DOCTORAL THESIS 2014 Doctoral Programme of Biology Facilitating transitions towards adaptive governance and management in estuarine socio-ecosystems: Institutional analysis and action research in the Doñana region Author: Pablo Fernández Méndez Director: Dr Luis Santamaría Co-director: Dr Jaime M. Amezaga Tutor: Dr Elena García-Valdés Pukkits Doctor by the University of the Balearic Islands Facilitating transitions towards adaptive governance and management in estuarine socio-ecosystems: Institutional analysis and action research in the Doñana region A Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Doctoral programme of Biology, Earth and Environmental Sciences Speciality (based on UNESCO Nomenclature 2599). Department of Biology, University of the Balearic Islands. Author: Pablo Fernández Méndez Director: Dr Luis Santamaría (Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies – joint centre between the University of the Balearic Islands and the Spanish Research Council, Spain) Co-director: Dr Jaime M. Amezaga (School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Newcastle University, United Kingdom) Tutor: Dr Elena García-Valdés Pukkits (Department of Biology, University of the Balearic Islands, Spain) Approved by the Committee of Postgraduate Studies of the University of the Balearic Islands. Palma de Mallorca, 2014 Suggested citation: Méndez, P.F., 2014. Facilitating transitions towards adaptive governance and management in estuarine socio-ecosystems: Institutional analysis and action research in the Doñana region. PhD Thesis, University of the Balearic Islands. The author I certify that the present work is original, that all material in this thesis that is not my own work has been identified and properly referenced, and that no material has been submitted for which a degree has already been awarded to me. Signed, Pablo Fernández Méndez The directors We certify that this thesis has been developed by Pablo Fernández Méndez under our direction at the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies (IMEDEA), a joint centre between the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB) and the Spanish Research Council (CSIC), and the Doñana Biological Station (EBD), a centre of the Spanish Research Council (CSIC), as a requirement for the award of a PhD in Biology: Earth and Environmental Sciences Speciality (based on UNESCO Nomenclature 2599). The director, The co-director, Approval of the tutor, Dr Luis Santamaría Dr Jaime M. Amezaga Prof Elena García-Valdés Pukkits Galdón Menendez This thesis is dedicated to my family, especially to my grandparents, whose personal example and character have marked my will to work hard into the unknown. Antonio Fernández Rabaneda In memoriam “It is when the hidden decisions are made explicit that the arguments begin” G. Hardin (1968) The Tragedy of the Commons “Students frequently complain–and justifiably so– that they have a sense of being in a Tower of Babel” E. Ostrom (2005) Understanding Institutional Diversity “Suddenly, the resulting unpredictability stifles informed action or triggers ignorant reaction” C.S. Holling (2004) From Complex Regions to Complex Worlds Abstract The accelerated impact of human activities is causing increasing damages to the Earth’s life support systems. Consequently, the policy-making and scientific communities have advocated the urgent need for a change towards the sustainable use of natural resources and ecosystems. This thesis deals with the institutional conditions necessary for that change in coupled social-ecological systems, through an in-depth case study: the Doñana region, an estuarine social-ecological system affected by intricate water resources and wetland conservation problems located in the Guadalquivir Estuary (south-west Spain). In particular, I focus on the need for transitions from command-and- control schemes towards more flexible, participatory and adaptive approaches to policy and decision making: specifically, adaptive governance and adaptive management. For this purpose, I address three interrelated questions of broad research interest, using a theoretical framework that combines elements from resilience and institutional path dependence theories. The first question has implications for the implementation of participatory processes in the course of transitional designs towards adaptive governance and management, while the other two have implications at a theoretic- analytical level. The first research question focuses on assessing the usefulness of an action-research program aimed at introducing adaptive management tenets at the research-management interface of the Doñana region (Chapter 4). The program, which paralleled an adaptive restoration in the context of the hydro-ecological restoration project Doñana 2005, combined a formalised process of networking, interviews, focus groups and System Dynamics techniques that proved useful to engage and build trust among a wide range of actors who finally participated in two adaptive management workshops. The participation of stakeholders and agencies entrenched in long-standing conflicts and power struggles up to that date was considered a major success of the program. During the workshops, the participants collaboratively developed a set of policy recommendations, offering potential avenues to improve the research-management interface, water resources management and wetland conservation practices in the Doñana region and Guadalquivir Estuary. The action-research program was supported by preparatory research aimed at analysing the practices of, and learning from, best-in-class practitioners on adaptive management from British Columbia (Canada), where this approach was first conceived and implemented on a large scale (Chapter 3). Such preparatory research, which was based on a document review, interviews and a final workshop at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver), revealed that adaptive management has cycled, during the last four decades, through alternate phases of theoretical development, practical implementation and feedback, to which many scholars and practitioners have contributed. In particular, the workshop allowed current opportunities and constraints for the testing and implementation of adaptive management in Canada to be elicited, based on the direct, on-the-ground experience of practitioners and analysts. The results of that research provided the grounds and support for the strategic development of the action-research program in the Doñana region. The preliminary identification, during the action-research program, of major rigidities within Doñana’s institutional framework and management agencies triggered the second part of the thesis, which addressed, through institutional analysis, the two additional research questions mentioned above. The second research question of the thesis focuses on enhancing the understanding of the roots of institutional rigidity in maladaptive social-ecological systems. Institutional rigidity that hinders change and smothers innovation represents a major constraint for adaptive governance and adaptive management. Therefore, to facilitate potential transitions towards more sustainable social-ecological systems characterised by adaptive approaches to decision-making, it is of utmost importance to understand and explain the origins of such institutional rigidity. In Chapter 5, by constructing a historical pattern, I identify the existence of a rigid institutional regime for water resources management and wetland conservation in the Doñana region, and explain, through a first theoretical iteration, the mechanisms underlying the genesis, amplification and persistence of such institutional rigidity. My explanation has two distinguishable parts: on one side, the deep-historical genesis of the regime at a critical juncture in the 19th century; and on the other side, the formation and continuity of the regime up to the last decades of the 20th century, despite its dysfunctionality for coping with crises and its inability to harmonise wetland conservation, water management and economic development. The historical pattern confirms that the Doñana’s regime has followed a path-dependent dynamic, largely characterised by the historical recurrence on the application of command-and- control schemes. In a seeming paradox, these schemes, instead of driving the regime towards an efficient outcome, led to the formation of a rigid institutional regime that drove the Doñana region into a sub-optimal systemic rigidity trap. This rigid outcome may be theoretically qualified as contingent, for it defies the traditional expectations of neoclassical economics that lie at the logical core of the concept of institutional path dependence. The third research question of the thesis focuses on the explanatory potential of entrepreneurship and discourses, in their relationship with political-economic interests and power, as factors contributing to shape outcomes in local social-ecological systems. In particular, I discussed the explanatory potential of those factors, when the core logic of path dependence (composed by the mainstream principles of neoclassical economics) fails to predict observed outcomes in historical, evolutionary perspective, and qualifies such outcomes as contingent. In Chapter 6, I undertake a second theoretical iteration that re-examines the historical explanatory pattern developed in Chapter 5, in order to show how the Doñana’s rigid outcome can be understood as more predictable. In particular, I argue that three mechanisms constituted necessary and sufficient conditions