Class 2 and 3 Flashcards
Why is China important?
As a country, China is part of a broader socio-economic system, and has huge impacts on it. Being an important actor, it contributes to shaping they way we all deal with the environment. China represents an example of the nexus between society, politics and science, especially when it comes to normative ideas of decision-making.
Define Governance
Governance can be defined more narrowly as: made of power and shaped by the actions of those who are in charge. In this sense, governance is what state bureaucracies do in taking care of public affairs.
A broader, multi-dimensional definition of governance includes: values, norms, structures, and processes that generate decisions to steer and regulate public affairs.
Define Environmental Governance
The term we use to describe how we as humans exercise our authority over natural resources and natural systems.
Environmental Governance includes:
- Institutions (rules, social norms, vales);
- Structures (formal organizations and network of actors);
- Processes (political interaction, negotiation, formulation of rules) that shape human interaction with natural systems
What is the aim of Environmental Governance?
The aim of environmental governance, in particular, is to manage individual behaviors or collective actions in pursuance of public environmental goods and related societal outcomes.
To comprehend environmental governance is to understand how decisions related to the environment are made and whether resultant policies and processes lead to environmentally and socially sustainable outcomes.
How can we measure the success of Environmental Governance?
Responsiveness: capacity to respond to, manage, and trigger regime shift.
Historically EG systems have evolved in response to modifications of the environment, modifications that generate crises that need to be addressed in view of societal goals. Awareness is key to the establishment of responsive EG Systems. Often this awareness is nurtured by actors outside the bureaucracy.
Effectiveness: is measured based on goals defined by the wider context in which EG is embedded. Normative outcomes like the improvement in ecosystem functioning, greater biodiversity or species, better environmental health, increases in productivity of system or provisioning of ecosystem services, improved socio-economic outcomes.
Equitability: inclusion in decision-making processes, increases in quality of life or wellbeing, more fair distribution of wealth, better access to justice and protection of rights.
Define Transformation
Capacity to create a fundamentally new system when ecological, economic, or social (including political) conditions make the existing system untenable. Transformation is NOT mere change Transformation is change with vision and purpose, realized through human agency.
Transformation in SES: deliberate human attempt to change processes that control a SES, may be at different scales/dimension e.g. food web interactions (ecological hierarchies).
Define the public
The public include all human members of a certain group, community, or society that identifies itself as such - and that has a governing structure. People, Citizen, Rightholder, stakeholder, actor.
Define public participation
Any action through which the members of the public seek/are given the possibility to influence public affairs and relevant decisional processes.
Normative underpinning: participation improves decisional processes. More accountability, more responsiveness, more legitimacy.
Different types of participation
Formal: Elections, Citizen Juries, Consultation in administrative processes, Associations, Judicial redress.
Informal: Protests Information campaigns, Resistance (violent or non violent), Community activism.
Formal and informal ways of participating should NOT be seen as different paths that never interact. Quite on the contrary, informal participation is often triggered by frustration over the fact that formal avenues are not available, difficult to access, or not effective
Explain the Ladder of Citizen Participation
The ladder (Arstein 1969) is both an analytical & planning instrument. We use this to understand & categorize public participation, power-holders use this to design PP.
Citizen power - government shares power with citizens (NORMATIVE) - citizen control, delegated power, partnership
Tokenism - harness information from the public (SUBSTANTIAL) - placation, consultation, information.
Instrumental participation - no power to people (INSTRUMENTAL) - therapy, manipulation
What are the promises and expectations of the different levels of PP?
Different levels of influence translate into different promises made to the people and therefore different expectations.
Public participation goals: inform (bottom of the ladder), consult, involve, collaborate, empower (let the public decide - top of ladder).
Promises: lower level of the ladder –> we will keep you informed; higher lever –> you will be empowered.
Also level of engagement (point of view of the public): monitor, inform, consult, involve & negotiate, collaborative, empower.
All of this can be applied at any scale (association, corporate, university, etc)
What are the Environmental Governance Objectives?
