Wednesday, April 20 | Preworkshop Talk

Tuomas Ylä-Anttila talk in the Waterloo Institution for Complexity and Innovation Speaker Series

“Comparing Climate Change Policy Networks”

Faced with the threat of climate change, some countries have managed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while in other countries emissions keep growing. What explains this national variation? The 20-country comparative research project Comparing Climate Change Policy Networks (see compon.org) looks at the role of interorganizational policy networks and media discourses in shaping national policy responses to climate change. This talk presents recent findings of the project from Finland, Sweden, India and the United States.

Location: Davis Centre 1302, University of Waterloo

Join us for refreshments starting at 2 pm. The talk will start at 2:30pm and run till approximately 3:30 pm. A Q&A with the speaker will follow the lecture.

To register for the event (free), please visit Eventbrite.

Thursday, April 21

8:45 Coffee and Tea

9:10 Welcome & Opening Remarks

9:10 John McLevey, University of Waterloo

9:20 John Ravenhill, Director of the Balsillie School of International Affairs

9:30 Resource Extraction and Nature Tourism

9:30 - 10:00 Angela Carter, University of Waterloo: “Confronting Newfoundland and Labrador’s “Economic Saviour”: Energy & Environmental Policy on the Rock(s)”

Oil production has dramatically reshaped Newfoundland and Labrador’s (NL) economy: offshore oil has taken the province from a longstanding “have not” status to one of extraordinary growth, at least until the recent oil price crash. But economic growth is just one part of the story of the province’s oil boom. This presentation first provides an overview of the broader political-economic and environmental impacts of oil development in NL, set within a global petro-capitalism context. I then focus on analyzing the problematic institutions charged with environmental protection and the key regulations surrounding oil development in need of redesign, with emphasis on spills and emissions. I conclude by noting coming regulatory challenges, such as oil development in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Overall, I argue the province exemplifies the political-economic and environmental tensions underlying Canada’s energy superpower aspirations. But burgeoning provincial civic mobilization against the petro-economy—one calling for an authentically sustainable and locally rooted development—provides some optimism for change.

10:00 - 10:30 Mark Stoddart, Memorial University: “The Oil-Tourism Interface and Social-Ecological Change in the North Atlantic”

Offshore oil development and nature-oriented tourism offer alternate visions for how societies can live with, and make a living from, coastal environments. Across the North Atlantic region, tourism relies on unspoiled coastlines, whales, seabirds, hiking, and sea kayaking. Beyond this tourism imagery – and often out of sight of tourists – offshore oil extraction proceeds, fueling economic growth and providing government revenue. Much of the time, offshore oil development and nature-oriented tourism do not appear to intersect and are not incorporated into the same discussions about the social and ecological viability of coastal communities. However, oil extraction entails risks and negative impacts for local environments, but creates an economic context that facilitates tourism development. Likewise, tourism relies on natural environments, but also on oil-dependent systems of airplane and car travel. This presentation introduces and argues for the analytical value of the key concept of the “oil-tourism interface,” which makes visible the connections between modes of development that are often seen as disparate. Following this theoretical discussion, the presentation will introduce a new multi-year research project on the connections and tensions between offshore oil and nature-oriented tourism at sites across the North Atlantic, including: Newfoundland and Labrador, Norway, Iceland, Denmark and Scotland. These cases are linked by broad similarities of geography, relatively low population density, and democratic political systems. Yet, there are substantial differences in how well-established and economically significant the tourism and oil industries are in the different sites. This research program examines how the oil-tourism interface is shaped through the interaction of governments, the oil industry, the tourism industry, social movements, and the media. Through a comparative analysis of the oil-tourism interface, this research will provide insights into the complexities and contradictions inherent to pursuing nature-oriented tourism and offshore oil as parallel development projects.

