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The working landscape approach is gaining rapid recognition for its potential to help address global environmental crises such as climate change and biodiversity loss and support social well-being. Yet, the working landscape approach still lacks a comprehensive conceptual framework to guide further research and practice. This article provides such a framework through a comprehensive review and synthesis of the governance dimension of working landscapes. The framework is built on five premises, including (1) the working landscape approach focuses on simultaneously achieving social well-being and environmental protection within the landscapes, (2) it is concerned with fostering collective action among multiple actors to deliver sustainable outcomes, (3) the social-ecological context affects and is affected by the working landscape in question, (4) five common elements—equity, facilitative leadership, local autonomy, incentives, and trust—are essential for facilitating collective action in working landscapes, and (5) collaborative and multilevel interactions enhance governance fit in working landscapes. Our framework focuses on the local scale and how the local is embedded within multilevel governance arrangements. This framework can guide empirical case studies on the working landscape approach, further its theoretical understanding, and contribute to enhancing policy aimed at increased social well-being and environmental protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Good governance is needed to foster good management of the environment. Yet, the link between environmental governance and environmental management has received very little research attention. This paper adopts a mechanism-based framework to unpack the link between the governance and management of species at risk or endangered species in a working landscape. Using species at risk management in the South of the Divide region of southwestern Saskatchewan as a case study, we identified four governance conditions connected by five mechanisms to produce management outcomes. The governance conditions include facilitative leadership, local autonomy, trust, and incentives. The five mechanisms include institutional disruption, institutional crafting and drift, brokerage or bridging, program uptake, and alleviation of fear of harm. We discuss how using a mechanism-based approach could help us better understand the processes within the governance system that trigger particular management outcomes. For example, in this case study, dissatisfied factors disrupt the existing governance arrangements and create new ones that reflect their desire for local autonomy. Local autonomy, in turn, creates an atmosphere for local actors to form coalitions and build trust; trust enhances program uptake and the co-design and co-implementation of incentives, which then alleviates land managers' fear of harm from participating in species at risk management. Our study also suggests that top-down institutions that create room for further institutional work can become acceptable at the local level and enhance endangered species management. We conclude that a mechanism-based explanation can be useful for opening the black box connecting environmental governance and management and offering valuable recommendations to guide policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]