Presented at the IASC 2014 European conference, this paper explores how institutional design and social-ecological perspectives can inform governance of catchments. It focuses on ‘Catchment-Based Approach (CaBA) in England - and stems from the EU Water Framework Directive.
Stakeholders & Catchment Management - Where's the Stake?
1. Where’s the ‘stake’ for involving
stakeholders in catchment
management?
John Powell and Chris Short
Countryside and Community Research Institute
University of Gloucestershire
2. Overview
• EU Water Framework Directive - a driver for both
improved quality and encouraging active involvement
of stakeholders
• Respective roles of the state and stakeholders that are
becoming engaged remain unclear
• Aim of paper: explore how institutional design and
social-ecological perspectives can inform governance of
catchments
• Focus on a case study of the ‘Catchment-Based
Approach (CaBA) in England
3. Integrated catchment
management
Definition – ‘a comprehensive approach that aligns
multiple objectives in a river basin across different
spatial scales and temporal dimensions’
A form of ‘co-management’ – a ‘tailoring’ of institutional
arrangements to deliver locally determined goals
Principles for good practice (Bissett et al. 2009):
• Integration –common issues identified
• Collaboration –stakeholders agree actions/goals
• Adaptation –planning process can respond to change.
4. Governance and institutional
design
Macro level:
Governance
Meso level:
Coordination
Micro
Micro
Micro:
Agency
• Macro – level: all relevant ‘processes of regulation coordination
and control’
• Meso – coordination, necessary to define areas pushing for
institutional change
• Micro – social and biophysical systems under-represented or mis-represented
- ‘crafting of institutions’ required
5. Case study: Piloting the
Catchment-Based Approach
(CaBA)
• 2011 Defra launched a ‘catchment based approach’
- focus on the ‘management of land and water in a
coordinated and sustainable way’
• Upper Thames catchment – the Farming and Wildlife
Advisory Group South West (FWAG SW) is the local
host
– created a multi-stakeholder committee to take forward an
integrated approach – ‘collective development of a PES
scheme’
6. Decision to consider PES
• Thames Water has no wish to be ‘regulator’
– But could suggest banning Metaldehyde
• Only partial knowledge of Metaldehyde
– How it behaves ‘in the field’
– What actions reduce concentrations
• Thames Water will not fund PES on their own
– Existing partnership are willing to explore PES
9. Cotswold PES Partnership
• Sellers – farmers involved at start, data input
• Beneficiaries/Buyers
– Private sector (Thames Water, Ecotricity)
– Local communities (develop and benefit from)
– Public Sector (Env. Agency and Nat. England)
• Facilitators – making links and contacts
• Researchers – gather evidence & framework
10. Approach
• Farmer on farm (data)
– Nitrate, Phosphate and
Ammonia + field diary
• TW/UWE (data)
– Metaldehyde, pesticides
• Catchment sensitive
Farming personnel – soils
• Joint discussion of data
• Agree way forward
– management options
– knowledge gaps
11. What has been agreed so far...
Multiple
sellers
and multiple
buyers
– A ‘Many to
Many’ PES
12. What has been agreed so far...
A layering of services - rather than
one ES
13. Paying for what?
• Not the status quo or passive activity
• Positive impact
– What is this?
– long lasting – time frame – 20 to 25 yrs?
• Payment by input or outcomes (or both)
• Certainty for buyer/beneficiary (required)
14. Where are we now?
• Need more detail to increase certainty
• Options to take forward:
– Introduce approved soil management practice
– Specific management interventions
– Add energy production component to arable rotation
– Influencing (Metaldehyde) application management
• Sellers install and researchers/buyers test
• Discuss results and fine tune
15. Remaining challenges...
• Including Soil (a slow variable) in the PES
• Deepening testing with more interventions
– Providing certainty for buyer/beneficiaries
– Providing viability for range of sellers
• Developing robust framework
– Separating one ES is difficult
– need a systems approach
• Identify ‘benefits’ of stakeholder engagement
– Democracy, coordination, environmental effect
16. Key findings so far...
implications for commons
governance
• Scoping to identify assets/beneficiaries
– Provides basis for partnership
• Highly skilled facilitation is key
– Developing trust, enabling engagement
– Shared problem solving
• High reward for integrating local knowledge
• Participation could change institutions
– Assist move from sector to territorial approach
17. Collective action at the
micro level
• Changes initiated by participation in a shared
perspective
• Flexibility important as the local context varies
• Use of existing structures viewed both positively (local
knowledge) and negatively (reinforcing exclusion)
• The local context:
- makes it more attractive for some groups to engage than others
18.
19. Participants in the Upper
Thames pilot study
Interest area Number Type of organisation involved
Water Companies 1 Thames Water (private water company)
Conservation NGOs 2 Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust, Cotswold Water Park
Other Government Agency 2 Natural England, Highways Authority
Local River’s Trust 1 Cotswold Rivers Trust
Farmer/landowner 2 National Farmers Union, CLA and individual farmers
Local Authorities 3 County, Borough and District representation
Fishing/angling 0 Linked through Rivers Trust
Economy regeneration 1 Cotswold Canal Trust
Woodland/forestry 0 Asked but not attended
Water recreation 0 Although part of CWPT remit
Higher Education 1 The local university
National Park & similar 2 Statutory protected landscapes
Other water authorities 0
20.
21. Catchment ‘environmental
services’ as common resources
Direct
• Water quality/purification
• Groundwater re-charge
• Flood mitigation
• Erosion mitigation
Indirect
• Carbon sequestration (soil and veg. management)
• Biodiversity (aquatic, soil, and habitat)
Editor's Notes
• The Water Framework Directive (WFD) is both a driver for stricter standards for quality and ecological status in water courses, and for encouraging the active involvement of stakeholders and communities in both planning and action.
