Moving towards Multilevel Governance of Wetland Resources: Local Water Organisations and Institutional Changes in France

Abstract

The aim of this study is to achieve an understanding of the collective management of wetlands by landowner associations, in order to reflect on their role and position within the new wetland resource governance system, initiated by the recent institutional reform in France. Proposals from self-governance institutions for natural resource management and social capital studies inform the analytical framework. Two survey phases among the chairs and members of associations that currently manage the riparian marshes of the Gironde estuary are the basis for an empirical study. The results reveal that half of the landowners sampled will default. However, neighbourhood and community-based social capital as well as the close involvement of the chairs of the associations are the key elements of the collective management of water-level and wetland resources. We then argue that informal and flexible collaboration between small associations should be the governance mode for the collaborative management of wetlands.

Integrative governance: The relationships between governance instruments taking center stage

“…However, as I have suggested earlier (Visseren-Hamakers, 2015), “the debate on fragmentation has itself been rather fragmented,” with authors from different disciplines contributing to the debate over time, using different terminologies, focusing on different levels of governance, and studying relationships between various units of analysis. Used concepts include interorganizational relations (see e.g., Schmidt and Kochan, 1977), legal pluralism (Griffiths, 1986; Merry, 1988), polycentric governance (Ostrom, 2010), regime complexity and fragmentation (Alter and Meunier, 2009; Biermann et al., 2009; Fischer-Lescano and Teubner, 2003), integrated management (Born and Sonzogni, 1995; Hughes and Pincetl, 2014), landscape governance and approaches (Buizer et al., 2015; Görg, 2007; Sayer et al., 2013), (environmental) policy integration (EPI) (Jordan and Lenschow, 2010; Persson et al., 2018; Weber and Driessen, 2010; Winkel and Sotirov, 2015), coordination (Geddes and Jordan, 2012; Peters, 1998), mainstreaming (Brouwer et al., 2013; Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen et al., 2017; Kok and de Coninck, 2007), coherence (Jones, 2002), smart regulation and policy mixes (Gunningham and Grabosky, 1998), multilevel governance (Hooghe and Marks, 2003; Marks et al., 1996; Rambonilaza et al., 2015), governance architectures and systems (Biermann et al., 2009; Visseren-Hamakers, 2009), regime complexes (Abbott, 2012; Raustiala and Victor, 2004), institutional interaction and interaction management (Oberthür, 2016; Oberthür and Gehring, 2006), metagovernance and orchestration (Abbott Kenneth and Bernstein, 2015; Abbott and Snidal, 2010; Kooiman and Jentoft, 2009), telecoupling (Liu et al., 2013), the governance of complex systems (Young, 2017), and the nexus approach (Benson et al., 2015; Rasul and Sharma, 2016).…”