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A taxonomy of collaborative governance: a guide to understanding the diversity of international and domestic conservation accords

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Abstract

Partially in response to the increasing complexity of governance structures in the international environmental arena, international scholars have adopted a distinction between “Type 1” and “Type 2” international agreements. The former refer to agreements between governments, whereas the latter refer to agreements between governments and nonstate actors. While useful, this distinction offers only a partial taxonomy of the diversity of collaborative governance, and fails to incorporate “Type 3” dynamics among nonstate actors. As an initial attempt at sorting out the wide array of collaborative governance structures both domestically and across international borders, we propose a 3 × 3 matrix based on two typologies, one institutional (governmental, collaborative, nonstate), the other geopolitical (domestic, transborder, interstate/transnational). The result is a classification system of nine types of both domestic and international governance. In addition to identifying fundamental differences among the myriad forms of governance, the matrix reveals how the “softening of sovereignty” occurs in practice.

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Notes

  1. Other typologies have been developed; for a useful historical approach to the “typology of conceptual developments in research on environmental governance,” see Davidson and Frickel (2004).

  2. For a broad overview and insightful critique of the WSSD, see Wapner (2003).

  3. For an examination of these partnerships, see Andonova and Levy (2003, p. 23) who “were able to process information systematically on 231 partnerships” based on information gathered from the WSSD website. For the current listing, see http://webapps01.un.org/dsd/partnerships/public/partnerships/title_all_1.html. Since the Summit, scholars have conducted extensive analytical treatments of the Type I–Type II distinction; in particular, see Hooghe and Marks (2003).

  4. In the literature on the WSSD, it is most common to see Roman numerals used in distinguishing between “Type I” and “Type II” agreements.

  5. Notably, the Type II partnerships listed in the CSD database include a substantial numbers of partnerships between nonstate actors—just the kind of arrangements that we are explicitly distinguishing through the proposed matrix.

  6. To an extent, our interests can be seen as part of a resurgence, or at least continuance, of analyses of regime design (Andresen and Hey 2005; Lejano 2006).

  7. We discovered this book chapter after we had developed our matrix. Also see the companion book chapter by Clark (2000) that applies the matrix to the international environmental arena.

  8. We use the term “institutional” with deference if not fealty to Ostrom’s characterization of institutions as “the prescriptions that humans use to organize all forms of repetitive and structured interactions” and North’s (1990, p. 3) conceptualization of institutions as “the humanly devised constraints that shape human interaction.” Both would consider the three levels of institutional responses to biodiversity loss outlined here as but a small sampling of the various types of institutions, others of which include “conventions, codes of conduct, and norms of behavior to statute law, and common law, and contracts between individuals” (North 1990, p. 6).

  9. Note that both Types 1 and 2 usually but not always involve state supported international institutions such as secretariats, international funding or other intergovernmental environmental governance agencies.

  10. Beyond interstate, transnational, and transborder, a few additional related monikers that we chose not to use include transgovernmental, cross-border, and transboundary. Transgovernmental has been defined as applying “when we relax the realist assumption that states act coherently as units” (Keohane and Nye 2001, p. 21). Cross-border and transboundary are largely synonymous to transborder, the latter of which we somewhat arbitrarily prefer—although note that while transboundary is the favored term in the international conservation literature, it is often used to apply to entirely domestic subjects such as cooperation between different land management agencies in the U.S. or individual states in Australia (Kelson and Lielieholm 1999; see also the edited volume by Knight and Landres 1998).

  11. See http://www.saveourenvironment.org.

  12. Originally chartered in 1948 as the International Union for the Protection of Nature, the organization was renamed the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources in 1956. When the name changed again in 1988 to the World Conservation Union, it kept its old acronym. Consequently, all forms of work produced by the world’s most extensive conservation organization is stamped with the non-sequitur “World Conservation Union (IUCN).”

  13. See IUCN (2004) for the most updated version of the red lists. The IUCN also has six principal commissions covering protected areas, species survival, environmental law, ecosystem management, education and communication, and environmental, economic and social policy (WCPA 2000).

  14. See http://www.climatenetwork.org.

  15. See http://www.gbf.ch.

  16. Although Karkkainen writes that a “few scholars” have adopted this viewpoint, our impression of the literature is that many if not most would generally agree.

  17. For example, an insightful comparative analysis of various Regional Seas Programs can be found in Lejano (2006).

  18. Although some commentators incorporate the private sector as part of civil society (see Fukuyama 1995; Speth and Haas 2006), we follow the common practice of distinguishing between the two. We also follow the admittedly clumsy practice of using “private sector” to refer exclusively to business interests, while the generic phrase “private actors” refers to both civil society and the private sector.

