Patricia and Daniele's blog for Tuesday morning of the Adaptive Governance course

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Blog-post - 17th march 2015 - Patricia Villarrubia and Daniele Crimella
Presentations of the case studies and discussion - morning group
After the groups compiled their case study governance analysis, we had a presentation from 3 of the
groups and a discussion afterwards, trying to understand generalizability, similarities and differences
between the different case studies. We’ll first go through a brief recap of the presentations, and then
reflect on some of the main discussion points.
Group 1: Deforestation and Forest Fire in the Amazon. By Carl Samuelsson and Patricia Villarrubia.
Group 2: . By Kavita Oheme, Linn Järnberg and Linnea Joandi
Group 3: Changing Landscapes in the Balinese Rice Farming System. By Noah Linder and Daniele
Crimella
Group 1: Deforestation and Forest Fire in the Amazon
Introduction
The aim of this case study was to identify the mismatches between different existing governance system,
both at the national level and between the national and lower levels, due to an institutional incapacity to
deal with the coupled problems of deforestation and forest fires.
The Amazon cover an area about of 5 million Km2 and encompasses nine countries (Venezuela, Ecuador,
Bolivia, Brazil and Colombia, etc), so different governance systems are being applying to this area
depending in which part of the Amazon we talk about. This project focused on the Brazilian Legal
Amazon (BLA) because it comprises a majority of the Amazon region and most academic literature on
governance of the Amazon discuss it from a Brazilian. As a remarkable fact to understand the BLA
system it must be point it out that by 2012 fire and deforestation (including here both natural and human-
induced) have cleared 20% of the original extent of the BLA.
Social-Ecological stressors:

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Deforestation: conversion of pristine forest leading to extensification and intensification of agricultural
practices. In case of Brazilian´s government the interest of exploiting and land-change use are not only for
agricultural purposes, but also for mining and hydroelectric projects that are leading to the clearing the
BLA. However, nowadays land conversion policies have been mixed with a greater interest for
conservation It must be highlighted that between 2004 and 2011 deforestation rates fell by 77% between.
Regarding the fires, slash-and-burn techniques are intentionally used for converting forest to farmland by
burning certain areas. It is subsistence agriculture that typically uses little technology.
During the drought of 2005, this led to devastating outcomes as over 300,000 hectares.
Both deforestation and fires as considered as
independent regimes within this case study, because
even though both regimes are very connected to
each other they connect differently with the system
of the BLA.

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Explanation of the CLD:
● The effect of the Global Climate Change leads to an increase on the temperatures at a regional
level in the BLA, fact has been proven to promote droughts → increase in the deforestation→
decrease in the amount of trees and forest cover leading to climate changes at regional scale.
● Furthermore, both deforestation and fires are not only human-induced but natural as well, they
see this fact more as a channel than a variable/driver
● Remarkable to mention, that fires promote deforestation but also deforestation will increase the
risk of fire spreading promoting then fires.
● The Amazon has been seen a sink of CO2, but due to the great persistante and extension of fires,
nowadays the Amazon is also consider as a CO2 emission that effect, with a delay, contributing
with GCC
● Looking at governance arena, due to a great International demands for agricultural products
theres is an increase in the federal land cover legislation that affects differently to landholders. In
this case the dotted line means that there are different kinds of landholders (very large, large and
small landholders). Brazilian policies promotes very large and large landholders, due to they are
food producers to export.
● Following changes in the land use for Agriculture → deforestation
● In times of crisis the Federal government connect to researchers but there are no clear sign of
them working permanently with researcher and also it is not clear how NGOs are affecting the
system.

