Regulatory biodiversity trading (or biodiversity "offsets") is increasingly promoted as a way to enable both conservation and development while achieving "no net loss" or even "net gain" in biodiversity, but to date has facilitated development while perpetuating biodiversity loss. Ecologists seeking improved biodiversity outcomes are developing better assessment tools and recommending more rigorous restrictions and enforcement. We explain why such recommendations overlook and cannot correct key causes of failure to protect biodiversity. Viable trading requires simple, measurable, and interchangeable commodities, but the currencies, restrictions, and oversight needed to protect complex, difficult-to-measure, and noninterchangeable resources like biodiversity are costly and intractable. These safeguards compromise trading viability and benefit neither traders nor regulatory officials. Political theory predicts that (1) biodiversity protection interests will fail to counter motivations for officials to resist and relax safeguards to facilitate exchanges and resource development at cost to biodiversity, and (2) trading is more vulnerable than pure administrative mechanisms to institutional dynamics that undermine environmental protection. Delivery of no net loss or net gain through biodiversity trading is thus administratively improbable and technically unrealistic. Their proliferation without credible solutions suggests biodiversity offset programs are successful "symbolic policies," potentially obscuring biodiversity loss and dissipating impetus for action.

We use a globally unique dataset that scores every individual academic's holistic research performance in New Zealand to test several common explanations for the gender pay gap in universities. We find a man's odds of being ranked professor or associate professor are more than double a woman's with similar recent research score, age, field, and university. We observe a lifetime gender pay gap of~NZ$400,000, of which research score and age explain less than half. Our ability to examine the full spectrum of research performance allows us to reject the 'male variability hypothesis' theory that the preponderance of men amongst the 'superstars' explains the lifetime performance pay gap observed. Indeed women whose research career trajectories resemble men's still get paid less than men. From 2003-12, women at many ranks improved their research scores by more than men, but moved up the academic ranks more slowly. We offer some possible explanations for our findings, and show that the gender gap in universities will never disappear in most academic fields if current hiring practices persist.

We examined consensus-based management through the lens of the Colorado River Recovery Implementation Program, a consensus-based plan that attempts to develop the Colorado River's water while protecting its endangered fishes. Because this management model has been touted as a preferred substitute to government-imposed regulation, we analyzed the recovery implementation program to determine its strengths and weaknesses. By reviewing secondary information and interviewing members of the diverse groups involved in the program, we gathered detailed information about the program's history, implementation, and progress. Our investigation revealed that the recovery implementation program has allowed development of the Colorado River's water and incorporated more voices into the decision-making process. But the program circumvented federal authority over endangered species conservation, which has proved detrimental to the fishes. Furthermore, we learned that the consensus-based model is vulnerable to control by special-interests and may be driven by bureaucratic procedural goals rather than species recovery. To ameliorate these concerns, (1) program success should be judged by species recovery, rather than political achievements, (2) the federal government should retain the power of issuing statutory sanctions in the event of continued population decline, and (3) funding should be provided by an agency with a clear species-protection agenda to reduce the disproportionate power of utilitarian interest groups. By incorporating these recommendations, conservation programs can better realize the benefits of a consensus-based approach without sacrificing species recovery.

Human activity is changing the biosphere in unprecedented ways, and addressing this challenge will require changes in individual and community patterns of behavior. One approach to managing individual behaviors is “top-down” and involves imposing sanctions through legislative frameworks. However, of itself, a top-down framework does not appear sufficient to encourage the changes required to meet environmental sustainability targets. Thus, there has been interest in changing individual-level behavior from the “bottom-up” by, for example, fostering desirable pro-environmental behaviors via social norms. Social norms arise from expectations about how others will behave and the consequences of conforming to or departing from them. Meta-analyses suggest that social norms can promote pro-environmental behavior. Environmental social norms that appear to have changed in recent decades and have themselves promoted change include recycling, include nascent behavioral shifts such as the move away from single-use plastics and flight shaming (flygskam). However, whether the conditions under which pro-environmental social norms emerge and are adhered to align with environmental systems’ features is unclear. Furthermore, individuals might feel powerless in a global system, which can limit the growth and influence of pro-environmental norms. We review the conditions believed to promote the development of and adherence to social norms, then consider how those conditions relate to the environmental challenges of the Anthropocene. While promoting social norms has a valuable role in promoting pro-environmental actions, we conclude that norms are most likely to be effective where individual actions are immediately evident and have an obvious and local effect.

