Reef Futures Franciska von Heland Exploring the dynamics of transformative change in

Reef Futures
Exploring the dynamics of transformative change in
marine social-ecological systems
Franciska von Heland
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©Franciska von Heland, Stockholm University 2014
ISBN 978-91-7447-963-8
Printed in Sweden by Printers name, Stockholm 2014
Distributor: The Stockholm Resilience Centre
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“One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, ‘What if I had never seen this
before? What if I knew I would never see it again?’”
Rachel Carson
ABSTRACT
Marine resource degradation is a pressing issue worldwide. This thesis comes at a time when
transformative change is necessary if we are to maintain the capacity of marine ecosystems to
provide life-supporting benefits for millions of people. This is why resilience research has shown
an increasing interest in transformability, that is, the capacity to shift from undesirable system
toward new system trajectories. Despite the increasing research interest in transformability, the
underlying factors and management strategies that enable us to shift to new types of governance
are poorly understood. This thesis aims to nuance the understanding of transformative change
processes.
The thesis consists of four papers that explore issues relating to transformative change in the
context of marine governance in the Coral Triangle, and the effects of such change processes on
policy, stakeholder relations and management activities. The Coral Triangle is located along the
equator at the confluence of the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans, and is recognized as a
priority site for conservation due to high marine biodiversity and high ratings of exposure to reef
threats and reef dependence. Paper 1 studies how change-oriented actors (institutional
entrepreneurs) operating at the international level can introduce and purposefully navigate largescale change processes. Paper 2 studies the impact of resource asymmetries on multi-stakeholder
collaboration, and tackles the literature of boundary work so as to increase its usefulness for
understanding complex, multi-level governance initiatives. Paper 3 explores how narratives about
the marine environment are entwined with and influence critical aspects of marine ecosystem
governance such as resource allocation, day-to-day management actions, stakeholder relations,
and long-term ecological monitoring. Paper 4 investigates how actors at the local level can
capture opportunities at higher institutional levels while at the same time catalyzing local potential
for change by focusing on the interplay between strategies, opportunity and context.
The results reinforce evidence that institutional entrepreneurs play an important role in
introducing and driving transformative change. Institutional entrepreneurship requires
understanding of how strategies can be matched with opportunity and context, for example by
offering a way for other actors to address key priorities and add value to their organizations. This
is linked to the capacity to coordinate the activities of other actors, not only within organizations,
but also outside of and between organizations. The results also show that behind-the-scene
organizing is often a precondition for the introduction of transformative change. Shifting the
process from an informal track to a formal track where ideas about transformative change can be
deliberated among a broader set of stakeholders is thus a major challenge. Moreover, a strong
narrative is key to successfully introducing and driving transformative change. In this sense, the
ability to articulate and distribute a narrative, which tells a compelling story about the broader
system, rather than merely making sense of ecological knowledge or formulating visions, is
critical. However, the actors involved in a governance context are not equally capable of value
articulation, deliberation and knowledge exchange. Power dynamics are constantly at play in
transformation processes due to resource asymmetries. The thesis shows that differences in
resources may influence the credibility, legitimacy, and salience of transformative change. It also
shows that communication technology and media help to drive transformative change, and that
actors are increasingly facing a new dilemma of knowing where to find the right knowledge at the
right time. Lastly, this thesis demonstrates that emotion is an important but neglected aspect of
transformative change.
Keywords: transformative change, marine governance, multi-level governance, multi-stakeholder
collaboration, institutional entrepreneurship, boundary work, narrative, Coral Triangle
SAMMANFATTNING PÅ SVENSKA
Miljöförstöring i marinaområden är ett växande problem världen över. Transformativa
förändringar, det vill säga, långtgående förändringar i hur vi utnyttjar och förvaltar marina
miljöer, är således avgörande för att säkerställa att de miljontals människor som beror av
ekosystemstjänster från våra hav kan möta en säker framtid. Långtgående miljöförstöring i våra
hav är en anledning, bland andra, till att resiliens forskning har visat ett ökat intresse för
’transformaility’. Transformability är en benämning på vår förmåga att bryta beteenden och
strukturer som ligger till grund för miljöförstöring. Trots ökat intresse för denna typ av forskning
finns föga kunskap om de underliggande faktorer och management strategier som kan möjliggöra
sådana skiften. Denna doktorsavhandling har för avsikt att bidra med kunskap om hur
transformativa förändringsprocesser kan aktivt drivas.
Avhandlingen basers på fältforskning i ett område som vanligen går under namnet ’the Coral
Triangle’ (på svenska Koralltriangeln) och består av fyra olika artiklar som med hjälp av olika
infallsvinklar undersöker transformability. Koralltriangeln är belägen där den västra delen av Stilla
havet möter Indiska oceanen och är känt för att inrymma unik mångfald av marina arter, vilket
också gjort den till ett prioritetsområde för naturbevarande. Överfiske, illegala fiskemetoder som
dynamitfiske, kustnära exploatering, och utsläpp både till havs och på land i avrinningsområdet
utgör ett stort hot mot Koralltriangeln och de 120 miljoner människor som där försörjer sig på
småskaligt fiske. Området sträcker sig från Malaysia och Indonesien i väst, via Filippinerna och
Timor-Leste till Papua Nya Guinea och Salomonöarna i öst.
Artikel 1 undersöker hur förändringsorienterade individer och organisationer, vilka i
avhandlingen går under namnet ’institutionella entreprenörer’, kan introducera och katalysera
förändringsprocesser på internationell nivå. Artikel 2 studerar hur resursojämlikhet (exempelvis i
politiskt inflytande, ekonomisk makt, språkkunskaper, etc.) påverkar hur transformativa
förändringsprocesser kan drivas och med vilka resultat. Artikel 3 undersöker kommunikationens
(exempelvis det sätt vi väljer att skildra ett ekosystem) påverkan på förvaltning och sociala
relationer. Artikel 4 belyser hur aktörer på det lokala planet kan katalysera förändring genom att
matcha deras förändringsstrategier med möjligheter och skeenden på nationell eller internationell
nivå samt genom att noggrant ’läsa’ den omgivande lokala miljön.
Avhandlingen visar att institutionella entreprenörer spelar en viktig roll i att möjliggöra för
transformativa förändringar och att ett sådant entreprenörskap kräver förståelse för hur strategier
bäst kan matchas med närliggande möjligheter och andra kontextuella faktorer. En avgörande
faktor i sådana processer verkar vara att institutionella entreprenörer måste ’bygga’ värde för
andra organisationer. En annan viktig förmåga som sådana individer eller organisationer måste
besitta är förmågan att organisera mellan organisationer och informella processer. Avhandlingen
visar också att transformativ förändring i ett inledande skede sker ’bakom kulisserna’ och att en
inledande utmaning är att skifta en sådan informell process till en formell process där fler aktörer
kan delta i att diskutera och förhandla om förändring. Den visar även att en strak och tilltalande
berättelse är nödvändig för att driva förändringsprocesser. Detta betyder att förmågan att
artikulera och sprida en sådan berättelse är en avgörande faktor. Samtidigt har de aktörer som
deltar i en förändringsprocess olika förmåga att uttala och få gehör för sina berättelser.
Exempelvis spelar tillgången till resurser en avgörande roll. Därutöver föreslås att
kommunikationsteknologi och media har stor potential att pådriva förändring. Slutligen,
framhåller avhandlingen att forskning i ökad utsträckning måste ta hänsyn till känslomässiga
aspekter av transformativa förändringar.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Thank you Per Olsson and Beatrice Crona for being my supervisors and believing in me. Thanks
for all the advice and important insights you have given me throughout these years. Julian
Clifton, thank you for taking the time to working with me. You have been a great inspiration.
And to Pedro Fidelman, thanks for inviting me to collaborate with you and for your important
input into my research. It was great living with you in Australia and I will never forget your
hospitality and friendship. Thanks to Örjan Bodin.
I would also like to thank the ARC Centre of Excellence in Australia and WorldFish in the
Philippines for welcoming me as a guest researcher. A special thanks to Joe Padilla at UNDP in
Bangkok. It was a great experience working with you. The Stockholm Resilience Centre: thank
you all for the creative atmosphere. A special thanks to Martina Kadin, Arvid Bergsten and Jonas
Hentati-Sundberg. You are stalwarts and I am deeply grateful for you friendship! Matilda
Thyresson, thanks for mental and physical coaching. Henrik Ernstson, thank you for sharing
insights and for always taking the time to help me out. Wijnand Boonstra, thanks for all the
advice and your critical eye on my papers and kappa, for which I am truly thankful. Thanks to
Vanessa Masterson, Carol Crumley and Andrew Merrie for proofreading. Thanks also to Jerker
Lokrantz. Thérèse La Monde and Cecilia Linder, thanks for administrative support!
