Multi-actor governance, in which a broad mix of actors collaborates to deal with complex societal... more Multi-actor governance, in which a broad mix of actors collaborates to deal with complex societal problems, requires a leadership approach that can take into account the dynamic interdependencies between the involved actors. A relational approach to leadership, focusing on processes and practices, is more adequate for that purpose than approaches focusing on individuals and positions. Complexity leadership theory offers such a relational approach to leadership within organizations. In this article, we use complexity leadership theory to capture the emergent leadership processes between organizations. We focus on the characteristics of the informal relations between representatives of different organizations that enable dealing with the often-conflicting goals and values in multi-actor governance. The case of a landfill mining initiative for sustainable materials governance is used as an illustration to clarify the main concepts and arguments.
Multi-actor governance is considered necessary when the complexity of an issue transcends the kno... more Multi-actor governance is considered necessary when the complexity of an issue transcends the knowledge base, decisional power and resources of a single actor. The challenges related to the massive degradation of the natural environment stimulate the recent interest in this approach. One main goal of the collective decision processes in multi-actor governance is the development of common aims that are aligned to local conditions, and that integrate scientific facts and expert opinions with local knowledge. Deciding collectively, as proposed by multi-actor governance, has profound implications for how ambiguous issues are handled, because different actors hold different frames of what is at stake. In this paper we argue for accepting and dealing adequately with ambiguity, instead of trying to eliminate it, as it is an expression of complexity itself. When we conceive knowledge as resulting from embodied interaction processes in and between communities, then ambiguity is the result of different ways of being in and dealing with the world. Such a relational view directs the attention to boundary crossing practices between different communities that are able to connect and mutually enrich scientific and other ways of knowing. This results in "generative" propositions that open up new interaction possibilities between scientists and other actors to co-create knowledge for sustainability.
This paper proposes a normative and an analytical framework for an actor-oriented conceptualizati... more This paper proposes a normative and an analytical framework for an actor-oriented conceptualization of the development of rural territories with the aim to inform practitioners’ interventions. For the latter, we stress the need for a more realistic and modest positioning vis-à-vis the endogenous strategies of interacting actors in the rural territories. Our normative framework draws on a relational elaboration of Sen’s human capabilities approach. We adopt an ethical individualism (each individual’s well-being is the criterion for development), but reject methodological individualism (well-being of individuals depends mainly on their own efforts). We argue that power-laden social relations determine outcomes in the multiple political arenas which will open or close collective development pathways upon which the (non)realization of people’s desired livelihood trajectories depend. In the second part, we develop an analytical framework that allows us to interpret the emergence of such ...
Local community participation in complex technological projects, where technological innovations ... more Local community participation in complex technological projects, where technological innovations and risks need to be managed, is notoriously challenging. Relations with local inhabitants easily take the form of exclusion, protest, controversy or litigation. While such projects represent opportunities for creating knowledge, business or societal benefits from the perspective of the community of driving actors, they often represent a potential threat to health, safety or prosperity from the perspective of the community of people who happen to live near the facilities. What are the challenges in dealing with this difference and which practices are helpful in bridging this gap? In this paper we analyse the functioning of an organised group of local inhabitants in the development of an Enhanced Landfill Mining project in Belgium where previously landfilled waste is going to be used for recycling and energy production. We find that setting up a multi-actor platform, organising a group of involved locals, combining formal and informal communication channels, maintaining a mutually credible dialogue and involving knowledgeable local people as bridging figures are important ingredients to bridge the gap in this case. We also discuss the emerging challenges of local community participation for all actors involved and especially for the organised group of 'Locals' who risk to become a victim of its own success by being incorporated too much in the project consortium and leaving a new gap to be bridged with the rest of the local community.
