing, aggregation, spatial distribution, and composition of carbon emissions. Our emphasis is on identifying system linkages and points of leverage. The study draws primarily on emission inventories and regional development histories carried out in the regions around the cities of Manila, Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh City, New Delhi, and Chiang Mai. We find that how urban functions, such as mobility, shelter, and food, are provided has major implications for carbon emissions, and that each function is influenced by urban form and role in distinct ways. Our case studies highlight the need for major “U‐turns” in urban policy.

Places, Chains, and Plates: Governing Transitions in the Shrimp Aquaculture Production-Consumption System

Abstract The shrimp production-consumption system is governed by a diverse and dynamic array of actors each drawing on institutions at various levels, from local through national to international. But, for the most part, the politics of consumption (plates), chains, and places are disconnected. Instead, shrimp producers face a myriad of institutional and consumer demands and the sustainability of the shrimp aquaculture production-consumption system is not merely a technical problem to be solved by better site selection and management of ponds. Instead, campaigns for, and against, consuming certain kinds of shrimp are launched in remote corners of the globe and standards, codes, and quality assurance schemes are developed and promoted by equally diverse set of actors, to guide and regulate practices of shrimp farmers and food processors. Furthermore, most initiatives take place with little or no consultation with shrimp farmers or the communities living in shrimp growing areas. Efforts to improve sustainability will require much greater attention to ways different stakeholders, in particular, shrimp farmers and affected communities in growing areas, are brought together with other actors, to deliberate and assess impacts, and to negotiate fairer distribution of risks and benefits in a sustainable production-consumption system. Associations based in producer locales and emerging platforms that bridge these arenas would be a good place to start. A Chinese version of this articles abstract is available online at: www.informaworld.com/rglo

Knowledge and innovation relationships in the shrimp industry in Thailand and Mexico

Experts, government officials, and industry leaders concerned about the sustainability of shrimp aquaculture believe they know what farmers need to know and should be doing. They have framed sustainability as a technical problem that, at the farm level, is to be solved by better shrimp and management of ponds and businesses. Codes of conduct, standards, and regulations are expected to bring deviant practices into line. Shrimp farmers are often cornered in a challenging game of knowledge in which their livelihoods are at stake. In the commodity chain there are multiple relations with both suppliers and buyers, not all of which are trustworthy. The social networks shrimp farmers belong to are crucial for sifting out misinformation and multiplying insights from personal experience in learning by doing. Successful farmers become part of a learning culture through seminars, workshops, and clubs in which knowledge and practices are continually re-evaluated. The combination of vertical and horizontal relationships creates a set of alternative arenas that together are critical to bridging knowledge and action gaps for shrimp farmers. Government and industry initiatives for improving links between knowledge and practice for sustainability have largely succeeded when incentives are aligned: shrimp grow better in healthy environments, and using fewer resources means higher profits.

Enabling Sustainable Shrimp Aquaculture: Narrowing the Gaps Between Science and Policy in Thailand

Since the early 1980s, shrimp aquaculture has expanded rapidly with production increasing more than 100-fold from 31,000 t in 1976 to 2.6 million tons in 2006 (Fig. 7.1). About 90% of farmed shrimp is produced in Asia (mainly in China, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and India). The other 10% is produced mainly in Latin America, where Mexico, Brazil and Ecuador are the largest producers (Fig. 7.1). The two main aquaculture species that are farmed – black tiger shrimp (Penaeus monodon) and Pacific white shrimp (Penaeus vannamei) – accounted for about 88% of the shrimp in the aquaculture industry in 2006.

Deliberation, negotiation and scale in the governance of water resources in the Mekong region

Deliberating, negotiating, designing, and implementing water management policies are often disconnected activities. Different actors come together in separate arenas at different times, places and levels to gain support for their policies, programs and projects. Scale represents a class of key choices, commitments and constraints that actors contest or are forced to accept. In the Mekong region water governance is multi-level and multiscale with issues and actors that surge and ebb as they move from deliberation, negotiation and allocation of water and related services and back out again. The attributes and outcomes of multi-level governance — like fairness, equity and sustainability — depends not only on the interplay of institutions, but also the fortuitous and staged cross-level interactions among less rigid and formalized social networks and deliberative platforms. While attributing impacts to deliberative engagement is not a straight-forward exercise, our hypothesis remains that cross-level interactions in deliberations initially produce and later help influence negotiations and the robustness of structure of rules, agreements, policies and institutions.