Climate change has considerably dominated science-policy dialogue, public debate, and subsequently environmental policies since the three “Rio Conventions” were born. This has led to practically independent courses of action of climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation actions, neglecting potential conflicts among outcomes and with missed opportunities for synergistic measures. Transformative governance principles have been proposed to overcome these limitations. Using a transformative governance lens, we use the case of the Norwegian "Climate Cure 2030" for the Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) sector to, first, illustrate the mechanisms that have led to the choice of climate mitigation measures; second, to analyze the potential consequences of these measures on biodiversity and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions; and, third, to evaluate alternative measures with potential positive outcomes for biodiversity and GHG emissions/removals. We point to some mechanisms that could support the implementation of these positive actions.
Abstract:The article investigates how national and international measures to protect wolves turned the whole of Norway into a field of study for wildlife biologists, and how the extensiveness of this "field" prompted a transformation in the methods employed to count and monitor wolves. As it was not possible to conduct traditional field studies throughout the whole of Norway, the biologists constructed an extensive infrastructure, which I have termed a "counting complex," in order to count wolves from a distance. The article identifies three decisive periods in the construction of this complex: the 1960s, the 1980s, and the first decade of the new millennium. During the first two periods, biologists used the infrastructure to mobilize ordinary people's observations; they did this by first searching through newspaper notes, then enrolling people more directly through local committees of game management.However, the public's observations often turned out to be unreliable, and, in the 2000s, molecular biologists helped to incorporate genetic techniques into the counting complex. By using the infrastructure to mobilize wolf scat, rather than observations, and by constructing DNA profiles for individual wolves, the molecular biologists enabled research that I have termed "nationwide field studies in absentia." The article argues that the biologists' main motive for constructing and refining the counting complex was to make wolves amenable to government, as they considered this a vital premise for the successful practice of protecting of wolves. The increased intensity in monitoring in the last period, however, was also driven by international conventions and detailed regulations.
Abstract:The article investigates how the protection of wolves in Norway has been conducted in practice since the legal protection of wolves was enacted in the early 1970s, by tracing how political decisions to regulate the number of wolves Norway should protect have been determined. The scientific concept of a 'minimum viable population size' (MVP size), which the article construes as a technology of government, has been a central instrument in these processes. The article examines how biologists, nature managers, bureaucrats, politicians and others have attempted to define and employ MVP size through the period, and how many of the political negotiations concerning Norwegian wolf numbers have played out as controversies over what constitutes a viable population. The major issues have concerned how a viable population should be theoretically defined, how many wolves this would mean in practice, and whether a viable population could be shared with other countries. The article identifies two decisive moments of transition in the way MVP size has been employed in the protection of wolves in Norway, in which the authority to define its content was transferred first from biologists to nature managers, and later to politicians. These shifts involved major transitions in the practice of determining MVP size and in the number of wolves considered necessary for protecting a viable population. In a larger perspective, the article argues that environmental historians have much to gain from delving deeper into the practices and technologies of government, in terms of the histories of endangered species management and nature management, more generally.
This article investigates the construction of instruments and techniques employed in the management of Norwegian wolves since the early 1980s by construing the tools as technologies of government. The proliferation of such instruments and techniques, constructed to effect protection in practice, has transformed Norwegian wolves in significant ways. Unlike the historic population, which often went through large variations in numbers and was spread throughout large parts of the country, the current population of wolves is regulated to stay at a fixed number and within a relatively small wolf-zone. The current population is also highly amenable to detailed government; the number and location of the wolves, and even the genetic composition of the population over the longer term, can be reconfigured in detail. The article further argues that the general proliferation of governmental technologies in biodiversity conservation has meant similar transformations of a great number of endangered organisms.
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