Poster: Research for Governance Reforms in International Waters Systems

Mahon Robin Centre for Resource Management and Environmental Studies (CERMES), University of the West Indies Alexcia Cooke, Lucia Fanning and Patrick McConney governance, assessment, scale, regime, architecture effectiveness "Improved governance is a major focus of the GEF International Waters (IW) Program. To achieve this there is the need to see governance as a researchable topic and to develop programs for governance research. There has been considerable recent conceptual development of governance frameworks that are relevant to IW systems, e.g. those of the Earth Systems Governance Project, the Institutional Assessment Framework (Ostrom), the Interactive Governance Approach (Kooiman) and the work of the Resilience Alliance. We now the need to move beyond conceptual frameworks to operational frameworks that can guide assessment of governance and the development of interventions to improve governance. We propose an operational framework that incorporates key characteristics derived from the conceptual frameworks. The proposed operational framework takes actual or potential issues as the basis for governance action; transboundary issues in the case of IW systems. Each issue must have a ‘governance arrangement’ which must have certain common characteristics to be effective. The arrangement must have a complete policy process with mechanisms for uptake of data and information, generation of advice, decision-making, implementation and review. It must also have functionality in three modes: (1) a meta-mode for articulation of principles, visions and goals; (2) an institutional mode that reflects agreed ways of doing things reflected in plans and organisations) and (3) an action mode for day-to-day activities. Similar issues may be covered by similar arrangements, which may be clustered for efficiency and linked for integration as is needed for ecosystem-based management. The entire framework, which encompasses the governance regime or architecture in an IW system, consists of all the arrangements needed to cover the issues and may involve multiple organisations at several geographical and institutional scale levels. This framework provides for addressing the governance regime as a whole and for breaking it into components that can be assessed and for which interventions can be designed. Assessments conducted within the CLME Project illustrate the approach. They have focused on: the national-regional interface; the gaps, overlaps and networking among regional organisations; arrangement architecture and policy processes; and visioning and principles at the level of the whole system."

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