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Academic schools are important institutions for consolidating and disseminating ideas. They can be defined as diffused communities held together by a collectively constructed body of knowledge, a shared worldview and a network of social relations. Identifying and delimiting academic schools might be a hard endeavor, since they are embedded in a fluid “state of spirit,” which is context- and time-specific, and not always easy to systematize and communicate. However, we still think that the notion (or metaphor) of “school” still makes sense to characterize the bonding elements that hold together and give coherence to the diverse ideas, debates and approaches represented in this book.

In this article, we offer an analysis of point-source water pollution governance in the European agri-food sector. Specifically, we tackle the case study of the wine industry in Aragon (Spain) through the lenses of the networks of action situations approach. We unveil key strategic decisions of wine producers in relation to compliance with water discharge regulations and explore the feasibility and effectiveness of potential solutions. According to our quantitative and qualitative analyses, the problem of peak load discharges in the sector can be explained by the strategic behavior of wine producers in the context of enforcement deficits, as well as by particularities of the wine production process, and controversies around the construction and management of public treatment plants. Coordination among wine producers and public treatment plant managers to invest in in-house treatment infrastructure or to smooth discharges out so they fit the capacity of treatment plants would be a promising solution; however, economic incentives and tightened enforcement of discharge regulations would also be necessary. Graphical abstract

In this chapter, we offer an overview of the scholarship at the interface of commons regimes and social movements and unveil the agenda of the Barcelona School around this topic. The frontiers of theory and research on the governance of commons have notably evolved in the last decade. At the forefront of such evolution is the study of environmental conflicts around the use and management of common resources. Social movements are one means through which such conflicts manifest in relation to the discourse and practice of commons governance. As we claim here, key in this evolution has been the contributions of Joan Martínez Alier and others around the environmentalism of the poor, environmental justice movements, and alternatives to “growth”. Important research programs within the new scholarship, and scholars within the School in particular (See Sect. 19.3 where we identify the initiatives and scholars associated to this), include the study of interactions between mobilization and community-based natural resource management regimes in rural contexts; the emergence and consolidation of new urban commons; the study of processes of commoning and becoming a commoner; and the connections between commons and the degrowth scholarship.

This chapter aims to give an overarching vision of the plural epistemological basis of the Barcelona school of ecological economics and political ecology, as well as to provide examples of the cross-fertilization between disciplines, methods and approaches that we think constitute one of the main contributions of the School. The chapter identifies the main bonding elements of the scholars that belong to the School, briefly explains the diverse core concepts and methods on which the School relies, and elaborates on how the interaction between them have resulted in an original and relevant research program during the past 30 years.

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-M The construction of hydroelectric dams in the Global South and emerging economies is controversial; on one hand, advocates highlight the positive impacts at national and global scales, such as national development and independence from fossil fuels. On the other hand, opponents of dams stress the negative social-ecological impacts on the livelihoods of communities near construction sites, and the lack of local communities participation in the decision making processes. Scholars have published a range of case studies exploring the impacts of dams. However, there is no comprehensive understanding of how hydroelectric dams impact people's livelihoods and capital globally. In this study, we present a comparative medium-N survey exploring the impacts of 33 large-scale dams on people's natural, social, human, financial, and physical capital and the pathways of conditions that explain the changes in these capital in the Global South. To do so, we used the information from a qualitative meta-analysis of the social impacts of dams and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). Our results show that the types of people's capital are impacted differently by the construction: natural, social, human, and financial capital are negatively impacted, whereas physical capital is often positively impacted. The fsQCA showed three main groups of pathways that explain the changes in capital. First, the study indicates that lack of local communities participation in decision-making processes negatively impacts all capital but physical. Second, regardless of the nation's energy security, megadams generate primarily negative impacts on natural, social, and human capital and positive impacts on physical capital. Third, our results indicate the importance of the World Commission on Dams in raising international awareness about the social-ecological impacts of dams despite a country's energy-security status.

