Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2013
Abstract
Efforts to develop extensive forest-based climate change vulnerability assessments have informed proposed management and policy options intended to promote improved on-the-ground policy outcomes. These assessments are derived from a rich vulnerability literature and are helpful in modeling complex ecosystem interactions, yet their policy relevance and impact has been limited. We argue this is due to structural-functional logic underpinning these assessments in which governance is treated as a procedural “black box” and policy-making as an undifferentiated and unproblematic output of a political system responding to input changes and/or system prerequisites. Like an earlier generation of systems or cybernetic thinking about political processes, the focus in these assessments on macro system-level variables and relationships fails to account for the multi-level or polycentric nature of governance and the possibility of policy processes resulting in the nonperformance of critical tasks.
Publication Title
Ecology and Society
Recommended Citation
Wellstead, A.,
Howlett, M.,
&
Rayner, J.
(2013).
The neglect of governance in forest sector vulnerability assessments: Structural-functionalism and “black box” problems in climate change adaptation planning.
Ecology and Society,
18(3).
http://doi.org/10.5751/ES-05685-180323
Retrieved from: https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/social-sciences-fp/6
Version
Publisher's PDF
Publisher's Statement
© 2013 by the author(s). Publisher's version of record: http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-05685-180323