Disconnected dots?: A systematic review of governance challenges for natural resource management

Abstract

As concerns for the ongoing and increasing degradation of the natural environment worldwide, have increased the impetus for action, and development of governance arrangements to support natural resource management. Despite this, issues around governance remain a significant challenge to the success of natural resource management. This study reports the findings of a systematic literature review of 240 papers to better understand how governance challenges manifest spatially, how they change over time, and identify key priority areas for strategic governance reform. This paper reveals that the capacity of natural resource management governance systems internationally is most limited by factors that limit connectivity and collaboration between stakeholders in decision-making processes, and the alignment of vision and objectives across institutions. The paper shows clear spatial disparities and temporal changes in the number of studies and governance challenges of natural resource management identified in developing and developed countries.

A scoping review of environmental governance challenges in southern Africa from 2010 to 2020

“…Our review showed that challenges related to responsive environmental governance were the least dominant. The limited number of articles identified in the review is also similar to the trends identified by Potts (2020) in a global review of governance challenges. This might mean that responsive environmental governance challenges are understudied or not considered to be core challenges (Potts 2020).…”

“…The limited number of articles identified in the review is also similar to the trends identified by Potts (2020) in a global review of governance challenges. This might mean that responsive environmental governance challenges are understudied or not considered to be core challenges (Potts 2020). Other understudied areas within southern Africa include social-ecological stewardship, polycentricity, innovation and experimentation.…”

“…A database of bibliographic references, authors' names, article title, year of publication, country of focus, type of article and governance challenges was created in Microsoft Excel (Vincent & Cundill 2021). To explore the broad characterization of the studies selected, the papers' content was manually analysed based on the date of publication, location of research, overall article approach, scale of analysis and the natural resource sector (Potts 2020). Descriptive analysis was carried out using Microsoft Excel.…”

“…At a global scale, Potts (2020) highlighted that governance systems continue to struggle to improve social-ecological systems because of factors inhibiting the connectivity between actors, structures, institutions and processes. However, the absence of review studies that focus on governance challenges at the regional scale, particularly in the southern African region, means that understanding remains limited.…”

Climate-water governance: a systematic analysis of the water sector resilience and adaptation to combat climate change in Pakistan

“…For example, Ozerol et al (2018) conducted the SLR to assess how water governance is conceptualised, contextually defined, and evaluated in different parts of the world. Similarly, Eckhardt et al (2019) and Potts (2019) applied the SLR method to assess the governance issues for natural resource management. Another study (Brisbois & De Loë, 2015) examined the use of collaborative strategies for governing water resources using a formal systematic review.…”