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Actors and Institutions
● Federal, regional and municipal
governments
● Scientists (regional network)
● Landholders - small-scale and large-
scale
● Local communities
● Global market
● Agricultural expansion policies
● Deforestation control
● Forest management alliances
● Extractive reserves
● Concessions
● Green markets
With the figure above they wanted to show how diverse the conditions are within different parts of the
BLA. The policies that work for smallholders and large landholders are not the same. Furthermore, is
important to notice that in this figure the red areas correlate well with the ones most affected by
deforestation, command-and-control actually quite useful. However, policies are getting more limited
● Top-down policies - agricultural expansion policies and deforestation control in opposition
● Extractive reserves - bottom-up but officially recognized. Cannot compete with agricultural
expansion
● Local communities organize themselves in alliances
Institutional mismatches
● “Problem of fit”
- Reserves affected by exogenous activities

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● Pollutants from deforestation
● Spread of uncontrolled fires
● Natural catastrophes
- Institutions need to be aligned with each other
● Ambiguous federal policies
- Encouraging growth of agricultural export
- Top-down deforestation control
● Effective towards large-scale landholders (44% of land area)
● Small-scale landholders require actor-tailored approaches
● Some vertical links exist
- But not all the way from government to local communities...
The Institutions need to be aligned. Reserve policies are good on paper, but if they don’t fit in the larger
institutional scale it’s impact is limited. Furthermore, policies work against each other on the federal scale
- some top-down policies are effective in curbing deforestation while other encourage it and work against
reserves etc.
Potential for Adaptive Governance
During 2005 fires, during time crises there was vertical links between politics and academia to create a
situation room with researchers and state representatives giving daily updates. Nested features in times of
crisis - but we need AG to avoid crisis. Local communities have to rely on horizontal links to expand, but
also to put pressure on politicians. Furthermore, link between researchers and communities - could be
better with monitoring. there is also a Potential for BO - many links already made but does not form
coherent network
Conclusions:
- In times of crisis, governance works, but not constantly
- The fact that during the last years deforestation have been controlled and stabilized gives the
feeling to governance that there is no need to transform their system to and adaptive system.

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- However, they argue that AG approach will be need towards the uncertainty of future drivers like
Climate Change.
DISCUSSION!
- Smallholders are part of the local communities? There were no evidence in the literature, and the
border between them is unclear, and will depend on the focus of the study.
- When you talk about communities, are you referring only to Indigenous communities perhaps? No,
that’s would be very narrow, even though some studies on them have been done with indigenous
communities.
- The used framework to classify institutions, neat, but does it capture all institutions? there was any left
out? Maybe the more traditional ones? Like local/indigenous communities that do some management?
Didn’t really come across it! There are forest management groups, but their role within the system is
not very clear, but they speculate that there are more.
- And what about the international institutions? have you consider green markets as institution? Yes,
green markets have been consider as institution like fair trade, payment for ES, etc...
- What about global climate change policies? Global deforestation policies?
- Defining institution vs actor? E.g. the global market? Global market can be seen as actor when they are
consumers, enterprise and international demand while labelling, etc... and an institution would be
when they set rules for certification, for example.
- Blurred definition of institution vs actors, also Institution: sets of rules, norms, procedure that shape the
behaviour of people; and actors, that are entities that can make decisions. Actors are influenced by
institutions and shape them at the same time, e.g. WTO set of rules, and is also the organization who
administer it, so both things can be both at once, so it’s important to be clear and define properly.
- Fires, they hypothesize that are maybe hard to spread in the moist area of rainforest? There’s higher
fires close to roads and depends on forest density, intentional fires closer to more accessible areas,
strategical decision. Natural forest fires cycle? Revitalise the forest? Could it be beneficial? Is it a
beneficial thing rather than stressor? In the rainforest fires may not have this important role, we could
assume that in this system theres no such role, most of the biomass is above the ground
Group 2: Human African Trypanosomiasis in sub-Saharan Africa
Introduction
African Trypanosomiasis, also known as "sleeping sickness” and has an epidemic character affecting
nowadays up to 36 countries. It is caused by caused by parasites and transmitted by the tsetse fly
(Glossina species). There are estimated 30 000 cases/year, mainly poor people in rural areas in sub-
Saharan Africa. In fact it is a curable disease, but there are many deaths/year due to poor availability and
affordability of drugs. Thus is classified as neglected disease and they are also overlock by government
and companies
Stressors
“Stressors are seen as social, political, economic, biophysical and ecological drivers that create change in
the SES in terms of contributing to HAT outbreaks. ”:
● Economic performance