Involving indigenous peoples in the development of mitigation measures for climate change present... more Involving indigenous peoples in the development of mitigation measures for climate change presents procedural, conceptual and structural challenges. Here, we reflect on some of these challenges and ways of overcoming them, as suggested by collaborative approaches to policy and decision making. We specifically focus on issues of scale, knowledge and power, and how they interrelate to act as a barrier or opportunity for the involvement of indigenous groups. We argue that multi-scalar negotiations, blended knowledge and power-sharing structures are all necessary to include indigenous communities as valuable partners in climate change mitigation, and we suggest strategies and recommendations for actively accomplishing this inclusion. Examples from recent literature about the inclusion of indigenous communities in different sectors, are used to illustrate and provide evidence of the current problematic and the need for collaborative solutions. Overall, the ideas expressed here, serve as a conceptual framework to better understand and support the inclusion of indigenous communities in policy and decision making processes.
The interdependent character of sustainability challenges calls for collaboration among actors wi... more The interdependent character of sustainability challenges calls for collaboration among actors with different capabilities, interests, and knowledge frames. Behavioral simulations offer good opportunities to learn about dealing with these differences. They are based on an “experiential learning” approach that integrates the direct experience of the participants during a simulation exercise with reflection, theorizing, and acting. As such the simulation is able to mobilize the “minds, hearts, and hands” of the participants to stimulate not only cognitive, but also affective and moral learning in an embodied way. This is considered of utmost importance in education for sustainable development. The simulation exercise presented in this manuscript is inspired by a real case in the Southern Andes of Ecuador, where an existing multi-actor committee for the co-management of the regional UNESCO Biosphere is challenged by the arrival of an international mining company. The results are based ...
This paper proposes a normative and an analytical framework for an actor-oriented conceptualizati... more This paper proposes a normative and an analytical framework for an actor-oriented conceptualization of the development of rural territories with the aim to inform practitioners’ interventions. For the latter, we stress the need for a more realistic and modest positioning vis-à-vis the endogenous strategies of interacting actors in the rural territories. Our normative framework draws on a relational elaboration of Sen’s human capabilities approach. We adopt an ethical individualism (each individual’s well-being is the criterion for development), but reject methodological individualism (well-being of individuals depends mainly on their own efforts). We argue that power-laden social relations determine outcomes in the multiple political arenas which will open or close collective development pathways upon which the (non)realization of people’s desired livelihood trajectories depend. In the second part, we develop an analytical framework that allows us to interpret the emergence of such ...
This paper proposes a normative and an analytical framework for an actor-oriented
conceptualizati... more This paper proposes a normative and an analytical framework for an actor-oriented conceptualization of the development of rural territories with the aim to inform practitioners’ interventions. For the latter, we stress the need for a more realistic and modest positioning vis-à-vis the endogenous strategies of interacting actors in the rural territories. Our normative framework draws on a relational elaboration of Sen’s human capabilities approach. We adopt an ethical individualism (each individual’s well-being is the criterion for development), but reject methodological individualism (well-being of individuals depends mainly on their own efforts). We argue that power-laden social relations determine outcomes in the multiple political arenas which will open or close collective development pathways upon which the (non)realization of people’s desired livelihood trajectories depend. In the second part, we develop an analytical framework that allows us to interpret the emergence of such development pathways in rural territories, which we conceptualize as complex socio-ecological systems with dispersed polycentric governance. For the elaboration of this framework, we draw creatively on insights from the sustainable livelihood framework, development sociology, critical institutionalism, social capital theory, the legal pluralism perspective, the critique of participation and the Latin American territorial rural development (DTR) approach. We also compare our proposal, which is more developed from the perspective of non-governmental development actors, which the public policy perspective of the DTR.
Ninguna lectura es posible sin lentes conceptuales. Esto también se aplica a este libro, donde in... more Ninguna lectura es posible sin lentes conceptuales. Esto también se aplica a este libro, donde intentamos construir una mirada sobre los procesos de desarrollo rural que nos permita hacer un diagnóstico de las rutas de desarrollo en los territorios de los municipios de Muy Muy, Matiguás y Río Blanco, y reflexionar sobre las estrategias de promoción del desarrollo, en particular sobre el llamado 'enfoque territorial' de Nitlapan. La elaboración de un marco conceptual para sustentar esta o cualquier mirada inevitablemente implica una serie de decisiones y posicionamientos epistemológicos, éticos y paradigmáticos. El posicionamiento epistemológico obedece a preguntas claves sobre el conocimiento científico: ¿Cómo podemos saber? ¿Cuál es el estatus y la validez de nuestro conocimiento científico?