To all the people I have worked with in Wakatobi and elsewhere in Indonesia: thank you so
much for welcoming me and for sharing your knowledge with me. I would especially like to
mention Hugua and Lida Pet-Soede. Thanks to WWF and TNC. Despite the critical stance in
this thesis, I am deeply inspired by your work and constant effort to make change possible. I
would also like to thank all the informants who have contributed to my thesis. Your generosity
has made this research possible. I hope that your enthusiasm will continue to inspire people
around the world to make a difference.
Finally, I would like to thank Jacob. You are the most inspiring discussant, critical reviewer and
loving supporter. You rock my world!
LIST OF PAPERS
I.
Rosen*, F., Olsson, P. 2013. Institutional entrepreneurs, global networks, and the
emergence of international institutions for ecosystem-based management: The Coral
Triangle Initiative. Marine Policy 38, 195–204.
II.
von Heland, F., Crona, B., Fidelman, P. Mediating science and action across multiple
boundaries in the Coral Triangle. Global Environmental Change. In press.
III.
von Heland, F., Clifton, J. 2015. Whose threat counts? Conservation narratives in the
Wakatobi National Park. Conservation & Society 13(1).
IV.
von Heland, F., Clifton, J., Olsson, P. 2014. Improving stewardship of marine resources:
Linking strategy to opportunity. Sustainability 6, 4470–4496.
Publications outside the thesis:
V.
Fidelman, P., Evans, L., Fabinyi, M., Foale, S., Cinner, J., Rosen*, F. 2012. Governing
large-scale marine commons: Contextual challenges in the Coral Triangle. Marine Policy 36,
42–53.
VI.
Fidelman, P., Evans, L., Foale, S., Weible, C., von Heland, F., Elgin, D. 2014. Coalition
cohesion for regional marine governance: A stakeholder analysis of the Coral Triangle
Initiative. Ocean & Coastal Management 95, 117–128.
VII.
Rosen*, F. 2011. Vårt öde och havens är ett. Havsutsikt 3, 8–9.
* Name before marriage
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
7
Research framework
9
Study design
15
Field context
17
Methodology – a reflexive note
22
Summary of papers
24
Synthesis of results and discussion
29
References
36
Appendix A: Interview templates
45
LIST OF BOXES AND FIGURES
Box 1: Coral Reefs and MPAs
8
Box 2: President Yudhoyono speaks on the Coral Triangle
Initiative
21
Box 3: RAINBOW: Enabling change
33
Figure 1: Research framework
14
Figure 2: Scope of the thesis
15
Figure 3: Map
19
Table 1: Analytical and empirical focus for each Paper
16
INTRODUCTION
Until very recently the ocean was foreign territory to me. I appreciated it for its beauty, sense of
endlessness and serenity, but never could I imagine that it would become my profession to
safeguard its ecosystems. I use the word ocean in singular to underline the connectivity of all
major saltwater bodies, with each other, with the land and the atmosphere (Orbach 2002). As a
PhD student I was soon to explore the many ways in which humanity is interlinked with the
ocean and how our future wellbeing depends upon it. This was the beginning of a marvelous
journey where I have gradually become an untiring advocate of new marine policy.
This journey has brought me to tropical latitudes with warm waters where millions of people rely
on marine life, such as corals and coastal fisheries, to support their livelihoods. Diving in these
waters has certainly been a feast for the eyes, but also a rude awakening to the fact that humanity
is on a collision course with the biosphere (Rockström et al. 2009). My research has been situated
in the Coral Triangle, a region located at the confluence of the Indian and the Pacific Oceans
where many corals are vulnerable to warming temperatures and ocean acidification (Pandolfi et
al. 2011). The region includes parts of or all the seas of Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia,
Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste. Here reefs are only a fraction of the
size that they once were due to overfishing, destructive fishing, marine pollution, and coastal
exploitation (Burke et al. 2011). Together with climate change, these stressors will rearrange food
webs, lead to further loss of corals, and this will result in substantially fewer fish and other marine
creatures (Nellemann et al. 2008, Burke et al. 2011).
While scientists are still learning how much — or how little — marine ecosystems might adapt to
these changes, it is clear that new governance institutions are urgently needed to protect the
identity of the Coral Triangle. This is particularly important for coastal communities who are
already facing poverty and are among the most vulnerable to changing ocean conditions. But this
is also critical from a macro economic perspective, as productive marine ecosystems generate
important revenue (e.g. income, taxes, license fees and trade revenues) and employment
opportunities across the Coral Triangle countries (Foale et al. 2013, Hoegh-Guldberg et al. 2009).
Healthy reef systems and mangroves also protect coastal communities from storms and tsunamis,
reducing causalities, injuries, and future reconstruction costs (CTI Secretariat 2009).
New marine governance institutions are emerging to protect the unparalleled marine biodiversity
of the Coral Triangle (Veron et al. 2009). One example is the establishment of marine protected
areas (MPAs) and to connect these through networks to safeguard important marine ecosystems
such as coral reefs (Flower et al. 2013, Fernandes et al. 2012). MPA networks are believed to
strengthen resilience to environmental stresses “through protecting a representative cross-section
of habitats and species within a defined area and facilitating species movement between sites
through connectivity” (Clifton 2009: 91). However, a large proportion of MPAs offer little or no
protection (Burke et al. 2011, Mora et al. 2006). In regions like the Coral Triangle, conservation is
commonly subject to severe budgetary constraints that impede the ability of authorities to
implement enforcement activities (Christe 2004). There is also a widespread belief among
government authorities that there is no relationship between fishing effort and stock decline as
fisheries data show increasing catches over time (Davis 2001). Yet, catches have increased
because fishermen use more advanced fishing technology and travel greater distances, which
disguise the fact that stocks are declining. Such perceptions further decrease the willingness of
governments to finance and seriously engage in conservation. In the Coral Triangle, actors
involved in implementing networks of MPAs have also been criticized for failing to address the
into several sectors and governance levels) in transformation processes. For example, Westley
and colleagues (2013) stress that there is ”a need for a contextual understanding of the
relationship between different strategies and techniques actors utilize, and the broader system
dynamics that shape the context in which they are working” (pp. 1, see also Walker et al. 2006,
Folke et al. 2010). Such knowledge is important in order to develop a more coherent theory of
the role of change agents, and the strategic actions they employ, in transformation processes.
Another issue that has often been neglected in resilience research is the role of power, and that
managing for resilience or transformation runs the risk of reproducing inequality and domination
(Hornborg 2009).
Developing an ecosystem stewardship of marine resources would require a radical change in
present institutional frameworks governing how we use and think about the marine environment
(Westley et al. 2011). Ecosystem stewardship is understood as an improved capacity to learn
from, respond to, and manage environmental feedback in dynamic ecosystems to sustain the
supply of ecosystem services to support human well being (Chapin et al. 2010). In the context of
marine governance, institutional change has proven extremely difficult. Until the United Nations
Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) came into force in 1994 there was no
international regulation on ocean use. Even though UNCLOS was an attempt to regulate all
aspects of the marine environment, it includes no regulation to protect natural habitats and
wildlife or important ecological processes such as the replenishment of fish stocks or larvae
dispersal. Historically, the notion that the ocean is a source of inexhaustible resources has
affected the way we manage marine ecosystems (Orbach 2002). Additionally, marine ecosystem
use was motivated by the ‘Freedom of the Seas’ doctrine, a principle put forward in the
seventeenth century, which proclaimed open access to the world’s oceans (Eckert 1979, Wilder
1998). These two aspects have led to the widespread view that the ocean is in no need of
restriction, in opposition to the precautionary principle. Until the nineteenth century, the ocean
was also understood to be timeless, a belief that survives in the common trope of the ‘eternal sea’
(Gillis 2011). Unlike the land, the ocean was not thought to be an important factor shaping
human destiny (ibid). Despite the current knowledge that marine resources are not only finite but
also in decline, institutional inertia means that the view of the ocean as an inexhaustible resource
is still influential in shaping how we manage marine ecosystems.
Additionally, marine governance is often out of sync with ecosystem dynamics, and marine
degradation often arises due to institutional mismatches between the scale of management
(determined by the institutional framework informing management) and the scales of the
ecological processes (Galaz et al. 2008). Many marine environmental problems transcend policy
sectors, administrative units, and nation-states, meaning that they often are too multifaceted to be
solved within traditional problem-solving structures of single state bureaucracies (Juda and
Hennessey 2001, Crowder et al. 2006). For example, management is often divided into separate
regimes for fisheries, aquaculture, marine conservation, tourism, shipping, and oil and gas
without much coordination between sectors (Young 2002). There are at least three different types
of mismatches between governance systems and marine ecosystems –– spatial, temporal and
functional mismatches.
Spatial mismatches between the scales of governance and marine ecosystems are widespread and
decision making takes place at multiple levels of social organization (Young 2002). This means
that the resilience of the ocean is affected by management decisions occurring within different
jurisdictional areas such as the high sea, Exclusive Economic Zone, territorial sea, and the coastal
zone. These zones are often managed in isolation to one another and jurisdictional boundaries
often cause seascape fragmentation. This undermines efforts to treat marine areas as
interconnected (ibid.). On the one hand, the scale at which authority resides often does not
match the spatial scales of the resources or processes it is supposed to manage (Crowder et al.
