Rebecca L. Gruby

Blue Economy and Competing Discourses in International Oceans Governance

In this article, we track a relatively new term in global environmental governance: “blue economy.” Analyzing preparatory documentation and data collected at the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development (i.e., Rio + 20), we show how the term entered into use and how it was articulated within four competing discourses regarding human–ocean relations: (a) oceans as natural capital, (b) oceans as good business, (c) oceans as integral to Pacific Small Island Developing States, and (d) oceans as small-scale fisheries livelihoods. Blue economy was consistently invoked to connect oceans with Rio + 20’s “green economy” theme; however, different actors worked to further define the term in ways that prioritized particular oceans problems, solutions, and participants. It is not clear whether blue economy will eventually be understood singularly or as the domain of a particular actor or discourse. We explore possibilities as well as discuss discourse in global environmental governance as powerful and precarious.

Everyone's Solution? Defining and Redefining Protected Areas at the Convention on Biological Diversity

For decades, conservationists have remained steadfastly committed to protected areas (PAs) as the best means to conserve biodiversity. Using Collaborative Event Ethnography of the 10 th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD/CoP), we examine how the PA concept remains hegemonic in conservation policy. We argue that, as a broadening base of actors frame their political objectives through PAs in order to further their agendas, they come together in a discourse coalition. In this coalition, actors do not necessarily have common interests or understandings; rather, it is through dynamic struggles over the meaning of the PA concept and the continual process of reshaping it that actors reproduce its hegemony. In this process, the CBD/CoP disciplines and aligns disparate actors who might otherwise associate with distinct discourse coalitions. As the concept accommodates a wider range of values, PAs are increasingly being asked to do more than conserve biodiversity. They must also sequester carbon, protect ecosystem services, and even promote human rights. These transformations reflect not only changes in how PAs are defined and framed, but also in the realignment of relationships of authority and power in conservation governance in ways that may marginalise traditional conservation actors.

Boundary Objects and Global Consensus: Scalar Narratives of Marine Conservation in the Convention on Biological Diversity

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) continues to promote marine protected areas (MPAs) as a preferred tool for marine biodiversity conservation, in spite of concerns over their effectiveness and equity. However, explanations for this consensus on the utility of MPAs focus primarily on their measurability and ignore the ways in which they are conceptualized through ongoing governance processes. Drawing on the results of collaborative event ethnography at the Tenth Conference of the Parties to the CBD, this paper adopts the concepts of boundary objects and scalar narratives to analyze the ways in which consensus on MPAs is produced, in spite of conflicting understandings of MPA forms and functions. Both a local narrative of participatory MPAs and a global narrative of science driven high seas conservation articulate a regional scale as ideal for MPA governance, although with different priorities. Ultimately, consensus at the CBD is enabled only by accommodating competing visions of MPAs.

Learning from Ecosystem-Based Management in Practice

We explore how marine ecosystem–based management (EBM) is translated from theory to practice at six sites with varying ecological and institutional contexts. Based on these case studies, we report on the goals, strategies, and outcomes of each project and what we can learn from these efforts to guide future implementation and assessment. In particular, we focus on how projects dealt with the challenges of working across geographic scales and diverse governance arrangements. While we hypothesized that EBM in the United States would be distinct from EBM in developing countries due to differences in social and political factors, we found that sites faced similar challenges. Variation among sites appeared to be more closely related to the preexisting management context and the scale at which the projects began rather than to clear differences between the United States and developing country contexts. EBM project implementers were able to overcome many of these challenges by focusing on a limited number of specific objectives, starting at a small scale, pursuing adaptive management, and monitoring a diverse set of indicators. These findings are directly relevant to current and future EBM efforts in these and other places.

