Governance of SES in Singapore

We briefly discussed governance in the first post, that such complex SESs involved numerous stakeholders. That said, the question then is who is in charge of maintaining balance in these ecosystems. How are these SESs governed? Are they closed systems of interactions between the resident community and the environment? Or does the government intervene to maintain balance?

Our goal today is to take a deeper look into the nature of SES governance in Singapore by:

1.       Deconstructing the process of governance

2.       Identifying the agencies & communities involved and their objectives.

3.       The roles of these agencies and communities as part of the Socio-ecological systems framework

4.       Any major prior actions taken by bodies to better govern these SESs.

What is Governance?

Governance as defined by the Merriam Webster dictionary is “the way that a city, company, etc., is controlled by the people who run it” implying the creation of certain sets of rules, norms and structures that guide the subject being governed.

Thus, the governance of SES implies that there exists certain social norms, rules and unspoken cues that taken together create a behavioral paradigm that stakeholders are subject to.

Agencies & their Objectives

The major agencies are the National Parks Board (NParks) and the National Environmental Agency (NEA) operating under the Ministry of National Development and the Mininstry of the Environment and Water Resources respectively. NParks is the agency that more or less manages most of the green spaces in Singapore. This includes the various nature reserves such as Sungei Buloh to community areas in East Coast Park. The NEA is the statutory board responsible for preserving the green environment in Singapore and as such is heavily tied into the sustainability movement in Singapore.

Framework: What roles do these Agencies fulfill?

Ostrom (2009) identified 10 aspects that governance systems comprised of. Most of the 10 are commonly heard of such as Government Organisations and NGOS but there are a few which are less intuitive. Collective choice rules for example refers to the full autonomy users have at the collective choice level to design and uphold their own rules (Ostrom, 2009). Operational rules in this case refer to the rules that governing bodies put in place that SES stakeholders must adhere to which can be different from the constitutional rules defined by the body of law in which the SES resides in.

Governance however need not be come solely from the governing bodies. Self-organizing is entirely possible and can be see in SES in Singapore where nature interest groups tied to a SES have sprung up. Examples include OtterWatch, a group dedicated to the Singapore Otter sightings.

Above are the characteristics Ostrom links to users of the SES. These factors ultimately affect how users should be governed or in the case of self-organization, how they govern the interactions occurring in the SES. Governing bodies should take into account these factors when designing policies to avoid community backlash from ill-received policies. For example, charging parking fees at previously free to park locations near community parks and nature reserves (Khew, 2015) resulting in decreases in visitor rates after.

Bibliography

Khew, C. (2015, July 14). Parking at popular parks? You'll have to pay. Retrieved from The Straits Times: http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/transport/parking-at-popular-parks-youll-have-to-pay

Ostrom, E. (2009). A General Framework for Analysing Sustainability of Social Ecological Systems. Science, 419-422.