2006), and, at the other hand, large-scale management institutions tend to ignore local
heterogeneity (Hughes et al. 2005). Temporal mismatches arise in situations in which the time
required for governance systems to respond to environmental decline or when the rhythm of
policy-making does not match the temporal scales of ecosystem processes (Galaz et al. 2008,
Young 2002). In such cases intervention efforts often come too late. A majority of political
systems build on a 4-year voting cycle. The relatively short time frame of political systems affects
the willingness of decision makers to make long-term commitments to marine conservation and
sustainable management. The third type of mismatch is of functional character. Marine
ecosystems are not only characterized by multiple use, they are also valued for different things
(Ostrom 1990). There is a general tendency of governments to primarily target their conservation
efforts on species of commercial value (Young 2002). As a result, broader-scale ecological
processes and keystone species that have little commercial value, but uphold ecosystem resilience,
are not recognized as important to preserve. Marine degradation is also difficult to address due to
significant mismatches between the supply of scientific information and the knowledge
requirements of policymakers (Parker and Crona 2012, Klerkx and Leeuwis 2008). Therefore,
new institutions and organizational mechanisms are urgently needed for improving exchange
between scientific knowledge, policy, and marine resource management.
This thesis aims to improve our understanding of how transformative change can be introduced
and catalyzed by networks of individuals and organizations. It also aims to generate new insights
on the dynamics of transformative change processes to improve understanding of the interplay
between agency and context. In so doing, the thesis generates knowledge of the factors and social
mechanisms at work in institutional transformation processes of marine governance. The thesis
takes its analytical point of departure in four complementary analytical frameworks that
contribute important insights on transformative change. These are: 1) institutional
entrepreneurship, 2) complexity perspectives on leadership, 3) boundary work, and 4) value
articulation (Figure 1). These are described here:
The concept of ‘institutional entrepreneurship’ was developed within sociology and has emerged
to study the activities of individuals who spearhead collective attempts to create new institutions,
often in the interests of achieving particular goals of their own (DiMaggio 1988, Maguire et al.
2004, Garud et al. 2007). DiMaggio writes: “new institutions arise when organized actors with
sufficient resources (institutional entrepreneurs) see in them an opportunity to realize interests
they highly value (DiMaggio 1988:14). The idea that individual action can play a role in shaping
broader system dynamics taps into a long-running debate in the social sciences about the tension
between institutional determinism and agency (Emirbayer and Mische 1998). Whereas
institutional determinism describes our norms and beliefs as institutionally determined, and that
individual agency can therefore only play a limited role in institutional change, the notion of
institutional entrepreneurship suggests that groups of individuals can break the institutional status
quo by initiating divergent changes and actively participating in their implementation (Battilana et
al. 2009). In other words, they organize collective attempts to disseminate new beliefs, norms,
and values into social structures (Rao et al. 2000). Analytically, the concept takes its point of
departure in the assumption that any institutional context involves struggles over resources,
stakes and access, and focuses attention on the way in which actors influence their institutional
context by participating in such struggles (Maguire et al. 2004). To successfully perform
institutional entrepreneurship requires the employment of a series of activities and strategies.
Generally, it involves developing a vision (i.e. activities undertaken to make the case for change
including sharing the vision with followers), mobilizing people (i.e. activities undertaken to gain
other actors’ support for and acceptance of change), and motivating other to achieve and sustain
the vision (i.e. activities undertaken to institutionalize change (Battilana et al. 2009). In the
context of this thesis, the concept of institutional entrepreneurship has enabled me to investigate
how individuals and networks of individuals can purposefully play a role in transformation. The
concept has also enabled me to investigate relational dynamics of such processes.
‘Complexity perspectives on leadership’ are inspired by complexity science (building notions such
as non-linearity, uncertainty, self-organization, and experimentation) and build on the growing
recognition that traditional top-down theories of leadership are overly simplistic and unable to
account for the inherent complexity in social change (Lichtenstein et al. 2006). Rather than being
an innate individual characteristic, leadership – defined as the capacity to influence others – is
understood as an emergent outcome occurring through interaction between and across
individuals, networks and organizations (Uhl-Bien et al. 2007, Lichtenstein and Plowman 2009).
“Leadership is not only incremental influence of a boss toward subordinates, but most important
it is the collective incremental influence of leaders in and around the system” (Osborn et al.
2002). In other words, leadership is understood as a dynamic process transcending the
capabilities of individuals alone. Yet, individuals are described as capable of catalyzing change by
promoting behaviors and actions that can encourage emergence in and across organizations
(Lichtenstein et al. 2006), for example by disrupting existing practices and beliefs (i.e. embracing
uncertainty and creating controversy), by recombining resources into new configurations, or by
encouraging novelty through experimentation, sense making, and supporting collective action
(Lichtenstein and Plowman 2009). From this follows an interest in the ‘space between’
individuals and a view of leadership as potentially enacted within every interaction between
members of an organization and its environment (Lichtenstein and Plowman 2009, Uhl-Bien et
al. 2007). In this sense, traditional, hierarchical views of leadership (focusing on the CEO, the top
management team or other individuals with authority) are understood to be less useful to explain
processes of organizational change. The framework recognizes that organizational members or
lower level system participants can interact, exchange information, and act without coordination
from a manager, resulting in unintended institutional change at higher levels within or beyond the
organization. The aim of the framework is to develop a better understanding of organizational
change through investigating the interaction between micro-behaviors and macro-context and
how influence can be co-generated across multiple interactions throughout the organization and
its environment (Lichtenstein and Plowman 2009). Building on the concept of institutional
entrepreneurship, complexity perspectives on leadership have helped to focus the analysis toward
taking into account how the interplay between institutional entrepreneurship and context shapes
transformation.
‘Boundary work’ offers a concept for studying the interaction between different actors in the
processes through which new policy emerges (Shackley and Wynne 1996, Schneider 2009). In
particular, the concept has been used to investigate the infusion of research-based knowledge
into policy and how science and policy communities can organize their relations with each other
to produce new ways of knowing and solving complex problems. The concept was developed
within Science & Technology Studies (STS) and emerged in response to an identified need to
analyze how actors within science and policy established ‘boundaries’ between their different
communities when working to ensure meaningful communication and reach common goals
(Jasanoff 1987). Literature on boundary work is not only interested in how boundaries between
science and ‘non-science’ are constructed or blurred, but also in the consequences of such
boundary delineation (Guston 2001, Miller 2001, Schneider 2009, Lidskog 2014). Recent studies
of boundary work stress that distinctions between science and policy is often vague, that the two
spheres often co-mingle, and that boundary making is often a result of strategic and contextspecific activities undertaken by groups to legitimize their own positions and roles (Parker and
Crona 2012; Lidskog 2014). Due to the proliferation of actors seeking to orchestrating scientific
knowledge to support (or hinder) particular policy outcomes, the boundary work concept is
increasingly recognized as a valuable tool for understanding how actors in the policy process
organize their relations with science and other sources of knowledge for decision support and to
promote action (Clark et al. 2011, Huitema and Turnhout 2009, Robinson and Wallington 2012,
Parker and Crona, 2012, Lidskog 2014). As the concept of boundary work has migrated to other
research fields, actors other than policymakers and scientists have come to populate the analysis
(Parker and Crona 2012). As a consequence of its migration the concept nowadays has to
accounts for interactions between heterogeneous stakeholders, often without clear-cut
demarcations between science and policy, and with highly unequal means to participate in
knowledge creation and policy making. Definitions of ‘success’ of boundary work vary across
studies, but the generation of social capital, creation of shared meanings, joint learning, and
changes in perception, practices, and eventually in institutions is commonly mentioned
(Schneider 2008). For this thesis, the boundary work concept has helped to further investigate
relational aspects of transformative change, especially how power and resources come into play,
and how knowledge for transformation is constructed.
Developed with in the social sciences and humanities (Sörlin 1999, Leach et al. 2010, Crompton
2010), theories on ‘value articulation’ investigate actors’ work to construct narratives wherein
specific ecosystems and species are assigned characteristics, meanings, and value. In other words:
actors’ different ways of thinking about and representing a system. The framework recognizes
that all analysis, whether by researchers, policy actors or local communities, requires framing, and
that all framing involves an element of value judgments (Leach et al. 2010). For example, it is
often said that researchers and policymakers ‘mutually construct’ policy by jointly negotiating
what questions need to be answered and what knowledge counts (Fairhead and Leach 2003). In
framing policy, these actors produce narratives about the issues at hand and compelling reasons
for change. These narratives describe events, define a set of characteristics that makes certain
environments what they are, explain how problems come about, and what needs to be done to
mitigate them. In other words, they define what is wrong and how it can be solved (IDS 2006).
