Watershed management in an urban setting: process, scale and administration

Schmidt, P.; Morrison, Tiffany H.

doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2011.05.003

Cited by 28 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Urban-specific components and the idiosyncratic interactions among these components in urban ecosystems call for specialized modes of investigation and governance. It is also important to acknowledge here that most compounding urban environmental issues today are consistent products of the current global political-economic order rather than avoidable anomalies (Ernstson 2013;Schmidt and Morrison 2012;Keil 2003).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Forty-three years of Ramsar and urban wetlands

Hettiarachchi

Morrison

McAlpine

2015

Global Environmental Change

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The Ramsar Convention is unquestionably the backbone of modern wetland management theory and practice. In the last four decades, it has mainstreamed wetlands in the environmental discourse and fostered the development of a comprehensive institutional framework for wetland governance. However, many of the wetlands that occur in human-dominated landscapes remain acutely threatened. The problem is most alarming in urban areas, especially in the fast expanding cities of the developing world, where unprecedented wetland destruction is leading to recurring environmental disasters. This triggers the question: are these failures in wetland governance purely induced by factors exogenous to Ramsar-based institutions or are they manifestations of conceptual drawbacks within the Ramsar conceptual framework? Here, we investigate the success and failures of the application of the Ramsar framework's policy directives and management guidelines for urban wetlands using two rapidly expanding cities in South Asia as case studiesColombo (Sri Lanka) and Kolkata (India). We conclude that despite its remarkable achievements over the past four decades, the Ramsar framework has several conceptual drawbacks that weaken its effectiveness in complex urban contexts. An inadequate recognition of the complex dynamics of urban social-ecological systems, an inadequate recognition of the political complexity of policy processes, and a lack of an environmental justice perspective are the main shortcomings contributing to failures in urban wetlands governance. While we acknowledge that some solutions are contingent upon national socio-political processes and reforms, we offer a pragmatic set of technical and strategic modifications to the Ramsar framework that can significantly improve its effectiveness in urban wetlands governance.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Forty-three years of Ramsar and urban wetlands

Hettiarachchi

Morrison

McAlpine

2015

Global Environmental Change

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“…This confirms that fundamental contradictions between a governance system and a social-ecological system cannot be resolved by reforms from 'within', as long as the conditions that led to those contradictions remain unchanged (Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith 1999;Schmidt and Morrison 2012).…”

Section: 3mentioning

confidence: 68%

Power, politics and policy in the appropriation of urban wetlands: the critical case of Sri Lanka

Hettiarachchi

Morrison²,

McAlpine

2017

The Journal of Peasant Studies

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Little is known about the drivers and governance strategies of appropriation of urban nature in the global south. We compare urban land-grabbing in the city of Colombo, Sri Lanka, with broader understanding of rural land-grabbing in the developing world. We show that the colonial legacy of appropriation and alteration of urban wetlands in Colombo has attained new heights in the neo-liberal period. This cyclical process has caused acute irreversible damage to the wetland ecosystem and a vast majority of the urban poor, with the marginalised continuing to suffer dispossession and environmental hazard. In recognition of the inherent limitations of 'uncontrollable' hybrid ecologies, potent social struggles have emerged to resist the continued appropriation agenda. As this cycle is perpetuated, broader social struggles for democratic urban governance have overtaken the pursuit of narrow politicaleconomic goals and internal policy reform.

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“…The Upper Bremer River sub-catchment is a rural catchment located in the upper reaches of SEQ, and is a hotspot for sediment pollution impacting downstream waterways and Moreton Bay, caused by agricultural land use activities and erosion (Crimp 2012). The Oxley Creek catchment has a complex mix of land uses and is heavily urbanised in its lower reaches (Schmidt and Morrison 2012), and is considered one of the most severely degraded waterways in SEQ. The Caboolture River catchment is located on the expanding urban fringe of SEQ, and considered vulnerable, yet set to experience major future urban expansion (BMT WBM 2010).…”

Section: Description Of the Local Casesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Purposeful collective action in ambiguous and contested situations: exploring ‘enabling capacities’ and cross-level interplay

Patterson

2017

Int J Commons

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Purposeful collective action is important for sustainably managing many kinds of natural resource issues in social-ecological systems. However, cultivating purposeful collective action is challenging in ambiguous and contested situations involving multiple issues, actors, levels, and drivers, and weak or missing feedback. A particular example is the problem of managing waterway health in large and diverse landscapes. This paper analyses the emergence of purposeful collective action for managing waterway health, focusing on a case study of a large and diverse region in Australia. It applies a heuristic developed to guide inquiry into 'enabling capacities' underpinning purposeful collective action, to analyse three local cases embedded within a broader regional landscape. A diverse range of enabling capacities at both local and regional levels, and cross-level interplay between these levels, are shown to be important. Findings imply that efforts to generate purposeful collective action require building enabling capacities across multiple levels of organisation, from which contextually-appropriate and adaptive action can emerge. Moreover, findings indicate the need for a practice-focused 'knowledge-action perspective' that recognises the importance of intersubjectivity and agency. The paper demonstrates a promising approach for investigating purposeful collective action in ambiguous and contested water and environmental governance situations.

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Watershed management in an urban setting: process, scale and administration

Cited by 28 publications

References 33 publications

Forty-three years of Ramsar and urban wetlands

Forty-three years of Ramsar and urban wetlands

Power, politics and policy in the appropriation of urban wetlands: the critical case of Sri Lanka

Purposeful collective action in ambiguous and contested situations: exploring ‘enabling capacities’ and cross-level interplay

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