10:30 - 11:00 Cole Atlin, University of Waterloo, “Assessing Cumulative Effects in the Lagging Mineral Extraction Industry of Remote Canada – The Need for Assessment Regimes to Shift to a ‘Contribution to Sustainability’ Test”

Canada is facing an uncomfortable truth: the drop in mineral prices has stagnated the Canadian resource exploitation industry, without a significant rebound in sight. Simultaneously, the weakened environmental assessment laws have further embedded cycles of boom and bust economics in small remote communities, generated ecological problems that have permanently altered the landscape and biodiversity, and caused social upheaval. Communities lack viable means to transition economies due to poor planning and assessment, particularly in remote communities. In order to move toward a more sustainable future in mining and extraction industries, better assessment regimes that include consideration of cumulative effects, legacy effects, economic transition and alternatives must be pursued. In particularly, assessment must move away from the “significant adverse effect” test towards a “positive contribution to sustainability” test. This paper will analyze the current status of assessment regimes, determine deficiencies and suggest where best practice opportunities lie. Additionally, it will focus upon the proposed development of the mineral rich Ring of Fire region, 300 kilometers north of Thunderbay, Ontario and consider the issues emerging in the region in relation to other regional mining developments in Canada, particularly those in BC, NWT and the Yukon.

11:00 - 11:30 Neil Craik, University of Waterloo: “Enforcement and Liability Challenges for Environmental Regulation of Deep Sea Mining”

Deep sea mining in the Area is transitioning from the exploration stage to exploitation stage, prompting the International Seabed Authority (ISA) to consider the development of rules for the assessment and ongoing environmental management of future operations. Environmental regulation in areas beyond national jurisdiction raises difficulty issues respecting enforcement of domestic and international rules and liability for wrongful acts. This paper considers a range of enforcement options available to the international community, and potential liability rules, in anticipation of the development of new exploitation regulations by the ISA.

11:30 - 12:00 Conversation about all papers and open discussion about resource extraction and nature tourism session

12:00 - 1:30 Lunch

1:30 Coffee and Tea

1:45 Keynote Address

1:45 - 2:45 Kari Marie Norgaard, University of Oregon: “Democracy and the Twin Challenges of Climate Denial”

Many observers in both academia and general public have presumed that the failure in public response to climate change is a function of lack of information or concern. Climate change poses major challenges to the operation of “modern” political, economic and social systems, making visible assumptions and raising questions about how scientific information can and should operate in a modern globalized democracy. Alongside the serious threat to democracy posed by the phenomenon of “literal denial” (the e.g. so called skeptic challenges of scientific information for political reasons) is “implicatory denial” or the more pervasive and everyday problem of how and why people who believe climate change is occurring nevertheless manage to ignore it. Instead, disturbing information about climate change is normalized through a variety of everyday social practices from changing the subject, controlling exposure to information or the use of humor. The blatant and more readily identifiable processes of literal denial can work together with the less visible (and to date less studied) process of implicatory denial to hamper public response to climate change. I draw interviews and ethnographic data from a community western Norway, during the unusually warm winter of 2000–2001 to better understand how knowledge of climate change is experienced in everyday life and build a model of socially organized denial to describe how people normalized these disturbing emotions. The “social organization of climate denial” occurs through multiple levels, from emotions to cultural norms to political economy. The primary research from Norway is supplemented by comparisons to the United States. As a result, information about climate science is known in the abstract but disconnected from political, social, and private life, and sees this as emblematic of how citizens of industrialized countries are responding to global warming.

2:45 Environmental Governance and Decision Making

2:45 - 3:15 Heather Douglas, University of Waterloo: “The Challenge of Accountability in Expert Advice”

Science advice is central for policy decision-making, as no other source of empirical knowledge is as reliable as science.  That said, there are often legitimate, value-based disputes over what the evidence says among scientific experts.  Thus, deciding which experts to rely on when making governance decisions is often a fraught challenge.  Further, because social and ethical values play legitimate roles in framing scientific knowledge and in informing assessments of evidence, we should not presume expert advice to be value-free. This raises complex questions of how to hold expert advising accountable to democratic publics without damaging the integrity and feasibility of science advice.  This talk will examine various institutional forms of science advising and address how they might be made accountable in appropriate ways in democratic societies.  The forms will be illustrated with examples regarding environmental issues and the often conflicting values that attend environmental policy decisions.