• Respective roles of the state and the multiple stakeholders that are becoming engaged remains unclear, however, due to both the centralising-decentralising tensions created by the policy approach, and the uncertainty that terms like ‘ecosystem services’ generate.
• The aim of this paper is to explore how the institutional design and social-ecological perspectives can assist the current discussions on institutional governance within new catchment management policies across Europe. It does this by focusing on England and the introduction of the ‘Catchment-Based Approach (CaBA), which aims to integrate a number of policies and related activity in a territorial way using the Water Framework Directive (WFD) as the focus. How CaBA is implemented is dependent on it being embedded at the local level, and here the concepts of institutional design and social-ecological systems might offer a valuable perspective on the shift towards a territorial or systems approach (Ostrom and Cox, 2010). One pilot catchment is examined in detail using an action research approach (Zikos and Thiel, 2013) where an integrated bottom-up participatory framework is being trialed.
• The move away from a sector-based approach (e.g. flooding, water quality and agriculture) towards a territorial approach (e.g. catchment or sub-catchment) has been long predicted but less evident in reality.
• From an institutional perspective Alexander (2005) also insists that this new approach moves away from the conventional problem solving orientation that hinges around a subject centre, as outlined by Gualini (2001), towards one where there is a ‘collective framing’ to make sense of the situation. This involves some reflexivity among the actors rather than an ‘exogenous process’, and this internal processing is a key driver for institutional change as they seek to be ‘fit for purpose’ (Alexander, 2006).
According to Bissett et al. (2009) and Grigg (2008), integrated catchment management is the coordinated planning and management of a river catchment by a group of stakeholders operating under agreed terms of engagement. Rijke et al. (2012a:371) define as a ‘comprehensive water management approach that aligns multiple objectives in a river basin across different spatial scales and temporal dimensions’. Therefore both see the need to bring previously separate programmes and stakeholders together because without this there is the potential for unintended consequences (where good management under one area has negative consequences for another) and duplication (where a similar task is repeated unnecessarily). Bissett et al. (2009), go on to identify three overarching principles for good practice in catchment management:
• Integration – where common issues, objectives, types of information or stakeholders in a catchment are identified and involved so multiple goals can be achieved.
• Collaboration – where different stakeholders work together to agree actions and achieve goals.
• Adaptation – where the planning process can anticipate, accommodate and respond to change.
Similarly Rijke et al. (2012a:372) makes the case that since this about change, governance is central to the thinking in terms of the processes involved (networks and hierarchies) and structures (mechanisms) that drive this change. Consequently, there would seem to be a clear link between integrated water management and the literature around institutional design.
Governance operates at the macro-level and includes all relevant ‘processes of regulation coordination and control’ and therefore spread across a number of disciplines (Alexander, 2006:9). The need for coordination at various levels, largely at the meso-level is a necessity because of the need to define areas that are pushing for changes within the institutional structures. Agency is important for understanding the context in which micro-level decisions are made. The overriding concern is that within the planning context outlined by Alexander (2006) there is little allowance for local or traditional knowledge and structures as the process is essentially top down and driven by a sense of diagnostic desire. As a consequence, the fear remains that in much of the work around institutional design the role of the local is under played and this is essential in areas of ecological consideration and the social and biophysical systems are under-represented or misrepresents what occurs at the micro-level. As a result Thiel et al. (2014) propose to offer ‘crafting of institutions’ as an extension of Alexander’s thinking on institutional change at the micro-level.
4. UK case study: Piloting the Catchment-Based Approach (CaBA)
In March 2011 Defra launched its ‘catchment based approach’ with a focus on the management of land and water in a co-ordinated and sustainable way to balance environmental, economic and social demands at a catchment scale. Their intention was to develop a ‘holistic approach that recognises the many different pressures facing ecosystems and aligns funding and actions coherently within a catchment’ (Defra, 2011). Whilst there were 10 catchments where the EA was introducing a catchment based approach they invited other agencies to come forward and run an approach in 15 other catchments. The table below uses data from these partnerships to show the types of partners involved in the 10 EA initiated pilots.
One of the 15 pilot catchments that is hosted by an external host is the Upper Thames catchment, here the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group South West (FWAG SW) is the local host and, using a particular framework, integrated local delivery (Short et al., 2010), has gathered a multi-stakeholder committee to take forward an integrated approach. The stakeholders for the catchment are many and varied, as outlined in Table 5.
Drivers for action:
Loss of arable reversion
WFD failings
Flooding, biodiversity
Metaldehyde levels
As the table shows a key trigger and difference between micro-level crafting of institutions and two main aspects of institutional design outlined by Alexander (2005, 2006) is the presence of social capital. As Wendt (2001:1023) outlines micro-level changes are initiated by collective action and participation through a shared perspective. Lowndes and Wilson (2001) looked at the role of social capital within local governance and in particular critiqued Putnam (1993). This centres around Putnam’s assumption that local governance was a constant, when in reality it changes significantly, reducing the significance that Putnam places on the influence of society. Lowndes and Wilson (2001) suggest that the role of flexibility is most important because the local context varies significantly from place to place. This is both in terms of the institutions involved and the nature of the locality. The use of existing structures is viewed positively (local knowledge) and negatively (reinforcing exclusion for some). The local context will:
make it more attractive for some groups to engage in a particular activity than another;
reward groups with certain internal structures whilst sidelining others who are organised differently;
influence the level of voluntary activity;
determine access to funding and networks.