Understanding the governance of sustainability pathways : hydraulic megaprojects, social-ecological traps, and power in networks of action situations
Méndez, Pablo F. (Universitat Politècnica de València. Institut d'Innovació i Gestió del Coneixement)
Clement, Floriane (Université de Toulouse)
Palau-Salvador, Guillermo (Universitat Politècnica de València. Institut d'Innovació i Gestió del Coneixement)
Díaz-Delgado, Ricardo (Estación Biológica de Doñana)
Villamayor Tomás, Sergio (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals)

Data:	2022
Resum:	To enable sustainability pathways, we need to understand how social-ecological systems (SES) respond to different governance configurations, considering their historical, institutional, political, and power conditions. We advance a robust methodological approach for the integrated analysis of those conditions in SES traps. Our advancement consists of a novel combination of the networks of action situations approach with an agency-based polycentric power typology and the concept of discursive power. We test the approach by building on previous research on the Doñana estuary-delta SES (Guadalquivir estuary), which is characterized by a rigidity trap in the context of ecosystem and water governance. Specifically, we focus on a recent hydraulic megaproject involving deep dredging in the Guadalquivir estuary, finally canceled due to its broad negative socioeconomic and environmental repercussions. According to our analysis, certain governance, institutional, and informational mechanisms currently prevent further SES degradation in Doñana. However, key governance actors are caught in a lasting coordination failure prone to mutual defection strategies owing to power dynamics and discursive-institutional inertia. Although seemingly stable due to counteractive mechanisms among actors, this situation is at continuous risk of being unbalanced by powerful actors promoting large SES interventions such as deep dredging. Such interventions bear the systemic risk of strong suppression of SES functions, and a regime shift to a lock-in trap. This overall undesirable situation might be escaped through transformative policy designs that take into account meso-level mechanisms, such as discursive power and its role in non-decision-making, pragmatic inaction, and inefficient investment and infrastructure.
Ajuts:	European Commission 871128 Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación CEX2019-000940-M Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación RyC-2017-22782
Nota:	Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-M
Drets:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Llengua:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Matèria:	Agency-based power ; Water resource governance ; Sustainability pathways ; Social-ecological traps ; Discursive power ; Networks of actions situations
Publicat a:	Sustainability science, (December 2022) , ISSN 1862-4057

DOI: 10.1007/s11625-022-01258-0

19 p, 3.3 MB

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