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● Social unrest
● Other prioritized diseases
● Cattle as livelihood
● Land & water use change
● Population density
● Famine
● Poverty
● Climate change variability
● There is a prevailing of diseases decrease when there is an availability of public health. More people
get ill when there is less availability for treatment.
● When the country is wealth more public health will affect the transmission rates, decreasing it.
● War and social unrest, migration and movement of livestock affect the spread of the disease, also
increasing transmission rates of the die.
● Relationship people-cattle, increase rate of cattle market will lead to higher levels of cattle affected
by the disease. This interactions will also influence the vegetation cover. Vegetation can be seen as a
vector, so more vegetation will affect the transmission rate.
● Water land use, more vegetation, more transmission rate
● More density of population more transmission rate. Famine affect also to the immune system. Easier
to transmit the disease.
● Impact of availability of drugs, more drugs available for people will lead to less people affected.
● Poverty means less money for acquiring drugs, this will also influence the private sector and the
production of drugs will change because the will see situation as non-profitable for them.
● Climate variability and change, depends on the country itself, uncertain

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Key actors
● International level: cooperation trying to improve the state of the disease, coordinating people in
case of outbreak. The WHO, supporting national government in disease control, coordinate
research and action in case of outbreak. Also, the pharmaceuticals companies, participate both at
a national and at international level.
● National level: government. They decide expenditures, budgetary priorities.
● Local: local population, livelihood option, land use change.
Institutions
Are defined as as a set of agreed upon, contextual norms and rules existing at different scales. they
divided this into two different groups:
● Health system: International, national and local.
- On a national scale the national government regulates what health policies to implement, what
infrastructure to prioritize (e.g. making sure hospitals are built, roads for easy distribution of
drugs etc.) and general economic distribution (e.g. budgetary constraints for health
ministries).The decentralization of the health service is another factor contributing to the
difficulty of initiating and governing control strategies of the disease
- On the local scale there is limited access to medicine, both due to the lack of affordability, e.g.
economical assets, and availability reasons. There is also scepticism against western medicine
where the effectiveness of the drugs sometimes is questioned
● Social contract of public and private sector: The research and development of drugs are
currently in the hands of the market. This social contract describes how the public sector has
distributed the responsibility of the drug development to the private sector, i.e. the pharmaceutical
industry. This is a global solution that tends to work in countries where purchasing power is high,
providing incentives for pharmaceutical companies to develop a certain drug.This fails in cases
where solvency is lacking, such as in the case in HAT-affected SSA countries. Pharmaceutical
companies can still develop medicines for neglected diseases when there are actors with
purchasing power demanding a solution e.g. the case of malaria medicine development because
of western travellers. Even though there is availability of a drug it is still not affordable to all.
Conclusions:
● Lack of governance within and across scales
-Lack of state capacity among governments
-Market-based drug development ill-suited in this context
-Lack of supernetwork coordinating
-Lack of resources and political will at national and international level
● Transformation needed
-Initiative by Médicins sans frontières. e.g. Doctors without borders that act to overcome limits to
the “social contract”.
● Impacts of climate change, tourism, political instability and economic development remains
unclear