This article discusses social learning as a means to implement integrated water resources managem... more This article discusses social learning as a means to implement integrated water resources management (IWRM). Implementing IWRM requires cooperation between policy sectors, countries, government bodies, the civic sector and scientific disciplines. The social learning approach suggests several ingredients for such cooperation. First, water managers and the other stakeholders need to realize their dependence on each other. Second, they need to
Natural resources management in general, and water resources management in particular, are curren... more Natural resources management in general, and water resources management in particular, are currently undergoing a major paradigm shift. Management practices have largely been developed and implemented by experts using technical means based on designing systems that can be predicted and controlled. In recent years, stakeholder involvement has gained increasing importance. Collaborative governance is considered to be more appropriate for integrated and adaptive management regimes needed to cope with the complexity of social-ecological systems. The paper presents a concept for social learning and collaborative governance developed in the European project HarmoniCOP (Harmonizing COllaborative Planning). The concept is rooted in the more interpretive strands of the social sciences emphasizing the context dependence of knowledge. The role of frames and boundary management in processes of learning at different levels and time scales is investigated. The foundation of social learning as investigated in the HarmoniCOP project is multiparty collaboration processes that are perceived to be the nuclei of learning processes. Such processes take place in networks or "communities of practice" and are influenced by the governance structure in which they are embedded. Requirements for social learning include institutional settings that guarantee some degree of stability and certainty without being rigid and inflexible. Our analyses, which are based on conceptual considerations and empirical insights, suggest that the development of such institutional settings involves continued processes of social learning. In these processes, stakeholders at different scales are connected in flexible networks that allow them to develop the capacity and trust they need to collaborate in a wide range of formal and informal relationships ranging from formal legal structures and contracts to informal, voluntary agreements.
Natural resources management in general, and water resources management in particular, are curren... more Natural resources management in general, and water resources management in particular, are currently undergoing a major paradigm shift. Management practices have largely been developed and implemented by experts using technical means based on designing systems that can be predicted and controlled. In recent years, stakeholder involvement has gained increasing importance. Collaborative governance is considered to be more appropriate for integrated and adaptive management regimes needed to cope with the complexity of social-ecological systems. The paper presents a concept for social learning and collaborative governance developed in the European project HarmoniCOP (Harmonizing COllaborative Planning). The concept is rooted in the more interpretive strands of the social sciences emphasizing the context dependence of knowledge. The role of frames and boundary management in processes of learning at different levels and time scales is investigated. The foundation of social learning as investigated in the HarmoniCOP project is multiparty collaboration processes that are perceived to be the nuclei of learning processes. Such processes take place in networks or "communities of practice" and are influenced by the governance structure in which they are embedded. Requirements for social learning include institutional settings that guarantee some degree of stability and certainty without being rigid and inflexible. Our analyses, which are based on conceptual considerations and empirical insights, suggest that the development of such institutional settings involves continued processes of social learning. In these processes, stakeholders at different scales are connected in flexible networks that allow them to develop the capacity and trust they need to collaborate in a wide range of formal and informal relationships ranging from formal legal structures and contracts to informal, voluntary agreements.
Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 2004
Drawing on qualitative data from a longitudinal case study of a collaborative soil conservation i... more Drawing on qualitative data from a longitudinal case study of a collaborative soil conservation initiative in southern Ecuador, we study how multiple actors, including university experts, development organizations and local communities, make sense of the issues from different perspectives through the process of issue framing. Starting from an analysis of the actors' usual issue frames, we point out their differences in selecting aspects, connecting them and drawing boundaries around the issues. Bringing in the time dimension leads us to consider how changing patterns of actor involvement and evolving frame configurations mutually influence each other. In a third step, we zoom in on the here-and-now level of ongoing interaction using discourse analysis, outlining an interactive, communicative and discursive approach to dealing with differences in issue framing. We identify various ways of dealing with these differences and argue that approaching them constructively by tuning the different frames into a mutually acceptable configuration is an important challenge for any attempt at integrated management of natural resources.
