Global Connections

Disconnects occur when those most affected by environmental problems are unable or unwilling to implement effective solutions. Our most recent project is designed to test the hypothesis that wider social, psychological, political, and economic (SP2E) disconnects delay responsive governance and can even lead to cycles of rationalization that exacerbate exiting environmental problems and speed up the governance treadmill. We are also interested in understanding factors that narrow disconnects. These include community engagement/empowerment, corporate social responsibility, and regulatory reform processes. To understand these dynamics and test our hypothesis, we are working to develop tools to map disconnects by comparing the geospatial distribution of environmental impacts with a diverse set of measures of SP2E influence (see figure GC1). These disconnect maps can then be compared with maps of governance response to test our central hypothesis and related corollaries. All three types of maps would be combined with photos and narratives to create an interactive on-line source called the Global Connections Center (GCC) to allow the public and decision-makers to identify areas of disconnects, related impacts on the governance treadmill, and different types of levers (e.g. policy, eco-labeling, etc.) that could re-connect those most affected by environmental problems with environmental decision makers. We will make our methods open-source so that other researchers can add their disconnect analyses to the database, as a wider range of cases and a larger quantitative data set will make our findings more interesting and more robust.

Figure GC1 Preliminary disconnect maps (conceptual). Spatially explicit maps are in progress.

Figure GC1 Preliminary disconnect maps (conceptual)

In these early stages, we are seeking funding to map disconnects in three main areas: water quality management/harmful microbial blooms, the ongoing global coral reef bleaching event that started in 2014, and mining of minerals and fossil fuels. For water quality management, our focus is on understanding how social networks can affect governance response by widening or narrowing political disconnects, particularly through the mediating activities of non-governmental organizations, professional groups, and other meso-scale coalitions that act as brokers between affected groups and policy makers. We are also working to quantify psychological disconnects associated with scientific uncertainty and risk perception and recently submitted a multi-institution proposal to study these issues in the Lake Erie and Lake Champlain Basins.

Our coral reefs project includes similar network/risk analysis but also extends to other types of SP2E disconnects, such as negative externalities, and to multiple levels of analysis. Indeed, we are most interested in measuring the gaps between reef communities that are negatively affected by bleaching and the international community centered on the UNFCCC’s mitigation and adaptation strategies. When funded, this project would provide a solid core for the GCC platform, via a proposed system called Connections 4 Climate Adaptation and Mitigation (C4CAM). Here again, psychological disconnects are important and we will start to measure these for international environmental issues, including climate change, in a workshop scheduled for February 2017 and funded by the International Studies Association.

Lastly, the minerals and mining project will focus on the relationship between political disconnects at the local level and economic disconnects in international markets. This project draws on Dr. Webster’s teaching in several courses, notably Business, Growth, and the Environment (ENVS 16) and Environmental Economics and Governance (ENVS 56). Our goal is to select a set of representative cases that include both terrestrial and marine mining and that cover a wide array of political systems. We are currently exploring research opportunities in the Arctic (Greenland, Norway, Iceland, Canada, Alaska, and Russia), Africa (South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana) and the continental United States (Appalachia). In this area much of the governance structure at the international level depends on the mining companies themselves, so it will be very interesting to see how different corporations respond to public pressures to protect the environment and social systems. Can they learn to reduce these risks over time via corporate sustainability management, hopefully narrowing disconnects with affected stakeholders? Or, do they simply close ranks, reducing information flows and widening disconnects?