They therefore influence agenda setting, goal definition, characterization of options, and
prioritization (Leach et al. 2010). Narratives may also portray the promoted project or policy as
superior to previous ones, that is, de-legitimating existing institutional arrangements or those
supported by rivals (Battilana et al. 2009). One may say that actors develop narratives to make
complex problems and interactions governable (Westley 2002). In essence, narratives are part of
and evolve from sense-making processes of self and world and therefore provide concepts and
metaphors for understanding how the world operates. Yet, our efforts to interpret reality and
create appealing metaphors tend to simplify social-ecological interactions. Over time, some
narratives come to be supported by institutional and political processes so as to bring about a
particular set of interventions, while other narratives remain marginalized. Understanding
narratives, and the social practices through which these are produced, is therefore central to
understand why policies on the environment take particular shapes (IDS 2006). Not least is this
important as narratives may profoundly impact on human-environment interaction. For example,
historical research demonstrates that in order for a site to become a target for conservation a
widely distributed narrative articulating its high value is absolutely vital to mobilize action for a
new type of governance (Ernstson and Sörlin 2009). Moreover, dominant narratives often gain
validity at the expense of alternative narratives that frame problems and solutions in different
ways. Leach and colleagues (2010) argue that “all too often the marginalized narratives are those
voiced by or representing the perspectives of marginalized people” (pp. 373). For this research,
theories on value articulation have helped to analyze how actors can create policy space for
transformation and why processes of change take particular shapes.
FIELD CONTEXT
“If we look at a globe or a map of the Eastern Hemisphere, we shall perceive between
Asia and Australia a number of large and small islands, forming a connected group
distinct from those great masses of land and having little connexion [sic] with either of
them. Situated upon the equator, and bathed in the tepid water of the great tropical
oceans, this region enjoys a climate more uniformly hot and moist than almost any
other part of the globe, and teems with natural productions which are elsewhere
unknown” (Wallace 1869: 1)
These are the opening lines of Alfred Russel Wallace’s seminal book The Malay Archipelago, first
published in 1869, which over time has become a classic in modern biogeography (Veron et al.
2009). Wallace was a contemporary of Darwin and is known for demarcating the ‘Indo-Malayan
region’ from the ‘Austro-Malayan region’ with a red line when lecturing for the Royal
Geographical Society in London in 1863. This line, more known as the ‘Wallace line’, has since
then become one of the best-known demarcations in the history of biogeography for denoting
the locus of marine biodiversity. Later studies of biogeography repositioned the line so as to
include the Great Barrier Reef in Australia (Veron et al. 2009). This demarcation was altered in
the 1990s when studies of the global distribution of corals were first compiled at a species level,
and clearly indicated that the Malay archipelago was the de facto center of coral diversity (Veron
1995). This region is known as the Coral Triangle (Figure 3). The impact of this finding on
marine conservation efforts was swift. It shifted the international focus of coral reef conservation
from Australia to the relatively under-studied and largely unprotected Coral Triangle, a heavily
populated region with very different socio-economic conditions than Australia (Veron et al.
2009).
The Coral Triangle is 5.7 million km2 in area, which is as large as half of the USA (Fidelman et al.
2012). Although it only covers 1.6 percent of the Ocean, the Coral Triangle harbors 76 percent of
all known coral species, 37 percent of all known coral reef fish species, 53 percent of the world’s
coral reefs, the greatest extent of mangrove in the world, and spawning and juvenile growth areas
for the world’s larges tuna fishery (CTI Secretariat 2009, Hoegh-Guldberg et al. 2009). The area
covers all or part of the seas of Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the
Solomon Islands, and Timor-Leste. Maritime border conflicts between Malaysia and Indonesia
have over the last years caused reoccurring territorial disputes and strained diplomatic relations
(Jakarta Post 2011a, 2011b). Likewise, there are no settled maritime boundaries between
Indonesia and the Philippines and between Indonesia and Timor-Leste (Jakarta Post 2011a).
Approximately 372 million people reside within the Coral Triangle (Fidelman et al. 2012).
Poverty among coastal communities is widespread and as many as 120 million rely on local
marine resources for their income, livelihoods and food security (CTI Secretariat 2009). The
Bajau people are an ethnic minority group living in coastal settlements in Malaysia, Indonesia and
the Philippines, very often in stilt houses in the intertidal area (Acciaioli 2001). A very high
proportion of the Bajau make a living by fishing and there is a strong tradition of travel and
migration. While they are often imagined to have an inherent desire to roam, like the Rom in
Europe, the fact is that the Bajau probably do so only when it becomes too difficult to remain
where they are, either because of conflict with land-based communities or government authorities
or because of changes in environmental conditions (Kortschak 2010). There is often a
(mis)perception among land-based communities that the Bajau do not care about the marine
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Designate the sustainable management of marine and coastal resources as a high and an
urgent ongoing priority on national agendas;
Mobilize high-level public and private sector leadership;
Achieve enhanced regional collaboration to address important regional problems;
Implement economic, policy and legal reforms where needed;
Establish a system of sustainable funding and orient these financial resources toward
achievement of the CTI Regional Plan of Action;
Achieve rapid improvement in institutional and human capacity;
Lead effective, highly participatory multi-stakeholder alliances;
Integrate conservation, management and development; and
Promote public/private partnerships.
The CTI Regional Plan of Action is a 10-year action plan, which captures the above priorities and
commitments. It is organized around five overall goals covering: (i) priority seascapes; (ii)
ecosystem approach to managing fisheries and other marine resources; (iii) marine protected
areas; (iv) climate change adaptation; and (v) threatened species. Each goal includes one or more
time-bound targets. A regional system of areas of high biological value has been selected to
implement the CTI. The selection of sites was guided by criteria that consider the existing state of
the resource base, existing enabling factors, and the feasibility of conservation work in candidate
locations (CTI-CFF 2013). In Indonesia, the Wakatobi National Park in Southeast Sulawesi has
been identified as a priority for the CTI (Figure 3). At 13,900 km2 it is Indonesia’s third largest
MPA. In May 2014, the WNP was nominated as one of four flagship sites for the establishment
of a functional MPA network by the six CTI countries and their development partners. These
four sites, the WNP included, were nominated on the basis of being “large, already effectively
managed sites that have regional ecological, governance and socioeconomic importance” (CTICFF 2014) The Wakatobi National Park is described further in Papers 3 and 4.
The choice for the CTI as a case study reflects the fact that the CTI implies radical change in
marine governance institutions for the Coral Triangle countries (and for the WNP) and that
significant changes are already occurring due to the agreement of the six countries to implement
the Initiative. The CTI has introduced a new paradigm for structuring human-environment
interaction and highlights the many ways in which social systems are interlinked with marine
systems. For this region, the scale of the Initiative is unprecedented and demonstrates an effort
to better match governance with the scale of ecological processes. Another reason for my
selection of case study is the high biodiversity of the region. The Coral Triangle is ecologically
unique and therefore important from a global conservation perspective. The uniqueness of the
CTI (e.g. its scope and complexity), alluded to suggests it could work as a ‘critical case’, i.e. aimed
to achieve information which permits logical deductions of the type, ‘if this is (not) valid for this
case, then it applies to many (few) cases’ of similar type and complexity (Flyvbjerg 2006). For
example, if we are not able to transform marine governance for this area, which contains the
globally most important coral reef, then we are likely to also fail in other less important areas
(especially in emerging organizational fields (Maguire et al. 2004) with high resource inequality,
high natural resource dependence, and multilevel governance structures). Accordingly, the CTI
promised to be a fruitful case study for the study of transformative change in tropical regions
relying on marine resources for income, food and livelihoods. The thesis approaches the CTI as a
process of transformation, which has initiated radical institutional change, but does not claim that
the CTI demonstrates a fully institutionalized transformation.
METHODOLOGY - A REFLEXIVE NOTE
This thesis is based on qualitative research interviews. As described by Kvale and Brinkmann
(2009), the research interview is always “an interpersonal situation, a conversation between two
partners about a theme of mutual interest” (pp. 123). From this perspective, it follows that
knowledge is co-constructed by the informant and the researcher (Holstein and Gubrium 1995).
Thus knowledge is not viewed here merely as found by or given to the researcher, but rather
actively created through questions and answers. Consequently, the quality of scientific knowledge
depends on the researcher’s ability to engage with his/her research rather than firmly situating
the world in a particular narrative that strips the research context and research activity of their
complexity (Holstein and Gubrium 1995, Alvesson 1999).
Before conducting my interviews, I designed interview templates for the different studies.