Uncertainty is an increasingly important concern when trying to manage complex systems of interre... more Uncertainty is an increasingly important concern when trying to manage complex systems of interrelated natural resources. Scientific knowledge or necessary information may be lacking or incomplete. Additionally, the multiple and interdependent users of those resources may diverge in defining what really is at stake. When they frame issues in very different ways, ambiguity results, i.e., the existence of two or more equally plausible interpretation possibilities. Environmental management in these conditions implies a shift in attention from solving clearly delineated problems to continuous negotiating and tuning between different actors and expertise domains. This requires dealing with the frame differences in a reciprocal way by mutually acknowledging frames and connecting them. Some or all parties will have to revise, enlarge or reframe the way they relate to the issues and to each other, in order to support mutual understanding and common action. The contribution of experts does not consist then in providing total predictability nor in predefining issues and solutions, but in supporting a joint learning and negotiation process among different actors and in feeding this process with relevant information. Behavioural simulations may play an important function to stimulate multi-actor learning and negotiation processes.
Multi-actor governance, in which a broad mix of actors collaborates to deal with complex societal... more Multi-actor governance, in which a broad mix of actors collaborates to deal with complex societal problems, requires a leadership approach that can take into account the dynamic interdependencies between the involved actors. A relational approach to leadership, focusing on processes and practices, is more adequate for that purpose than approaches focusing on individuals and positions. Complexity leadership theory offers such a relational approach to leadership within organizations. In this article, we use complexity leadership theory to capture the emergent leadership processes between organizations. We focus on the characteristics of the informal relations between representatives of different organizations that enable dealing with the often-conflicting goals and values in multi-actor governance. The case of a landfill mining initiative for sustainable materials governance is used as an illustration to clarify the main concepts and arguments.
Multi-actor governance is considered necessary when the complexity of an issue transcends the kno... more Multi-actor governance is considered necessary when the complexity of an issue transcends the knowledge base, decisional power and resources of a single actor. The challenges related to the massive degradation of the natural environment stimulate the recent interest in this approach. One main goal of the collective decision processes in multi-actor governance is the development of common aims that are aligned to local conditions, and that integrate scientific facts and expert opinions with local knowledge. Deciding collectively, as proposed by multi-actor governance, has profound implications for how ambiguous issues are handled, because different actors hold different frames of what is at stake. In this paper we argue for accepting and dealing adequately with ambiguity, instead of trying to eliminate it, as it is an expression of complexity itself. When we conceive knowledge as resulting from embodied interaction processes in and between communities, then ambiguity is the result of different ways of being in and dealing with the world. Such a relational view directs the attention to boundary crossing practices between different communities that are able to connect and mutually enrich scientific and other ways of knowing. This results in "generative" propositions that open up new interaction possibilities between scientists and other actors to co-create knowledge for sustainability.
This paper proposes a normative and an analytical framework for an actor-oriented conceptualizati... more This paper proposes a normative and an analytical framework for an actor-oriented conceptualization of the development of rural territories with the aim to inform practitioners’ interventions. For the latter, we stress the need for a more realistic and modest positioning vis-à-vis the endogenous strategies of interacting actors in the rural territories. Our normative framework draws on a relational elaboration of Sen’s human capabilities approach. We adopt an ethical individualism (each individual’s well-being is the criterion for development), but reject methodological individualism (well-being of individuals depends mainly on their own efforts). We argue that power-laden social relations determine outcomes in the multiple political arenas which will open or close collective development pathways upon which the (non)realization of people’s desired livelihood trajectories depend. In the second part, we develop an analytical framework that allows us to interpret the emergence of such ...
Local community participation in complex technological projects, where technological innovations ... more Local community participation in complex technological projects, where technological innovations and risks need to be managed, is notoriously challenging. Relations with local inhabitants easily take the form of exclusion, protest, controversy or litigation. While such projects represent opportunities for creating knowledge, business or societal benefits from the perspective of the community of driving actors, they often represent a potential threat to health, safety or prosperity from the perspective of the community of people who happen to live near the facilities. What are the challenges in dealing with this difference and which practices are helpful in bridging this gap? In this paper we analyse the functioning of an organised group of local inhabitants in the development of an Enhanced Landfill Mining project in Belgium where previously landfilled waste is going to be used for recycling and energy production. We find that setting up a multi-actor platform, organising a group of involved locals, combining formal and informal communication channels, maintaining a mutually credible dialogue and involving knowledgeable local people as bridging figures are important ingredients to bridge the gap in this case. We also discuss the emerging challenges of local community participation for all actors involved and especially for the organised group of 'Locals' who risk to become a victim of its own success by being incorporated too much in the project consortium and leaving a new gap to be bridged with the rest of the local community.
