A Reflexive Legal Framework for Bridging Organizations in Regional Environmental Governance and Management
Creators: name: Stewart, Judy
Publisher: name: Environmental Design
Year: 2016
Subjects: subject: Design and Decorative Arts
subject: Business Administration--Management
subject: Law
subject: FOS: Law
subject: Political Science
subject: FOS: Political science
subject: Sociology--Organizational
subject: Social Structure and Development
subject: Urban and Regional Planning
subject: FOS: Social and economic geography
subject: Environmental Sciences
subject: environmental governance
subject: reflexive legal theory
subject: social-ecological systems
subject: bridging organizations
subject: Social Network Analysis
subject: Environmental Regulation
subject: reflexive legal analysis
subject: environmental management
subject: applied general systems theory

description: In Canadian provinces, municipalities are responsible for most land use management on private lands, and are encouraged to protect provincially owned natural resources from local land use impacts. Policy and regulatory gaps exist at the regional-scale for managing municipal land use impacts on natural resources, such as air, water and ecological resources that cross multiple municipal boundaries and jurisdictions. In the Calgary Metropolitan Area, a social-spatial region of approximately 17,000 km2 in southern Alberta, Canada, (the Region) three multi-stakeholder environmental governance organizations (the Calgary Regional Partnership (CRP), Bow River Basin Council (BRBC) and Calgary Regional Airshed Zone (CRAZ) emerged, connecting municipal, public and private stakeholders with shared interests in land use, watershed and airshed management, respectively. These organizations co-created natural resource management plans (co-created plans) to address transboundary and interjurisdictional issues not addressed through provincial laws or municipal bylaws. The Region provided a demonstration context for conducting transdisciplinary research, combining emerging theories in environmental governance, social-ecological systems, networks, organizations and law. In 2014, interviews were conducted with eighteen municipalities in the Region and Directors of CRP, BRBC and CRAZ. Social network mapping and analysis (SNA) were used to analyze interview data, and identify a collaborative municipal environmental management network. SNA illustrated the strategic ‘bridging’ functions of CRP, BRBC and CRAZ in influencing increased municipal participation in thirty resource management activities selected from the co-created plans. Municipal respondents identified the primary land use, watershed and air quality management issues in the Region, and results were used to select twenty-eight environmental policies, laws, regulations, plans, directives, guidelines, (legal instruments) existing in Alberta in 2014-2015 that addressed the identified issues. These legal instruments and the three co-created plans were assessed for reflexivity using a ‘reflexivity assessment matrix tool’ designed for this purpose that was based on reflexive legal theory, principles and criteria found in the literature. The interview data, SNA, legal research and reflexivity assessment informed the design of a ‘reflexive legal framework’ intended to clarify, support and legitimize the role of multi-stakeholder environmental governance organizations in ‘bridging’ policy and regulatory gaps between provincial and municipal authorities at a regional-scale.