Browsing by Subject "governance"

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8

Open Access
A novel framework for analyzing conservation impacts: evaluation, theory, and marine protected areas.
(Ann N Y Acad Sci, 2017-07) Mascia, Michael B; Fox, Helen E; Glew, Louise; Ahmadia, Gabby N; Agrawal, Arun; Barnes, Megan; Basurto, Xavier; Craigie, Ian; Darling, Emily; Geldmann, Jonas; Gill, David; Holst Rice, Susie; Jensen, Olaf P; Lester, Sarah E; McConney, Patrick; Mumby, Peter J; Nenadovic, Mateja; Parks, John E; Pomeroy, Robert S; White, Alan T
Environmental conservation initiatives, including marine protected areas (MPAs), have proliferated in recent decades. Designed to conserve marine biodiversity, many MPAs also seek to foster sustainable development. As is the case for many other environmental policies and programs, the impacts of MPAs are poorly understood. Social-ecological systems, impact evaluation, and common-pool resource governance are three complementary scientific frameworks for documenting and explaining the ecological and social impacts of conservation interventions. We review key components of these three frameworks and their implications for the study of conservation policy, program, and project outcomes. Using MPAs as an illustrative example, we then draw upon these three frameworks to describe an integrated approach for rigorous empirical documentation and causal explanation of conservation impacts. This integrated three-framework approach for impact evaluation of governance in social-ecological systems (3FIGS) accounts for alternative explanations, builds upon and advances social theory, and provides novel policy insights in ways that no single approach affords. Despite the inherent complexity of social-ecological systems and the difficulty of causal inference, the 3FIGS approach can dramatically advance our understanding of, and the evidentiary basis for, effective MPAs and other conservation initiatives.
Open Access
Community‐based conservation strategies to end open access: The case of Fish Refuges in Mexico
(Conservation Science and Practice, 2021-01) Quintana, ACE; Basurto, X
Open Access
Integrating simultaneous prosocial and antisocial behavior into theories of collective action.
(Sci Adv, 2016-03) Basurto, Xavier; Blanco, Esther; Nenadovic, Mateja; Vollan, Björn
Trust and cooperation constitute cornerstones of common-pool resource theory, showing that "prosocial" strategies among resource users can overcome collective action problems and lead to sustainable resource governance. Yet, antisocial behavior and especially the coexistence of prosocial and antisocial behaviors have received less attention. We broaden the analysis to include the effects of both "prosocial" and "antisocial" interactions. We do so in the context of marine protected areas (MPAs), the most prominent form of biodiversity conservation intervention worldwide. Our multimethod approach relied on lab-in-the-field economic experiments (n = 127) in two MPA and two non-MPA communities in Baja California, Mexico. In addition, we deployed a standardized fishers' survey (n = 544) to verify the external validity of our findings and expert informant interviews (n = 77) to develop potential explanatory mechanisms. In MPA sites, prosocial and antisocial behavior is significantly higher, and the presence of antisocial behavior does not seem to have a negative effect on prosocial behavior. We suggest that market integration, economic diversification, and strengthened group identity in MPAs are the main potential mechanisms for the simultaneity of prosocial and antisocial behavior we observed. This study constitutes a first step in better understanding the interaction between prosociality and antisociality as related to natural resources governance and conservation science, integrating literatures from social psychology, evolutionary anthropology, behavioral economics, and ecology.
Open Access
Operationalizing the social-ecological systems framework to assess sustainability.
(Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 2015-05-12) Leslie, Heather M; Basurto, Xavier; Nenadovic, Mateja; Sievanen, Leila; Cavanaugh, Kyle C; Cota-Nieto, Juan José; Erisman, Brad E; Finkbeiner, Elena; Hinojosa-Arango, Gustavo; Moreno-Báez, Marcia; Nagavarapu, Sriniketh; Reddy, Sheila MW; Sánchez-Rodríguez, Alexandra; Siegel, Katherine; Ulibarria-Valenzuela, José Juan; Weaver, Amy Hudson; Aburto-Oropeza, Octavio
Environmental governance is more effective when the scales of ecological processes are well matched with the human institutions charged with managing human-environment interactions. The social-ecological systems (SESs) framework provides guidance on how to assess the social and ecological dimensions that contribute to sustainable resource use and management, but rarely if ever has been operationalized for multiple localities in a spatially explicit, quantitative manner. Here, we use the case of small-scale fisheries in Baja California Sur, Mexico, to identify distinct SES regions and test key aspects of coupled SESs theory. Regions that exhibit greater potential for social-ecological sustainability in one dimension do not necessarily exhibit it in others, highlighting the importance of integrative, coupled system analyses when implementing spatial planning and other ecosystem-based strategies.
