Analysis – Drivers for the Social Construction of Different Planning Regimes

The information presented above relating to the social construction of coastal, marine and catchment problems highlights several interesting points, not only in terms of the historical development of each regime, but also in the use of Hannigan’s model as a framework for understanding how an

environmental problem is defined and brought to attention, and both of these aspects will now be commented upon.

Firstly, in trying to trace the development of coastal planning regimes from a historical perspective, it must be noted that man’s relationship with water or the sea reaches back much further than any formal establishment of rights and responsibilities, and takes on different forms depending on locally specific circumstances. This long and varied history therefore makes it a complex task to determine the origins of different constructions of the coastal, marine or catchment environments.

Considering each of the regimes in turn, starting with ICZM, the review above shows that whilst there has been a considerable amount of research on different problems of the coast, such as erosion and sediment movement, the intensification of land use and the loss of biodiversity, and much of this

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information has come from “credible” sources such as the UN Environment Programme and other international environmental bodies, academics such as J.A. Steers and even reports commissioned by national government, this body of evidence as a whole has not been brought together to produce a strong, unified claim for a coastal problem. Similarly, media coverage, dramatic incidents and

popularisers have only provided a narrow perspective on coastal issues, highlighting a limited number of symptoms.

In this sense the recognition or social construction of a coastal problem does not fully adhere to the principle of a holistic perspective as outlined in ICZM Recommendation 2002/413/EC. Indeed Midlen observes that in policy terms, the coast as a cohesive entity with its own problems is sidelined in favour of visions for the marine and terrestrial (rural) environments (see Safeguarding Our Seas, DEFRA, 2002, and the Countryside Agency’s “2020 Vision”, 1999) which fail to interpret policy in a specifically coastal context (2006:v), thus leading to a call for the coast to be made more “visible” in mainstream policy. Such a perspective would require a substantial debate and reconstruction of the “coastal zone” concept, and given the ambiguous nature of this transitional zone such a debate may never be resolved. On the other hand, attempts at spatial integration focused on overcoming the pre-existing divisions between land and sea may be more possible through interaction between coastal stakeholders and plans or policies that take into account the impacts of sea use on the land and vice versa.

The influence of economic incentives appears to be quite low in socially constructing a case for ICZM – a point which may again be linked to the difficulties of combining information about land and marine based coastal activities, and given that the magnitude of the effects of climate change are still very much contested, it is difficult to anticipate the future costs of climate change impacts on coastal zones, although the Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change (2006) provides a clear message that the benefits of strong, early action on climate change outweigh the costs.

It is the institutional sponsors for ICZM that may give most insight into the reasons why this regime has not achieved statutory status and subsequently experienced implementation “failures”. Referring back to the points made in Chapter Two regarding how communicative planning approaches help to build the legitimacy of subsequent actions, and the hollowing of the state in which powers may be transferred upwards or downwards from central government, it may be observed that institutional sponsors for ICZM have originated at the international level (for example in the UN and European Union), and their

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calls for action at local levels have actually mobilised considerable support in the form of coastal partnerships.

Whilst a form of ICZM was being advocated at international level as part of the UN’s Agenda 21, the UK government’s rejection of the recommendations made in the House of Commons Environment Select Committee on Coastal Protection and Planning in the same year effectively closed off one avenue of discussion about the use of ICZM at national level, and with the Estuaries Initiative first being perceived to have an environmental focus (see Morris, 2008) and second not considering an explicit coastal zone, it was not until the EU Demonstration Programmes began in 1996 that ICZM really achieved prominence on the political agenda again. With the Demonstration Programme, again, institutional sponsors at the international level were at the forefront, and the implementation of projects at local levels may have bypassed some of the potential debates about ICZM that were required at national level to gain further legitimacy and support for a statutory system of ICZM. The government’s adoption of ICZM

Recommendation 2002/413/EC in 2002, at the same time as Safeguarding Our Seas thus demonstrated a growing awareness in national government of the need for ICZM, however whilst DEFRA (and previous incarnations of the Department of the Environment such as DETR) have facilitated ICZM actions at the local level through the funding of projects, their own actions on ICZM specifically have remained one step behind the capacity that has been built at local and regional level.

For the social construction of a marine problem, again scientific evidence is a key driver of problem recognition, and in this case the distinct spatial boundary of the marine environment provides a much clearer focus for action. International organisations are also central to the construction of the marine problem, although in this instance there appears to be a greater orientation towards marine

conservation, with NGOs at national level such as the Marine Conservation Society and WWF acting as chief popularisers (outside government) for a form of marine management.

