Management in the guise of governance? Rethinking the ends and the means of natural resource governance

Abstract

The frameworks and indices used for carrying out formal assessments of natural resource governance often fail to address a series of fundamental questions as to governance for what, by whom, under what conditions, and toward what ends? In this chapter, the author draws on a political economy of institutions approach to develop a parsimonious meta-framework comprising of five key dimensions of governance that are theoretically informed, internally consistent, and externally generalizable. To illustrate the novel contributions of this approach, the author applies this meta-framework to analyze three prominent frameworks related to the governance of natural resources in a variety of natural resource sectors: Resource Governance Index (RGI) developed by Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), Natural Resource Governance Framework (NRGF) developed by International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and Resource Politics for a Fair Future, a Memorandum of the Heinrich Böll Foundation. The development of the framework and its application to the analysis of prominent natural resource governance frameworks contributes new insights to the challenge of governing natural resources in this era of global environmental change amidst deep inequalities between key actors in the state, society and markets