Polycentric Environmental Governance to Achieving SDG 16: Evidence from Southeast Asia and Eastern Africa

Effective environmental governance is deemed essential in advancing the Sustainable Development Goals. However, environmental dimensions have no specific reference across the SDG 16 targets and indicators. In achieving SDG 16—the realization of peace, justice, and strong institution, polycentric environmental governance involving multiple actors across scales deserves thoughtful consideration. This study illustrates the potential of a polycentric approach to environmental governance in achieving SDG 16, using case studies of forest, watershed, and transboundary bushland and seascape management in Southeast Asia and Eastern Africa, namely Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Kenya–Somalia cross-border. By highlighting four key elements of polycentric governance namely, political will, legal framework, support from higher-level governance and capacity building, the case studies demonstrate that polycentric governance play a significant role in achieving three environment-relevant SDG 16 targets, yet these targets are silent about environmental governance dimensions. Since many conflicts arise from the environment and natural resources sector, we suggest that (i) polycentric environmental governance be strongly pursued to achieve SDG 16, and (ii) SDG 16 includes indicators specifically directed on polycentric environment and natural resource governance.

A study on community expectation for cooperative behaviour among locals and migrants: a case study of an Okinawan village, Japan

Despite the increasing need for local and migrant populations to cooperate in natural resource governance, little attention has been paid to community contexts that influence individual cooperative behavioural choices among them. The present study demonstrates this influence through quantitative and qualitative data obtained in Shiraho village, Okinawa, Japan. Externalised cooperative behaviour was significantly different between locals and migrants, and the residents’ location in the social network was related to the level of cooperation, even though they had similar individual cooperative preferences. We find that people with dense social ties participate in community cooperation more than others, and that residents practise their cooperative behaviour in a way that fits community expectations: which was influenced by age and birth origin. Understanding the social context that guides individual behaviour for natural resource governance in a time when residential fluidity may keep increasing has relevance to other communities.

Lule Lappmark and Sources

In this chapter, we describe the study area, Lule lappmark, and the sources we used. We discuss how land use was influenced by differences in environmental settings and argue that empirical material from Lule lappmark in northern Sweden can be used to draw valid conclusions about general features regarding Sami land use and property rights in other regions as well. We introduce the reader to our interpretations of some important concepts necessary to understand the development of natural resource governance and argue that some earlier interpretations of the pre-modern Sami organization have led to misconceptions about that development.

The Natural Resource Governance Framework : improving governance for equitable and effective conservation

Governance is a critical determinant of the social equity, effectiveness and sustainability of natural resource use and conservation. Improving natural resource governance, including securing rights and sharing power and responsibilities, benefits both people and nature. Despite this, governance remains relatively poorly understood and weakly addressed in many natural resource and conservation contexts. The Natural Resource Governance Framework (NRGF) is an IUCN knowledge product created to provide a robust, inclusive and credible approach to assessing and improving natural resource governance at multiple levels and in diverse contexts. This publication presents the NRGF as it has been developed to date through a robust and inclusive process involving IUCN experts, Members and partners.

Defining Pathways towards African Ecological Futures

Africa has experienced unprecedented growth across a range of development indices for decades. However, this growth is often at the expense of Africa’s biodiversity and ecosystems, jeopardizing the livelihoods of millions of people depending on the goods and services provided by nature, with broader consequences for achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Encouragingly, Africa can still take a more sustainable path. Here, we synthesize the key learnings from the African Ecological Futures project. We report results from a participatory scenario planning process around four collectively-owned scenarios and narratives for the evolution of Africa’s ecological resource base over the next 50 years. These scenarios provided a lens to review pressures on the natural environment, through the drivers, pressures, state, impacts, and responses (DPSIR) framework. Based on the outcomes from each of these steps, we discuss opportunities to reorient Africa’s development trajectories towards a sustainable path. These opportunities fall under the broad categories of “effective natural resource governance”, “strategic planning capabilities”, “investment safeguards and frameworks”, and “new partnership models”. Underpinning all these opportunities are “data, management information, and decision support frameworks”. This work can help inform collaborative action by a broad set of actors with an interest in ensuring a sustainable ecological future for Africa.

Application of the governance disruptions framework to German agricultural soil policy

Governance of natural resources is inherently complex and requires navigating trade-offs at multiple dimensions. In this paper, we present and operationalize the “governance disruptions framework” (GDF) as a tool for holistic analysis of natural resource governance systems. For each of the four dimensions of the framework (target adequacy, object adequacy, instrument adequacy, and behavioural adequacy), we formulate guiding questions to be used when applying the framework to particular governance systems. We then demonstrate the use of GDF by applying it to the core of German agricultural soil policy. We show that for each framework dimension, the governance system exhibits deficits, particularly with respect to object adequacy and instrument adequacy. Furthermore, we use the GDF-based analysis to highlight research gaps. We find that stakeholder analyses are a central gap across GDF dimensions.