Research Articles
Macropolitics of Micronesia:
Toward a Critical Theory of
Regional Environmental Governance
(cid:129)
Rebecca L. Gruby*
Abstract
This article examines regional environmental governance (REG) through the lens of
human geography theory on scale. Drawing on a case study of the Micronesia Challenge,
a regional conservation commitment among five Pacific islands, I advance a critical
theory of REG as a scaling process and tool of politics through which regions are
(re)made and mobilized in support of diverse agendas. Results highlight understudied
dimensions of REG, including: motivations for scaling environmental governance to
regions; the co-production of regional and global environmental governance; the mutable
expression of regionality within REG; and the ways in which REG is leveraged for resource
mobilization, global visibility and influence, and conservation. The potential for REG to em-
power subaltern groups while advancing conservation is promising, and an important area
for future research. The overall contribution of this article is a more complex, politicized un-
derstanding of REG that complicates a scholarly search for its inherent characteristics.
At the eighth Conference of the Parties (CoP) to the Convention on Biological Di-
versity (CBD) in 2006, the President of Palau announced a new agreement for
regional environmental governance (REG) among five states and territories in
Micronesia. In the audience that day were the presidents of Conservation Interna-
tional and the World Wildlife Fund, the vice president for external affairs of The
Nature Conservancy (TNC), the executive coordinator of the Global Environment
Facility, and the executive secretary of the CBD. Minutes after the announcement,
TNC put forward a US$ 3 million pledge of support and issued a “challenge” for * The National Science Foundation Geography and Spatial Sciences Program provided funding for this work through a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (award no. 1130675). I am indebted to many interviewees, whose generosity in sharing time, experiences, and insights made this research possible. Special thanks to three anonymous reviewers and to Lisa M. Campbell, Catherine Corson, and Kimberly R. Marion Suiseeya for providing valuable com- ments on earlier drafts of this article. I also thank Robbie Greene for producing the map in Figure 1. Global Environmental Politics 17:4, November 2017, doi:10.1162/GLEP_a_00426 © 2017 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) license. 9 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . l / / e d u g e p a r t i c e – p d l f / / / / / 1 7 4 9 1 8 1 8 1 2 2 g e p _ a _ 0 0 4 2 6 p d . l f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 10 (cid:129) Critical Theory of Regional Environmental Governance others to do the same. Conservation International followed, pledging US$3 mil-
lion to the Micronesia Challenge and congratulating the region for its leadership
in advancing global conservation targets.
Formally, the Micronesia Challenge is an agreement among the Federated
States of Micronesia, Palau, the Marshall Islands, Guam, and the Commonwealth
of the Northern Mariana Islands to “effectively conserve at least 30% of the
near-shore marine and 20% of the forest resources across Micronesia by 2020”
(Micronesia Challenge 2006a). In the policy performance described above, it
was also serving a number of political functions for a diverse network of policy
actors. For the president of Palau, it was a way to attract the attention of powerful
global elites and bring resources to Pacific island microstates often viewed as
small, isolated, and dependent. For global conservation organizations, the re-
gional commitment was, in part, a signal to the world that the CBD program of
protected areas was gaining traction.
This opening vignette introduces this article’s focus on the politics of REG.
A special issue in this journal (August 2012) called attention to “the rise of the
region in global environmental politics” (Conca 2012, 127), arguing that “[i]t is
time to bring the regional back in to the study of global environmental politics”
(Balsiger and VanDeveer 2012, 1). Thus far, the research agenda emerging
around REG has been framed and populated largely by political scientists, re-
flecting a predisposition for realist ontologies and functionalist questions such
as, do regional regimes offer a more practicable scale for achieving global envi-
ronmental governance? As geographer Bernard Debarbieux (2012) has argued,
however, “Another question, How is a region? deserves much more attention.”
To this I add the related question, “Why is a region?”
This paper addresses these questions with a case study of the Micronesia
Challenge, analyzed through the lens of human geography theory on scale and
scalar politics. My objectives are to advance the contribution of geography to the
emergent research agenda on REG, further develop the concept of strategic region-
alization within the scalar politics literature, and enhance understanding of a
globally significant model of REG, the Micronesia Challenge.
Regional Environmental Governance Through the Lens of Scale
Balsiger and Prys (2014) defined REG as a heterogeneous category of agreements
that exhibit contiguity in their membership (i.e., among two or more neighboring
countries), their spatial ambit (i.e., a contiguous area), or both. According to this
definition, approximately 60 percent of all international environmental agree-
ments developed between 1945 and 2005 were regional (Balsiger and Prys
2014). An extensive body of research has addressed REG. However, this literature
has largely treated REG “simply as illustrations of general patterns of international
environmental politics and policy-making” (Balsiger and VanDeveer 2010, 6179).
More recently, REG has emerged as a distinct subdiscipline within the global
environmental politics literature, signaling its recognition as a phenomenon
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
l
/
/
e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
/
1
7
4
9
1
8
1
8
1
2
2
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
4
2
6
p
d
.
l
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
Rebecca L. Gruby
(cid:129) 11
worthy of empirical attention in its own right (Balsiger and Prys 2014; Balsiger
and VanDeveer 2010). Within this emergent subdiscipline, the majority of work
to date has focused on European and North American contexts and on regimes
characterized by narrow thematic objectives, political territoriality, and state ac-
tors (Balsiger and VanDeveer 2010). Systematic research on emerging forms of
REG is needed to address fundamental questions about the diversity of REG in
form and function, compliance and effectiveness across agreement types, and
the position of REG within multilevel regimes (Balsiger and VanDeveer 2010;
Balsiger and VanDeveer 2012).