Although it has been noted that use of the media and dramatic incidents may have resonance for the construction of both coastal and marine problems, it is questionable how much influence these events have on the long term perception of an issue and potential solutions given that the media is constantly bringing new stories to attention and can quickly drop its interest in an issue when another story comes along, for example the “ghost ships” were headline news at the time when they were being brought to the UK, however the protracted legal wrangling over their eventual fate has failed to generate the same level of national interest. This is partly because such events do not lend themselves well to dramatic

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imagery, but may also be that beyond the initial outcry the solution to this particular problem lay in the domain of specialist knowledge that was not easily translated into a wider debate about what kind of economic activities are deemed acceptable to the public and for the marine environment and the manner in which they are regulated.

In terms of economic incentives, MP, like ICZM, lacks a clear economic argument to incentivise marine planning, however, in attracting national government as an institutional sponsor the case can be made that marine planning provides greater certainty for the private and public sectors alike about the way in which the marine environment will be managed, and of more specific interest to the private sector, supporting marine planning may have benefits in terms of providing a clearer, streamlined framework for governing their activities and speeding up the decision making process. In this, the MMO may be seen as a fair arbitrator in sources of conflict.

Finally, the social construction of a catchment/river basin problem provides a significant example of where many of the prerequisites suggested by Hannigan as essential for the construction of problems are, in some cases, quite poorly demonstrated. Whilst gathering scientific evidence for claims about a river catchment problem has taken place in a systematic way through the environmental protection agencies of government, there appears to be far fewer high-profile popularisers to take what can be quite technical information and present this to a wider audience in a more readily understandable format.

Similarly, beyond the examples cited earlier in the chapter of acid rain and the Baia Mare chemical spill, there have been relatively few dramatic incidents or newsworthy stories to demonstrate why good chemical and biological status is necessary. The reasons for this could be that “dramatic” incidents are localised and small scale, or possibly it is because the established system of inland water regulation has performed adequately in preventing such disasters. In this respect, the fact that the catchment problem is built on a long-standing discourse about water quality and not framed as something novel means that popularisers, the media and symbolic events are less significant in the case of RBMP than they would have been in initially establishing water quality measures in the UK or at European level when the first round of water quality Directives were issued in the mid-1970s.

As with ICZM and MP, economic incentives play only a small role in constructing the case for catchment management, though it should be noted that the economic argument is couched in terms of a case for

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taking action to avoid negative costs rather than what Hannigan terms an “incentive for taking positive action”, given that there are penalties for non-compliance with Directive 2000/60/EC.

The recruitment of an institutional sponsor provides the greatest influence on constructing a claim for a catchment problem. Having an established competence in the field of environmental policy, the

European Union represents a high-level sponsor for activities related to the monitoring and setting of water quality standards. The fact that the European Union already had powers in relation to water quality thus makes it the natural authority for future proposals on new initiatives. At lower levels of governance, the role of national and regional institutional sponsors is weakened due to the weight carried by the European Union, and this will undoubtedly affect the discourse that takes place around measures to be taken as much of the agenda is already set by Europe, but whilst the discussion on the nature of the problem is constrained by higher level governance, there is still scope to engage a greater number of perspectives in developing solutions at the local level.

3.4.1 The Construction of a Claim: Some Conclusions

To conclude this analysis, the literature reviewed and the discussion above shows that on paper at least, there are slightly different drivers for each of the three coastal planning regimes examined. In all cases, scientific evidence from a number of governmental and non-governmental sources (such as WWF or the Environment Agency) and at all levels of governance have contributed to the recognition of some sort of environmental problem, whether this is a natural physical process whose impacts are exacerbated by anthropogenic activities, such as coastal development and the erosion and accretion of sediment identified by Steers, or a directly man-made threat such as water pollution.

Yet the existence of science alone is insufficient to socially construct a coastal, marine or catchment problem, and thus a combination of science with the other prerequisites identified by Hannigan becomes important. For ICZM, efforts by popularisers and institutional sponsors at the international level such as the United Nations and European Union have recognised the importance of the coastal zone for sustainability and are not only able to promote their claims for a coastal problem, but also in acting as an institutional sponsor propose or guide a response. This is also true for river basin

management, where the European Union is, to a large extent, already accepted as a sponsor for new initiatives to address emerging environmental problems. For Marine Planning, it is NGOs such as the Marine Conservation Society and Wildlife Trusts that are acting as popularisers alongside DEFRA.

