Suchergebnisse

In February 2022, the United Nations Environmental Assembly (UNEA) is expected to mandate negotiations for a legally binding plastic agreement. In preparations for such discussions, it is important to understand the academic research behind what a global treaty on plastic will require to succeed. Therefore, a systematic literature review was conducted on 64 peer-reviewed articles published before July 4th, 2021, that focused on global plastic governance and avenues to mitigate our pollution crisis. Once reviewed, the articles were organized into a series of four main categories: 1) plastic pollution overview articles, 2) top-down solutions, 3) bottom-up solutions, and finally a 4) global treaty as a solution. The analysis of these articles enabled an overarching review and discussion of what the literature suggested is required for the creation of a global plastics agreement. First, the researchers argued that previous global plastics governance literature is characterized by an optimist governance perspective, i.e., a view of governance as a problem-solving mechanism. Second, global plastics governance as a research field could make headway by engaging in further empirical investigation of current negotiations and solutions at the national level, especially in developing nations. In the end we found that a global agreement is feasible if it allows for multi-stakeholder solutions involving industry, governance, stakeholders, and citizens. ; publishedVersion

PurposeResilience can be understood as the ability of communities to adapt to disturbances in a way that reduces chronic vulnerability and promotes growth. Disaster scholars assert that resilience is developed through a set of adaptive capacities across multiple domains, including society, the economy, the built and natural environments, and sociopolitical institutions. These adaptive capacities have been thought to be networked, but little is known about how they are connected. The authors explore how institutional capacity and social capital intersect to influence change adaptation, using a case from the Artic: Longyearbyen in the Svalbard archipelago.Design/methodology/approachThe authors use case study methods that integrate original interviews of Longyearbyen residents with news articles and public documents to analyze emergent themes related to institutional capacity, social capital and disaster risk reduction.FindingsAnalyses reveal that implementation gaps in hazard and disaster programs and policies, coupled with high turnover of staff in key positions, have created accountability issues indicative of low institutional capacity and weak social capital between the public and government. Additionally, high turnover of the population of the community, within the context of the legacy as a mining company town, is accompanied by social divisions and low trust between diverse cultural groups in the community. This lack of social capital provides little support for institutional capacity to effectively mitigate risk posed by climate change.Originality/valueThis study illuminates institutional capacity building needs directly related to disaster resilience for cases of complex institutional arrangements and developing democracy.

Aquaculture expansion is a political priority in Norway, despite simmering conflicts, and competing claims. We expand on this hypothesis and analyze the Norwegian governance system by adding stakeholder theory in case of a simulated model of the effects of municipal coastal zone planning in the municipality of Frøya, Norway. One cannot analyze the governance system in Norway without fully comprehending the perspectives of the stakeholders involved. Different stakeholders will react and respond differently and have conflicting presumptions basing their actions toward the planning process for coastal areas. They will also have different levels of power and abilities to influence the system. The article presents the interdisciplinary, first generation development of an agent based simulation model that mimics the outcomes of coastal zone planning for a stakeholder groups, the commercial fishers and the aquaculture industry, based on qualitative input from legislation, regulations, and stakeholder workshops. We proceed with verifying the applicability of this simulator in light of the key actors involved, namely the commercial fishers. We found that the simulator had two outcomes for the commercial fishers that were consistently recurring, namely "collapse" and "stability," based on the simulated occurrences of complaints by the stakeholders, with the latter being the de facto perceptions of actuality by the commercial fishers. Using stakeholder theory, we argue that the aquaculture industry's role has the saliency of an Important Stakeholder in Frøya has steered the commercial fishers, who has the role of Dependent Stakeholders according to stakeholder theory, to no longer see any legitimacy in the process in that their complaints were never upheld because of their lack of the attribute power. ; publishedVersion ; © 2015 Tiller, Svalestuen, Öztürk and Tidemann. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Worldwide increases of jellyfish has occurred during the last several decades. A dense population of a large scyphozoan jellyfish, Periphylla periphylla, has established itself as top predator in the Trondheimsfjord in Norway, impacting traditional fisheries. On this background we discuss the adaptive capacity of artisanal fishers and stakeholder involvement in environmental management. A serendipitous discovery was that fishers report that their capacity to adapt to the presence of jellyfish in fact was sufficient. What they could not adapt to, within the context of jellyfish proliferation, was top–down decisions from the national government allowing purse seiners into the fjord to harvest Sprat Sprattus sprattus and Atlantic Herring Clupea harengus rest quotas and thereby also large bycatches of the local codfishes. This harvest was perceived more detrimental to their fishery than was the jellyfish invasion. Relative to fisheries management's choice of regulatory mechanisms during times of climatic change, we argue that by involving stakeholders intimately, the resulting policy advice will be experienced bottom–up and, thus, more legitimate and serendipitous results of a critical nature are more likely to surface. ; publishedVersion ; © 2015 The Author(s). Published with license by the American Fisheries Society. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial License (CC BY-NC 3.0) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/)

Worldwide increases of jellyfish has occurred during the last several decades. A dense population of a large scyphozoan jellyfish, Periphylla periphylla, has established itself as top predator in the Trondheimsfjord in Norway, impacting traditional fisheries. On this background we discuss the adaptive capacity of artisanal fishers and stakeholder involvement in environmental management. A serendipitous discovery was that fishers report that their capacity to adapt to the presence of jellyfish in fact was sufficient. What they could not adapt to, within the context of jellyfish proliferation, was top–down decisions from the national government allowing purse seiners into the fjord to harvest Sprat Sprattus sprattus and Atlantic Herring Clupea harengus rest quotas and thereby also large bycatches of the local codfishes. This harvest was perceived more detrimental to their fishery than was the jellyfish invasion. Relative to fisheries management's choice of regulatory mechanisms during times of climatic change, we argue that by involving stakeholders intimately, the resulting policy advice will be experienced bottom–up and, thus, more legitimate and serendipitous results of a critical nature are more likely to surface. ; publishedVersion

This Policy Brief summarizes the key results and recommendations of the Working Group WG Ocean, Climate Change, and Acidification within the COST action CA15217."Ocean Governance for Sustainability – Challenges, Options and the Role of Science" on global and regional management of Ocean Acidification (OA). ; GRANTS: COST Action CA15217, Ocean Governance for Sustainability: challenges, options and the role of science". COST European Cooperation in Science and Technology.

