Presentation at 3rd GRF One Health Summit 2015 Plenary V: Social Challenges and Opportunities for Effective One Health Governance Andreas RECHKEMMER, Professor and American Humane Endowed Chair, University of Denver, Denver, USA

1. One Health Governance
and the Social Sciences:
Enhancing coherence, accountability
and effectiveness
Andreas Rechkemmer
GRF One Health Summit 2015

2. At the 3rd
OHS…

3. Sustainable Development is all about the coupled resilience
and well-being of social-ecological systems.
Well, One Health is, too!

4. Sustainable Development (as well as Social
Development, Human Well-being, and Environmental
Sustainability) can only be achieved if the social-
ecological system as such is resilient (and hence
adaptive).
One Health can play a crucial “bridging role”…

5. What is largely missing:
- a deeper reflection on human-animal connections
- a more profound ethical dimension
- a focus on behaviors, norms, values, attitudes
- cultural and spiritual aspects
- a genuine social development component

6. Especially, the dimension of justice needs to be strengthened.
One Health as a matter of Justice.
Social Justice. Environmental Justice.
Animal Rights. Ecological well-being.
> “Social-Ecological Justice”

7. Also…

8. What is “One Health”?
A conceptual framework?
A paradigm?
A discourse?
A movement?
A global program?
An institution?

9. The quest for
OH governance

10. Definitions:
Governance
gov·ern·ance / g v rn ns/• n.ˈ ə ə ə – “the action or manner of governing” (The
Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English 2009)
“any attempt to control or manage any known object” (Alan Hunt, Gary
Wickham: Foucault and law: towards a sociology of law as
governance, 1994)
“the exercise of political, economic and administrative authority to
manage a nation's affairs. It is the complex mechanisms, processes and
institutions through which citizens and groups articulate their interests,
exercise their legal rights and obligations, and mediate their differences”
(UNDP)

11. Definitions: Global
Governance
Global governance … is the political interaction of transnational actors aimed at
solving problems that affect more than one state or region when there is no
power of enforcing compliance. en.wikipedia.org
A set of codified rules and regulations of transnational scope, and the collection of
authority relationships that manage, monitor or enforce said rules. Note that
this definition encompasses a variety of arrangements, including “hard law”
treaties, “soft law” declarations, private orders, and international governmental
organizations. DanielW. Drezner (Foreign Policy)
The complex of formal and informal institutions, mechanisms, relationships and
processes between and among states, markets, citizens and organizations,
both inter- and non-governmental, through which collective interests on the
global plane are articulated, rights and obligations are established, and
differences are mediated. ThomasWeiss

12. Governance:Themes & Criteria
as they apply to the OH context
(© by Earth System Governance Project)
 Architecture
 Governance complexes
 Agency
 Non-state as well as state actors
 Adaptiveness
 Governance dynamics
 Accountability
 Who answers to whom?
 Access/allocation
 Who gets what?

13. Crosscutting Themes:
themes that are crucial for the study of each analytical problem
but also for the integrated understanding of OH governance
These four themes are:
the role of power;
the role of knowledge;
the role of norms;
and the role of scale.

14. OH Governance
Real Governance provides a broader umbrella than nation-centered
politics and/or institutions:
The roles of knowledge, culture, norms, habits etc.
Vertical & horizontal interplay
Dynamics of multi-level governance
Multi-actor focused
Interaction of actors, their sometimes conflicting objectives, and the
instruments chosen to steer processes within a particular area.
Institutions are a central component, as are the patterns of interaction
between actors and the multilevel institutional setting, creating complex
relations between structure and agency.
Towards a wide and open concept of ‘institution’.

15. After Per Olsson,
Stockholm Resilience Centre
Adaptive Governance
e.g. Ecosystem
management
Adaptive co-
management
Adaptive
governance
Topical
approach
Co-management and
adaptive management
Multi-level
governance

16. “Adaptive governance systems often self-organize as social networks
with teams and actor groups that draw on various knowledge
systems and experiences for the development of a common
understanding and policies.The emergence of “bridging organizations”
seem to lower the costs of collaboration and conflict resolution, and
enabling legislation and governmental policies can support self-
organization while framing creativity for adaptive co-management
efforts.”
STOCKHOLM RESILIENCE CENTER

17. Thank you!