Going Transboundary? An Institutional Analysis of Transboundary Protected Area Management Challenges at Mt Elgon, East Africa.

Abstract

ABSTRACT. We analyze institutional challenges for a joint transboundary protected area regime. Employing the case of Mt Elgon in Uganda and Kenya, we use the concepts of fit and interplay to guide our examination in the challenges of the establishment of a transboundary protected area management (TBPAM) regime. Although transboundary regimes are thought to provide better fit for the resources, fitness is a contested phenomenon. The findings are critical to the perceived benefits of the TBPAM strategy in the form of one, fully integrated regional regime. We reveal how such a regime will be seriously constrained by the interplay of complex institutional factors. We moreover find evidence that TBPAM entails a reintroduction of the old top-down conservation paradigms, counteracting the community conservation attempts. Therefore, policy makers are encouraged to approach critically the daunting exercise of a continuum of TBPAM governance toward fully integrated management within a joint TBPAM regime. Instead, the focus should be on identifying the issues that are truly transboundary in nature and construct governance structures that directly address these. In this paper we suggest that policy makers carry out a clear institutional analysis: disaggregate the real transboundary objects, identify common interests, and look for appropriate content and levels of cooperation. It is no panacea to establish an integrated transboundary regime, even if two protected areas happen to be adjoining.

Nudging Evolution?

“…Beginning with the common feature that all authors explicitly consider the role that social norms play in both the specification and assessment of the quality of institutional fit, there is, as mentioned previously, with the exception of Hukkinen (2012), a clear distinction to be made between those who place the formulation of social norms squarely within their focus (Bromley 2012, Hukkinen 2012, Moss 2012, DeCaro and Stokes 2013, Haller et al 2013, Hiedanpää 2013) and those who focus, instead, on how established norms influence, whether in theory or in practice, the specific criteria and social practices that may give rise to institutional fit (Cox 2012, Hukkinen 2012, Vatn and Vedeld 2012, Zikos and Roggero 2012, Lebel et al 2013, Petursson et al 2013, Herrfahrdt-Pähle in press; Table 1). Cox (2012), Herrfahrdt-Pähle (in press), Petursson et al (2013), and Zikos and Roggero (2012) all start out by taking the specification of the criteria against which institutional fit is to be measured as more or less given and proceed, in their respective studies, to explore means for evaluating whether institutional fit is present or possible in a given situation. Cox (2012), whose text is intended to contribute toward the development of theory and the design of modeling methodologies, concentrates on providing a set of standardized but semantically open analytical tools, based on principles drawn from relational database management and programming, that can accommodate the processing of the specific social norms observed within a given society.…”

“…Some authors place them at the center of their studies, exploring their characteristics as phenomena endogenous to the process of defining what constitutes criteria for and what is involved in creating fit institutions, considering both how norms emerge within and how they impact social-ecological processes related to institutional fit (Bromley 2012, Hukkinen 2012, Moss 2012, DeCaro and Stokes 2013, Haller et al 2013, Hiedanpää 2013. Others take the formation of norms as a phenomenon that is exogenous to their particular study, determined either through reference to previous political decisions, expert assessments, and/or some combination of the two (Cox 2012, Vatn and Vedeld 2012, Zikos and Roggero 2012, Lebel et al 2013, Petursson et al 2013). Although these two approaches seem to us to highlight an important distinction, they are complemented by http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol18/iss4/art47/ a strong ontological consistency across the contributions; the creation, maintenance, and use of institutions is a process of social construction that takes place within and is heavily mediated by its physical and biological contexts.…”

“…Cox (2012), whose text is intended to contribute toward the development of theory and the design of modeling methodologies, concentrates on providing a set of standardized but semantically open analytical tools, based on principles drawn from relational database management and programming, that can accommodate the processing of the specific social norms observed within a given society. Herrfahrdt-Pähle (in press), Zikos and Roggero (2012), and Petursson et al (2013), whose texts are all based on case studies, i.e., of water management in South Africa and on the divided island of Cyprus, and of protected area management at the border between Uganda and Kenya, focus instead on evaluating if and, if so, to what extent the environment-related social norms that they observe do or could facilitate achievement of institutional fit. Of these three, Zikos and Roggero (2012) also give some attention to the dynamics of norm creation as a process endogenous to the specification Ecology and Society 18(4): 47 http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol18/iss4/art47/ and realization of institutional fit, proposing that the politically divided status of the island of Cyprus has given rise to a socialecologically complex set of normative positions concerning both the purposive object of and the objectives associated with achieving institutional fit.…”

“…This pattern emerged from the process of putting together this Special Feature and seems to us to offer some useful insights into the particular constraints and requirements associated with conducting studies concerning the role and place of institutions within social-ecological systems. The second pattern, regarding the various types of studies being presented, namely, critiques and elaborations of the theory (Bromley 2012, Cox 2012, Hukkinen 2012, Moss 2012, Vatn and Vedeld 2012, Haller et al 2013, Hiedanpää 2013, methods for judging qualities (Bromley 2012, Cox 2012, Hukkinen 2012, Vatn and Vedeld 2012, DeCaro and Stokes 2013, Lebel et al 2013, and/or applied case studies using the concept (Hukkinen 2012, Moss 2012, Zikos and Roggero 2012, Haller et al 2013, Hiedanpää 2013, Petursson et al 2013, reflects the original call for papers for the Berlin workshop and the subsequent composition of this Special Feature. For that workshop, the contributors were invited to explore the following: (1) epistemology and theory, by presenting theory-based critiques that explore the potential for the concept to serve as a tool for explaining institutional aspects of social-ecological system dynamics; (2) ontological and empirical questions, by presenting applications of the concept of institutional fit to specific social-ecological change cases, based on detailed empirical studies that can be used as testing grounds for evaluating the usefulness of the concept; and (3) methodological and action-oriented prospects.…”

“…Normativity taken as exogenous to the study / study starts out with reference to a given set (or sets) of normative criteria concerning what constitutes fitting institutions Normativity taken as endogenous to the study / the role of normativity within the process of determining fit is treated as a study object Cox 2012 Herrfahrdt-Pähle in press Hukkinen 2012 Lebel et al 2013Petursson et al 2013Vatn and Vedeld 2012Zikos and Roggero 2013Bromley 2012 DeCaro and Stokes 2013 Haller et al 2013Hiedanpää 2013Hukkinen 2012(Lebel et al 2013) Moss 2012 (Vatn andVedeld 2012) (Zikos and Roggero 2013) (brackets indicate a secondary orientation within the text) fundamental implications for the nature of the arrangements required to solve or at least ameliorate them. (Young 2008:20) The point of introducing these distinctions is not to argue that some environmental problems are harder to solve than others in some generic sense.…”