Questions were formulated to reflect important aspects of each analytical framework. To
investigate the role of institutional entrepreneurship in the creation of the CTI and in the
governance of the WNP, interview templates for Paper 1 and Paper 4 focused on the role of
individuals and networks in catalyzing change, as well as contextual factors. Templates were also
designed to illicit information on barriers to change and with the help of what strategies such
barriers were confronted. To analyze the CTI from a boundary work perspective, interview
templates were designed to illicit information on different actors’ contribution to, and capacity to
engage in, the CTI process, including their perceptions of multi-stakeholder collaboration and
associated conflicts. Building on theories on value articulation, the interview template for Paper 3
aimed to illicit information on central actors’ narratives about marine governance in the WNP
and in what contexts these narratives were articulated. In doing so, it asked about actors’
perceptions of marine ecosystems, threats to these ecosystems, and finally their preferences with
respect to management interventions. Narratives were then juxtaposed with actual management
activities. All interview templates included questions on the socio-economic context of the four
studies.
The interviews were semi-structured (Bernard 2006), yet always flexible enough to allow followup questions and improvisation, including personal judgments about which questioning
techniques to invoke or not invoke (Kavle and Brinkmann 2009). As a general rule, I introduced
a topic, and then followed up on the informants’ answers to seek new information and angles on
the issue at hand. The methods used are described further in the individual papers.
Conducting interviews is an academic practice, but it is also a locally determined practice. As
Alvesson notes (1999), “the interplay between two people with their genders, ages, professional
backgrounds, personal appearances, ethnicities, put heavy imprints on the accounts produced”
(pp. 6). As Kavle and Brinkmann (2009) draw attention to, interviewing is also “influenced by,
and itself influences, the larger social situation in which it takes place” (pp. 309). In my research I
have interviewed a number of actors (e.g. policy experts, government officials, local officials,
politicians, NGO officials, resource users and researchers). Some of these operate at the
international level, while others operate at the national level or at specific local sites. Certainly, the
interplay of identities has influenced the process of conducting interviews and consequently
knowledge production. Being a young, foreign and female doctoral student interviewing, for
example, government officials in Muslim Jakarta, expatriates in Bangkok, tourism operators in
Wakatobi, or climate change negotiators from Australia, situates research in a relational field. On
several occasions I have experienced situations where my gender and age facilitated the research
process by disarming my informants in the sense that my identity posed little threat them, which
often lead to informal, personal accounts. In other situations, such as when applying for an
Indonesian research permit, I have faced various intimidations by government officials and the
police. I also experienced difficulty in interviewing senior policy experts, which often entailed
considerable aspects of politically motivated behavior and a tendency to portray themselves in
beneficial terms (Alvesson 1999). This illustrates the strategic interactions involved in interview
contexts and the challenge of reaching beyond political manifestations while at the same time
allowing for a certain degree of political speech, not least as such speech is central to cultural
production and sense making. In sum, I have experienced that this kind of ‘identity work’ situates
research in a trial-and-error process in terms of developing my own interview skills.
As pointed out by Hammersley and Gomm (1997), research biases are sometimes produced once
a particular interpretation, explanation or theory has been deployed to interpret data in terms of
it. From this observation follows that the researcher may be inclined to search for data that falls
in line with and confirm it, or even shape the research process in ways that lead to erroneous
conclusions. Building on four different analytical frameworks, this PhD thesis has explored the
research subject from different analytical angles, diminishing the risk for a bias toward a
particular kind of conclusion. It does not claim to present an objective truth about the
investigated processes and relations, rather it acknowledges that knowledge is always, to some
degree, co-constructed. Furthermore, to critically analyze the used frameworks and the empirical
material and was central undertaking, and, in the view of this thesis, an important undertaking to
improve understanding of transformative change processes and how resilience research can
approach this area of research in the future.
The interview sample for Paper 1 and Paper 2 is slightly biased toward a higher representation of
males. Meanwhile, at the local level in the Wakatobi the sample has a strong bias toward male
informants (Paper 3). This bias reflects the fact that very few women occupy senior positions
within the Wakatobi district government. Likewise, there is a lack of female employees in local
NGO offices. Paper 4 is intentionally written from the perspective of a person holding a senior
managerial position in the Wakatobi district government, but strives to reflect the larger context
in which this person operates. The account should therefore be seen as subjective. As research
was conducted in two of the six Coral Triangle countries (Indonesia and the Philippines), and,
due to the location of many donors, in Thailand, the research is biased toward perspectives of the
CTI found in these three countries.
SUMMARY OF PAPERS
I: Institutional entrepreneurs, global networks, and the emergence of international
institutions for ecosystem-based management: The Coral Triangle Initiative
This study analyzed institutional change through an investigation of the role of institutional
entrepreneurs in the development of the CTI. It analyzed how institutional entrepreneurs
develop strategies to overcome barriers to change and navigate opportunity contexts to mobilize
support for new marine governance and management institutions. The study builds on a series of
qualitative interviews.
The paper demonstrates that the CTI was initially developed in a shadow network of institutional
entrepreneurs who belonged to different organizations, primarily conservation oriented NGOs
with network ties to the donor community and to influential, senior government officials.
Establishing network ties with high-level political leadership was important to legitimize and
support consumption of divergent ideas and to shift the CTI planning process from being an
informal activity to a formal process that could be better integrated into government structures.
Linked to this, the institutional entrepreneurs identified to what ongoing government processes
of environmental policy making the CTI could be related to. In leverage support for the CTI they
drew on previous experiences of bringing governments together to work on conservation. These
previous examples of cooperation between NGOs and governments were important to build
trust and a shared vision. The institutional entrepreneurs also facilitated interaction between
central stakeholders by supporting the development of new governance mechanisms wherein the
CTI could be deliberated. For example, the design of the ‘Senior Official Meetings’, which is a
forum for the six countries, NGOs and donors to convene, structure the CTI planning process,
and negotiate new policy. The institutional entrepreneurs used the ecosystem approach to
visualize the interconnectedness of social and ecological systems and to frame sense making. For
example, they made the issue of declining ecosystem services relevant to political leaders by
linking it to regional stability and food security, as well as by linking the CTI to parallel,
international processes of environmental policy making.
Understanding the interplay between institutional entrepreneurship, informal social networks,
political priorities and ecosystem dynamics is key to understanding the dynamics of large-scale
governance transformations. Additionally, understanding about timing –– the ability to create the
right links at the right time around issues of high political priority –– should also not be
underestimated. As shown by this thesis, and other research (Westley et al. 2013, Olsson et al.
2008, Olsson et al. 2006), such knowledge can help to identify mechanisms behind the capacity
of change-makers to self-organize in relation to new challenges, create windows of opportunity,
and scale up new ideas. With that said, this thesis suggests that institutional entrepreneurship may
raise critical questions about legitimacy, accountability and ownership of change processes. In the
Coral Triangle, there is a risk institutional entrepreneurship leads to increasing reliance on
external capital and human resources, rather than improved institutional capacity to deal with
interacting environmental problems.
The question of legitimacy is a central question in Paper 2 (described below), which focuses on
the first phase of implementing the CTI. While Paper 1 focuses on analyzing the role of
influential individuals and the networks through which these persons operate, Paper 2 focuses on
relations between the central actors participating in the CTI (i.e. governments, NGOs, donors
and scientists) and their capacity to meaningfully engage in collaborative processes. The
perspective in Paper 2 complements the analysis of individual agency by showing that structure
and resources put heavy imprints on transformation.
II: Mediating science and action across multiple boundaries in the Coral Triangle
The paper studied the process of boundary work as represented by the CTI, i.e. the process by
which actors within science, policy and civil society interact and co-produce knowledge for
governance. Qualitative interviews with representatives of the different organizations involved in
the CTI form the basis of the study. Boundary work among heterogeneous actors in the
developing world is not well understood, so this paper focuses on improving the concept of
boundary work so as to increase its usefulness for understanding complex, multi-level and multiactor governance initiatives. This is important considering that little is known about how
resource inequalities affect both the process and outcomes of governance. The paper also
investigated how boundary work may have an impact on stakeholders’ perceptions of policy
outcomes, that is, whether outcomes are perceived as salient, credible, and legitimate.
Results show that boundary work is challenged by resource inequalities among the Coral Triangle
countries, on the one spectrum, and among the six countries and NGOs, on the other, resulting
in limited knowledge diversity, blurred boundaries between science and politics, and misaligned
temporal scales. The study illustrates that resource inequalities have led to a disproportionate
influence of NGOs on the CTI. The limited capacity of government officials to deconstruct
policy (i.e. the unpacking of policy to reveal embedded norms and tacit values), and to share
domain and country specific knowledge is a major barrier to the co-production of knowledge and
sustainability. This has skewed the focus of the process toward biodiversity conservation (at the
expense of food security which is the overarching goal of the CTI), and created a lack of diversity
in the knowledge and the viewpoints reflected in CTI. The study also suggests that the lack of
equally powerful counterparts to the NGOs risks depraving the credibility and the salience of the
knowledge brought into the CTI.
The study concludes that boundary work has an important temporal dimension that has often
been neglected in the literature (e.g. that different actors involved in boundary work operate on
different time scales, which may constrain collaboration and learning), and that literature on
boundary work must provide a conceptual guide to understand tradeoffs arising as a result of
stakeholders’ various strategies to engage in boundary work.