This paper explores the socio-ecological effects of increased aquaculture/farmed fish production, around the island group of Frøya in Trøndelag, Norway, as a result of new licenses accorded to the industry. This is investigated from a stakeholder perspective by assessing the adaptive capacity of selected stakeholder groups through workshops combining Scenario Analysis, Systems Thinking and Bayesian Belief Network and by developing conceptual frameworks and structural diagrams that visualize the perceived effects of the industry on the given stakeholder system. This adaptive capacity is critical to explore before a de facto industry expansion. This is because context-specific adaptation policies and measures can reduce a given stakeholder group´s vulnerability to negative consequences of industry expansion. Policy makers' a priori knowledge of these variables can lessen conflicts that may arise as a result of stakeholder discontent with top-down approaches to fisheries management and can also bring a legitimizing aspect to the political process leading to integrated coastal zone management (ICZM) in the region for affected stakeholder groups, possibly lessening simmering conflicts. ; publishedVersion ; Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Determining the socio-ecological effects of increased aquaculture/farmed fish production through the granting of new licenses to the industry around the island group of Frøya in Trøndelag, Norway, is explored in this paper. This is investigated from a stakeholder perspective, assessing the adaptive capacity of the given community in each region through workshops combining Scenario Analysis, Systems Thinking and Bayesian Belief Network, developing conceptual frameworks and influence diagrams visualizing the perceived effects of the industry on the given stakeholder system. This adaptive capacity is critical to explore before a de facto industry expansion. This is because there can be context-specific adaptation policies and measures that can be pursued that reduce a given stakeholder group´s vulnerability to negative consequences of industry expansion. Policy makers' a priori knowledge of these variables can lessen conflicts that may arise as a result of stakeholder discontent with top-down approaches to fisheries management. It can also bring a legitimizing aspect to the political process leading to integrated coastal zone management (IZCM) in the region for affected stakeholder groups, possibly lessening simmering conflicts.

Climate change affects the marine environment at all levels of governance. At a global level, researchers expect the projected increase in sea surface temperature to facilitate large changes in the marine food web, which in turn will affect both global fisheries and aquaculture. At the local level, government and stakeholders want to know whether and how this affects their local communities and their adaptive capacity in light of this. Research suggests that risk communication of the effects of changes in the marine food web suffers from stakeholders' short-term mentality and narrow boundaries. This in turn can lead to an underestimation of the potential risks associated with climate change. We explore this theory by mapping the perceptions of marine stakeholders in the region of Troms, Norway. We first developed cognitive maps in a workshop setting, and then used system conceptualization to analyze the feedback mechanisms of the system qualitatively using fuzzy cognitive mapping. We examined the outcomes and compared them for different scenarios using a simple MatLab script. Results demonstrated that stakeholders did not underestimate their risks to climate change. They were aware of environmental changes, and they perceived that a changing climate was the cause of this change, and that it was indeed affecting their livelihoods—and would continue to do so in the future. ; publishedVersion

Climate change affects the marine environment at all levels of governance. At a global level, researchers expect the projected increase in sea surface temperature to facilitate large changes in the marine food web, which in turn will affect both global fisheries and aquaculture. At the local level, government and stakeholders want to know whether and how this affects their local communities and their adaptive capacity in light of this. Research suggests that risk communication of the effects of changes in the marine food web suffers from stakeholders' short-term mentality and narrow boundaries. This in turn can lead to an underestimation of the potential risks associated with climate change. We explore this theory by mapping the perceptions of marine stakeholders in the region of Troms, Norway. We first developed cognitive maps in a workshop setting, and then used system conceptualization to analyze the feedback mechanisms of the system qualitatively using fuzzy cognitive mapping. We examined the outcomes and compared them for different scenarios using a simple MatLab script. Results demonstrated that stakeholders did not underestimate their risks to climate change. They were aware of environmental changes, and they perceived that a changing climate was the cause of this change, and that it was indeed affecting their livelihoods—and would continue to do so in the future. ; publishedVersion ; © 2016 Tiller, De Kok, Vermeiren, Richards, Ardelan and Bailey. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Research projects combining different disciplines are increasingly common and sought after by funding agencies looking for ways to achieve environmental, social, and economic sustainability. Creating and running a truly integrated research project that combines very different disciplines is, however, no easy task. Large-scale efforts to create interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary research efforts have reported on their experiences in trying to achieve this goal. This article shares the methods, challenges and achievements experienced by a smaller group of researchers who have developed an interdisciplinary approach based on former results of Norwegian and Chilean experiments. The project "A Cross-disciplinary Integrated Eco-system Eutrophication Research and Management Approach" (CINTERA), funded by the Research Council of Norway (RCN, project 216607), brings together the fields of political science, economics, marine biology/oceanography and marine bio-geo-chemistry to improve the understanding of marine eutrophication and its possible socio-economic impacts. CINTERA is a multidisciplinary project that evolved into an interdisciplinary project and in so doing, transformed the attitudes of participants. The transformative process was generated particularly by the need to work closely together in making the CINTERA project useful for policy-makers. ; This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.