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In Hannigan’s original model for the social construction of an environmental problem, use of the media and dramatisation feature quite strongly as essential prerequisites for making a claim, as a means of communicating more complex (scientific or technical) messages to a non-specialist audience. Examples of such dramatisation and news stories have been highlighted here, and as such demonstrate that they are part of constructing a claim as they can stimulate a debate about a particular issue (for example the case of what to do about preserving Seahenge), or create an image that remains in people’s

consciousness and helps them to understand or identify with a particular argument at a later date. But in trying to establish a direct link between such incidents and the kind of long term responses that may be implemented by a government, either as a law, policy or programme of action, the effects of the media and dramatic events are quite weak or diffuse in the cases of ICZM, MP and RBMP. It could therefore be proposed that isolated incidents have a minimal influence on the construction of a claim, and that these prerequisites may only become significant when they are seen in the context of a series of incidents happening over a longer period of time.

Lastly, the use of economic incentives in constructing a claim for a problem is another prerequisite where the effects can be quite diffuse when rewards are considered in relation to broad sustainable development objectives, and less attractive when seen in terms of risk avoidance rather than a gain. Thus for ICZM, Marine Planning and RBMP again, the economic case is one of the less persuasive elements in making a claim.

Taken as a whole, the use of Hannigan’s (1995) model for the successful social construction of an environmental problem therefore provides a useful framework for examining how coastal or other environmental problems are constructed, and also gives some clues as to how or what kind of response may subsequently be developed. However in using the model to trace the development of ICZM, Marine Planning and RBMP two important observations can be made:

1. Whilst Hannigan treats each of the six prerequisites for constructing an environmental problem relatively equally, the literature review above shows that not all prerequisites feature equally in making the case for a problem. As has been discussed, the presence of scientific evidence may be strong, but use of the media may be weak, or there may be a lack of institutional sponsors to support a claim for action.

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2. The social construction of a problem is only the beginning of a longer process, which includes a discussion of what is to be done about the problem, the choice of a course of action and implementation. Whilst institutional sponsors themselves might be in a position to act, for example DEFRA can initiate the development of new policies or procedures, Hannigan’s model does not describe the mechanism by which a claim becomes the subject of political action. The points above thus provide two further avenues for investigation in relation to the discussion of coastal, marine and catchment problems and the implementation of a response. In the first instance, the fact that certain prerequisites have a stronger or weaker presence in constructing a claim for a problem raises the possibility that Hannigan’s model of social construction can be refined to

demonstrate the more nuanced way in which each prerequisite may contribute to the way a claim is defined and articulated.

In other words, rather than seeing Hannigan’s six prerequisites - scientific authority and validation of claims, popularisers, media attention, dramatisation, economic and institutional sponsors - as being discrete events (i.e. there is scientific evidence or there is not), each prerequisite may be viewed along a spectrum of “weak” to “strong” presence indicating how persuasive they may be in constructing a claim. Representing this visually, Figure 3.2 below shows how this may look for the construction of a coastal problem, based on what has been found in relation to ICZM in this chapter. For each prerequisite, a black circle has been placed along the spectrum of weak to strong presence to give an approximate indication of the relative strengths of each component in making the case for ICZM.

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Figure 3.2: the Case for a Coastal Problem: Contributions to the Construction of Claims in ICZM

Were the same exercise to be repeated with Marine Planning and River Basin Management, based on the literature reviewed and conclusions made in the previous section, then it could be expected that the placement of black circles along the spectrum for each prerequisite would be slightly different,

representing for example that the presence or use of media attention and dramatisation is much less significant in making the case for RBMP than it is for ICZM and Marine Planning.

Considering this critique of Hannigan’s model in the wider context of the research, this exercise confirms to some extent the assertion made in Chapter One that different social constructions or definitions of a problem can result in different planning regimes being developed. The framing of the problem therefore has implications for the integration of space, levels of governance and policies or plans that may be overcome through communicative efforts to understand other perspectives and build a common vision for future actions.

Source: Author Weak presence Strong presence

Scientific Authority/Validation

Popularisers

Media Attention

Dramatisation

Economic Incentives

Institutional Sponsors

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Regarding the second point made on the use of Hannigan’s model to explain the emergence of different coastal planning regimes, namely that the model does not adequately describe the link from defining a problem to the implementation of a response, it is necessary to return to the literature to find other sources which may provide this explanation. Reference has already been made to Kingdon, (1995, 2003), whose work takes a broader perspective on the factors which contribute to problem recognition and agenda setting.

In examining agenda setting in American politics, Kingdon uses the metaphor of streams joining

together – the political, comprising of parties, interest groups, individuals and public opinion, the policy stream, where policies and initiatives to tackle the problem are chosen and the problem stream, in which evidence for a problem (e.g. a sudden crisis, symbols, experiences and feedback from current initiatives) is drawn. Similar to the “dramatisation” discussed by Hannigan, focusing events happen suddenly, often unpredictably and attract media attention, either revealing new problems, or, as in