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Abstract:Collaborative environmental governance is a prominent approach to natural resource governance in New Zealand. It is emerging in the Land and Water Forum, Canterbury Water Management Strategy, and the proposed Resource Legislation Amendment Bill. This article reviews political and economic theory to ask if collaboration is good for the environment in the context of the Land and Water Forum. Interest group and public choice theories offer cogent reasons for pessimism. Elinor Ostrom's and Guy Salmon's models offer reasons for optimism. I conclude that the most pertinent parts of Ostrom's model for New Zealand are her caveats. Her model applies to closed systems, not open systems such as rivers with down-stream effects like nitrate E. coli contamination. In open ecological systems, pessimism about local collaborative environmental governance is warranted unless decisions are shackled to strong and unambiguous national regulation. Without strong regulation, collaborative governance creates systems in which those not invited into the collaborative deliberation do not count. In natural resource governance, this dynamic will favour resource development interests over conservation. I conclude that collaborative environmental governance risks being less than democratic, less than fair, and less than good for the environment.Not surprisingly, optimists and pessimists would view the Land and Water Forum differently. Optimists would say that it is an incomplete application of a promising model. Unfortunately, ecological outcomes data to settle the question are rarely collected internationally and do not exist yet in New Zealand. Pessimists would say it was doomed from the start by power imbalances, displaced and subjugated environmental goals, and a fundamental lack of democracy. Such pessimists might say Fish and Game was wise to pull out in November 2015, but would have been wiser to pull out sooner.

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This article briefly reviews a complicated and politically explosive process of land reform on New Zealand's South Island. It presents the legal and administrative anatomy of the reform, and analyzes the results in light of the statutory goals. Comparing the results to the four goals reveals that the Crown has not defined its first goal and is meeting its goal of economic development, but has achieved only Pyrrhic victories for the conservation and recreation-related goals. The majority of the reformed land has been freed from pastoral constraints, but at a seemingly unnecessary cost to the public of NZ$18.2 million. And on a key indicator of conservation, biodiversity protection, the Crown is failing to protect the most critical habitat while successfully protecting the scree and glacier, which require little protection. The New Zealand government has other policy tools available that might prove less expensive to the taxpayers and might yield conservation victories that are less Pyrrhic. Finally, the article concludes that a similar land reform policy idea is not likely to achieve legislative success elsewhere, as interest group opposition would be too intense. Resumen Este artículo revisa brevemente un proceso complicado y políticamente explosivo de reforma de la tierra en la Isla Sur de Nueva Zelanda. Se presenta la anatomía legal y administrativa de la reforma y analiza los resultados a la luz de las metas estatutarias. Comparando los resultados con las cuatro metas, se revela que la Corona no ha definido su primer meta, esta cumpliendo su meta de desarrollo económico, pero solo ha logrado victorias a muy alto pecio relacionadas a las metas de conservación y recreación. La mayoría de las tierras reformadas han sido liberadas de las restricciones pastoriles pero a un costo, aparentemente innecesario para el público, de NZ$18.2 millones. En base a un indicador clave de conservación, la protección a la biodiversidad, la Corona esta fallando en proteger el hábitat mas critico, mientras que está protegiendo exitosamente los glaciares y rocallas, las cuales requieren poca protección. El gobierno de Nueva Zelanda tiene otras herramientas políticas disponibles, las cuales pudieran ser menos costosas para los contribuyentes y que pudieran rendir éxitos en la conservación, que serían más efectivos. Finalmente, este artículo concluye que la idea de una política similar de reforma de la tierra probablemente no logrará el éxito legislativo, así como la oposición del grupo de interés sería muy intensa.