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Discussion points proposed by the group:
- Role of tourism? Availability and affordability of drugs?
- Potential of the systems transformative capacity?
- Lack of governance is a stressors itself or an institutional problem?
- Is decentralisation and centralisation more suitable for governance of this system?
DISCUSSION!
- What is the meaning of the yellow boxes in the CLD? The yellow boxes are drivers and white
are the factors/variables affecting the transmission rate.
- Locals don’t trust in western medicine, is there any traditional medication in place? Not known,
there is scepticism, locals´ way of dealing with the disease is unknown and maybe lacking in the
literature, there must be some strategies in place. In there was a period when the situation was
better regarding the prevention programs were helping and improving the situation. For example,
the countryside was decentralized and every clinic was giving the same info, which has to been
proven to be better to legitimate the system.
- Political conflicts like corruption are affecting the government, and foreign help usually tries to
get there through e.g. NGOs, but, do the aid arrives? Not read about it, unclear, if the money is
distributed in other sectors, then there was no money for drugs.
- Were local traditional institutions in place for disease control? And how does that relate to the
decentralisation advocated by AG? And if theres no concerted action and top down policies? The
scepticism is important, even if not the drugs, you can act on other parts of the system that are
less impacting people scepticism. The state was stronger during colonialism actually, so
centralised national government was better dealing with the problem.
- Coordination is the key, it also seen in other diseases, ebola for example, was very top-down but
well coordinated. E.g. the role of the WHO in coordinating actors as a supranational legitimate
body.
- Concept of supernetworks connecting other networks, potential for emergence of this body to
coordinate action of different actors and different scales (government, NGOs, mission and
communities).
- The example of ebola vs sleeping sickness? Ebola transmitted between people, and the sleeping
sick between flies & people so there are difference in transmission rate. Also, being about
international security, the country that is affected is left to deal with it. Sleeping sickness is also
not highly deadly.
- With global warming is there a likelihood of diseases spreading in western countries? And
relating to tourism could that be a vector of transmission? There is not likely and spread of the
illness due to physical barriers that impede the spreading northward, for example the sahara.
Group 3: Changing Landscapes in the Balinese Rice Farming System
Introduction

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The third groups analysed the changing cultural landscape in the rice farming system in the island of Bali,
Indonesia. Bali has a territory slightly smaller than the area of Stockholms län, but with twice as many
inhabitants (more than 4 200 000). A salient characteristic is that is the only Indonesian island having
Hinduism as the main religion, the rest of the country is mainly Muslim.
The rice farming landscape is characterized by the subak system of traditional water management, truly
incarnating the Tri Hita Karana philosophy (integrating, spiritual, environmental and social realms). This
model has been compared to the SES model of economy staying within the boundaries of society, itself
staying within the boundaries of the planet.
The subak system, articulates in taking communally agreed decisions in a democratic fashion between the
farmers during meetings held at the water temples, that assume both a functional role (water allocation to
the terraces) and religious spiritual one (celebrations, divination).
Main stressors
Different events have influenced this system through time, especially from the 1960’s. The main events
happening on different scales have been visualized in the timeline graph (see figure). It is important to
stress the repercussions of large scale events (e.g. the green revolution) on a local scale (e.g. introduction
of pesticides, fertilizers etc.)

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From this, the main stressors to the system were identified as:
● The «scars» of agricultural modernization
● Mass tourism expansion
● Erosion of traditional values, especially in young generations
● Immigration
● Livelihoods and land use change conflicts
● Climate change
Actors and institutions
At the same time, the main actors on different scales were identified, and it’s been stressed that all these
actors have different interests in the system, sometimes conflicting. They are:
● Local/micro scale
○ Individual rice farmers, households
○ Other locals
○ Individual tourists
● Focal/meso scale
○ Subak members
○ Land owners
○ Industries competing for space
● Regional/global/macro scale
○ Indonesian National Government
○ Bali provincial government and the Indonesian national government
○ UNESCO
The main institutions recognised are the subaks and the Tri Hita Karana.
● The first are defined as socio-religious societies for irrigation water management, with a defined
set of formal and informal rules and norms decided collectively at the water temple meetings.
Water temples are places where social relationships are built, informal agreements reached, and
disputes solved.
● The second is a philosophy defining the traditional foundation for human wellbeing in its social,
spiritual and environmental aspects. It guides all the other aspects of life for a sustainable living.
Governance problems
Problems identified in the governance are:
● Problem of fit: observed when the government tried to impose a new water management system
previously tested in other parts of the country, in a one-size-fits-all manner. This policy failed as
it wasn’t fitting in the scale of the local social-ecological system, and it wasn’t taking into
account the already well-functioning co-management system of the subaks. The “too big puzzle
piece” from the government couldn’t fit in the “SE-puzzle” of Bali.

