Investigating policy processes: The Governance Analytical Frame-work (GAF)

Societies develop ways of making decisions regarding collective problems, thereby creating norms, rules, and institutions; this is what governance is about. In policy research, governance has become an important focus of attention; but debates show a lack of clarity at the conceptual level and a confusion between the use of the concept for prescriptive and analytical purposes. The present article is based on the hypothesis that using a clarified, non-normative governance perspective in policy research can contribute to an improved understanding of political processes, including formal and unrecognised ones, those embedded in larger and smaller social systems, as well as both vertical and horizontal political arrangements. The paper is the result of a collaborative engagement with the concept of governance within several networks, leading to the development of the Governance Analytical Framework (GAF). The GAF is a practical methodology for investigating governance processes, based on five analytical tools: problems, actors, social norms, processes, and nodal points. Besides describing the conceptual sources and analytical purpose of these five tools, the paper presents examples of how the GAF can be operationalised.

Adapting agricultural water governance to climate change: Experiences from Germany, Spain and California

This study describes and discusses initiatives taken by public (water) agencies in the state of Brandenburg in Germany, the state of California in the USA and the Ebro River Basin in Spain in response to the challenges which climate change poses for the agricultural water sector. The drivers and actors and the process of changing agricultural water governance are its particular focus. The assumptions discussed are: (i) the degree of planned and anticipatory top-down implementation processes decreases if actions are more decentralized and are introduced at the regional and local level; (ii) the degree of autonomous and responsive adaptation approaches seems to grow with actions at a lower administrative level. Looking at processes of institutional change, a variety of drivers and actors are at work such as changing perceptions of predicted climate impacts; international obligations which force politicians to take action; socio-economic concerns such as the cost of not taking action; the economic interests of the private sector. Drivers are manifold and often interact and, in many cases, reforms in the sector are driven by and associated with larger reform agendas. The results of the study may serve as a starting point in assisting water agencies in developing countries with the elaboration of coping strategies for tackling climate change-induced risks related to agricultural water management.

Institutions for sustainable governance of forests: Equity, robustness and cross-level interactions in Mawlyngbna, Meghalaya, India

This study adopts Ostrom’s Social-Ecological Systems (SES) framework in empirical fieldwork to explain how local forestry institutions affect forest ecosystems and social equity in the community of Mawlyngbna in North-East India. Data was collected through 26 semi-structured interviews, participatory timeline development, policy documents, direct observation, periodicals, transect walks, and a concurrent forest-ecological study in the village. Results show that Mawlyngbna's forests provide important sources of livelihood benefits for the villagers. However, ecological disturbance and diversity varies among the different forest ownership types and forest-based livelihood benefits are inequitably distributed. Based on a bounded rationality approach, our analysis proposes a set of causal mechanisms that trace these observed social-ecological outcomes to the attributes of the resource system, resource units, actors and governance system. We analyse opportunities and constraints of interactions between the village, regional, and state levels. We discuss how Ostrom’s design principles for community-based resource governance inform the explanation of robustness but have a blind spot in explaining social equity. We report experiences made using the SES framework in empirical fieldwork. We conclude that mapping cross-level interactions in the SES framework needs conceptual refinement and that explaining social equity of forest governance needs theoretical advances.

Land system science and sustainable development of the earth system: A global land project perspective

Land systems are the result of human interactions with the natural environment. Understanding the drivers, state, trends and impacts of different land systems on social and natural processes helps to reveal how changes in the land system affect the functioning of the socio-ecological system as a whole and the tradeoff these changes may represent. The Global Land Project has led advances by synthesizing land systems research across different scales and providing concepts to further understand the feedbacks between social-and environmental systems, between urban and rural environments and between distant world regions. Land system science has moved from a focus on observation of change and understanding the drivers of these changes to a focus on using this understanding to design sustainable transformations through stakeholder engagement and through the concept of land governance. As land use can be seen as the largest geo-engineering project in which mankind has engaged, land system science can act as a platform for integration of insights from different disciplines and for translation of knowledge into action.

Large-scale land acquisitions: Focus on South-East Asia: International Development Policy

Large-scale land acquisition, or "land grabbing", has become a key research topic among scholars interested in agrarian change, development, and the environment. The term "land acquisitions" refers to a highly contested process in terms of governance and impacts on livelihoods and human rights. This book focuses on South-East Asia. A series of thematic and in-depth case studies put "land grabbing" into specific historical and institutional contexts. The volume also offers a human rights analysis of the phenomenon, examining the potential and limits of human rights mechanisms aimed at preventing and mitigating land grabs' negative consequences.

Strengthening the food systems governance evidence base: Supporting commensurability of research through a systematic review of methods

Governance of food systems is a poorly understood determinant of food security. Much scholarship on food systems governance is non-empirical, while existing research is often case study-based and theoretically and methodologically incommensurable. This frustrates aggregation of evidence and generalisation. We undertook a systematic review of methods used in food systems governance research with a view to identifying a core set of indicators for future research. We gathered literature through a structured consultation and sampling from recent reviews. Indicators were identified and classified according to the levels and sectors they investigate. We found a concentration of indicators in food production at local to national levels and a sparseness in distribution and consumption. Unsurprisingly, many indicators of institutional structure were found, while agency-related indicators are moderately represented. We call for piloting and validation of these indicators and for methodological development to fill gaps identified. These efforts are expected to support a more consolidated future evidence base and eventual meta-analysis.