  19. In particular, we point to a recent article by Agrawal and Lemos (2007) who offer an insightful framework of different forms of “multi-partner governance” that distinguishes between civil society (what they call “NGOs and communities”) and the private sector. In their model, the authors identify four types of hybrid governance: (1) co-governance between state agencies and communities, (2) public-private partnerships between state agencies and businesses, (3) social-private partnerships between businesses and civil society, and (4) multipartner governance incorporating actors from all three arenas. We hope in future work to incorporate this perspective with our classification matrix.

  20. For a close examination of the history of ISO in the environmental arena, see Roht-Arriaza (1995) While the development of ISO 14000 standards is typically treated as an interaction between governments and industry, civil society actors have played a role in the development of ISO 14000 (Ogilvie 2006).

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Correspondence to Charles C. Chester.

Appendix A: North American transborder conservation efforts (Types 1B, 2B & 3B)

Much of the information in this appendix is summarized from Harris et al. (2001). It is not comprehensive, particularly in as much as it does not include numerous Canada/U.S. watershed initiatives that touch on biodiversity issues (Legault et al. 2000), and it covers only those transborder conservation efforts within North America (i.e., only those efforts among Canada, the U.S., and Mexico—and not those between Mexico and its Central American neighbors or between North American countries and other states, such as the proposed “Beringia International Park” between Russia and the U.S. (Westing 1993; see also http://www.nps.gov/akso/beringia/index.htm).

Appendix A: North American transborder conservation efforts (Types 1B, 2B & 3B)

Conservation initiative

    Type 1B: Governmental-transborder

        International Porcupine Caribou Board (Canada/U.S.)

        Klondike Goldrush International Historic Park (Canada/U.S.)

        Puget Sound-Georgia Basin International Task Force (Canada/U.S.)

        Skagit Environmental Endowment Commission (Canada/U.S.)

        Okanagan Basin Technical Working Group (Canada/U.S.)

        Okanagan Technical Advisory Committee (Canada/U.S.)

        Upper Columbia Basin International Task Force (Canada/U.S.)

        Consultative group on the Garrison Diversion Project (Canada/U.S.)

        International Lake of the Woods Control Board (Canada/U.S.)

        International Rainy Lake Board of Control (Canada/U.S.)

        International Rainy River Water Pollution Board (Canada/U.S.)

        Gulf of Maine Council for the Marine Environment (Canada/U.S.)

    Type 2B: Collaborative-transborder

        Columbia River Transboundary Gas Group (Canada/U.S.)

        International Recovery Team for the Kootenai River White Sturgeon

        Glacier/Waterton International Peace Park (Canada/U.S.)

        Rainy Lake and Namakan Reservoir Water Level International Steering Committee (Canada/U.S.)

        Lake Champlain Basin Program (Canada/U.S.)

        Global Program of Action Coalition for the Gulf of Maine (Canada/U.S.)

        Bay of Fundy Ecosystem Partnership (Canada/U.S.)

        Tijuana River Watershed Project (U.S./Mexico)

        International Sonoran Desert Alliance (U.S./Mexico)

        San Pedro Binational Initiative (U.S./Mexico)

        Upper San Pedro River Basin Issue Team (U.S./Mexico)

        El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro historical trail (U.S./Mexico)

         “Letter of Intent” pilot project: Big Bend/Cañon de Santa Elena/Maderas del Carmen (U.S./Mexico)

        Great Plains Partnership (Canada/U.S./Mexico)

    Type 3B: Civil society-transborder

        Cascades International Alliance (Canada/U.S.)

        Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Canada/U.S.)

        Great Lakes United (Canada/U.S.)

        Algonquin to Adirondacks Conservation Strategy (Canada/U.S.)

        Task Force Atlantis (Canada/U.S.)

        International Sonoran Desert Alliance (ISDA)

        Sky Island Alliance/Ski Island Wildlands Network (U.S./Mexico)

        Rio Grande/Rio Bravo Basin Coalition (U.S./Mexico)

        Laguna Madre Binational Initiative (U.S./Mexico)

        Baja to Bering Sea Initiative (Canada/U.S./Mexico)

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Chester, C.C., Moomaw, W.R. A taxonomy of collaborative governance: a guide to understanding the diversity of international and domestic conservation accords. Int Environ Agreements 8, 187–206 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-008-9073-7

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