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Urban Ecosystems

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01-09-2013

Structuring institutional analysis for urban ecosystems: A key to sustainable urban forest management

Authors: Sarah K. Mincey, Miranda Hutten, Burnell C. Fischer, Tom P. Evans, Susan I. Stewart, Jessica M. Vogt

Published in: Urban Ecosystems | Issue 3/2013

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Abstract

A decline in urban forest structure and function in the United States jeopardizes the current focus on developing sustainable cities. A number of social dilemmas—for example, free-rider problems—restrict the sustainable production of ecosystem services and the stock of urban trees from which they flow. However, institutions, or the rules, norms, and strategies that affect human decision-making, resolve many such social dilemmas, and thus, institutional analysis is imperative for understanding urban forest management outcomes. Unfortunately, we find that the definition of institutions varies greatly across and within disciplines, and conceptual frameworks in urban forest management and urban ecosystems research often embed institutions as minor variables. Given the significance of institutional analysis to understanding sustainable rural resource management, this paper attempts to bring clarity to defining, conceptually framing, and operationally analyzing institutions in urban settings with a specific focus on sustainable urban forest management. We conclude that urban ecologists and urban forest management researchers could benefit from applying a working definition of institutions that uniquely defines rules, norms, and strategies, by recognizing the nested nature of operational, collective choice, and constitutional institutions, and by applying the Institutional Analysis and Development framework for analysis of urban social-ecological systems (SESs). Such work promises to spur the desired policy-based research agenda of urban forestry and urban ecology and provide cross-disciplinary fertilization of institutional analysis between rural SESs and urban ecosystems.

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According to Sanesi (query2011: 35), “The term ‘Community forestry’ (CF) includes all the forest management types that provide both economic and social goals, under the control (or property) of a local community or larger social group. CF management is often set in a larger ecological landscape with other land uses.” Urban forests, set in a landscape of variable land use, also include forest management that provides economic and social benefits which are largely controlled by the local community as the majority of the urban forest is privately owned (Clark et al. 1997).

It is important to emphasize here that institutions have been studied in urban areas in general; the urban planning and smart-growth literature emphasize policy solutions, such as zoning and urban growth boundaries, as tools for sustainable development (see Duany et al. 2009). Our point is that in-depth institutional analysis is underutilized and seldom linked to understanding ecological outcomes in research framed as “urban ecosystem” or “urban forest management research,” in particular.

This does not mean that the IAD framework cannot address rapidly changing circumstances. The framework assumes that the action situation is a holon, “[a] nested subassembly of part-whole units in complex adaptive systems” (Ostrom 2005: 11). Holons cannot be reduced to stand alone, but can be dissected for analysis to composite holons that allow for explanations at multiple levels and various spatial and temporal scales. Thus, in a rapidly changing environment for which urban systems are often characterized, iterative analyses may be required, particularly as outcomes may quickly influence and change the exogenous variables that must be fixed to determine outcomes.

As presented in the figures, the action situations produce optimal outcomes, however, we outline textually the potential for sub-optimal outcomes given theoretical disconnects between exogenous rules and actual components of the action situations.

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Title: Structuring institutional analysis for urban ecosystems: A key to sustainable urban forest management
Authors: Sarah K. Mincey
Miranda Hutten
Burnell C. Fischer
Tom P. Evans
Susan I. Stewart
Jessica M. Vogt
Publication date: 01-09-2013
Publisher: Springer US
Published in: Urban Ecosystems / Issue 3/2013
Print ISSN: 1083-8155
Electronic ISSN: 1573-1642
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-013-0286-3

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