3:15 - 3:45 Alex Latta, Wilfrid Laurier University, BSIA: “Indigenous Rights and Socio-Ecological Resilience in a Multilevel Governance Context: The Case of Water Resources in the Northwest Territories”

This paper marks the beginning of a case study that is part of a broader research project on evolving indigenous rights regimes around consultation and consent in resource governance. Water resources in the Northwest Territories are increasingly managed through a diverse set of multilevel governance arrangements and practices. What is the relationship between evolving rights regimes and these complex forms of multilevel governance? And how do both rights regimes and multilevel governance relationships interact with broader social, cultural and economic factors shaping conditions for socio-ecological resilience for northern Aboriginal peoples?​

3:45 - 4:15 Vanessa Schweizer, University of Waterloo: “Enhancing multi-level environmental governance across levels, scales, and sectors through systematically linked socio-ecological scenarios”

In order to achieve international climate policy goals – which aim to avoid dangerous climate change – effective multi-level governance across scales (nations, states, cities, etc.) will be needed. Scenarios have played an important role in raising awareness that climate change is a planetary threat, and scenarios may still have a role to play in helping decision makers coordinate efforts to achieve a common future. In cases of large-scale environmental problems like climate change, the analysis of socio-ecological scenarios may be separated into different work streams: earth system modelling, socio-economic modelling, and impact assessment. This can result in different norms for how multi-scale scenarios are developed, which pose challenges for the reintegration of work streams into a cohesive and scientifically credible ‘big picture’. This presentation focuses on the ‘socio’ work stream and new developments for how socio-scenarios (i.e. socio-ecologic, socio-economic, socio-technical) can be systematically linked across scales. An important feature of socio-scenarios is that they often have the most value when they are developed locally. This presentation describes a method for how such independently derived scenarios could still be linked consistently across scales to explore cohesive and scientifically credible ‘big pictures’. Although the case of international climate policy will be featured, the challenges for such multi-level governance can also be seen for other large-scale environmental problems including for countries with a federal government structure such as Canada or the US.

4:15 - 4:45 Marc Saner, University of Ottawa: “Are there any universal principles of good governance?”

Sets of good governance principles have been proposed by bodies such as the United Nations, the World Bank, academic scholars and governance practitioners. For example, a 1997 UNDP policy document identified participation, rule of law, transparency, responsiveness, consensus orientation, equity, effectiveness and efficiency, accountability, strategic vision, as characteristics of good governance. A 2003 policy brief issued by the Institute on Governance (IOG) condensed these characteristics into a shorter set of five principles. Similar lists can be compiled from the literature on the topic of good environmental stewardship.

These sets of concepts can be used as check lists and are very helpful to achieve reasonable completeness when a governance system is designed or analyzed. I have used the IOG principles to evaluate the environmental governance of aquaculture and the designs of science policy interfaces, for example. Considering that these two contexts are vastly different, I conclude that the check lists are versatile, perhaps even universal.

This alone justifies their existence. However, check lists provide little information about important qualities such as completeness, balance, overlap, interactions, and coherence. Interactions and tensions among characteristics can be expected. For example, optimizing performance is not conducive to optimizing accountability at the same time (except in the unusual case when performance is seen as the overriding accountability concern). The utility of these lists can be improved through an analysis of their structure, the determination of the smallest set of required units, and the grouping of principles into a typology based on this analysis. Some of this work has already been done by the IOG report, but the analysis can be pushed further.

Considering, that we are dealing with the concept of the “good”, this analysis will start with ethics and also address the link between good governance and human rights. Considering further, that “governance” is a means to an end (plus, maybe, an end-in-itself, in its best version), I will also comment on issues of implementation and performance measurement. Based on this two-prong approach – foundations and implementation – I will discuss if the project to develop a set of universal principles of good governance is a feasible undertaking.

