Indigenous Peoples and Multiscalar Environmental Governance: The Opening and Closure of Participatory Spaces

There has been an unprecedented inclusion of Indigenous peoples in environmental governance instruments like free, prior, and informed consent; reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) projects; climate adaptation initiatives; and environmental impact assessment. We draw on theories of participatory governance to show how locally implemented processes have been shaped by their interactions with invited, closed, and indigenous-led spaces at multiple scales. Empirically, our article is based on field research in Latin America, semistructured interviews, and a systematic literature review. We find four main barriers that have (re-)produced environmental injustices in environmental governance: first, a lack of influence over the institutional design of governance instruments; second, the exclusion of Indigenous peoples in the domestication of global instruments; third, policy incoherencies constraining the scope for decision-making; and fourth, weak cross-scale linkages between Indigenous-led spaces. This article helps to elucidate constraints of participatory spaces and identify leeway for transformation toward environmental justice.

Sustainability of Agriculture: An Analysis Based on Financial Performance and Good Governance

Strategy to achieve food security is crucial for all countries around the world. This becomes more important for Indonesia as the fourth most populous country. This study evaluates Indonesia’s agricultural sustainability as one of the food security programs. In specific, the evaluation is based on micro-economics point of view by analysing the financial performance of the agricultural industries. This study also examines the role of ownership and external auditors as corporate governance instruments controlling a company achieving its ultimate objective. Conducting a quantitative study and examining Indonesia listed companies for the period of 2003-2018, the results show that most of Indonesia’s listed agricultural companies are not sustained as they were in bankruptcy zone. The ability of companies to manage the costs and commitment to do investments create value for the future, and the role of foreign ownership as one of governance instruments is found to be able to prevent agricultural companies from bankruptcy. The findings bring practical implications on the importance of financial literacy for managers of agricultural industries and good corporate governance practice to ensure the sustainability of agriculture.

Municipal Lake governance Developments in Latvia: Towards Complex Approach Management Practice

Latvia has a significant number of lakes, even eventually more as 10 000 as they never been fully accounted, but just comparatively small number are subject to lake governance, since the entire national lake governance system is still under development and currently mostly municipalities themselves are step-wise developing and realising lake management plans, but municipal capacities vary significantly. According to EU Water framework directive, there are four river basin management systems established in Latvia, having related water and risk management documents in place, as well as, in the past decade, there have been both national and regional level planning guidelines developed for lake and river waterbodies management, but all mentioned has been not yet utilized in local practice, having some legal responsibilities’ and admin capacities’ deficiencies. Despite this, there has been seen slow improvement of the water quality and socio-economic usage of lakes, but more in the lake management practice is to be done, accounting also for climate change. The goal of this research was to study the municipal level lake management practice developments, applying general research-and-development (R&D) framework approach and researching particularly the status and development trends of the three governance’s dimensions’ employment – governance content by socio-ecological system (SES) approach, governance segments as for main stakeholders’ involvement and participation, as well as, the set of governance instruments, especially, institutional/administrative ones. There were chosen pilot municipalities, having diverse and successful lake management approaches utilised, and, for the first study stage, document analysis and semi-structured interviews with related municipal specialists were done, using case study research (CSR) methodology application. There were recognized five lake management approaches, even in most municipalities in Latvia, particularly in rural ones, lake management is traditionally done by the scarce municipal territory administrative units and Utilities departments/services, and, only limited number of municipalities, also particularly studied, have developed and are employing for lake management also nature resource/environmental departments, while only in few municipalities there are established special municipal lake management agencies. Promising looks NGO sector management approach used by some municipalities, both top-down either bottom-up establishment chosen to apply, but as most perspective could be recognised complex approach (cross-sector) management practice, where most or all above mentioned approaches are combined and complementary supporting each other, within particular municipality. All studied municipalities possess certain lake management success stories, to be studied further in very detail, however, in general, there is to be seen still limited understanding and utilisation of the SES approach, also still potential of various stakeholder’s involvement and pro-active development of all complementary governance instruments, even many of instruments are available in studied municipalities, but lake communication instruments (information, education/training, participation and lake-friendly behaviour) are mostly underdeveloped.

Identifying Policy Best-Practices to Support the Contribution of Aquatic Foods to Food and Nutrition Security

The relationship between aquatic foods and food nutrition and security is increasingly recognised in policy and practice, yet many governance instruments do not acknowledge or support this important connection. The most effective policy approaches to support the link between these sectors, or ‘best practices’ are currently unknown. We reviewed relevant governance instruments from multiple countries to identify how these instruments linked fisheries, aquaculture and food security and nutrition, including the policy framing and evidence of political commitment. Of the documents connecting the sectors (65%), the majority did so in the context of developing the fisheries/aquaculture sector to increase aquatic food availability and/or access (51%), followed by developing the fisheries/aquaculture sector as a livelihoods approach to indirectly improve food security (33%), for example, through income generation. Sectoral links established in the context of nutrition-sensitive approaches to fisheries and aquaculture were less common (5%). Almost one third (29%) of instruments supported the connection between aquatic foods and food security and nutrition across three or more different contexts relevant to food security or food systems, while 12% indicated a very high level of commitment. We recommend some key attributes for future policy development to help build coherence between sectors and to help frame coherent food system-based policies.

One Planet Living and the legitimacy of sustainability governance: From standardised information to regenerative systems

The last two decades have seen the increased use and evolving forms of governance instruments seeking to promote sustainability across increasingly complex and varied contexts. These primarily voluntary instruments combine guidance on sustainability strategy and/or monitoring with marketable public information, such as certifications, ratings and reports, to incentivise take-up. Whilst they are typically based on standardised assessment criteria, recent academic literature emphasises more context-sensitive and systems-based, or ‘regenerative,’ approaches. We evaluate these differing approaches by adapting the concept of ‘legitimacy’, often applied to product certification, for this broader family of governance instruments. Prior research finds that standardised approaches have achieved success in take-up at the expense of other aspects of legitimacy, such as programme effectiveness and informational quality. Yet there remains a need for evaluation of established instruments based on a regenerative approach. We address this need through a focus on the One Planet Living framework established by Bioregional in the UK. Using practice-embedded, mixed-methods research, we identify achievements of the framework in terms of promoting effective, participatory and generally transparent programmes. Key limitations of the more bespoke approach concern take-up, resource requirements and the integration of measurement. Governance instruments for complex strategy and monitoring have, to date, struggled to combine programme effectiveness with scalability, suggesting there remains a need to develop more scalable regenerative approaches.

Measuring the fiscal governance instruments: a synthetic index for EU countries

ABSTRACT The aim of the paper is to examine the collective effect of fiscal governance instruments (i.e., fiscal rules, medium-term budgetary frameworks, independent fiscal institutions) on the fiscal outcomes of EU member states. The results of panel data model estimation for 28 EU countries for the period 2004-2016 confirm a statistically significant and positive impact of synthentic index for those instruments on the general government balance to GDP ratio. Additionally, an adjustment of the synthetic index was proposed, taking into account the degree of autonomy of independent fiscal institutions, and the link between medium-term budgetary frameworks and the annual budget.