Studying Power with the Social-Ecological System Framework

A long-standing divide exists among social scientists regarding power and its effects on the sustainability of social-ecological systems (SESs). In some disciplines, such as political ecology, power is a central focus, and seen as having a significant impact on social-ecological processes and outcomes. In contrast, commons theory, a new institutionalist strand of research on environmental governance, deliberately sidelines power to focus on the relationship between institutions and sustainability. Historically, there has been little constructive interaction between power-centered and institution-centered approaches. Therefore, we apply the SES framework, a tool explicitly designed to confront interdisciplinary puzzles, to ask whether it can be used to bridge the gap between these two traditions of social-ecological research. The chapter outlines a systematic approach for integrating diverse conceptualizations of power with the SES framework and then applies this approach to study the relationship between power and social-ecological outcomes. The analysis suggests that the SES framework is a promising tool for social science integration, but also that important questions remain concerning the validity of classifications, measurement, and statistical tests. We conclude with a call for greater interdisciplinary attention to questions of power with the SES framework to better understand its normative and positive implications for sustainable and equitable governance of SESs.

Moments of influence in global environmental governance

International environmental negotiations such as the 10th Conference of Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP10) are state-dominated, and their outcomes are highly publicized. Less transparent is the role of non-state delegates who effect changes during negotiation processes through myriad strategies and relations. This article focuses on the influence of indigenous peoples and local community (IPLC) delegates in official COP10 negotiations using collaborative event ethnography to identify and evaluate ‘moments of influence’ that have gone largely unnoticed in the literature on global environmental politics. Findings indicate that IPLC delegates influenced negotiations by enrolling, shaming, and reinforcing state actors. Such relational maneuvers and interventions may appear inconsequential, but their implications are potentially far-reaching. Recognizing moments of influence improves understandings of non-state influence, relational power, and the multiple ways diverse actors reach across networks to overcome the power asymmetries that continue to characterize global environmental governance.

Conceptualizing Social Outcomes of Large Marine Protected Areas

ABSTRACT There has been an assumption that because many large marine protected areas (LMPAs) are designated in areas with relatively few direct uses, they therefore have few stakeholders and negligible social outcomes. This article challenges this assumption with diverse examples of social outcomes that are distinctive in LMPAs. We define social outcomes as inclusive of both social change processes and social impacts, where “social” includes all perceptual or material human dimensions. We draw on five in-depth case studies to report social outcomes resulting from proposed or designated LMPAs in Bermuda, Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Kiribati, Palau, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands & Guam. We conclude: (1) social outcomes arise even in remote LMPAs; (2) LMPA efforts generate social outcomes at all stages of development; (3) LMPAs have the potential to produce outcomes at a higher level of social organization, which can change the scope and type of affected populations and, in some cases, the nature and stakes of the outcomes themselves; (4) the potential for LMPAs to impart distinctive social outcomes results from their unique geographies and/or intersection with high-level politics and policy processes; and (5) social outcomes of LMPAs may emerge in the form of social change processes and/or social impacts.

Human Dimensions of Large-scale Marine Protected Areas: Advancing Research and Practice

