Local Visions for Patagonia: Drivers and Dynamics of Collaborative Environmental Governance in Aysén, Chile

Collaborative governance (CG) has emerged as a tool for addressing increasingly complex societal problems by engaging a diverse of set of cross-sector actors in a deliberative process with the aim of realizing consensus-driven outcomes. Emerson et al.’s (2011) Integrated Framework for Collaborative Governance (IFCG) attempts to improve understanding of these arrangements by articulating causal connections between collaborative drivers and dynamics across different contexts. Answering researchers’ call for more empirical support for the IFCG in non-US/European contexts, I used the framework to guide 10 interviews with collaborative governance practitioners in the comanaged marine protected area, AMCP-MU Pitipalena Añihue, located in Aysén, Chile. I found that the overall framework is useful for conceptualizing key collaborative dynamics in Aysén—those dynamics most prominent in participant perspectives in determining AMCP-MU functionality and effectiveness. Dynamics were closely linked to the Collaborative Governance Regime’s (CGR) structural and functional evolution, varying alongside the collaborative’s lifecycles. Additionally, I found that the role and significance of certain IFCG elements, particularly capacity elements, were acutely related to external context, which is deeply influenced by international and political pressures. This relationship between capacity and context suggests that there are likely important differences in the role and influence of elements of the framework based on the environmental, legal, and geographic context in which the framework is applied. Future research could explore whether these relationships appear as patterns in certain geographies (i.e. the global South) and how the framework could be revised to reflect these patterns.