Working in fisheries development infrastructure and compliance, any paper that starts with ”Understanding why institutions fail is a major concern for natural resource governance. In systems where resources are managed locally, failure is often attributed to the rules poorly fitting the social-ecological system. But what might also bring failure is the manner with which the rules are ‘fitted’ to the system”
Local fisherman in Kiritimati
Is written by 3 authors of which I know one (Andrew M. Song). As a bit of an challenging (I say that as a good thing) paper, as it based in traditional markets in Greenland and uses Cybernetics (the science of control and feedback) … it argues that the conceptual development of institutional failure could be made more tenable with cybernetics. In this case, the study and process tracing of a ‘market’ institution (an open-air fish market in Greenland), and they show how recently implemented European food safety regulations have generated unintended negative consequences, limiting Inuit access to marine foodstuffs, altering the social characteristics of food exchange, and giving rise to underground markets for marine foods.
What resonate to me is what I’ve seen so many times… well intended “western development programmes/experts” come with contemporary solutions to almost inexistent local problems… then the solutions don’t work… the investment stays idle… then of course the faults is of the beneficiaries and rarely donors assume the responsibility.
The last paragraph is spot on.
Together, our study augments a key message posited in studies of institutional failure in environmental governance That is, that top-down, panacea thinking is not just inadequate; it can also be dangerous to the public. Institutional arrangements — including regulatory controls – that apply in European settings will not necessarily produce similar outcomes in Greenland. Ultimately, the success of these rules, we argue, hinges upon the will and capacity of communities to accept changes in the trade and market systems for marine foods, and importantly, the capacity of government to observe and evaluate how they govern natural resources. Given that open-air fish and meat markets have been a site of food governance in Greenland for over 60 years, the institutional failures set forth in this case underscore that legitimacy is key for social-ecological fit. Cybernetics shows us how legitimacy stands as a crucial measure of a community’s willingness to comply with the rules that govern them..
The paper is here… always read the original