In paper 3 the question of resources and actors’ capacity to engage in and influence
transformative change is further elaborated, yet from another perspective, namely, their capacity
to engage in value articulation. The paper focuses on actors’ capacity to influence governance by
articulating narratives about ecosystems. Such narratives assign characteristics, meanings, and
value to species and ecosystems and are central to understand why policies on the environment
take particular shapes. While Paper 1 and Paper 2 analyzed international and national activities
associated with the introduction and implementation of the CTI, Paper 3 takes a local perspective
analyzing marine governance in a priority site for the CTI.
The Mirror Never Lies, film recording in the Wakatobi National Park. Photo by the author.
III: Whose threat counts? Conservation narratives in the Wakatobi National Park
The paper studied the impact of conservation narratives on coastal and marine governance in the
Wakatobi National Park (WNP) in Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia. Conservation narratives
describe which aspects of the marine environment should be made resilient to particular threats
and with the help of particular management practices. Indeed what is considered as an
environmental problem is a matter of interpretation and boundary drawing. More specifically, the
study investigated narratives of central actors operating in the WNP to illustrate how narratives
influence and are influenced by critical aspects of governance such as resource allocation, day-today management actions (e.g. surveillance and patrolling), stakeholder relations (including power
dynamics and identity), and long-term ecological monitoring. The study draws on empirical
fieldwork in the WNP.
The results indicate that key narratives of central actors within the WNP are centered upon the
high marine biodiversity and associated livelihood activities. The establishment of the WNP is
often described as a success story of support from local communities where the main threat
comes from illegal fishing by outsiders, thus creating an ‘us versus them’ approach to
management. Defining and redefining identity seems to be a central element in these narratives,
and important in terms of attracting supporters. However, the ‘us versus them’ narrative risks
deflecting blame for marine degradation on the park’s ethnic minority because of their outsider
status and disadvantaged political position, which restricts their ability to articulate alternative
narratives. The results show that the narratives are profoundly entwined with critical aspects of
governance such as resource allocation, management practices and stakeholder relations, as well
as broader initiatives to develop the tourism sector. The dominant narratives also influence
ecological processes by favoring the protection of some species, ecosystems and sites. In the
WNP, narratives stressing the need for coral reef conservation may impact on other ecosystems
such as sea grass meadows. Sea grass meadows are not targeted under the current zonation plan,
but these habitats act as important fish nurseries, meaning that unsustainable fishing in sea grass
meadows may severely impact on adjacent coral reefs due to processes of ecological connectivity.
The dominant narratives, which focus on coral reef fisheries, may also neglect other critical
interactions in social-ecological systems such as the interaction between food security and pelagic
fisheries. Despite the widespread recognition of the importance of better protecting the national
park, governance of the WNP is uncoordinated among key stakeholders (e.g. fishermen,
government, NGOs, researchers and tourist operators) and sometimes poorly adapted to local
institutions and marine system dynamics.
The paper concludes that narratives about ecosystems provide an entry point for researchers to
make sense of how natural resource management operates, in particular its way of asserting itself
as being logical and well-founded. As narratives may have very different policy and governance
implications, those that attain precedence have direct effects on human wellbeing, equity, and
ecosystem resilience. For example, the narrative describing the Bajau (i.e. an ethic minority group
in the WNP) as ‘outsiders’ may downplay illegal activity by people of the dominant ethnic group
and stigmatize the less powerful Bajau community. By analyzing narratives researchers may reveal
controversial problems inherent in governance and explore how such conditions can be
reworked to improve governance outcomes.
Paper 4 has in common with Paper 3 that it focuses on marine governance in the Wakatobi, but
analytically it builds on Paper 1. While Paper 1 investigated the activities of institutional
entrepreneurs operating at primarily the international level, the proceeding paper aimed to
analyze cross-level interaction and interplay between the local, national and international level to
improve understanding of agency and institutional change. It improves the understanding of
institutional change by paying more attention to the context in which institutional entrepreneurs
can become innovative. Finally, it picks up the discussion on institutional capture (e.g. when
dominant external actors take a leading role in defining new institutions on the basis of selfinterest), a main feature of Paper 2 and Paper 3.
IV: Improving stewardship of marine resources: Linking strategy to opportunity
While the need for institutional change in the context of marine governance is increasing,
understanding of how individuals at the local level can pursue different strategies to introduce
ecosystem stewardship is lacking. Drawing on the concept of institutional entrepreneurship, the
paper responds to this gap by investigating the interplay between the institutional entrepreneurs’
strategies and the broader system dynamics that shape the context in which they are working.
This involves understanding how opportunities at higher institutional levels can be captured and
scaled down by institutional entrepreneurs, as well as how local initiatives can be scaled up. The
paper also analyzed the impacts of this interplay to improve our understanding of how
institutional entrepreneurship affects local marine governance.
The study was carried out in the Wakatobi in Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia, and based on
empirical data generated through qualitative interviews. In particular, the study traced the
strategies and activities of an institutional entrepreneur to unravel the larger context within which
this person operates.
The study shows that institutional change and the development of a new ecosystem stewardship
may be accelerated by creating links between different social spheres, such as between natural
SYNTHESIS OF RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Creating a new ecosystem stewardship requires radical change in present institutional frameworks
that govern how we think about, interpret and use marine ecosystems (Ostrom 1990). This thesis
has explored the dynamics of such change processes at an international and local level and
examines how actors can initiate, catalyze and navigate transformative change across multiple
levels. Here I present and discuss seven key insights generated from the four articles included this
thesis. These insights serve to synthesize the results of each paper and aim to contribute to the
discussion on institutional transformative change in marine governance, especially with reference
to the developing world for which the CTI may work as a ‘critical case’ (Flyvbjerg 2006).
Insight 1: Institutional entrepreneurs display grit, rise to challenges and work
systematically
The thesis supports evidence that networks of institutional entrepreneurs, and the skills they
possess, play an important role in introducing and driving transformative change (Westley et al.
2011, Westley et al. 2013). Overall, it shows that institutional entrepreneurs work at the interface
between different social spheres and that transformability arises from their ability to bring these
spheres into contact (Paper 1 & 4). The thesis further shows that institutional entrepreneurs work
in alignment with other credible individuals and organizations, fulfilling complementary roles in
the institutional work required, and with an interest in enabling the same vision, but not
necessarily for the same reason (Paper 1, 3 & 4) (Wijen and Ansari 2007). In developing the CTI
some individuals and organizations were incentivized by anthropocentric values (e.g. the need for
political stability to avoid social unrest), whereas others were driven by more biocentric or
ecocentric values (e.g. the need to protect certain species or ecological processes) (Paper 1 & 2).
This insight is important to take into account as it may affect the long-term impact of
institutional entrepreneurship and its relationship to the broader context in which it is situated.
For example, actors’ different rationale behind implementing networks of MPAs (e.g. the wish to
promote tourism, protect certain species or enhance food security) may influence their view on,
for example, preferred design principles and compliance mechanisms. From this observation
follows that actors will have different perceptions about the legitimacy, salience and credibility of
MPAs once implemented (a question elaborated in Paper 2).
Moreover, the thesis suggests that institutional entrepreneurs demonstrate grit and perseverance
in continuously confronting and interrogating accepted practices and beliefs that are taken for
granted by the people they work with. Some of the interviewed institutional entrepreneurs testify
that they have been denigrated and their efforts thwarted more than once (Paper 4). Significant
grit is innate to the struggle of presenting new, challenging ideas to decision makers, CEOs or
community leaders. This is why timing and in-depth knowledge about key actors’ preferences and
priorities is critical for institutional entrepreneurship (Suddaby and Greenwood 2005). To achieve
a common vision and spur collective action, institutional entrepreneurs have to communicate
how their ideas contribute to value creation for other people, organizations and businesses (Paper
1 & 4). Or as Maguire and colleagues (2004) describe it: “crafting their project to fit the
conditions of the field itself” (pp. 658). This is sometimes referred to as cross-pollination or
issue-linkage (Haas 1980, Dorado 2005, Westley et al. 2013). This is important in order to
provide incentives to organizations and individuals whose interests may lie in not cooperating
and to overcome collective inaction (Wijen and Ansari 2007). One example is the strategy of
Adhi––the institutional entrepreneur followed in Paper 4––to form the ‘School for Marine
Conservation’. Its establishment was to offer a way to address the lack of trained people to
manage Indonesia’s expanding MPA estate, an increasing problem for the Ministry of Marine
Affairs and Fisheries and the Ministry of Forestry (the two ministries overseeing the management
of marine reserves and national parks in Indonesia). Through this initiative, the district
government could form a long-term, strategic relationship with the central government and
create an impetus for a new ecosystem stewardship in the Wakatobi National Park. At the
international level, the creation of the CTI points to the importance of issue-linkage between
national security, regional stability and marine resource use (Paper 1) (see also Österblom et al.