Involving indigenous peoples in the development of mitigation measures for climate change present... more Involving indigenous peoples in the development of mitigation measures for climate change presents procedural, conceptual and structural challenges. Here, we reflect on some of these challenges and ways of overcoming them, as suggested by collaborative approaches to policy and decision making. We specifically focus on issues of scale, knowledge and power, and how they interrelate to act as a barrier or opportunity for the involvement of indigenous groups. We argue that multi-scalar negotiations, blended knowledge and power-sharing structures are all necessary to include indigenous communities as valuable partners in climate change mitigation, and we suggest strategies and recommendations for actively accomplishing this inclusion. Examples from recent literature about the inclusion of indigenous communities in different sectors, are used to illustrate and provide evidence of the current problematic and the need for collaborative solutions. Overall, the ideas expressed here, serve as a conceptual framework to better understand and support the inclusion of indigenous communities in policy and decision making processes.
The interdependent character of sustainability challenges calls for collaboration among actors wi... more The interdependent character of sustainability challenges calls for collaboration among actors with different capabilities, interests, and knowledge frames. Behavioral simulations offer good opportunities to learn about dealing with these differences. They are based on an “experiential learning” approach that integrates the direct experience of the participants during a simulation exercise with reflection, theorizing, and acting. As such the simulation is able to mobilize the “minds, hearts, and hands” of the participants to stimulate not only cognitive, but also affective and moral learning in an embodied way. This is considered of utmost importance in education for sustainable development. The simulation exercise presented in this manuscript is inspired by a real case in the Southern Andes of Ecuador, where an existing multi-actor committee for the co-management of the regional UNESCO Biosphere is challenged by the arrival of an international mining company. The results are based ...
This paper proposes a normative and an analytical framework for an actor-oriented conceptualizati... more This paper proposes a normative and an analytical framework for an actor-oriented conceptualization of the development of rural territories with the aim to inform practitioners’ interventions. For the latter, we stress the need for a more realistic and modest positioning vis-à-vis the endogenous strategies of interacting actors in the rural territories. Our normative framework draws on a relational elaboration of Sen’s human capabilities approach. We adopt an ethical individualism (each individual’s well-being is the criterion for development), but reject methodological individualism (well-being of individuals depends mainly on their own efforts). We argue that power-laden social relations determine outcomes in the multiple political arenas which will open or close collective development pathways upon which the (non)realization of people’s desired livelihood trajectories depend. In the second part, we develop an analytical framework that allows us to interpret the emergence of such ...
This paper proposes a normative and an analytical framework for an actor-oriented
conceptualizati... more This paper proposes a normative and an analytical framework for an actor-oriented conceptualization of the development of rural territories with the aim to inform practitioners’ interventions. For the latter, we stress the need for a more realistic and modest positioning vis-à-vis the endogenous strategies of interacting actors in the rural territories. Our normative framework draws on a relational elaboration of Sen’s human capabilities approach. We adopt an ethical individualism (each individual’s well-being is the criterion for development), but reject methodological individualism (well-being of individuals depends mainly on their own efforts). We argue that power-laden social relations determine outcomes in the multiple political arenas which will open or close collective development pathways upon which the (non)realization of people’s desired livelihood trajectories depend. In the second part, we develop an analytical framework that allows us to interpret the emergence of such development pathways in rural territories, which we conceptualize as complex socio-ecological systems with dispersed polycentric governance. For the elaboration of this framework, we draw creatively on insights from the sustainable livelihood framework, development sociology, critical institutionalism, social capital theory, the legal pluralism perspective, the critique of participation and the Latin American territorial rural development (DTR) approach. We also compare our proposal, which is more developed from the perspective of non-governmental development actors, which the public policy perspective of the DTR.
