This brief 700 essay was an answer to an essay question under the Environmental Policy and Governance module. To be honest, I couldn’t locate the final submission or the graded version so I picked the closest draft I could find and attempted to fill in the gaps as best as I could. The total grade for this submission and the submission for the information disclosure essay here was 66. Please do not plagiarise.
This essay shall examine the ways non-governmental actors influence governmental decision-making in the context of environmental governance by first using the framework theory on the mechanisms and strategies of environmental governance by Lemos and Agrawal (2006). The examples this essay shall refer to are the decentralised forms of governance in the form of state-community partnerships in community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) exemplified in Bosawas reserve, Nicaragua and the ‘conservation emergency’ program in Madagascar highlighting the means of influence of non-state stakeholders. Also, this essay shall show in these examples that CBNRM non-state actors at different levels and scales can have varying degrees of success, provided ignorance, mismatching and plurality are minimised (Cash et al., 2006)
In more recent years, governance has been redefined to include actors aside from the state (Carter, 2007; Jordan, 2003). More specifically, environmental governance has arisen due to the rising and pressing complexities of transboundary challenges of multidimensional magnitudes and levels such as climate change (Patterberg, 2012).
Levy and Newell (2005) define environmental governance as the hard and soft rules that shape and constrain actors’ behaviour towards the environment. Lemos and Agrawal (2006) developed a framework outlining the relationship between non-state actors and the state as shown in figure 1. This framework essentially summarises the mechanisms and strategies that can be employed in policy instrumentation to address emerging challenges with regards to environmental governance.
Figure 1. The mechanisms and strategies of environmental governance. Source: (Lemos and Agrawal, 2006: 310)
The relationship of interest in the framework is co-management of resources between the state and the community. An example is the Bosawas reserve, Nicaragua where government authorities worked with locals to establish and maintain agreements concerning preservation of forest. Dressler et al. (2010) largely attribute the success of this CBNRM initiative to four reasons; participation, rule setting, maintenance as well as the scale and level of engagement.
Firstly, compared to a similar co-management program executed in Madagascar, the Bosawas CBNRM extended over a longer period than the five years of the Madagascar program. This was largely due to the extensive engagement of locals in decision making which included granting of land rights in selected areas within the reserve by active stakeholders such as government and colonists. It must be noted that the indigenous people presented a unified front and engaged the support of local NGOs such as the Centro Humboldt. However, residents largely led negotiations and actively participated throughout the planning process which included demarcations and the establishment of a resource management plan.
Secondly, the negotiated Bosawas agreements can be likened to voluntary instruments as they were set with the desire to minimise conflict with external private parties interested in the reserve.
Thirdly, regarding maintenance, NGOs such as Cenro Humboldt and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) were strategic stakeholders providing information in technical, financial and organisational advice to the government as well as training of forest guards and assistance with acquiring land titles, thereby enhancing interests of residents and enabling sustainable practises in managing the reserve.
Lastly, concerning the scale and level of engagement, the principle of subsidiarity was employed where management was at the lowest possible jurisdiction level (Marie et al., 2009) . This ensured the economic benefits from the forest were broader than those captured by a few elite.
More actors such as international environmental organisations (IEOs) can engage in the CBNRM level at ‘cross-scale’ within the context of Global environmental governance (GEG). Biermann and Patterberg (2008) define GEG to include more non-state actors becoming formally part of norm-setting and norm-implementing institutions and mechanisms at the international level, which denotes a shift from intergovernmental regimes to public-private and increasingly private-private cooperation and global policy-making. In such a scenario, the Madagascar, ‘conservative emergency’ program serves as a strong example. This is because, despite the presence of IEOs, the program was perceived as a failure by many critics. Instituted by the President in 2003 to address increase protection status of more lands, this CBNRM has been perceived to be largely unsuccessful because of the lack of appropriate consultation of locals to understand their economy and existing role regarding the protected lands. (Marie et al., 2009)
Within the case of the emergency conservative action, it is highlighted that the success of co-management relies on the active participation of locals. The perceived error of the state was in shifting its power dynamic to IEOs backed largely by non-national conservationists who sole aim was to protect species of flora. For example, to protect baobabs, the government instituted a ban on rice cultivation without compensation. This worsened the state of co-existence of the locals and the flora targeted for protection.
Hence, as in the case of Nicaragua, co-management requires a promotion of local actors even as other non-state actors may be involved in decisionmaking to ensure successful outcomes.
To sum up, this essay has revealed that although non-state actors are crucial and warranted in decision making, scale and levels matter in defining the success of a CBNRM.
References
- Lemos M.C., Agrawal A. 2006. Environmental Governance. Annual Review Environmental Resource. 31:297–325. doi: 10.1146/annurev.energy.31.042605.135621
- Cash D.W., Adger W.N., Berkes F., Garden P, Lebel L., Olsson P. Pritchard L., Young O. 2006. Scale and Cross-Scale Dynamics: Governance and Information in Multilevel World. Ecology and Society.11(2). doi:10.5751/ES-01759–110208
- Carter N., 2007. The Politics of the Environment. Cambridge University Press
- Jordan A., Rüdiger K.W.W., Zito A.R. 2003. ‘New’ Instruments of Environmental Governance: Patterns and Pathways of Change,12:1, 1–24, doi:10.1080/714000665
- Patterberg, P. 2012. How Climate Change Became a Business Risk: Analyzing Nonstate Agency in Global Climate Politics. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space. 30:4. doi: https://doi.org/10.1068/c1179
- Levy D.L., Newell P.J. 2005. The Business of Global Environmental Governance. Business Strategy and International Environmental Governance.
- Dressler W., Büscher B., Schoon M., Brockington D., Hayes T.M., Kull C.A., Mccarthy J., Shrestha K. 2010. From Hope to Crisis and Back Again? A Critical History of the Global CBNRM Narrative. Environmental Conservation. 37(01):5–15. doi:10.1017/S0376892910000044
- Biermann F., Patterberg P. 2008. Global Environmental Governance: Taking Stock, Moving Forward. Annual Review Environmental Resource. 33:277–94
- Marie, C. N., Sibelet, N. Dulcire, M. Rafalimaro, M. Danthu, P. & Carrière, S. (2009) Taking into account local practices and indigenous knowledge in an emergency conservation context in Madagascar. Biodiversity Conservation. DOI. 10.1007/s10531–009–9672–9