Lasting community-based governance of common-pool resources depends on communities self-organizing to monitor compliance with rules. Monitoring serves an important function in community-based governance by establishing conditions for long-term cooperation, but the factors that foster its provision are poorly understood. We have analysed data from 177 forest user groups to assess the relative importance of 15 potential drivers of compliance monitoring, as well as the direction and form of their relationships. The results suggest that user groups are most likely to successfully self-organize to monitor compliance when rules are designed by local user groups (local rulemaking), and when those user groups are located close to or far from markets for forest products and have a larger number of members. Additionally, local leadership plays an important role in certain contexts, such as groups that are smaller in size and located near markets for forest products. A study of 177 forest user groups shows that these are more likely to self-organize to monitor rule compliance for forest management when the groups are larger, they design the rules and they are located either close to or far from markets.

Elinor Ostrom and colleagues developed the social-ecological system framework with the aim of synthesizing knowledge to foster a better understanding of the relationship between people, institutions and the environment. Although the framework has facilitated the diagnosis of complex systems; it has thus far struggled to account for the role of history in structuring the range of opportunities and constraints that actors face as they interact with the environment and each other. More recent innovations in measuring institutions and the integration of process-oriented approaches are beginning to provide the tools required to systematically trace the co-evolution of institutions and social-ecological systems. We review the history and development of social-ecological system scholarship, including longstanding concerns regarding the weak inclusion of temporal dynamics. We highlight the contributions of three novel advances – namely the combined IAD-SES framework, the institutional grammar tool, and the power in polycentric governance approach.

Altres ajuts: acords transformatius de la UAB Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-M In the last few decades, the scope of governanceauthr solutions for environmental problems has increased substantially. The old trichotomy of governance by government, governance by markets, and governance by communities has been replaced by a new interest in hybrid solutions in the recognition that no single-governance mode possesses the capabilities to address the multiple facets, interdependencies, and scales of current environmental problems. This paper takes stock on experiences that combine community-based natural resource management and market-based solutions, or as we call them community-based environmental markets (CBEMs). Specifically, we draw lessons from the literature on community-based payment for ecosystem services in the forest context, and from water markets in the context of water user associations (WUA markets). Similarities across the two contexts include the role of communities to ensure participation, compliance, and distributional equity, and the importance of markets as a source of revenue for communities, among others. Differences across highlight the importance to pay attention to the authority held by the communities (stronger in the context of WUA markets) and the nature of the market (i.e. whether it is a service or a resource market). These commonalities and differences motivate the interest of generating new theory on CBEMs, that is, one that builds on but also transcends community-based natural resource management and environmental market theory and allows to compare experiences from different resource contexts.

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-M 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.

Sustainability of community-based natural resource management regimes depends on the capacity to mobilise against external threats and participate in social movements. In this chapter we explore the validity of this conjecture via a meta-analysis of case studies where local resource user communities have mobilised against decommonisation threats. We first characterise the drivers of the threats and their impacts on the essential characteristics of commons management. We then assess the extent to which social movements contribute to “commonisation” processes. We show that, although some “decommonisation” drivers and impacts are more recurrent than others, they tend to occur in bundles and might be better studied as such. Although movements can be understood as responses to “decommonisation” challenges, their benefits usually go beyond protecting communities from the resulting impacts.

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552 This paper explores associations between disturbances and cooperative responses in a selection of irrigation associations from Spain. Transaction costs and collective action theories are used to characterize disturbances and responses. Disturbances are characterized by looking at the uncertainty they generate, their frequency, the distance of the transacting partners they affect, and their impact on asset-specific transactions. Responses are assessed based on the collective action tasks they involve and classified into coordination and cooperation responses. A qualitative comparative analysis confirms two pathways that are sufficient for the emergence of cooperation responses. The first path is congruent with transaction costs theory, and points to disturbances that are frequent and asset specific; the second path supports relational theory, and points to disturbances that emerge progressively from within the system. Other patterns include the tendency of irrigation associations to delegate to external entities when disturbances are external and occur frequently; and the adaptation of existing institutions when the disturbances are internal and progressive.