2011, Hamblin 2013). From this observation follows that, beside the individual capacity of
institutional entrepreneurs, the context in which they operate play a critical role in transformation
(as reflected in some of the below insights) While previous research has emphasized that
institutional entrepreneurs are visionary (Olsson et al. 2004, Olsson et al. 2007, Biggs et al. 2010),
few studies have emphasized that institutional entrepreneurship requires sustained effort over
time. Transformative change necessitates systematic effort over several years before collective
action can be initiated (Paper 1 & 4).
Insight 2: Institutional entrepreneurs are sometimes uncritical toward their own change
projects
An aspect that has received little attention in the literature is that institutional entrepreneurs, to
some extent, are driven by self-promotional goals (like other career oriented people). In resilience
research, studies of institutional entrepreneurship have focused on its positive contribution to
ecosystem governance and rarely applied a critical lens to the phenomenon. This thesis indicates
that institutional entrepreneurs are driven by pragmatism and are often uncritical toward the
effect of their own change projects (Paper 2 & 3). While pragmatism is perhaps necessary to gain
momentum and drive transformation it sometimes comes at the expense of legitimacy, credibility
and salience (Paper 2). The thesis shows several examples of the less positive aspects of these
actors’ work, for example that their influence is often an effect of highly unequal differences in
power, but also that their influence (re)produces truths about people and the ecology that
unavoidably also simplifies and misrepresents complex social-ecological interactions and
relations. These actors also show an interest in orchestrating science to support particular courses
of action (e.g. biodiversity conservation) and widely distribute such knowledge (Lidskog 2014).
From this follows that scientific advice is not always developed independently from policy.
Periodic assessments and reflexive governance emphasizing uncertainty, ambivalence about
multiple goals, and distributed power (Voss et al. 2006) is therefore critical in any governance
endeavor, especially in terms of learning about the conditions of its future existence and needs
Insight 3: Behind-the-scene organizing is often a precondition for the initiation of
transformative change. Shifting the process from an informal to a formal track is a major
challenge
The thesis shows that transformative change, especially at the international level among states,
but also at the local level, is often introduced behind-the-scenes by informal networks. Secrecy
serves as a basis for cooperation between, for example, government officials and NGOs, and
allows for bold ideas to develop in a safe space until the right actors have been mobilized and the
process has gained initial momentum (Ahrne and Brunsson 2011). An initial challenge for people
involved in such shadow networks is to recast this informal process into a formal process where
ideas about transformative change can be deliberated among a broader set of stakeholders and
can become institutionalized. For the CTI, the shift into a formal structure was made possible by
the design of a new set of governance mechanisms through which the process could continue to
evolve (Paper 1). Informal networks continued to play an important role even after this shift,
especially in terms of behind-the-scene organizing the transformation process in-between formal
meetings (Paper 2). The importance of informal social networks has been emphasized in many
studies on natural resource management and resilience (Ernstson 2008, Crona et al. 2011).
However, informal social networking may come at the cost of legitimacy. Many actors in the CTI
complained about the lack of transparency and found that it was very difficult to scrutinize the
CTI planning process, and that informal social networking sometimes preclude open deliberation
(Paper 2). This suggests that transparency is a tension point (among others) in change processes.
From this is follows that transformative change will have to involve a balancing act between
approaches that enable new ideas to develop in a safe space, on the one hand, and approaches
that radically increase the openness of organizational process, on the other.
Insight 4: A strong and compelling narrative is essential to successfully introducing and
driving transformative change
Before institutional entrepreneurs in informal networks can introduce transformative ideas, they
will have to develop a strong narrative through which the ecosystem of interest is assigned
meaning and value (Paper 3). This type of framing is a crucial bridging tactic to induce collective
action among both allies and adversaries, as well as to spread knowledge about an issue to make
it more familiar (Wijen and Ansari 2007). By using a narrative actors reiterate the use of certain
concepts, metaphors, and principles, which often renders the narrative a self-reinforcing nature
(Douglas 1986). The importance of visioning and sense making has been emphasized in previous
work on natural resource management and resilience. For example, Ostrom (2005) argues that
collective action is dependent on a common understanding of the problem and how it can be
solved. This thesis shows that the ability to articulate and distribute a narrative, which tells a
compelling story about the broader system (including its resource users), rather than just making
sense of ecological knowledge or formulating visions is critical (Ernstson and Sörlin 2009,
Ernstson 2012). According to Lakoff (in Crompton 2010), narratives form “mental structures
that allow human beings to understand reality – and sometimes to create what we take to be
reality. [T]hey structure our ideas and concepts, they shape how we reason, and they even impact
how we perceive and how we act” (pp. 11, see also Bourdieu 1992). In this sense narratives may
play an important role in shifting from paradigms that legitimize unsustainable resource use. This
thesis contains several examples of how narratives fundamentally contribute to new marine
resource management (for better or worse) by defining what types of knowledge count, steering
conservation activities toward certain goals, and assigning people new identities. One example is
the narrative about the need for a network of MPAs to ensure a safe future for the Coral
Triangle’s inhabitants, a narrative articulated at the international level (as exemplified in the CTI
Regional Plan of Action) and the local level in the Wakatobi National Park. This is an example of
a narrative which has achieved to enroll large numbers of supporters and generated a diffusion
process favoring collective action. As argued by Wijen and Ansari (2007), “collective action can
only be successful when institutional entrepreneurs are able to enroll a large majority of actors
through the process of ‘intréssement’ or alliance building (pp. 1085).
Furthermore, the articulation of success stories seems to be a common strategy among NGOs to
mobilize recognition for a certain narrative (Paper 3). In this sense, success stories are key
components of a narrative and serve an important marketing function (Paper 1 & 4). However,
drawing on Mosse (2004) there is a risk that narratives take on their own lives and impact
transformation in unexpected ways, as well as the risk that the narratives are written by single
actors. This is especially problematic when, as the ‘illegal-fisher-narrative’ and the representation
of the Bajau in ‘The Mirror Never Lies’ illustrate (Paper 3 & 4), promotes aspects of essentialism,
which is why the use of narratives may raise profound ethical issues (Crompton 2010). For
example, the representation of the Bajau as inherently different from people living on the land
(who hold the political power) could hinder them from contributing important ecological
knowledge to the transformation process and become engaged in governance. Another example
is the narrative about the ‘illegal fisher’ in the Wakatobi (Paper 3). In the WNP illegal fishing is
articulated as a matter of blast and cyanide fishing and associated with ’outsiders’ from elsewhere
who come to the WNP to fish. Yet, these narratives are often being conflated so that anyone
from ‘outside’ is an illegal fisher, but the Indonesian constitution allows small-scale fishermen to
freely fish anywhere in national waters (Gunawan and Visser 2012). The narrative of the ‘illegal
fisher’ forges a strong ‘us versus them’ relation between people within and outside the WNP.
From this it follows that any regulation of fishing practices should concentrate on regulating the
activity of ‘outsiders’. The narrative therefore undermines efforts to account for system dynamics
and multiple agencies, for example the need to manage endogenous drivers of marine decline.
Insight 5: Power dynamics are constantly at play in transformation
Transformative change cannot be studied without taking into account how power affects the
process in which transformative change is introduced, deliberated, and implemented. In this
thesis, power is understood as a relational quality, which requires at least two types of actors (e.g.
those who govern and those who are governed), is obtained through access to various resources
and tactics, and continuously in need of re-articulation (Rutherford 2007). As emphasized by
Crona and Bodin (2010), discussions of power have been remarkably absent in resilience
research. To improve understanding of transformative change, it is critical to engage more with
this issue (Ernstson et al. 2008, Hornborg 2009, Crona and Bodin 2010). This thesis illustrates
some of the ways in which power and resource asymmetries influence transformation processes
toward new types of ecosystem governance. Most notably the papers show that power is a
double-edged sword in that it both enables efficient transformation and steers it in directions that
are not always publically agreed upon (Paper 1-4). In particular, differences in resources influence
the credibility (i.e. perceptions about what constitutes accurate knowledge), legitimacy (i.e.
perceptions about procedural fairness) and salience (i.e. perceptions about the relevance of
information and actions) of change projects (Paper 2). For example, a lack of resources such as
human resources, language skills, and organizational capacity may prevent actors from evaluating
central concepts and assumptions and mobilizing alternative understandings (Paper 2). This is
important as failure to engage with the content (through contestation and deliberation) of the
CTI risks neglecting the fact that its content may not be relevant to specific national contexts and
that the assumptions behind scientific evaluations may not hold equally across the six nations.
