Looking for a postdoc on adaptive governance of mountain ecosystem services

Update 30 Aug: the vacancy is on-line and open for applications at http://www.academictransfer.com/19767

Update 27 Aug: due to technical problems this vacancy wrongly shows up as "expired" on the academictransfer website. The vacancy is still open for applications until 15 Sep, and the website will be corrected soon.

Our Public Administration and Policy group at Wageningen University is looking for a postdoc to carry out research in the ESPA project “Adaptive governance of mountain ecosystem services for poverty alleviation enabled by environmental virtual observatories (MOUNTAIN-EVO)”. We are looking for a social science researcher in this cross-disciplinary project with Imperial College London and the University of Birmingham. This position will involve working with local researchers in mountain regions in Peru, Ethiopia, Kyrgizstan and Nepal and synthesizing the social science insights on the potential of participatory monitoring, knowledge co-generation and environmental virtual observatories for adaptive governance of ecosystem services in these mountain regions. The project will be under supervision of dr. Art Dewulf and prof. Katrien Termeer of the Public Administration and Policy group. For more information on the MOUNTAIN-EVO project, see http://artdewulf.blogspot.nl/2013/04/adaptive-governance-of-mountain.html

We are looking for ambitious and enthusiastic scientist, with a PhD in a relevant social scientific discipline and with cross-disciplinary research skills.

The ideal candidate:
• has a PhD in the field of public administration, political science, development studies, environmental studies or other relevant social scientific discipline
• is familiar with the literature on ecosystem services, adaptive governance and poverty alleviation
• has experience with doing research in the global South and is prepared to travel to the different case study areas for study visits
• has published internationally in refereed scientific journals Is able to write articles and reports, to which many researchers contribute
• has published internationally in refereed scientific journals
• has excellent communication and writing skills in English (knowledge of Dutch or Spanish is an advantage)

We offer a postdoc position for 36 months with an intended starting date of 1 December 2013. The official job announcement can be found at www.academictransfer.com/19767 and is open for applications until 15 September. For more information contact art . dewulf @ wur . nl (without the spaces).

Contrasting frames in policy debates on climate change adaptation

Just published on-line in WIREs Climate Change: “Contrasting frames in policy debates on climate change adaptation”. I was invited to write this "Focus Article" for one of the Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews journals, which means it’s not reporting on original research but reviewing existing studies on framing climate change adaptation, and indicating some avenues for future research.

Contrasting frames in policy debates on climate change adaptation

The process by which issues, decisions, or events acquire different meanings from different perspectives has been studied as framing. In policy debates about climate change adaptation, framing the adaptation issue is a challenge with potentially farreaching implications for the shape and success of adaptation projects. From the

available literature on howthemeaning of climate change adaptation is constructed and debated, three key dimensions of frame differences were identified: (1) the tension between adaptation and mitigation as two contrasting but interrelated perspectives on climate change; (2) the contrast between framing climate change

adaptation as a tame technical problem, and framing climate change as a wicked problem of governance; and (3) the framing of climate change adaptation as a security issue, contrasting state security frames with human security frames. It is argued that the study of how climate change adaptation gets framed could be enriched by connecting these dimensions more closely with the following themes in framing research: (1) how decision-making biases lead to framing issues as structured technical problems; (2) the process of scale framing by which issues are situated at a particular scale level; and (3) the challenge of dealing with the variety of frames in adaptation processes.

The paper can be found http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/wcc.227 or downloaded here

Framing scale increase in Dutch agricultural policy 1950–2012

Maartje van Lieshout, who is close to finishing her dissertation at our group, has published an article about scale framing in agricultural policy in NJAS - Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences. This time, a historical data set of policy documents dating back to 1950 serves as the basis to analyze continuity and change in the framing of scale increase in agriculture.

Framing scale increase in Dutch agricultural policy 1950–2012
M. van Lieshout, A. Dewulf, N. Aarts,  C. Termeer

In this paper, we study how agricultural policy, and particularly how scale increase, has been framed by the responsible ministers over the last six decades. We analyse the different interpretations attached to scale increase and other policy issues, in a longitudinal study of the memoranda accompanying the yearly national budget for the Ministry of Agriculture. Our analysis provides a nuanced explanation for the continuous use of the contested concept of scale increase. We show that the framing of Dutch agricultural policy has undergone considerable changes regarding issues and solutions, the role of international policy and issues from other policy domains. We find that the policy and the policy frames have become more diverse, interdependencies have increased and as a result policy has become more complex and self-referential. Part of our findings can be explained as the occurrence of a paradigm shift. However this does not explain the continuous presence of the logic of scale increase as the way forward for Dutch agriculture. We state that the self-referential agricultural policy system has aimed to continuously improve itself by means of scale increase, without discussing or critically reflecting on the functioning of the system itself. In this process language played a powerful role: changing the language helped to maintain the existing system or paradigm in which scale increase is continuously positively framed as the solution for Dutch agriculture.