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552 Transboundary river basins experience complex coordination challenges during droughts. The multiscale nature of drought creates potential for spillovers when upstream adaptation decisions have cascading impacts on downstream regions. This paper advances the institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework to examine drought adaptation decision-making in a multijurisdictional context. We integrate concepts of risk management into the IAD framework to characterize drought across its natural and human dimensions. A global analysis identifies regions where severe droughts combine with institutional fragmentation to require coordinated adaptation. We apply the risk-based IAD framework to examine drought adaptation in the Rio Bravo/Grande-an archetypical transboundary river shared by the United States and Mexico and by multiple states within each country. The analysis draws on primary data and a questionnaire with 50 water managers in four distinct, yet interlinked, "institutional catchments," which vary in terms of their drought characteristics, socioeconomic attributes, and governance arrangements. The results highlight the heterogeneity of droughts and uneven distribution of their impacts due to the interplay of drought hazards and institutional fragmentation. Transboundary water sharing agreements influence the types and sequence of interactions between upstream and downstream jurisdictions, which we describe as spillovers that involve both conflict and cooperation. Interdependent jurisdictions often draw on informal decision-making venues (e.g., data sharing, operational decisions) due to the higher transaction costs and uncertainty associated with courts and planning processes, yet existing coordination and conflict resolution venues have proven insufficient for severe, sustained droughts. Observatories will be needed to measure and manage the cascading risks of drought.

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552 An underlying understanding among adaptation and community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) scholars is the existence of important feedbacks between local resource management institutions and individual adaptive capacity. The relationship between CBNRM and individual adaptive capacity is of global concern given the ubiquity of CBNRM worldwide, the patent impacts of global changes at local levels, and the recent calls for the integration of climate and rural development policies. So far, however, there have not been formal, large-n studies of that relationship. This study aims to fill that gap by testing whether the performance of community-based water management institutions and communal land regimes have an impact on the effectiveness of farmers' adaptation responses to climatic and global market disturbances. For this purpose, the study relies on a unique dataset of individual and collective features obtained from water user associations (WUAs) and ejidos in Mexico. According to the regression results, well-functioning community-based water management institutions have a positive and significant impact on individual farmers' self-reported response effectiveness. The impact of communal land property is also significant but negative. These effects, which hold only in the context of climate disturbances but not market disturbances, can be explained by looking at the support given by the associations to farmers, and issues of communal land marginalization, respectively. Policies that strengthen the autonomy and capacity for cooperation of WUAs and ameliorate structural deficits in communal land regimes shall not only guarantee a long-advocated path for rural development but also help farmers deal with some of the climatic uncertainties that increasingly threaten agriculture.

The European Union Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has failed to achieve its aim of preserving European farmland biodiversity, despite massive investment in subsidies to incentivise environmentally-beneficial farming practices. This failure calls into question the design of the subsidy schemes, which are intended to either function as a safety net and make farming profitable or compensate farmers for costs and loss of income while undertaking environmental management. In this study, we assess whether the design of environmental payments in the CAP reflects current knowledge about farmers’ decision-making as found in the research literature. We do so on the basis of a comprehensive literature review on farmers’ uptake of agri-environmental management practices over the past 10 years and interviews specifically focused on Ecological Focus Areas with policy-makers, advisors and farmers in seven European countries. We find that economic and structural factors are the most commonly-identified determinants of farmers’ adoption of environmental management practices in the literature and in interviews. However, the literature suggests that these are complemented by – and partially dependent on – a broad range of social, attitudinal and other contextual factors that are not recognised in interview responses or, potentially, in policy design. The relatively simplistic conceptualisation of farmer behaviour that underlies some aspects of policy design may hamper the effectiveness of environmental payments in the CAP by over-emphasising economic considerations, potentially corroding farmer attitudes to policy and environmental objectives. We conclude that an urgent redesign of agricultural subsidies is needed to better align them with the economic, social and environmental factors affecting farmer decision-making in a complex production climate, and therefore to maximise potential environmental benefits. The authors thank Doris Marquardt for her assistance with this study, and Juliana D?rnhart and Julia Wright for their contributions to study design and implementation. We also thank Linda Bl?ttler and Jan Dan?kfor for assistance with the interviews in the Czech Republic. We are grateful to Flore Jeanmart, Marie Vandewalle, Lynn Dicks and the EKLIPSE Project team for their assistance with the report on which this study builds, and to Bartosz Bartkowski and one anonymous reviewer for detailed and constructive reviews that substantially improved the manuscript.

