A multi-level perspective on conserving with communities: Experiences from upper tributary watersheds in montane mainland Southeast Asia

Abstract

Many of the critical tensions around conservation with people in upper tributary watersheds involve challenges of scale. Ecosystem goods and services derived from these watersheds are frequently used and valued by people at several different spatial levels, making these resources difficult to manage effectively without taking cross-level interactions into account. A multi-level perspective allows a more nuanced understanding of the governance challenges in conservation. Rather than assuming that the correct and best levels are known, we look at how discourses and social practices privilege certain levels over others and help shape the way decisions are made.A multi-level perspective also helps explain why the expectations of different actors are hard to satisfy, and why projects are often perceived as failures by some but not all actors. Some of the differences are a result of looking at the system from different levels, others are the result of the failure to acknowledge important crosslevel interactions, and yet others arise from over-reliance on single-level theories. An improved understanding of scale-related politics in conservation creates opportunities for evolving more appropriate institutions to the challenges at hand.

Adaptive Water Governance: Integrating the Human Dimensions into Water Resource Governance

“…The top‐down institutional structures of the conventional water resource management paradigm have received widespread criticisms, including the lack of fit between policy interventions and the scales at which problems occur (Lebel et al ), lack of flexibility in adapting to change (Healey ), difficulty of integrating local knowledge (Nelson et al ), and limited capacity for dealing with social‐ecological complexity (Karkkainen ). Adaptive governance is a response to the shortfalls of both centralized and community‐based institutional mechanisms.…”

Transfer, Diffusion, Adaptation, and Translation of Water Policy Models

“…Second, multi-level governance and scale approaches often used in the policy transfer literature can be misleading as they presuppose the carved in stone character of existing governance levels and scales which are not subject to political framing by interested parties. Specifically, a range of authors have demonstrated that the whole process of transfer is permeated with the politics of scale targeted at defining problems and solutions, and hence policy models, as pertaining to particular scales (e.g., Daniell and Barreteau 2014;Lebel et al 2005;Lendvai and Stubbs 2009 Third, there is a great degree of unpredictability, contextual relevance, and the need for practical adaptations of a policy model, which are at odds with the claims of the policy transfer literature that this process can be conceptualized and managed relatively easily through stage-based planning and a linear process of interventions. Molle and Hoanh (2011) and Mukhtarov (2013) showed the contingency of policy translation in their analysis of integrated river basin planning in Vietnam, and regional development in Southeastern Turkey, respectively, and De Jong (2009) and Stone (2012) showed that the discursive element in policy transfer needs strengthening with more exploration of how various actors define and pursue certain policy goals as inherently political projects.…”

The Role of Social Science in Successfully Implementing Watershed Management Strategies

“…The mismatch between the ecological scales of watersheds and the jurisdictional scales of the watershed management institutions could potentially result in a lack of fit between policy interventions and the problems to be addressed (Kerr ). For instance, centralized institutions often adopt one‐size‐fits‐all solutions based on generalizations that reflect poor knowledge on particular local cultures and ecosystems (Acheson ; Lebel et al ).…”

“…A related shortfall discussed by Karkkainen () is the mismatch in the resources and capacities required for the sustainable management of complex watersheds and the resources actually available to centralized institutions as single or dominant actors in watershed management. Centralized institutions often face resource constraints, such as funding and personnel shortages that render them ineffective (Lebel et al ). Command‐and‐control approaches have also been critiqued for their inefficiency (Dietz et al ), the lack of incentive to change they provide, and their poor record on the sustainable management of water resources (Acheson ; Darghouth et al ).…”

“…Command‐and‐control approaches have also been critiqued for their inefficiency (Dietz et al ), the lack of incentive to change they provide, and their poor record on the sustainable management of water resources (Acheson ; Darghouth et al ). Additionally, centralized institutions often lead to inequitable outcomes that exert disproportionate adverse impacts on communities while offering opportunities for capture by dominant power structures (Lebel et al ).…”