Open Access
The Differential Effect of Governance on Aid to the Water/Sanitation and Health Sectors: An Analysis
(2012-04-20) Waly, Alia
A swathe of research attests to the importance of governance in achieving economic growth and poverty reduction in developing countries. Whether governance has an equal effect across sectors, however, is a question that has been neglected empirically. This study adds to the literature by examining the differential impacts of governance on aid to the water/sanitation and health sectors. I used Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) to estimate the effect of health aid and water/sanitation aid on immunization rates and access to improved water and sanitation sources, respectively. My data on aid is from the OECD; I collected annual data for 5 aid flows: health aid, basic health aid, water/sanitation aid, water aid for large projects and sanitation aid for large projects, from 1996 to 2009. Annual data on immunization rates from 1990 to 2009 were collected from the World Bank World Development Indicators, and data on access to an improved water source and access to improved sanitation were collected from the WHO; 5 data points were available on this indicator. My covariates include governance, civil war, GDP per capita, GDP growth (percentage), decentralization, an indicator variable for Africa and log of population, which is consistent with the literature. I found that governance had a statistically significant impact on aid to the water and sanitation sectors—the sanitation sector appeared to be most negatively affected by poor governance—and no impact on aid to the health sector. These findings have potential implications for donor funding; they provide evidence that governance does not have an equal effect across sectors and that sector-level analysis of governance conditions in countries is important to undertake before giving aid. This study could also support increased aid to the water sector, as donor fears that aid will be squandered in the sector could be assuaged with these findings and the findings of other studies that (hopefully) will follow, which show that aid could be increased where good governance warrants it. While the water/sanitation sector is the subject of multiple Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets and indicators, making it more of a donor priority than many other sectors, like production or civil society, for example, the proportion of Official Development Assistance (ODA) to the water/sanitation sector has actually decreased since 2000, when the MDGs were initiated.
Open Access
The impact of governance and transparency on firm investment in Vietnam
(Economics of Transition, 2015-10) Malesky, E; Mcculloch, N; Nhat, ND
© 2015 The Authors. A large literature asserts a causal relationship between the quality of economic governance and economic performance. However, attempts to establish such a link at an aggregate level have met with considerable methodological criticism. This paper seeks to overcome this limitation. We match a panel of Vietnamese enterprises from 2006 to 2010 with a unique panel dataset measuring sub-national economic governance to estimate a relationship between local governance and private investment. We do not find a significant relationship between investment and most traditional forms of governance. However, there is one important exception - transparency, especially the public posting of planning documents, is strongly associated with higher investment across a range of different specifications. Our results have significant implications for policy, given the prevailing theory that changes in the quality of local economic governance will spur improved economic performance.
Open Access
The Impact of Recentralization on Public Services: A Difference-in-Differences Analysis of the Abolition of Elected Councils in Vietnam
(American Political Science Review, 2014-02) Malesky, EJ; Nguyen, CV; Tran, A
Comparative political economy offers a wealth of hypotheses connecting decentralization to improved public service delivery. In recent years, influential formal and experimental work has begun to question the underlying theory and empirical analyses of previous findings. At the same time, many countries have grown dissatisfied with the results of their decentralization efforts and have begun to reverse them. Vietnam is particularly intriguing because of the unique way in which it designed its recentralization, piloting a removal of elected people's councils in 99 districts across the country and stratifying the selection by region, type of province, and urban versus rural setting. We take advantage of the opportunity provided by this quasi experiment to test the core hypotheses regarding the decision to shift administrative and fiscal authority to local governments. We find that recentralization significantly improved public service delivery in areas important to central policy-makers, especially in transportation, healthcare, and communications. Copyright © American Political Science Association 2014.
Open Access
Value chains, networks and clusters: Reframing the global automotive industry
(Journal of Economic Geography, 2008-05-01) Sturgeon, T; Biesebroeck, JV; Gereffi, G
In this article, we apply global value chain (GVC) analysis to recent trends in the global automotive industry, with special attention paid to the case of North America. We use the three main elements of the GVC framework-firm-level chain governance, power and institutions-to highlight some of the defining characteristics of this important industry. First, national political institutions create pressure for local content, which drives production close to end markets, where it tends to be organized nationally or regionally. Second, in terms of GVC governance, rising product complexity combined with low codifiability and a paucity of industry-level standards has driven buyer-supplier linkages toward the relational form, a governance mode that is more compatible with Japanese than American supplier relations. The outsourcing boom of the 1990s exacerbated this situation. As work shifted to the supply base, lead firms and suppliers were forced to develop relational linkages to support the exchange of complex uncodified information and tacit knowledge. Finally, the small number of hugely powerful lead firms that drive the automotive industry helps to explain why it has been so difficult to develop and set the industry-level standards that could underpin a more loosely articulated spatial architecture. This case study underlines the need for an open, scalable approach to the study of global industries. © The Author (2008). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.