This special issue of Coastal Management focuses on the human dimensions of large-scale marine protected areas (LSMPAs), those MPAs that are typically larger than 250,000 km2.11. Toonen et al. (2013 Toonen, R. J., T. A. Wilhelm, S. M. Maxwell, D. Wagner, B. W. Bowen, C. R. C. Sheppard, S. M. Taei, T. Teroroko, R. Moffitt, C. F. Gaymer, et al. 2013. One size does not fit all: The emerging frontier in large-scale marine conservation. Marine Pollution Bulletin 77:7–10.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]) and the Big Ocean network of LSMPA managers define LSMPAs as those larger than 250,000 km2. Other authors have defined LSMPAs as larger than 30,000 km2 (de Santo 2013 de Santo, E. M. 2013. Missing marine protected area (MPA) targets: How the push for quantity over quality undermines sustainability and social justice. Journal of Environmental Management 124:137–46.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]) or 100,000 km2 (Spalding et al. 2013 Spalding, M. D., I. Meliane, A. Milam, C. Fitzgerald, and L. Z. Hale. 2013. Protecting marine spaces: Global targets and changing approaches. Ocean Yearbook 27:213–48.[Crossref], [Google Scholar]; Gruby et al. 2016 Gruby, R. L., N. J. Gray, L. M. Campbell, and L. Acton. 2016. Toward a social science research agenda for large marine protected areas. Conservation Letters 9 (3):153–63.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]). View all notes We define ‘human dimensions’ as the cultural, social, economic, political, and institutional factors that affect and are affected by large-scale marine conservation efforts. While human dimensions of marine conservation and coastal management have long been a focus of research, they have not yet received sustained and systematic consideration in relation to LSMPAs specifically. Although there is an emerging body of scholarship focused on the human dimensions of LSMPAs (e.g. de Santo 2013 de Santo, E. M. 2013. Missing marine protected area (MPA) targets: How the push for quantity over quality undermines sustainability and social justice. Journal of Environmental Management 124:137–46.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]; Harris 2014 Harris, P. 2014. A Political Trilemma? International Secruity, Environmental Protection and Human Rights in the British Indian Ocean Territory. International Politics 51 (1):87–100.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]; Wilhelm et al. 2014 Wilhelm, T. A., C. R. C. Sheppard, A. L. S. Sheppard, C. F. Gaymer, J. Parks, D. Wagner, and N. Lewis. 2014. Large marine protected areas – advantages and challenges of going big: Considerations when going big in MPAs. Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems 24:24–30.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]; Richmond and Kotowicz 2015 Richmond, L., and D. Kotowicz. 2015. Equity and access in marine protected areas: The history and future of ‘traditional indigenous fishing’ in the Marianas Trench Marine National Monument. Applied Geography 59:117–24.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]; Gruby et al. 2016 Gruby, R. L., N. J. Gray, L. M. Campbell, and L. Acton. 2016. Toward a social science research agenda for large marine protected areas. Conservation Letters 9 (3):153–63.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]; Ban et al. 2017 Ban N. C., T. E. Davies, S. E. Aguilera, C. Brooks, M. Cox, G. Epstein, L. S. Evans, S. M. Maxwell, and M. Nenadovic. 2017. Social and ecological effectiveness of large marine protected areas. Global Environmental Change 43:82–91.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]; Alger and Dauvergne 2017 Alger, J., and P. Dauvergne. 2017. The global norm of large marine protected areas: Explaining variable adoption and implementation. Environmental Policy and Governance 27 (4):298–310. doi:10.1002/eet.1768.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]; Christie et al. 2017 Christie P., N. J. Bennett, N. J. Gray, T. A. Wilhelm, N. Lewis, J. Parks, N. C. Ban, R. L. Gruby, L. Gordon, J. Day, et al. 2017. Why people matter in ocean governance: Incorporating human dimensions into large scale marine protected areas. Marine Policy 84:273–284.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]), this is the first collection of papers devoted to their analysis. The purpose of this special issue is to showcase the diversity of human dimensions of LSMPAs, illustrating the range of contexts in which LSMPAs function, the variety of social science tools that can be used to analyze LSMPAs, the ways that human dimensions considerations can be integrated into LSMPA management, and the diverse human dimensions outcomes that are associated with LSMPAs. We suggest this special issue is timely and valuable for several reasons.

Macropolitics of Micronesia: Toward a Critical Theory of Regional Environmental Governance

This article examines regional environmental governance (REG) through the lens of human geography theory on scale. Drawing on a case study of the Micronesia Challenge, a regional conservation commitment among five Pacific islands, I advance a critical theory of REG as a scaling process and tool of politics through which regions are (re)made and mobilized in support of diverse agendas. Results highlight understudied dimensions of REG, including: motivations for scaling environmental governance to regions; the co-production of regional and global environmental governance; the mutable expression of regionality within REG; and the ways in which REG is leveraged for resource mobilization, global visibility and influence, and conservation. The potential for REG to empower subaltern groups while advancing conservation is promising, and an important area for future research. The overall contribution of this article is a more complex, politicized understanding of REG that complicates a scholarly search for its inherent characteristics.