Abstract
Good governance is needed to foster good management of the environment. Yet, the link between environmental governance and environmental management has received very little research attention. This paper adopts a mechanism-based framework to unpack the link between the governance and management of species at risk or endangered species in a working landscape. Using species at risk management in the South of the Divide region of southwestern Saskatchewan as a case study, we identified four governance conditions connected by five mechanisms to produce management outcomes. The governance conditions include facilitative leadership, local autonomy, trust, and incentives. The five mechanisms include institutional disruption, institutional crafting and drift, brokerage or bridging, program uptake, and alleviation of fear of harm. We discuss how using a mechanism-based approach could help us better understand the processes within the governance system that trigger particular management outcomes. For example, in this case study, dissatisfied factors disrupt the existing governance arrangements and create new ones that reflect their desire for local autonomy. Local autonomy, in turn, creates an atmosphere for local actors to form coalitions and build trust; trust enhances program uptake and the co-design and co-implementation of incentives, which then alleviates land managers' fear of harm from participating in species at risk management. Our study also suggests that top-down institutions that create room for further institutional work can become acceptable at the local level and enhance endangered species management. We conclude that a mechanism-based explanation can be useful for opening the black box connecting environmental governance and management and offering valuable recommendations to guide policy.
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Notes
Black-boxed means that the causal processes linking inputs and outcomes are completely ignored, while grey-boxed implies a partial attempt to uncover these causal processes. Grey-boxing may result from equating mechanisms to intervening variables (Beach 2016). In the context of governance and management, black boxing means no attempt has been made to identify the causal processes linking the two, and grey boxing implies an attempt to use a ‘laundry list’ of governance conditions as the mechanisms that explain management.
See Pittman (2019) for a detailed account of the events that led to the instatement of the EPO in 2013.
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This research was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada through their Insight Development Grant Program (430-2018-00247) and by Environment and Climate Change Canada through their Habitat Stewardship Program.
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Ayambire, R.A., Pittman, J. Opening the black box between governance and management: A mechanism-based explanation of how governance affects the management of endangered species. Ambio 51, 2091–2106 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-022-01728-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-022-01728-w