Institutional bricolage and the application of the No Net Loss policy in Quebec: can we really engender ‘social fit' for more sustainable land use planning?

ABSTRACT

Offsetting and, more broadly speaking, the mitigation hierarchy have been widely studied in terms of decreasing the impacts of economic activities on biodiversity. There has been considerable tendency to anchor these mechanisms in science, promoting the idea that they are scientifically constructed. Building on Quebec’s recent regulatory changes concerning the introduction of offsetting and the mitigation hierarchy for wetlands and streams, we argue that their implementation relies strongly on political and social constructs. Using institutional bricolage, we highlight the implication of power relations, dominant views and path dependency in this new institutional setting. Indeed, the No Net Loss principle seems to raise historical tensions in water management policies, especially those between strong centralized governance and fragmented territorial management. But No Net Loss application also confronts powerful traditional land use planning with a long history of promoting development interests. To overcome these tensions, No Net Loss can be viewed as an opportunity for innovation towards more sustainable land use planning that acknowledges collective values. To investigate the potential for a novel social fit for wetland offsetting, we call upon Actor-Network Theory to rethink land use planning for a collective vision of the territory.

KEYWORDS:

• Biodiversity offset
• water resource management
• land use planning
• institutions

Aknowledgements

We appreciate insightful comments given on an earlier draft of this manuscript by Dr. Vijay Kolinjivadi.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Céline Jacob is a postdoctoral fellow at the Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO) and holds a PhD in geography from Montpellier Paul-Valéry University (France). She is interested in environmental governance systems with a particular focus on marine conservation. Her interdisciplinary work drawing from geography, economics and ecology investigates sustainable development through the analysis of the efficiency of offset instruments. Her research also explores assessment tools related to the maintenance costs of natural capital and analyzes impacts and dependency of the private sector on biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Jérôme Dupras is an Associate Professor of Ecological Economics in the Department for Natural Sciences at the Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO), researcher at ISFORT (Institute of Temperate Forests Science), and holds the Canada Research Chair in Ecological Economics. He holds a PhD in geography and a bachelor's degree in biochemistry from the Université de Montréal and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Biology at McGill University. He has a renowned expertise in ecosystem services modeling and valuation, environmental governance, and urban natural infrastructure planning and management.

Notes

1 https://portals.iucn.org/offsetpolicy/

2 Bricolage is from the French ‘fiddle’ or ‘tinker’ or to do-it-yourself, a word meaning to “make creative and resourceful use of whatever materials are at hand, regardless of their original purpose” (Cleaver, 2017). Although used in cultural studies, visual arts, architecture and management studies in relation to innovation and entrepreneurship, Cleaver adapted the concept from its use in anthropology. Claude Levi-Strauss referred to ‘intellectual bricolage’ to describe the ways in which people thought in ‘primitive’ societies.

3 Regarding the definition of institutions, we refer to Merrey et al. (2007) who identifies institutions as “social arrangements that shape and regulate human behaviour and have some degree of permanency and purpose transcending individual lives and intentions”.

4 http://www.mentalmodeler.org/#download

5 In some cases, regional municipalities call upon watershed organizations to help them developing their regional plans, thus ultimately endorsing the role of private consultancies.

6 Biodiversity offsetting is commonly implemented through (i) averted loss offsets (the protection of natural areas that are considered threatened) or (ii) actions promoting a change of practice within a sector for positive biodiversity outcomes (funding of agro-environmental measures for farmers, e.g. reducing fertilizers) or (iii) restoration actions of formerly degraded ecosystems (using ecological restoration practices).

7 Ecological functions are here considered as functions or processes carried out or enabled by an ecosystem that are necessary for the self-maintenance of that ecosystem, such as primary production, reproduction area, etc. (BBOP, 2012).

8 The BTSL atlas relies on a twofold approach:

• The selection of sites with high conservation value considering (i) their proximity to Protected Areas, (ii) the presence of exceptional forest ecosystems, (iii) the presence of flora with high conservation value, (iv) the presence of fauna with high conservation value, (v) their irreplaceability.

• Their prioritization is based on a multi-criteria analysis of habitat (plant diversity, primary productivity, surface area, degree of disturbance in the buffer zone, proximity to other wetlands), hydrological and biogeochemical criteria (water retention, erosion control, groundwater recharge, water purification, carbon sequestration).

9 Biophysical indicators are related to both biotic and abiotic components of an ecosystem as well as the functioning of the ecosystem.

10 Offsets must be additional, that is to say over and above what would have happened without the offset.