Normative: empowering people to visualize and translate into reality novel visions - ethics & aesthetics. (empowerment)
Substantial: improving decisions to reach better social and environmental outcomes - knowledge & politics (tokenism)
Instrumental: ensuring smooth implementation of a project, plan, policy - empirical reality. (no power)
Often the pursuit of an instrumental rationale may be the first step of wider processes of participation. Often this happens when people are frustrated by the instrumental rationale (i.e., by not being really heard in the first place)
FORMAL + INFORMAL of participation.
What is EIA or VIA?
Environmental Impact Assessment – EIA (in Italian VIA, Valutazione di Impatto Ambientale) - one of the major pathways of participation in environmental governance.
Activists use strategically EIA PP failures, to frame their demands in ways acceptable to power-holders, consistently with principles mandated by law.
How does EIA work in China?
In China the EIA Law makes a promise to the people: protecting people’s environmental rights. Enhancing EIA relevance and quality, to ameliorate projects, promotes openness, equality and inclusiveness.
BUT this promise is often NOT met due to political and cultural factors:
- pro-development bias
- technocratic mindset
- obsession with stability & control (among the leadership)
- conflicts of interest
- dismissive attitude towards less educated and affluent social categories - suzhi discourse
How can PP be improved in Environmental Governance?
Room of improvement of PP in EG - main pathways:
- Consistency: PP methods should be consistent with goals, otherwise they just generate expectations which cannot be met (blueprint that can be used to construct consistent modes of participation).
- Inclusiveness (& accountability): the sample has to be representative BUT also as affirmative action. Very practical way to do this: stakeholder analysis - which part of the public has more importance and therefore has more participation power. The higher the priority of stakeholder, the higher the level of participation.
- Responsiveness: to the current social-ecological crisis
Explain the importance of values, relations, norms and rules in governance.
They are part of the broader, multi-dimensional definition of governance.
Values are individual cognitive attitudes and individual emotions.
Relations are social and political interactions (human-human) Power relations
Norms are Shared understandings, collective patterns of behavior
Rules are Policies, laws and regulations
Explain the functioning of environmental systems
Functioning of these systems is defined by social-ecological processes.
However - for the purpose of governance - they are generally negotiated based on human needs, through politics. Governance rules, structures, and processes are shaped by interests and State bureacracies.
What is the current debate on environmental governance?
Overall, humans have not been able, so far, to find an effective solution to environmental crisis. Abrupt social-ecological regime shifts are expected, exceeding the resilience of SES, i.e., their capacity to absorb changes and still keep functioning providing ecosystem services essential to life; Our capacity to predict regime shift is limited, because our knowledge is not 100% accurate. We know there’s a tipping point, we don’t can’t predict exactly (until we have actually crossed it). The Earth is changing too fast for us to mitigate or to adapt
If this is true, then traditional EG systems are obsolete, because they are based on assumption that SES systems behave in a linear manner and that their resilience is unlimited.
Here the importance of transformation is key.
What are the key attributes of transformative environmental governance?
Responsiveness🡪 capacity to respond to, manage, and trigger regime shift
Effectiveness & Equibility🡪 health and well being of the biotic community as a whole (humans as nature). Social priorities consistent with the interests
of the entire biotic community, inclusive of those of more than humans.
What are the obstacles of transformation?
Entrenched power relations
Capitalism and dominant economic and political subsystems
Cognitive limits of humans
What are opportunities for transformation?
Law, formal institutions and governmental structure
Previous success of adaptive governance
Human agency and imagination
Main issues of EG PP?
PP in EG is Skewed toward the social and the political. Its normative underpinning = participation is good.
Main issues: Environmental and ecological aspects overlooked in governance structures and processes (often erased)
Participation is NOT always good. If not tuned in with community and nature it can actually do harm.
To avoid becoming irrelevant in view of the current civilizational crisis, we need to reconfigure PP as a toll to transform political and social-ecological relations
What is an example of Transformative PP?
Citizen science: scientific work undertaken by members of the general public, often in collaboration with or under the direction of professional scientists and scientific institutions.
