Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

6-2024

Abstract

For over two decades, scientists have documented the alarming decline of global Peatland ecosystems, regarded as the planet’s most crucial carbon sinks. The deterioration of these unique wetlands alongside their policy attention presents a puzzle for policy scientists and for students of anticipatory policy design. Two contrasting explanations have emerged. Some argue that pressures from economic globalization compel governments to relax environmental standards, while others point to deficiencies in policy design and implementation. Our paper applies Cashore’s Four Problem Types framework to assess a more nuanced explanation: that failure of global and local policies to curb ecosystem degradation is owing to a misalignment between how the problem is currently conceived of, and what conception is required for, effective environmental management. We find overwhelming evidence that reversing Peatland degradation necessitates a fundamental shift in applied policy analysis—from treating the crisis as a Type 3 (Compromise), Type 2 (Optimization), or even Type 1 (Commons) problem, to conceiving it as a Type 4 (Prioritization) challenge. Achieving this requires undertaking four essential policy design tasks: engaging sequentialist/lexical ordering processes; identifying key features of the problem that any solution would need to incorporate to effectively overcome; applying path dependency analysis to uncover policy mix innovations capable of “locking-in” sustainability trajectories that can fend off pressures for policy conception drift; and organizing multistakeholder “policy design learning” exercises that integrate complex sources of knowledge produced within, and across, the ecological and policy sciences.

Keywords

policy design, problem framing, policy drift, biodiversity, peatland conservation

Discipline

Biodiversity | Environmental Policy | Political Economy | Political Science

Research Areas

Political Science

Publication

Policy and Society

Volume

43

Issue

3

First Page

351

Last Page

380

ISSN

1449-4035

Identifier

10.1093/polsoc/puae019

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Copyright Owner and License

Author-CC-BY

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1093/polsoc/puae019

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