By Nick Durham

Blog Post 4

This post will serve as a final critical assessment of the various actors, regulations and initiatives pertaining to terrestrial invasive species.

The actors I've discussed include the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (WIDNR), the Urban Ecology Center, and the Beaver Island Association. The WIDNR is a powerful traditional government actor in Wisconsin that enforces many environmental policies, such as the Chapter NR 40 Invasive Species Rule. Government agencies can fund environmental scientific research directly without trying to incentivize the market, but as J.P Evans points out, governance requires political vision. The WIDNR is especially beholden to the whims of the current political structure in Wisconsin, with gag orders in place to prevent discussion or research into climate change on state time. This fact also prevents the WIDNR from being able to govern effectively because it limits the
agency's ability to learn and adapt to meet its goals.

WI State Treasurer Matt Adamczyk (left) voted to impose a climate change gag order on the secretary of the Board of Commissioners of Public Land Tia Nelson and Land Board staff (Image source: http://www.wausaudailyherald.com/story/opinion/columnists/2015/04/20/gag-order-climate-science-shames-wisconsin/26098311/)

The Urban Ecology Center is a very different entity from the WIDNR. It's status as a micro scale actor that is not sanctioned by the state mean that it has no regulatory authority, but it is an important member of a network of governance. Network governance (and markets) are described by Evans as "the best things that we have" for tackling climate change due to the problem of state sovereignty and the flawed structure of international relations. The ability of a small scale non governmental organization like the Urban Ecology Center to freely take action against invasive species without being chained to large scale political agendas is advantageous, yet the governance network it belongs to is fairly loose and coordination/collective action can be challenging.

The Beaver Island Association is a great example of a fairly strong governance network. The BIA acts as a sort of nucleus to help coordinate local government, tribes, schools and NGO's toward a set of common goals which include the eradication/management of invasive species from the Beaver Islands. This approach finds a good balance between the duality of structure mentioned by Evans, as well as being able to allow for meaningful public participation and the ability to learn/adapt to changing environmental and political contexts. The Beaver Island Association may seem like a poster child for successful network governance, but given that the Beaver Islands are a small geographic region with a unique cultural and political environment, it is unlikely that their mix of approaches would transfer well to other places or would be able to scale up to tackle "wicked" problems like global climate change.

The only regulation I've presented is the Chapter NR 40 Invasive Species Rule. This effective initiative is adaptable to shifting environmental changes because species can be added to the prohibited or restricted invasive species lists as needed. Of course it is a state regulation enforced by the WIDNR, which as mentioned previously is very vulnerable to political meddling. NR 40 may not be magnified as a contrived partisan issue at the moment, but that could very well change in the future.