Panel 12.1. Governing Coupled Infrastructure Systems in Transition

Water utilities are public service organizations that provide an essential service. As socio-environmental pressures—related to climatic changes, population shifts and aging infrastructure among others—build, water utilities will face a myriad of difficult decisions. Because water supply is a socio-technical system, decisions regarding water provision are driven not only by technical and economic influences, but also by norms, rules and practices at both the organization and sector levels. Yet, how these institutions affect water utility decision-making is not well understood.

In this study we draw on insights from institutional theory and socio-technical systems theory to examine water utility decision-making. Using the concept of institutional logics, we examine the rationalities that influence decision-making regarding infrastructure repairs, operational practices, system disruptions and responses to external mandates using case studies of eight drinking water utilities in the U.S. We find that multiple co-existing logics interact to influence water utility decisions. Logic interaction can take various forms—one logic might dominate, be compatible with or reinforce other co-existing logics—and affects which logic guides a utility’s decision in the end. These findings help better understand how water utilities may respond to socio-environmental pressures by clarifying the role of sense-making in water utility decision-making.

Utilities, such as energy and water providers, play a crucial role in shaping urban climate action in terms of mitigation or adaptation, yet their contributions are often understudied. This paper addresses the question: Are cities with strong city-utility relationships better at implementing climate action? If so, what types of relationships are most relevant? Our analysis is motivated by the growing recognition that cities are pivotal actors in addressing climate change, with utilities serving as key partners e.g. in the energy transition or to adapt water systems to climate impacts. Local governments and utilities have always been closely interrelated in many ways, e.g. through ownership or privatization, collective action in social programs, regulation or cronyism. Such relations might also play out strongly for climate -related decisions, making partnerships or conflicts among them central to urban climate governance.

We conduct a mapping exercise to explore mechanisms through which city-utility relationships influence climate action. This will include empirically described mechanisms of collective action, such as public ownership and regulation, as well as less-explored factors like familial ties and the “green revolving door” phenomenon. By contextualizing our findings through existing literature and expanding them with an AI-assisted systematic literature review, we provide a comprehensive overview of how these relationships impact urban climate governance. Our output is a catalogue of mechanisms for key pathways through which city-utility partnerships enhance or hinder climate action, offering value to researchers and practitioners interested in municipal governance and utilities. The catalogue provides a basis for planning or as device for situating further empirical studies. We hypothesize the catalogue will highlight the importance of collaboration between utilities and local governments for the successful implementation of urban climate plans, emphasizing the need for an integrated approach to climate governance.

New approaches to ensure urban water supply resilience are urgently needed. This requires moving beyond the management of water scarcity through infrastructural measures to understanding resilience as an outcome of complex interactions between people, water resources and technological infrastructure, which affect water services as urban commons. We conceptualize urban water systems as Coupled Infrastructure Systems (CIS), also referred to as Social-Ecological-Technological Systems (SETS). We analyze the CIS/SETS from different stakeholder perspectives to create a pluralistic, yet systematic, understanding of CIS/SETS interactions. We conducted a household survey (N=300) and expert interviews (N=19) in Amman, one of the world’s water scarcity hot spots. Our data analysis results in 1) the identification and characterization of new interactions among CIS/SETS sub-systems. We contribute this urban, resource-scarce example to the growing CIS-typology, which aims to identify general patterns of interactions for a better comparability among systems. 2) Inspired by frame analysis, we interpret the CIS/SETS through the lens of its different actor groups. Each group focuses on different system elements and interactions, resulting in disconnected system understandings or ‘frames’. Local experts focus on deficits of CIS/SETS elements and aim to increase available resources, while international experts emphasize the efficiency of CIS/SETS interactions. Households cope with deficient water supplies by mobilizing adaptive strategies. 3) We derive uncertainties resulting from unpredictable system dynamics, missing knowledge, and different (and unrecognized) stakeholder views. Accounting for these factors in water management strategies could enhance urban water resilience and help reframe the water management from a service delivered by public authorities to meet household water demand to one of an urban commons managed through shared responsibilities.

Landscapes are the emergent property of land-use systems in which feedback interactions between individual actions, the biophysical- and institutional context shape the observed state of the system. Contemporary interactions lock land-use system into undesired states of the system through reinforcing feedback loops. Largely driven by demands for food and fodder, such reinforcing mechanisms generate large-scale, high intensity, and homogenous agricultural landscapes at the consequence of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Where interactions at the systems scale are complex as the feedback between individual actions and changes in the landscape are spatially and temporally decoupled, such feedbacks can be more easily closed at the individual and local level. Here we set out to explore the tipping points at which individual actions leverage larger scale changes through the concept of feedback loops. Using the Coupled Infrastructures Framework and feedback principles from the field of control engineering, we develop conceptual- and formal models of the agricultural land-use system in the Province of Groningen. Building on ongoing rural transition processes in response to the Dutch Nitrogen crisis (Dutch National Program Rural Areas), we use these models to identify the set of local interactions needed to trigger tipping points towards alternative states of the land-use system. Based on this, we demonstrate what arrangements of the biophysical- and institutional context are needed to unleash latent values for individual action in pursuit of more desired landscapes.