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552 Introduction to the special issue on Polycentricity in Enioronmental Policy and Governance

A generalized knowledge of social-ecological relationships is needed to address current environmental challenges. Broadly comparative and synthetic research is a key method for establishing this type of knowledge. To date, however, most work on social-ecological systems has applied idiosyncratic methods to specific systems. Several projects, each based on the frameworks developed by Elinor Ostrom and colleagues, stand out for their application of consistent methods across a broad range of cases. In this paper we compare seven of these projects and draw conclusions regarding their potential benefits and the challenges that scholars can expect in conducting this type of research. The two main challenges that we identified are (1) the collective-action dilemmas that collaborators face in producing and maintaining the social and technical infrastructure that is needed for such projects; and (2) balancing complexity and comparability in the structure of the databases used and the associated methods for characterizing complex social-ecological cases. We discuss approaches for meeting these challenges, and present a guiding checklist of questions for project design and implementation to provide guidance for future broadly comparative research.

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552 This paper assesses the merits of polycentricity by looking at the water-energy nexus in the Spanish irrigation sector. In the last few decades, the Spanish electricity and water governance systems have transitioned from relatively monocentric, top-down arrangements to arrangements that exhibit traits of polycentricity. This paper characterizes both governance systems against a series of polycentricity traits and provision and production activities. It then assesses the merits of the systems against the capacity of water user associations (WUAs) to adapt to water and electricity supply dynamics. The study relies on quantitative and archival data collected from a set of 38 irrigation systems located in north-east Spain as well as secondary data from the broader water, energy and irrigation sectors. As illustrated in the analysis, WUAs can play a key role in integrating the management of water and electricity. They do so locally, via a diversity of institutional and operational adaptations. This role, however, requires sufficient levels of autonomy, clear rules that shape the interactions between WUAs and other water and electricity actors, and a relatively competitive environment.

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552 The international research on the benefits of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) regimes for sustainable development has raised concerns about the vulnerability of said regimes to globalization, shortsighted government regulations, marginalization, and other global political economy threats. This paper addresses the question of whether and how social movements contribute to the organization and robustness of CBNRM in the advent of those threats. To accomplish this, we carry out a qualitative meta-analysis of 81 cases worldwide. Our evidence shows that one of the most important effects of movements on CBNRM is the promotion and defense of community use and management rights against certain government decisions or actions by global corporations. We also find that movements can generate positive effects beyond the reaction to specific threats. Those effects include the democratization of communities' collective choice processes, the reinvigoration of identity ties and local ecological knowledge, the promotion of economic development and autonomy, and the creation of nested user organizations. Exploring such potentially longer-term effects is a promising next step towards further connecting the social movement and CBNRM scholarships and better understanding the robustness of local management regimes in the context of global change.

Commons and social-ecological systems research examines institutional arrangements for governing natural resources to improve social and ecological outcomes. However, no universal definition of success exists. We examine the CPR and SES synthesis literature to identify trends, gaps and challenges for examining success. We address: (1) gaps in the literature, (2) multidimensionality and tradeoffs, and (3) and the link between problem orientation and definitions of success. To do this we conduct a comprehensive review of Large-N studies, meta-analyses and systematic reviews of CPR and SES governance (n = 45). We found seven dimensions of success, corresponding to collective choice, constitutional and operational levels, temporal dimensions, and socio-economic outcomes. Most studies did not address power and tradeoffs, or specify the social groups to whom success would apply. The majority of studies defined success in one dimension, most often demand-side provisioning (e.g., productivity or biodiversity). A regression analysis suggests that studies on rangelands or grasslands, correlative studies, and/or studies of state property systems (i.e., protected areas) were more likely to use fewer dimensions of success. Problem orientations often did not correlate with dimensions of success considered in a study, suggesting that measures of success often cannot adequately address the full suite of problems recognized in synthesis research. This presents a significant challenge for collective action among scholars who aim to develop general knowledge on SES and CPR governance. We discuss exemplary studies that measure success as multidimensional, address power and tradeoffs, and conclude with four recommendations for advancing the analysis of success.