4:45 - 5:15 Conversation about all papers and open discussion about environmental governance and decision making session

7:00 Dinner for Presenters at King St. Trio in Uptown Waterloo

Friday, April 22

9:00 Coffee and Tea

9:15 Complex Systems, Governance and Policy Networks

9:15 - 9:45 Matthew Gaudreau, BSIA, University of Waterloo: “Political Constraints on Adaptive Governance: Environmental NGO Networks in Nanjing, China”

Rapid urbanization and industrialization have placed significant pressure on ecological systems in China. This study investigates a network of local environmental organizations working to combat pollution in Nanjing’s Qinhuai River. Research in adaptive governance has pointed to the importance of such nonstate actors in contributing to responsive management of ecosystems. However, these actors are embedded in larger political contexts that constrain their ability to exchange information and contribute to improved ecosystem governance. A network approach is used to provide empirical detail of relationships among nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and government while applying theory from Chinese politics to explain barriers and opportunities to adaptive governance. The results reveal the dominant corporatist relationship between the state and a single designated NGO, while also uncovering a separate group of information producing NGOs. Studies in adaptive governance can apply similar approaches to create a deeper interdisciplinary understanding of underlying political structures influencing information sharing and collaboration.

9:45 - 10:15 Tuomas Ylä-Anttila, University of Helsinki

The Advocacy Coalition Framework asserts that advocacy coalitions, based on shared core beliefs, are an increasingly important feature of policymaking. But scholars disagree on what these core beliefs are like. Some consider only fairly general normative beliefs, while others include a wide range of fairly specific policy preferences. In this paper, we clarify the definition of core beliefs by using Discourse Network Analysis to discern advocacy coalitions based on over 1400 statements in the debate on climate change in three US newspapers. Using community detection methods, we find three coalitions: (1) the ecology coalition, (2) the climate science coalition, and (3) the economy coalition. While the coalitions consistently disagree on general normative beliefs, consensus across coalitions seems to be forming on more concrete policy instruments. Our results also help explain why some scholars have found polarization and others convergence in the climate change policy process in the US. We argue that a situation where disagreement over core beliefs but inter-coalition compromises on the level of policy preferences prevails may be the norm across countries and policy domains rather than the exception.

10:15 - 10:45 Tahnee Prior, University of Waterloo, BSIA: “Engaging Complexity in Legalized Arctic Governance”

The Arctic serves as a salient example of how governance systems can constrain transnational environmental governance. Our vision for a stable, rules-based, and clearly defined Arctic is increasingly difficult in the face of unpredictable and non-linear change, like the accelerated loss of coastal sea ice. And it points to the failures of both hard and soft law approaches, as well as their ontological premises; mechanistic, in the case of hard law, and ecological, in the case of soft law. In the context of an increasingly unpredictable Arctic, scholars and policy-makers alike acknowledge that the Circumpolar North requires a more flexible governance system that can account for the region’s complexity; its multiple state and non-state actors, jurisdictions, overlapping fora for decision-making.

This paper draws on complex systems theory to better understand how we can move away from the general view of law as a linear tool that ensures predictability and security to a reflexive legal approach that stimulates innovation, prioritizes risk management, accounts for system interdependencies and informal, culturally grounded understandings. Put simply: if we require the benefits of hard law but cannot achieve the necessary socio-ecological conditions, what is an alternative governance approach?

First, I examine the current problem structure in the Arctic which requires governance characteristics that we seek from hard law approaches, legally binding obligations that are precise and delegate authority for interpreting and implementing the law. Prior to 2004, before empirical evidence provided that the Arctic was warming at twice the global rate (ACIA 2004), a soft law governance structure – including informal agreements and non-hierarchical networks – provided vague normative guidance sufficient to govern the region. However, in this increasingly unpredictable environment, the region’s international governance structure is beginning to exhibit a patchwork structure. Current approaches are insufficient because they do not guarantee the participation of all relevant actors; provide inconsistent international policies; or do not assure the implementation of existing institutions.

Then, I examine how factors relating to a changing Arctic – a rapidly altering environment, tightly linked social-ecological systems, and the opening up of the region to the rest of the world – make it increasingly difficult for actors to achieve the necessary conditions for a hard law approach. Finally, I briefly examine an alternative governance approach and what might that look like.

10:45 - 11:15 Ryan Deschamps, Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Regina: “Thick versus Thin Engagement: New Language or New Dimension for Global Environmental Policy?”