Dynamic Adaptive Policy Pathway (DAPP) maps are employed to plan management decisions in contexts where the future of critical assets and infrastructures is highly uncertain due to environmental changes. Recent discussions highlight the necessity of utilizing them for managing complex common-pool resource issues, shaped by the intricate interconnections among diverse species, ecosystem services, and stakeholders. However, these social-ecological systems (SES) present challenges due to the vast array of potential adaptation options available.

This study introduces a method for effectively constructing DAPP maps by integrating Ostrom’s governance frameworks: the Institutional Analysis & Development framework (IADF), the Social-Ecological Systems framework (SESF), and the Coupled Infrastructure Systems framework (CISF). We leveraged them to create and organize adaptation actions, their targets, and the roles of actors and infrastructures that trigger these actions within various nested governance arrangements, e.g. operational, collective-choice, constitutional, etc ... This integrated approach enhanced our capacity to derive DAPP maps based on the mathematical principles of complex dynamical systems and viable control theory.

We apply this method to explore nested adaptive governance pathways for managing species-rich hedgerow networks that provide diverse ecosystem services. Our focus is on two SES with distinct community needs: one rural and one peri-urban, both located in France's Auvergne region. In the face of climate change affecting hedgerow species, we identify a set of viable adaptation pathways across nine alternative nested governance arrangements. Indicators are developed to highlight key factors driving differences in DAPP maps in response to changes in climate and SES context.

From this application, we discuss the strengths and limitations of this approach for managing increasingly complex SES and semi-natural infrastructures, considering the challenges posed by greater diversity in species, stakeholders, and ecosystem services. Additionally, we discuss how this complexity may impact usability and testability in practical applications.

Outer space infrastructure development presents unique challenges and opportunities in managing legacy systems within a rapidly evolving environment. Contributing to the debate of governing coupled infrastructure systems, we apply Eric S. Raymond's "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" model to illustrate a space infrastructure development evolutionary path to resilience and robustness called ‘Cosmolocalism’. We build our argument upon Raymond’s model's main conclusion for producing software: bottom-up open coordination mechanisms can produce more reliable and innovative solutions than top-down rigid models.

The ‘Cathedral’ model, epitomized by the Soyuz and Apollo programs during the Cold War, represents centralized, proprietary technology development. Since the 2010s, the boom of commercial space exploitation known as ‘New Space’ has provided a platform for ‘merchants’ (e.g., SpaceX) to ‘enter the cathedral’, increasing the speed of space technology launched into orbit. The principal trajectory of the current 'Cathedral-New-Space' model is the Artemis Accords, a geopolitically polarized platform aiming to create the space infrastructure necessary to exploit the Moon. This situation comes with new challenges in ‘social’ (regulatory paralysis and stakeholder polarization) and ‘natural’ (accumulation of orbital debris) infrastructure.

In contrast, the ‘Bazaar’ model operates as decentralized and collaborative technology development favouring shared and publicly available knowledge and problem-solving through broad community participation. This model is emerging from ‘soft’ and ‘human’ infrastructure development, leaning on what gradually discovered blueprints of technology production and governance similar to what happened in open-source software development.

To conclude, we introduce cosmolocalism as a bazaar-like framework for producing shared space infrastructure. Here, globally shared digital commons combine with local production capabilities. A noteworthy case of cosmolocal space infrastructure development is the ESTCube-LuNa consortium, developing propellantless interplanetary solar wind propulsion technology. Started by a group of space enthusiasts, it evolved into a network of research centres sharing resources to locally produce space technology.

Over a dozen nations have expressed plans to engage in robotic and human missions to the Moon. The Artemis campaign explicitly aims for sustainable exploration, and its current plans include crewed and robotic operations on the lunar surface. With growing interest in lunar surface exploration and sustainability goals, it is important and timely to explore what lunar surface sustainability means. Based on a survey among diverse stakeholder groups, we derive insights into the different dimensions of lunar surface sustainability.
We use the coupled infrastructure systems framework for evaluating lunar surface sustainability. By understanding the interactions of diverse actors in the operations and political economy of moon missions, we aim to identify critical trade-off situations. We will apply the CIS framework to the lunar south polar region, a location of interest for multiple governmental, commercial, and other actors.

Combating environmental degradation requires global cooperation. Institutional designs for such efforts need to account for human behavior. In this talk, I will use the voyage of the Titanic as an analogous case to learn from, and use behavioral insights to identify critical aspects of human behavior that serve as barriers or opportunities for addressing the global environmental challenges we face. Based on an analysis of existing international organizations focused on how human behavior and institutions intersect, I will describe a set of public goods that may help us mitigate aspects of human behavior that act as barriers to collective action and leverage behaviors that promote it. Finally, based on insights from this analysis applied to existing institutional solutions for global environmental protection, I will present a set of institutional design features that, if adapted to better account for human behavior, could lead to more effective institutional solutions to global environmental problems.

