Citizen science and natural resource governance: program design for vernal pool policy innovation

Effective natural resource policy depends on knowing what is needed to sustain a resource and building the capacity to identify, develop, and implement flexible policies. This retrospective case study applies resilience concepts to a 16-year citizen science program and vernal pool regulatory development process in Maine, USA. We describe how citizen science improved adaptive capacities for innovative and effective policies to regulate vernal pools. We identified two core program elements that allowed people to act within narrow windows of opportunity for policy transformation, including (1) the simultaneous generation of useful, credible scientific knowledge and construction of networks among diverse institutions, and (2) the formation of diverse leadership that promoted individual and collective abilities to identify problems and propose policy solutions. If citizen science program leaders want to promote social-ecological systems resilience and natural resource policies as outcomes, we recommend they create a system for internal project evaluation, publish scientific studies using citizen science data, pursue resources for program sustainability, and plan for leadership diversity and informal networks to foster adaptive governance.

SMART social science? Examining the nature and role of social scientific expertise in institutional design

Daniel Bromley argues against Oran Young’s FIT model as a basis for environmental governance, on the grounds that humans cannot manage nature and that attempts to do so are based on a scientistic, modernist conceit. At issue is the role of natural and social scientists in adjudicating questions about what we ought to do to close governance gaps and address unsustainable behaviors. If Bromley is right, then the lessons of the American pragmatist tradition recommend against attempts to “fit” social institutions to the natural world. The first objective of this paper is to argue that Bromley’s view is not in keeping with the pragmatism of C. S. Peirce and John Dewey, which actually places a high value on natural and social scientific modes of inquiry in the service of social ends. I argue that Young’s proposal is in fact a development of the pragmatist idea that social institutions must be fit in the sense of fitness, i.e., resilient and able to navigate uncertainty. Social institutions must also evolve to accommodate the emerging values of the agents who operate within them. The second objective of this paper is to examine the role of social science expertise in the design of social policies. Governance institutions typically rely on the testimony of natural scientists, at least in part, to understand the natural systems they operate within. However, natural systems are also social systems, so it seems pertinent to ask whether there is a role for social systems experts to play in helping to design environmental governance institutions. I argue that social scientists can make a unique contribution as experts on social institutions, and as such, are necessary to bring about a transformation of the unsustainable institutions that are preventing us from achieving stated sustainable development goals.

Coproducing flood risk management through citizen involvement: insights from cross-country comparison in Europe

Across Europe, citizens are increasingly expected to participate in the implementation of flood risk management (FRM), by engaging in voluntary-based activities to enhance preparedness, implementing property-level measures, and so forth. Although citizen participation in FRM decision making is widely addressed in academic literature, citizens’ involvement in the delivery of FRM measures is comparatively understudied. Drawing from public administration literature, we adopted the notion of “coproduction” as an analytical framework for studying the interaction between citizens and public authorities, from the decision-making process through to the implementation of FRM in practice. We considered to what extent coproduction is evident in selected European Union (EU) member states, drawing from research conducted within the EU project STAR-FLOOD (Strengthening and Redesigning European Flood Risk Practices towards Appropriate and Resilient Flood Risk Governance Arrangements). On the basis of a cross-country comparison between Flanders (Belgium), England (United Kingdom), France, the Netherlands, and Poland, we have highlighted the varied forms of coproduction and reflected on how these have been established within divergent settings. Coproduction is most prominent in discourse and practice in England and is emergent in France and Flanders. By contrast, FRM in the Netherlands and Poland remains almost exclusively reliant on governmental protection measures and thereby consultation-based forms of coproduction. Analysis revealed how these actions are motivated by different underlying rationales, which in turn shape the type of approaches and degree of institutionalization of coproduction. In the Netherlands, coproduction is primarily encouraged to increase societal resilience, whereas public authorities in the other countries also use it to improve cost-efficiency and redistribute responsibilities to its beneficiaries.