Understanding the Social Licence of Carbon Farming in the Australian Rangelands

Carbon farming has expanded in Australia’s rangelands over recent years, incentivised under the Australian Government’s Emissions Reduction Fund. While this has largely been driven by economic benefits for landholders, the long-term viability of the carbon farming industry depends on its ability to obtain and maintain a social licence to operate in affected communities. Using a combination of survey, interview and focus group methods, involving key stakeholders in far-western New South Wales (NSW), this study reveals that the greatest threat to the social licence of carbon farming is the lack of confidence in governance related to policy complexity and uncertainty. Procedural fairness is a relative strength because of the involvement of trusted community members, and the trust-building strategies employed by the aggregators who recruit landholders to carbon farming. Perceptions of distributional fairness are strengthened by the benefits beginning to flow through rangeland communities, but are weakened by concerns around the equity of eligibility and the land management rules. A focus on participatory policy development, aligning rules with local values and local-scale trust building, is required in order to enhance the social licence for carbon farming in the NSW rangelands.

From Community Coalitions to City Hall: Shaping Policy in Chicago With Mayor Harold Washington

Today’s cities are seeking more social equity—a response in part to police violence, pandemic disparities, and the racial wealth gap. Activists, planners, and local government reformers are looking for bold examples of equity planning—single initiatives and multi-faceted equity plans. The mayoral administration of Harold Washington in Chicago (1983–1987) shows how a grassroots electoral campaign combined with participatory policy development produced the Chicago Works Together (CWT) Development Plan—that promoted jobs, neighborhoods, and citizen participation. This article recounts the development of CWT and examines the impacts of CWT for Chicago and equity planning.

China’s Wildlife Management Policy Framework: Preferences, Coordination and Optimization

The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic led to global concerns about the delicate relationship between humans and wildlife. However, quantitative research on the elements of a wildlife management policy framework in a certain country is lacking. In this study, we try to close this research gap by analyzing the formulation preferences of key elements in the wildlife management policy framework, as well as the coordination between them, in China, which is generally regarded as a main wildlife consumption country. Based on the content analysis of China’s wildlife management policy documents, with a three-dimensional analytical framework, we find that: China’s wildlife management policy framework prefers the use of compulsory tools, while voluntary and mixed tools are not fully used; adequate attention is paid to the biodiversity conservation objectives and attention is paid to the objectives of public health protection and wildlife welfare, while the utilization objective is restricted to some extent; government sectors, industry, citizens, and non-governmental organizations are involved in wildlife management policies and the degrees of participation of citizens and non-governmental organizations are relatively low. In conclusion, we draw wider implications for China’s wildlife management policy formulation, arguing for a more coordinated and participatory policy framework.

Love & hate in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver: features of an unusual drug scene

Purpose According to conventional research and political conceptions, illicit drug scenes are often characterised by cultures of crime, violence and deceit and customarily met by repressive law enforcement. However, a growing body of research demonstrates the very diverse nature of drug subcultures. This paper aims to explore this diversity and thereby investigates the psychosocial and socio-spatial features people selling and/or using drugs in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver (DTES) attribute to the local drug scene. Design/methodology/approach Qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted with 23 persons with drug selling and/or using experiences in the DTES. Interviews were analysed and interpreted according to grounded theory. Findings Participants represent the social fabric of the DTES drug scene as comprising complexly interwoven facets and structures including frequent, brutal violence on the one hand and sincere, heart-rending compassion, care and even love on the other. Originality/value Police and social and health services can cooperate constructively with the overriding aim of individual and social harm reduction. Thereby, the existing social network and prosocial orientations of a drug scene can be used in effective approaches such as participatory policy strategies and peer-driven interventions.

Equitable and empowering participatory policy design strategies to accelerate just climate action

Inter- and intra-country inequalities hamper adaptation and resilience capacity to climate change. Achieving a climate resilient future requires long-term visions, system-oriented approaches, cross-sector collaborations, and good climate governance, while centering on equity and justice in policy making. Central to these governance efforts is an informed and active society with concrete mechanisms to influence decision making. Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE) provides the framework to attain climate policy coherence that integrates the capacities and needs of all members of society into ambitious and effective strategies. This paper proposes a novel approach to policy making, applied to the co-creation of a national climate empowerment plan for the United States that encompasses local participation, leadership, and consent. The approach is based on a combination of participatory backcasting and the Talanoa process structure and principles of multi-level, transdisciplinary, transparency and inclusive dialogues. The proposed approach is beneficial for the advancement of ambitious, practical, and flexible plans with broad-based buy-in from stakeholders ranging from policymakers to relevant actors to frontline and marginalized communities to institutions.

Let the people decide: citizen deliberation on the role of GMOs in Mali’s agriculture

This paper describes and critically reflects on a participatory policy process which resulted in a government decision not to introduce genetically modified (GM) cotton in farmers’ fields in Mali (West Africa). In January 2006, 45 Malian farmers gathered in Sikasso to deliberate on GM cotton and the future of farming in Mali. As an invited policy space convened by the government of Sikasso region, this first-time farmers' jury was unique in West Africa. It was known as l’ECID—Espace Citoyen d’Interpellation Démocratique (Citizen’s Space for Democratic Deliberation)—and it had an unprecedented impact on the region. In this Deliberative and Inclusive Process (DIP), the ECID combined the citizens’ jury method with indigenous methods for debate and dialogue, including the traditional African palaver. The ECID brought together male and female producers representing every district in the Sikasso region of southern Mali, specialist witnesses from various continents and a panel of independent observers, as well as resource persons and members of the national and international press and media. As an experiment in deliberative democracy, the ECID of Sikasso aimed to give men and women farmers the opportunity to share knowledge on the benefits and risks of GM cotton, and make policy recommendations on the future of GM technology in Malian agriculture. Designed as a bottom-up and participatory process, the ECID’s outcomes significantly changed national policy on the release of GM technology and have had an enduring influence in Mali. In this paper, we describe our positionality as action researchers and co-organisers of the ECID. We explain the methodology used for the ECID of Sikasso and critically reflect on the safeguards that were put in place to ensure a balanced and trustworthy deliberative process. The ECID and its key outcomes are discussed in the context of the political economy of GM cotton in West Africa. Last, we briefly highlight the relevance of the ECID for current international debates on racism in the theory and practice deliberative democracy; the production of post-normal transdisciplinary knowledge for technology risk-assessments; and the politics of knowledge in participatory policy-making for food and agriculture.

From trickle down to inclusiveness :

Inclusiveness of the excluded is a new phenomenon in the study of governance. This is suggested in the researches that macroeconomic aggregates do not, as had been assumed, have a ‘trickle-down effect. The actors including state and societal that either play a dominant role or do not play any role at all in the policy process become evident in the systematic study of the policy formulation process. In Bangladesh, the participatory policy formulation process is introduced by the Local Government (Union Parishad) Act, 2009. This study used a qualitative case-study methodology, backed by secondary documentary analysis, and assessed the process of formulation of the policy at the participatory planning and budgeting processes at the local level in six Union Parishads(UP), the lowest administrative tier of Bangladesh. Based on empirical data this paper found that citizens were able to identify their priority needs of life if they were offered the opportunity.The nexus between donors and government works as an iron triangle and as an outcome, the citizens become unwilling to participate in those processes when they are being perceived that their needs are being neglected due to resource constraints. The absence of societal actors to play a dominant role to act as a pressure group in the policy formulation process, resource constraints, and patron-client relationship are some factors that exclude the demands of the grass-root level citizens. It is suggested that governments need to explicitly consider the human development objectives of local people when formulating macroeconomic policy.