The paper can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.njas.2013.02.001 or downloaded below.

Bridging knowledge frames and networks in climate and water governance

A book edited by Jurian Edelenbos, Nanny Bressers and Peter Scholten about "Water Governance as Connective Capacity" has just been published by Ashgate. Together with Marcela Brugnach, Katrien Termeer and Helen Ingram, we contributed a chapter on "Bridging knowledge frames and networks in climate and water governance". 

Here's an extract from the introduction to the chapter:

Addressing the challenge of water governance in view of climate change requires the best of available knowledge, sensible ways to deal with the inherent uncertainties, and, as we will argue in this paper, bridging diverging knowledge frames and networks. The fate of diverse knowledge frames and networks in the climate domain is directly relevant for water governance – why investing in e.g. hydropower or water storage capacity if climate change isn’t much of a problem, as climate skeptic activists and some political parties claim. In a field as knowledge-intensive as water and climate policy – without sophisticated models climate change wouldn’t even be recognized as an issue – a thorough understanding is needed of how knowledge is produced in networks, how knowledge links to conflicting perspectives or frames and how diverse ways of knowing can be bridged.

This is the reference:

Dewulf, A., Brugnach, M., Termeer, C. & Ingram, H. (2013). Bridging knowledge frames and networks in climate and water governance. In: J. Edelenbos, N. Bressers & P. Scholten (Eds). Water governance as connective capacity, pp 229-247. Ashgate.

The book is available at Amazon and also as a PDF ebook

Adaptive governance of mountain ecosystem services for poverty alleviation

More than a year ago we drafted a one-page project idea about citizen science, virtual observatories, social networks and adaptive governance for the ESPA (Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation) call of the British Research Council. Then followed a number of important steps, including a brainstorming session in a coffee bar in Lima, an exercise in interdisciplinary proposal writing and a joint effort to draft a response to the reviews. Last month, Wouter Buytaert (PI of the proposal at Imperial College), David Hannah (Co-PI at Birmingham) and myself (Co-PI at Wageningen) were invited to defend our proposal in London. A week later we received the good news that the proposal had been recommended for funding by the ESPA board!

The project is meant to start in the fall, and we will be looking for a social science postdoc (3-year, full time, based at Wageningen) in this cross-disciplinary research project. This position will involve working with local researchers in  mountain regions in Peru, Ethiopia, Kyrgizstan and Nepal. The title and a summary of the project can be found below.

Adaptive governance of mountain ecosystem services for poverty alleviation enabled by environmental virtual observatories (MOUNTAIN-EVO)

Ecosystem services (ESS) management can alleviate poverty if it is embedded in local processes of adaptive governance that rely on continuous monitoring and knowledge co-generation. This is especially the case in remote mountain regions, where poverty is often interlocked with multiple ecosystem threats, data scarcity, and high uncertainties. In these environments, it is paramount to generate locally relevant knowledge about multiple ESS and how they impact local livelihoods. This is often problematic. Existing environmental data  collection tends to be geographically biased towards more densely populated regions, and prioritised towards strategic economic activities that bypass the poor. Data may also be locked behind institutional and technological barriers and monopolised by the better educated or politically connected. These issues create a “knowledge trap” for data-poor regions, which is especially acute in remote and hard-to-reach mountain regions. This project will blend cutting-edge concepts of adaptive governance with technological breakthroughs in citizen science and knowledge co-generation to break this vicious circle.

Our central research question is how recent conceptual and technological innovations in environmental sensing, data processing, interactive visualisation and participatory knowledge generation can be leveraged to implement demand-driven, interactive and multidirectional approaches to knowledge generation about ESS. Our approach to this question is built around the notion of Environmental Virtual Observatories: decentralised and open technology platforms for knowledge generation and exchange that enable participation of marginalised and vulnerable communities bypassed by the traditional mechanisms.

Our case studies are 4 remote and poor mountain regions characterised by acute degradation of ESS, in particular water supply, soil fertility, and land cover. We will implement a process of participatory data collection and processing on these ESS and their trade-offs, embedded in the local NGO and educational setting. Mechanisms of continuous evaluation and improvements will be set up, and tested for usefulness, robustness and impact on human wellbeing. Our goal is not to develop specific solutions to specific problems. Rather, we will leverage the cross-disciplinary nature of our consortium to create a flexible and adaptive set of tools, methods and concepts to promote resilient ESS for poverty alleviation.