Sustainable and equitable aquatic food systems represent critical drivers of employment, economic growth, social development and environmental recovery. Small-scale fisheries (SSF) play a big role in these systems as they produce 40% of the total global capture fisheries per year, providing employment to 60.2 million people (~90 % of the total employed in fisheries globally) and nutritious food for subsistence to 52.8 million people. Yet these fisheries are complex given the range of targeted species and ecosystems, harvesting methods, labor organization, cultural values, and governance mechanisms, and they vary in their capacity to respond to new and evolving stressors (e.g. climate change, transitions of terrestrial landscapes for freshwater fisheries, etc.). Transformation of aquatic food systems towards more efficiency, inclusivity, and resiliency requires adoption and effective implementation of international instruments, regional coordination mechanisms, national plans of action, and guidelines that can support the integration of fisheries related policies in development agendas considering tradeoffs and addressing ecological, social and economic objectives. International instruments like the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable SSF in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication (SSF Guidelines) support this vision, yet implementation at national policy levels represents significant challenges for many countries. Global studies like the “Illuminating Hidden Harvests: The Contributions of Small-scale Fisheries to Sustainable Development” (IHH) have highlighted the prevalence of local-level over national-level SSF-specific policies granting management rights to fishers, and very limited devolution of management, exclusion, and transferability rights in legislations. This paper uses the IHH dataset, the Institutional Grammar tool, and the Coupled Infrastructure Systems Framework to assess systematically how configurations of 976 formal policies and institutional arrangements spanning 52 countries impact the ability of their SSF to facilitate the implementation of the SSF Guidelines, and transition towards providing nutritious and affordable healthy diets for the most vulnerable, while fostering equitable growth.

Tourism activities often lack comprehensive guidelines for identifying optimal strategies that suit local contexts and their complex impacts on sustainability. To fill this gap, we need theories linking institutional efforts with outcomes, considering local nuances. This study adapts the Coupled Infrastructure Systems Framework (CISF) for tourism, aiming to overcome fragmentation and advance a contextualized theory of sustainable tourism. We conducted a meta-analysis of 90 case studies to identify contextual and institutional variables cited as key causes of observed economic, social and environmental tourism outcomes.
Subsequently, we examined the influence of these variables on outcomes across all cases in which they were present. Results reveal 10 contextual (preexisting asymmetries in the community, high tourist influx, external influences, seasonality, political stability, tourism knowledge, cultural believes, infrastructure resources, resident's age, and development stage) and 11 institutional (communities' degree of involvement, congruence between benefits and costs, non-residents interventions, high tier policy development, monitoring rule compliance, educational tourism, clearly defined boundary rules, management transparency, government intervention, institutional innovations, nested enterprises) categories as the most frequently identified drivers of sustainable tourism outcomes.
Additionally, we show how certain institutional strategies mitigate or intensify effects based on contextual attributes. Community involvement plays a vital role in achieving ST outcomes, while their involvement as developers yields positive social and environmental results; economic benefits peak when communities engage in decision-making without direct management roles. These findings provide valuable guidance for sustainable tourism development and research, highlighting the need for inclusive, context-specific management approaches.

This presentation aims to synthesize an existing academic and gray literature on Russian energy megaprojects, their past, present and potential impacts on ecosystems and sustainability of Indigenous communities in Sakha Republic, Northeast Siberia. The presentation will employ the concept of infrastructural violence as an analytical tool and describe energy megaprojects along with their infrastructural facilities often portrayed as beneficial and benign, but which may inflict violence on fragile ecosystems and vulnerable Indigenous communities. Using megaprojects of “East Siberia-Pacific Ocean” as well as the “Power of Siberia” as a case study, the presentation will examine the tenuous yet increasingly detrimental forms of infrastructural violence that take place in southwest regions of Sakha Republic where Indigenous Evenki and Sakha hunters, fishers, herders and gatherers reside.

This study characterizes over 30 cases of small-scale agricultural and livestock systems across four continents (Africa, America, Asia, and Europe) using the Coupled Infrastructure Systems (CIS) framework. The analysis identifies system archetypes and explores the socio-ecological variables, both internal and external, that shape these systems. The findings offer insights on the adaptive capacities and transition pathways of these systems in response to global challenges, such as climate change. Internal variables include the type of system (agricultural or livestock-based), resource used (such as irrigation water, pasture, or forest), and the number of users involved in agriculture and livestock. External variables cover factors such as isolation levels, climate conditions, and biome types. Data were gathered through an approximately four-hour online survey, conducted by local researchers familiar with the studied communities. This research is significant as it provides a foundation for developing more effective governance strategies tailored to local realities, with the potential to enhance the sustainability and efficiency of agricultural and livestock systems worldwide.