Communication technology can be considered one of the many power resources that actors have
access to. The opportunity to speak on behalf of the marine environment and mobilize collective
action not only depends on people’s positions within networks and organizations (Busch 1997,
Battilana 2006), but also their technology use. Galaz and colleagues (2010) demonstrate the clear
relationship between communication technology and transformative change. Moreover, Latour
(1986) argues that communication technologies, infrastructure and monitoring devises are often
necessary to establish and strengthen social relations. The global information society and social
media offers new ways of communicating environmental challenges and solutions, pushing the
sustainability agenda, and mobilizing support for ecosystem stewardship. As the CTI is designed
to govern an area that stretches over 5.7 million km² technologies are fundamental to enable
knowledge exchange and collective action. This thesis shows that transformative change is
mobilized by a series of emails and conference calls, social medias, photography, and film (Paper
1-4). The rapid advance of communication technology offers new ways of communicating
environmental challenges and solutions, driving the sustainability agenda, and mobilizing energy
for a new ecosystem stewardship. Access to communication technologies is unequally distributed
among the Coral Triangle countries (Paper 2). Countries in the Southeast Asian part of the Coral
Triangle enjoy greater access than in the Pacific part. This creates an information and
communication deficit among key stakeholders in the Pacific, which heavily impacts on their
ability to engage in the CTI (Paper 2). Moreover, in contrast to government offices,
communication technologies are fully integrated into the operations of NGOs and donors, which
strengthen their capacity to drive the CTI process. Yet, the co-production of the movie ‘The
Mirror Never Lies’ between WWF and Wakatobi Regency is an example of a new way of
interacting with stakeholders, communicating ecological knowledge and promoting ecosystem
stewardship (Paper 3, 4). While increased exposure to information may raise decision makers’ and
resource users’ political awareness and help them to examine values and actions, they are facing a
new dilemma of being overwhelmed by too much information, not knowing which is credible
and reliable. The dilemma of representation is also an issue, as skewed representation of people
within social medias and film, may invoke a backlash against transformative change (Paper 3).
For example, the description of the Bajau as an icon of a disappearing, exotic lifestyle (which is
often equated with backwardness) instead of true political actors may impede the kind of multistakeholder collaboration needed to transform behaviors and marine resource governance.
Focusing on these three aspects of organizational and institutional change (i.e. credibility,
legitimacy and salience) provides a practical way of analyzing power, and aids in the identification
of concrete actions for reworking undesirable management outcomes and process designs. Such
analysis is of particular importance for resilience research that has often focused on factors and
conditions that enable transformative change rather addressing how the abuse of power and
asymmetrical stakeholder relations can contribute to loss of resilience. For example, this thesis
shows that institutional entrepreneurship, besides its innovative and transformative capacity,
involves aspects that could potentially hold off social changes. This may be so because
institutional entrepreneurs often know each other beforehand and because they need to embed
(or interlock) their ideas with existing interests and projects of others. This means that
institutional entrepreneurship may involve forces that are transformative as well as forces that are
conservative, and that the social capital of institutional entrepreneurs may also form a source that
impedes transformation (Woolcock 1998). Building on the previous discussion about narratives,
the thesis also shows how simple or uncritical narratives and interpretations of complex socialecological systems are produced from power relations (Flyvbjerg 1998). For this follows that we
need to analyze power relations if we want to know how these narratives come into existence and
how they can be changed toward better management and governance outcomes. Looking at
actors’ differential access to resources is also important considering that implementing any
change, particularly divergent change, is likely to be costly (Misangyi et al. 2008).
Insight 6: The capacity to drive transformative change reflects institutional
entrepreneurs’ position in social networks
Transformability is intimately linked to the capacity to organize existing ideas and change-makers,
not only within organizations, but also outside of and between organizations. This thesis
indicates that institutional entrepreneurs’ position in social networks (centralized or connecting
separate networks) determines how influential one is and how well one can transform institutions
(Battilana et al. 2009). In the context of this thesis, NGO’s seem to have these latter qualities.
This is shown in the work of NGOs to convene informal meetings in-between formal meetings
(Paper 1), enabling communication by acting as both messenger and interpreter (Paper 2),
attribute certain identities to groups such as ‘the illegal fisher’ (Paper 3), and promote certain
actions such as MPA management (Paper 4). In doing so, NGOs have introduced and catalyzed
transformative change within the Coral Triangle countries. It also seems that NGOs are
incubators of institutional entrepreneurs (Paper 1, 2, 4). This could be because NGOs are often
more flexible and have more participatory organizational structures than, for example,
governments in the Coral Triangle. They generally also have higher organizational capacity and
access to various resources. Adhi – the institutional entrepreneur followed in Paper 4 – had a
history of working in a local environmental NGO, and certainly brought a spirit of flexibility and
innovation with him into the district government of Wakatobi. Ahrne and colleagues (2007) have
presented several examples of NGOs that have few traditional power resources, such as
economic capital, yet have been successful in getting other actors to adopt their policy objectives.
In the Coral Triangle the NGOs’ capacity to do so is linked to:
1) Their decentralized organizational structure with national and field offices in the Coral
Triangle countries creating platforms for action (except in Timor-Leste);
2) Their network ties to influential donors and high-level government officials (occasionally
enabled through kinship such as in the Philippines where the daughter of President Arroyo works
as a policy officer for WWF);
3) Funding from international donors to operate CTI activities; and
4) Their ability to transfer knowledge and opinions to decision makers at the national level, who
often have very limited knowledge exchange with other experts and scientists.
These qualities allowed the NGOs to bridge diverse stakeholders, disseminate both facts and
values, and access dispersed sets of resources (DiMaggio et al. 2004). Crona and Bodin (2010)
found similar factors when investigating links between informal power structures, knowledge
sharing, and consensus building in small-scale fisheries in Kenya. Their study showed that
individuals with central positions in knowledge networks are often instrumental in determining
which knowledge and interpretation of ecological signals are given priority.
Insight 7: Emotion is an important but neglected aspect of transformative change
Scholars such as Westley (1991) have emphasized that emotional aspects are a neglected aspect of
our understanding of organizational life. The fact that emotion can play a role in transformation
therefore comes as no surprise. Institutional entrepreneurs who were interviewed for this thesis
felt that the desire to change and care for the natural world is tightly linked to our emotions and
that successful strategies speak to people’s emotions (Paper 4). In the WNP, addressing
emotional aspects of marine governance was seen as particularly helpful given that the scientific
jargon and arguments of conservation-based organizations often had little logical resonance
among local communities. For example, the local government of Wakatobi often used the
metaphor of a ‘house’ when explaining the rationale behind marine spatial planning. In
communicating with the public, the government asked what would happen if married couples
had to share room with other family members. The reasoning being that married couples need to
have their own room to make love, and that the same principle applies to fish. That is, without
safe sites for fish spawning there will not be any future fish stocks. According to the government,
such metaphors were often met with laughter and played an important role in mobilizing
understanding for marine spatial planning. Emotional aspects are rarely covered in the resilience
literature on transformative change. Yet, there is increasing evidence that facts play only a partial
role in shaping people’s judgment while emotion is often more influential (Crompton 2010).
Wijen and Ansari (2007) writes that institutional entrepreneurship, especially at the international
level, is more likely to become effective when invoking a sense of altruism and a feeling that this
is the right thing to do. Lack of spaces where people can express strong emotions and solve
conflicts associated with natural resource politics may erode support for transformative change
(Christie 2004, Atkisson 2011). In the WNP, the lack of such spaces presents a key dilemma.
Resilience research has a lot to gain by improving our understanding of the ways in which
emotional aspects come to play in ecosystem governance and transformation.
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Appendix A: Interview templates
Paper 1
1. Background information
Location
Date
Name
Title
Gender
Nationality
2. Thematic areas to be covered
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Main actors/organizations involved in the development of the CTI
The role of key individuals/organizations (who are they?)
Relational patterns of key actors
Visions for change
Key actors’ strategies
What characteristics/qualities make actors influential
Barriers to change
Links between key individuals, organizations and networks
Major drivers for change in the past and now
Enabling factors
Paper 2
1. Background information
Location
Date
Name
Title
Gender
Nationality
2. Thematic areas to be covered
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Key actors involved in negotiating the CTI
Contribution of key actors (How and with what do they contribute?)
Capacity of key actors
Perceptions of the CTI/Regional Plan of Action
Perceptions of multi-stakeholder collaboration
Perceptions of leadership
Perceptions of policy outcomes (relevance, trustworthiness)
Conflicts associated with the development/implementation of the CTI
Paper 3
1. Background information
Location
Date
Name
Title
Gender
Nationality
2. Thematic areas to be covered
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Describe present conservation strategies and management activities in the WNP
What actors are involved in management
Collaboration among different actor groups
Describe the park, its marine ecosystems
The status of marine resources
Threats to the park’s marine ecosystems
The effect of different threats
Preferred management strategies/interventions to deal with threat
Management conflicts
Paper 4
1. Background information
Location
Date
Name
Title
Gender
Nationality
2. Thematic areas to be covered
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Describe present conservation strategies/activities in the WNP
Impression of park management
Management barriers
Main actors involved in management/governance of the WNP
Relations between different actors
Impression of the present leadership
The role of key individuals (who are they?)
Visions for change
Key individuals’ strategies
Links between key individuals, organizations and networks
Major drivers for change in the past and now
•
•
Opportunities for change
The role of regional conservation initiatives/actors