Ninguna lectura es posible sin lentes conceptuales. Esto también se aplica a este libro, donde in... more Ninguna lectura es posible sin lentes conceptuales. Esto también se aplica a este libro, donde intentamos construir una mirada sobre los procesos de desarrollo rural que nos permita hacer un diagnóstico de las rutas de desarrollo en los territorios de los municipios de Muy Muy, Matiguás y Río Blanco, y reflexionar sobre las estrategias de promoción del desarrollo, en particular sobre el llamado 'enfoque territorial' de Nitlapan. La elaboración de un marco conceptual para sustentar esta o cualquier mirada inevitablemente implica una serie de decisiones y posicionamientos epistemológicos, éticos y paradigmáticos. El posicionamiento epistemológico obedece a preguntas claves sobre el conocimiento científico: ¿Cómo podemos saber? ¿Cuál es el estatus y la validez de nuestro conocimiento científico?
This article discusses social learning as a means to implement integrated water resources managem... more This article discusses social learning as a means to implement integrated water resources management (IWRM). Implementing IWRM requires cooperation between policy sectors, countries, government bodies, the civic sector and scientific disciplines. The social learning approach suggests several ingredients for such cooperation. First, water managers and the other stakeholders need to realize their dependence on each other. Second, they need to
Natural resources management in general, and water resources management in particular, are curren... more Natural resources management in general, and water resources management in particular, are currently undergoing a major paradigm shift. Management practices have largely been developed and implemented by experts using technical means based on designing systems that can be predicted and controlled. In recent years, stakeholder involvement has gained increasing importance. Collaborative governance is considered to be more appropriate for integrated and adaptive management regimes needed to cope with the complexity of social-ecological systems. The paper presents a concept for social learning and collaborative governance developed in the European project HarmoniCOP (Harmonizing COllaborative Planning). The concept is rooted in the more interpretive strands of the social sciences emphasizing the context dependence of knowledge. The role of frames and boundary management in processes of learning at different levels and time scales is investigated. The foundation of social learning as investigated in the HarmoniCOP project is multiparty collaboration processes that are perceived to be the nuclei of learning processes. Such processes take place in networks or "communities of practice" and are influenced by the governance structure in which they are embedded. Requirements for social learning include institutional settings that guarantee some degree of stability and certainty without being rigid and inflexible. Our analyses, which are based on conceptual considerations and empirical insights, suggest that the development of such institutional settings involves continued processes of social learning. In these processes, stakeholders at different scales are connected in flexible networks that allow them to develop the capacity and trust they need to collaborate in a wide range of formal and informal relationships ranging from formal legal structures and contracts to informal, voluntary agreements.
Natural resources management in general, and water resources management in particular, are curren... more Natural resources management in general, and water resources management in particular, are currently undergoing a major paradigm shift. Management practices have largely been developed and implemented by experts using technical means based on designing systems that can be predicted and controlled. In recent years, stakeholder involvement has gained increasing importance. Collaborative governance is considered to be more appropriate for integrated and adaptive management regimes needed to cope with the complexity of social-ecological systems. The paper presents a concept for social learning and collaborative governance developed in the European project HarmoniCOP (Harmonizing COllaborative Planning). The concept is rooted in the more interpretive strands of the social sciences emphasizing the context dependence of knowledge. The role of frames and boundary management in processes of learning at different levels and time scales is investigated. The foundation of social learning as investigated in the HarmoniCOP project is multiparty collaboration processes that are perceived to be the nuclei of learning processes. Such processes take place in networks or "communities of practice" and are influenced by the governance structure in which they are embedded. Requirements for social learning include institutional settings that guarantee some degree of stability and certainty without being rigid and inflexible. Our analyses, which are based on conceptual considerations and empirical insights, suggest that the development of such institutional settings involves continued processes of social learning. In these processes, stakeholders at different scales are connected in flexible networks that allow them to develop the capacity and trust they need to collaborate in a wide range of formal and informal relationships ranging from formal legal structures and contracts to informal, voluntary agreements.
Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 2004
Drawing on qualitative data from a longitudinal case study of a collaborative soil conservation i... more Drawing on qualitative data from a longitudinal case study of a collaborative soil conservation initiative in southern Ecuador, we study how multiple actors, including university experts, development organizations and local communities, make sense of the issues from different perspectives through the process of issue framing. Starting from an analysis of the actors' usual issue frames, we point out their differences in selecting aspects, connecting them and drawing boundaries around the issues. Bringing in the time dimension leads us to consider how changing patterns of actor involvement and evolving frame configurations mutually influence each other. In a third step, we zoom in on the here-and-now level of ongoing interaction using discourse analysis, outlining an interactive, communicative and discursive approach to dealing with differences in issue framing. We identify various ways of dealing with these differences and argue that approaching them constructively by tuning the different frames into a mutually acceptable configuration is an important challenge for any attempt at integrated management of natural resources.
Uncertainty is an increasingly important concern when trying to manage complex systems of interre... more Uncertainty is an increasingly important concern when trying to manage complex systems of interrelated natural resources. Scientific knowledge or necessary information may be lacking or incomplete. Additionally, the multiple and interdependent users of those resources may diverge in defining what really is at stake. When they frame issues in very different ways, ambiguity results, i.e., the existence of two or more equally plausible interpretation possibilities. Environmental management in these conditions implies a shift in attention from solving clearly delineated problems to continuous negotiating and tuning between different actors and expertise domains. This requires dealing with the frame differences in a reciprocal way by mutually acknowledging frames and connecting them. Some or all parties will have to revise, enlarge or reframe the way they relate to the issues and to each other, in order to support mutual understanding and common action. The contribution of experts does not consist then in providing total predictability nor in predefining issues and solutions, but in supporting a joint learning and negotiation process among different actors and in feeding this process with relevant information. Behavioural simulations may play an important function to stimulate multi-actor learning and negotiation processes.
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Papers by Marc Craps
conceptualization of the development of rural territories with the aim to inform practitioners’
interventions. For the latter, we stress the need for a more realistic and modest positioning
vis-à-vis the endogenous strategies of interacting actors in the rural territories. Our normative
framework draws on a relational elaboration of Sen’s human capabilities approach. We adopt an
ethical individualism (each individual’s well-being is the criterion for development), but reject
methodological individualism (well-being of individuals depends mainly on their own efforts).
We argue that power-laden social relations determine outcomes in the multiple political arenas
which will open or close collective development pathways upon which the (non)realization of
people’s desired livelihood trajectories depend. In the second part, we develop an analytical
framework that allows us to interpret the emergence of such development pathways in rural territories,
which we conceptualize as complex socio-ecological systems with dispersed polycentric
governance. For the elaboration of this framework, we draw creatively on insights from the
sustainable livelihood framework, development sociology, critical institutionalism, social capital
theory, the legal pluralism perspective, the critique of participation and the Latin American
territorial rural development (DTR) approach. We also compare our proposal, which is more developed
from the perspective of non-governmental development actors, which the public policy
perspective of the DTR.
conceptualization of the development of rural territories with the aim to inform practitioners’
interventions. For the latter, we stress the need for a more realistic and modest positioning
vis-à-vis the endogenous strategies of interacting actors in the rural territories. Our normative
framework draws on a relational elaboration of Sen’s human capabilities approach. We adopt an
ethical individualism (each individual’s well-being is the criterion for development), but reject
methodological individualism (well-being of individuals depends mainly on their own efforts).
We argue that power-laden social relations determine outcomes in the multiple political arenas
which will open or close collective development pathways upon which the (non)realization of
people’s desired livelihood trajectories depend. In the second part, we develop an analytical
framework that allows us to interpret the emergence of such development pathways in rural territories,
which we conceptualize as complex socio-ecological systems with dispersed polycentric
governance. For the elaboration of this framework, we draw creatively on insights from the
sustainable livelihood framework, development sociology, critical institutionalism, social capital
theory, the legal pluralism perspective, the critique of participation and the Latin American
territorial rural development (DTR) approach. We also compare our proposal, which is more developed
from the perspective of non-governmental development actors, which the public policy
perspective of the DTR.