The “thick” versus “thin” metaphor for civic involvement borrows from social capital theory as a way of mobilizing online networks for substantive social change. “Thick” civic involvement is familiar to policy theory and involves the strategic use of resources, trust-relationships, commons beliefs and coalition groups to mobilize policy actors towards policy change. Those involved in “thin” civic action have a less defined understanding of what needs to change and how it will be done, but can utilize online connectivity to amplify some voices over others. At the global level, social theorists have proposed new power relationships among citizens, interest groups and the state, but little evidence has shown a transformative change in state-level policy processes. This paper proposes to explore the meso, macro and global implications of “thin” interactions with policy and identify potential strategies to manage agenda setting in a globalized media environment.

11:15 - 12:15 Conversation about all papers and open discussion about complex systems, governance and policy networks session

12:15 Lunch

1:30 Coffee and Tea

1:45 Media & Civil Society

1:45 - 2:15 Howard Ramos, Dalhousie University: “ENGO Press Advocacy as Redistribution, Recognition and Representation”

The environment is increasingly seen as a meta-injustice or master frame of the politics of the new century. If this is indeed the case, environmental concerns should transcend national and organizational boundaries and should have a discursive claims-making space of their own. Research on environmental advocacy, however, shows that many claims for environmental justice are rooted in specific locales and advocacy is often mediated through, and at times overshadowed by, other dimensions of power. Using Nancy Fraser’s conception of dimensions of justice, and a Bourdieusian inspired field approach, this paper maps Greenpeace and Sierra Club’s press advocacy between 2006 and 2010. In doing so, the paper identifies environmental advocacy spaces and argues that non-parametric approaches to analysing ENGO media advocacy.

2:15 - 2:45 Patrick McCurdy, University of Ottawa: “Communicative Dilbit or Communicative Effluent? A critical examination of CAPP’s “Energy Citizens” Campaign”

Never has the future of Canada’s bitumen deposits (oil /tar sands) looked so uncertain. Never has industry campaigned so hard to save it.  Canada’s oil/tar sands industry is in the midst of a perfect storm. The price of crude oil has tanked. In May 2015, the province of Alberta elected a new, social democratic government ousting the business friendly Conservatives who ruled the province for 43 years. In November 2015, President Obama rejected the 1,900km TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline which would have pumped bitumen from Alberta to Texas. And, the controversial Northern Gateway pipeline is in its death throes. Yet, with $32.7 billioninvested in the bituminous sands in 2013 alone, there is sufficient financial capital and political interest in keeping the ‘oil sands’ industry flowing.   

Public relations campaigns have been a key tactic used by both opponents and supporters of Canada’s oil sands industry in the almost decade long “endless war” over bitumen’s future in Canada. However, “Energy Citizens” the most recent campaign by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) - the Canadian oil industry’s lobby group - marks a significant shift in campaigning strategy. The “Energy Citizens” campaign marks a departure from CAPP’s back-and-forth engagement with its oil sands critiques and a move towards the selective targeting of amiable and winnable publics.

Drawing on campaign materials, newsletters, emails as well as a critical visual analysis of select video advertisements, this paper presents a critical textual and visual analysis of CAPP’s promotional practices used in its “Energy Citizens” campaign. Rooted in literature on environmental communication and a growing literature on the contested representation of Alberta’ bituminous sands, the paper opens by establishing the communicative environment and context. Next, the paper maps the changing promotional tactics used by CAPP in its oil sands messaging leading to the establishment of its “Energy Citizen” campaign. The bulk of the paper offers a case study of CAPP’s “Energy Citizen” campaign. It takes particular interest in the campaigns’ use of Canadian nationalism and efforts to associate national pride with employment in energy-related sectors. The paper then critically examines discursive efforts to widen the aperture of the “Energy Citizen” base and charts CAPP efforts to use ‘grass roots’ tactics for its industry objectives. The paper concludes by reflecting on the implications of the “Energy Citizens” discourses and campaign tactics to the Canadian public’s engagement with and understanding of oil sands and larger social issues such as climate change.

2:45 - 3:15 Conversation about all papers and open discussion about media & civil society session

3:15 Closing Remarks

3:15 Vanessa Schweizer, University of Waterloo

3:15 - 5:00 Meeting about grant application or potential special issue

7:00 Everyone is invited to join us at Abe Erb in Uptown Waterloo