•The relationship between CBNRM and mobilization is non-linear due to synergies and tensions•CBNRM is neither necessary nor sufficient for mobilization, but it can contribute positively to it in some instances•Mobilization can have both positive and negative effects on CBNRM regimes•Further research should address the co-evolution of movements, CBNRM and political/management opportunity structures

Institutions are vital to the sustainability of social-ecological systems, balancing individual and group interests and coordinating responses to change. Ecological decline and social conflict in many places, however, indicate that our understanding and fostering of effective institutions for natural resource management is still lacking. We assess theoretical and methodological challenges facing positivist institutional analysis, focusing on natural resource governance according to Ostrom's social-ecological systems (SES) framework. Rather than adding more variables, progress requires a clearer, more consistent approach to selecting, defining and measuring institutional elements; stronger links between theory and empirical research; a greater focus on mechanisms and causality; and the development and application of new methods, including quantitative approaches. Strengthening the connections between theory, models, and data suggests several promising avenues for advancing institutional analysis through the study of relationships between institutional structure, process, function, context, and outcomes.

The conditions that contribute to institutional robustness of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) regimes are well understood; however, there is much less systematic evidence regarding whether and how CBNRM regimes adapt to changing environments. We address this question by exploring drought adaptation of 37 irrigation associations in northern Spain. For this purpose, we adopt the distinction between "generic" and "specific adaptation institutions" and explore whether and how these institutions combine across different types of irrigation systems. We obtained data from a survey delivered to the 37 associations, governmental records, and interviews with representatives of the associations and public officials. We then used hierarchical cluster analysis to classify the irrigation systems into types, followed by qualitative comparative analysis to explore associations between the adaptation institutions and drought adaptation across the types of systems. According our results, CBNRM regimes adapt to droughts through different combinations of institutions (i.e., different paths to drought adaptation). However, specific adaptation institutions such as water transfers are more relevant during droughts (i.e., to allocate scarcity), whereas generic adaptation institutions such as monitoring and collective choice arrangements play a role both during and in the aftermath of droughts (i.e., to build compliance with and redesign specific adaptation institutions). Also, we did not find an alignment between the two types of institutions and types of irrigation system; however, one type of system (i.e., the "Asian" type) shows a larger number of drought adaptation paths than the other (i.e., the "American" type).

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552 Appropriate institutions are essential for climate change adaptation. Yet diverse approaches to institutional analysis are available, encompassing different ontological and epistemological assumptions, and thus yielding insights on very different aspects of institutions in adaptation. Therefore, efforts to expand knowledge in this domain can be usefully informed by an assessment of approaches to institutional analysis in the adaptation literature, which is to date lacking. We address this gap by conducting a systematic review of the adaptation literature addressing institutions. Our review characterises approaches to institutional analysis by identifying methodological choices and the philosophy of science underpinning them. We then analyze the distribution of approaches to institutional analysis across different adaptation situations, contextualizing our results within methodological debates in adaptation research regarding the appropriateness of positivist, interpretative, or post-normal approaches. We find that institutional analysis of adaptation is now engaging with 'how' and 'why' questions, beyond descriptive questions that characterise the adaptation 'barriers' literature, that diverse philosophies of science drive methodological choice, and that post-normal approaches, e.g. co-design approaches, hardly address institutions. We conclude that support for interpretative approaches, and for institutional analysis in post-normal approaches is needed. The latter is important for adaptation planning processes in developing countries under the UNFCCC.

Construction of large-scale hydroelectric dams has increased in recent decades in the Global South and emerging economies. Population resettlement is one of the most severe socioeconomic impacts caused by dam construction. Processes aiming to mitigate its impacts and restore livelihoods are often described as inadequate. The resettlement process’ ineffectiveness could be explained by persistent deficiency in citizen participation, which is also a sign of the impacted population not being able to participate in the process affecting their lives. Our research presents a medium-N comparative study showing the pathways explaining deficiency of participation across 23 large-scale hydroelectric dams in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. We conducted a fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis based on information from a qualitative meta-analysis and secondary sources. Our results suggest that there are at least two scenarios to explain deficiency in participation. The first scenario includes dams constructed during autocracies, mostly before the release of the World Commission on Dams guidelines. The second scenario involves the largest dams in our analysis, with high economic and political interests at stake built under both autocratic and democratic regimes, despite the presence of what we categorized as effective forms of public opposition to the project and resettlement process. We discuss features that make large hydroelectric dams less participatory or inherently undemocratic in the Global South.

In this editorial we assess 50 years’ worth of peer-reviewed publications to establish traditions and trends in the study of the commons. Based on this assessment, we provide a sketch of how IJC and its editors can continue to contribute to the development of the field.