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● Problem with social networks: mainly driven by economic diversification and mass tourism, a
phenomenon of social networks fragmentation can occur. Cascading effects are a diversification
of livelihoods with famers turning away to other activities (especially young), and a weakened
participation in the subaks, leading to conflict over resource use, weakened capacity for collective
action and increased inequality.
Conclusion
Concluding, rice farming in Bali is currently under stress from drivers at different scales, agricultural
modernization, tourism and land use change just to mention a few. Governance has to shift towards fitting
the system better to strengthen its resilience, in the spirit of the Tri Hita Karana.
DISCUSSION!
● The differentiation of problem of fit defined as the mismatch between the governance and the
ecological system is not really clear in the example, but in general there seems to be unclarities
about the problem of fit. The important is to clearly define what you mean with it, reference it,
and stick to that definition.
● It’s been pointed out the importance of defining formal and informal institutions for the sake of
clarity.
● Having a better governance system is not going to solve the challenges of this system but it’s
going to be a platform for addressing them, including them in the system and addressing them
effectively.
● Modernization is regarded as a bad thing but usually there are good things to it, in this case only
the negative effects of the green revolution were taken into account as modernization.
The Grand Finale: Reflections on the main discussion points
Drawing the conclusions, it can be very useful to compare the three cases, trying to understand
similarities and differences between them, and trying to understand their generalizability.
We identified Key Messages, then contextualised in the different case studies:
1. An international regime goes across national borders, but focuses on a single issue.
In the Bali case, there is no international issue, the problem is mainly internal to the island or at
most national. Even if there is an intervention by an international organization, this is mainly an
addition to the system. Instead, in the Amazon and sleeping sickness cases seem to have a regime
in place to address the issue with the right set of rules, disputes this, the issue seem not to be
addressed effectively.
2. The lack of a regime could be the cause of the difficulty in addressing an issue: the idea of a
non-regime.
There seems to be a neglect from higher institutional levels in the African case, whereas there’s
an “intrusion” in the system in the other two cases. Having some governance in the system at the
right scale is crucial for the emergence of Adaptive Governance.

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3. It is crucial to take into account who are the winners and the losers in the system, at
different times, It could be more useful in fact to frame them as users of different benefits at
different times.
In the Amazon and Bali cases the winners seem to be larger groups of people, in general. E.g.
with the benefits of carbon sequestration, or the service of drinking water to the city of Sao Paulo,
or again the controversial soya products demanded in Europe but outsourced in Brazilian land. At
the same time this point clearly at whom are the losers of the system at different times. So the
matter was really, are the beneficiaries really able to influence the rules over resource use at all
times? E.g sleeping sickness affected people have a say in the systems governance?
4. Different SES may need different management strategies: adaptation or transformation?
The Bali case seems to be in need of an adaptation rather than an actual transformation, as
strengthening the system in place (the subak) could be a good strategy to improve water
management. Instead, the amazon and the sleeping sickness cases would most probably need to
transform. In Africa, with better information flows and implementation of public private
partnerships for better access to drugs. In the amazon a land use change transformational process
could be the key.
5. It is difficult to implement Adaptive Governance if good governance is not in place.
Principles of good governance are: equity, justice, transparency, participation. This is a -most
probably- necessary starting base for the emergence of Adaptive governance. It would be hard to
have Adaptive governance implemented from a dictatorship, for instance. Governance for
sustainability is likely assume the principles of good governance to emerge.