Chapter 6: Discussion and conclusions. Meanings, robustness and institutional design
6.5 Conclusions
The research contained in this thesis is concerned with managing change in social-ecological systems, in particular in relation to resources, like Tokai, that are managed in the public interest.
I postulated that behavioural response to change is shaped by anticipated and realised benefits and fundamentally by the meanings individuals and groups of stakeholders attach to those benefits. When change involves a reordering of meanings it also restructures the distribution of benefits. Some stand to gain while others lose and this directs stakeholder support or resistance to the change. Cilliers (2006) suggests that for complex systems to persist they must be able to change slowly, in other words they should be robust (Anderies et al. 2004). With these ideas as foundation, I adapted a framework developed by Anderies et al. (2004) to illustrate this conception of robustness and response to change in a social-ecological system. This positioned me to test the propositions that (1) stakeholder preference for certain benefits and their behaviour is fundamentally directed by meanings and (2) that insights around meanings and behaviours and their influence on the formulation of public infrastructure can be applied to design and direct institutions to foster robustness and thereby to also anticipate and engage change strategically. But, to do so requires collective reflection and relationships that allow appreciation for diverse meanings and sustain a willingness to order meanings for the common good. It requires a common identity.
Relational connectedness
Shared meanings
Low
Low High
High
An interpretive philosophy, focused on improving understanding, directed my methodological approach and I used narrative techniques in interviews which enabled me to elicit stakeholder expressions relating to meanings, benefits and behaviours. The Tokai case study facilitated collection of data that spanned a sufficient period of time to detect and describe slow, incremental change during an era of plantation forestry in Tokai as well as disruptive change brought about by a fundamental and abrupt prioritisation of biodiversity meanings. I conclude that the Tokai example was appropriate for the study and that it allows consideration of implications for other social-ecological systems founded on shared resources.
The framework I developed (Chapter 2) was helpful in illustrating the role and importance of meanings in how resource users perceive benefits and in shaping behaviours. Application of the framework also exposed issues of institutional design. The findings emphasised need for a meaning-oriented engagement process to promote shared understanding among stakeholders of new contexts, appreciating a basket of meanings and, acceptance that certain sets of meanings may not enjoy priority as before. The study shows that that when new meanings direct change in the public infrastructure, participatory processes should facilitate and encourage collective reflection on emerging contexts, meanings, benefits and new patterns of benefit distribution and access. It is through such reflection that co-evolution becomes possible thereby enhancing system robustness. And, because new meanings emerge and prioritisation changes continually, and particularly because sometimes these changes occur under conditions that cause stakeholder uncertainty, enduring structures and processes are required to facilitate gradual change and support robustness. The study shows that robustness is also influenced by perception of fairness (procedural and distributive justice) of the process whereby meanings are elicited and reordered and benefits distributed. I conclude that the framework is potentially useful to both managers and users when incorporated into adaptive management. Users can frame their dialogue with the agency in terms of meanings, benefits and context and the agency can use the framework to design engagement processes that promote perceptions of justice in the negotiation and prioritisation of context and meanings and that enhance the credibility of technical interventions (Ludwig 2001). The framework can also be helpful in directing stakeholder attention to meanings and changes that may appear to be remote from the SES and scale of interest, so as to encourage strategic anticipation of change. This is important for being purposeful when planning to influence the direction of change with the aim of enhancing robustness of the SES (Walker et al. 2004).
Importantly, the framework illustrates how meanings and meaning prioritisation influence the formulation of public infrastructure. This contrasts with other studies (with some exceptions, for example see Zinn & Manfredo 1998) that have focussed on values, collective action and behaviours as responses to rules and less as a purposeful input into the process of deriving regulatory instruments. For example game theory and theory of community show the influence of community action but they tend to focus on response to rules and give less attention to normative inputs into behaviours in relation to change or in relation to the processes that generate the rules of the ‘game’ (Lejano & de Castro 2014). Similarly, much of the integration of social change aspects into resilience thinking has regarded normative aspects such as cultural values, agency, human purposefulness and tough trade-offs among stakeholders as being somewhat external to, and mostly as outcomes of, SES dynamics (Davidson 2010; Cote &
Nightingale 2012). I show in this thesis how meanings and values are integral in the generation and mediation of support for institutions, and therefore are not merely reactionary responses to institutional rules and policies.
Despite its strengths and usefulness in relation to the study propositions, the framework I developed in Chapter 2 is not sufficiently explicit about how agencies can sustain robustness during cycles of system growth, collapse and reorganisation. I show that the interpretation based on the framework developed in Chapter 2 can be enhanced by a framework developed by Nkhata et al. (2008). By applying the Nkhata et al. (2008) framework I was able to generate an interpretation to indicate that robustness can be sustained by constructing and fostering relational capital and relational connectedness through a change process and that system collapse can be mitigated even when robustness becomes vulnerable in the face of disruptive change in meaning prioritisation. The combination of the two frameworks in addition allowed for the construction of future scenarios for when the system recovers from a state characterised by weak relational capital and reduced robustness, creating opportunities for strategic response to reconstructing social capital required to sustain robustness. Finally, the study exposed a shortcoming in the initial interpretation by indicating that it is necessary for social capital (and thereby robustness) to be constructed within the context of a collective identity (Mosimane 2012). I suggest that high levels of relational connectedness encourage stakeholders to identify with and develop a sense of belonging to the collective and commitment to the ordering of meanings held by the collective. Only then will stakeholders be motivated to align their behaviours with the meanings and values of the collective. Together, the three frameworks enabled development of deeper insights into user behaviour within the context of the findings of the study.
The study illustrates that meanings are persistent and strongly influence how stakeholders respond to change. Consequently, changing the prioritisation of meanings can elicit behavioural responses that range between disruptive and supportive. This positions meanings as an important dimension of adaptive management. Where stakeholders hold shared meanings and appreciate the ordering of those meanings they relate to each other and align behaviours to be consistent with their shared meanings. A collective identity is established that reinforces relational connectedness and the meanings shared and prioritised by the collective. When adaptive management for shared resources gives explicit attention to meaning prioritisation and relational connectedness the social-ecological system will retain robustness necessary to manage the disruptive nature of change.