With some exceptions (e.g., Debarbieux 2012; Debarbieux et al. 2014), the
emerging subdiscipline tends to position REG relative to global environmental
governance, with a normative interest in its comparative efficiency and effective-
ness for achieving collective action (Balsiger and Prys 2014; Conca 2012).
Conca (2012, 129), for example, suggests that collective action is more difficult
to achieve at larger scales due to increased transaction costs and information
needs, and hypothesizes that “the possibility of arranging robust schemes
for common property resources and public goods at [a] supranational scale
may seem more feasible at the regional level than the global.” Balsiger and
VanDeveer (2012, 3) similarly argue that relative to global approaches, regional
initiatives may offer “enhanced commonalities in a particular environmental chal-
lenge, greater familiarity with key actors, and the ability to tailor mitigating action
to a smaller than global constituency.” There is increasing interest in regional gov-
ernance, both as a potential alternative to relatively inefficient, ineffective global
treaties (Conca 2012) and as an opportunity to enhance global environmental gov-
ernance by linking global policy with localized management needs (Selin 2012).
An underlying goal of much emergent research on REG is thus to ascertain
the potential benefits of governance at the regional level, so as to inform the
allocation of governance tasks in multilevel regimes. Inherent to this objective
is an epistemological and ontological position that the regional level of envi-
ronmental governance exhibits intrinsic characteristics that may be discovered,
categorized, and generalized through theory building. In contrast, critical geog-
raphers argue that “there is nothing inherent about scale” (Brown and Purcell
2005, 607) and that research on REG would benefit from a more contextualized
and historicized approach informed by theory on scale and scalar politics
(Debarbieux 2012). Although global environmental governance scholars have at-
tended to the scalar dimensions of environmental governance, including the pol-
itics of scales and networks (Bulkeley 2005), the specific contribution of scale
theory to the REG subdiscipline has yet to be explicated. That is the focus here.
Critical geographers understand scale, including the region, as “the focal
setting at which spatial boundaries are defined for a specific social claim, activ-
ity, or behavior” (Agnew 1997, 100). Scale theory in geography is organized
around three key principles. First, scale is socially constructed through political
struggles and therefore does not have inherent qualities (Brown and Purcell
2005). Second, because the political struggles that produce scale are ongoing,
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
l
/
/
e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
/
1
7
4
9
1
8
1
8
1
2
2
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
4
2
6
p
d
.
l
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
12 (cid:129) Critical Theory of Regional Environmental Governance
scalar arrangements are fluid and dynamic, even though they can become fixed
over certain periods (Brown and Purcell 2005; McCann 2003). Finally, scale is
relational and must be understood in terms of the social production of scalar
relations (e.g., between the global and the regional) (Brown and Purcell 2005).
The scalar politics literature builds on this constructivist understanding of
scale, focusing on how actors strategically invoke and manipulate scale to serve
political agendas. This literature is grounded in the premise that groups forge
alliances over spatial scales to “shape conditions of appropriation and control
over place and have a decisive influence over relative socio-spatial power posi-
tions” (Swyngedouw 2000, 70). The motivating questions for scholars of scalar
politics are “Who produces scale, how, and for what purposes?” (McCarthy
2005, 733). Scalar politics scholars have approached the rescaling of environ-
mental governance as a dynamic political process that redistributes decision-
making power and access to resources (McCarthy 2005; Sievanen et al. 2013).
Although the literature acknowledges the role of biophysical processes in con-
structing biophysical scales, it also acknowledges that decisions to rescale gover-
nance to such “natural” scales as watersheds and ecosystems are also inherently
political (Cohen and McCarthy 2015; Sievanen et al. 2013).
Geographers have long recognized regions as scalar constructs emerging
from a “constellation of institutionalized practices, power relations and dis-
course” (Paasi 2004, 540). However, only recently have regions been examined
through the lens of scalar politics (Gray et al. 2014; Gruby and Campbell 2013).
Gruby and Campbell argue that regions are tools of scalar politics that actors
construct and mobilize to reshape their influence within global environmental
governance processes. This article extends this understanding of strategic region-
alization to REG, to argue that to really understand REG, we must attend to the
politics underlying the scaling of environmental governance to regions.
Toward this end, I examine the Micronesia Challenge through the lens of
scale and scalar politics. Theoretically, this means approaching regions as stra-
tegically constructed tools of politics through which actors attempt to fix (i.e.,
establish) a spatial construction in space and time, in an effort to fix (i.e., solve)
a particular problem for a particular group (McCann 2003). Analytically, this
means foregrounding the questions of how and why governance is scaled to
the region. How and why did environmental governance emerge at the regional
scale in Micronesia? How is the Micronesia Challenge regional, and how regional
is the Micronesia Challenge? How is regionality mobilized through the Micronesia
Challenge in support of diverse agendas?
Drawing on McCay (2002), I approach institutional emergence as a polit-
ical process shaped by the situated choices of policy actors embedded in partic-
ular historical, institutional, and political contexts. I interrogate the form of the
Micronesia Challenge with respect to its territoriality and governance activities,
and I address function in accordance with themes that emerged from my analysis:
resource mobilization, global visibility and influence, and environmental conser-
vation. My answers to these questions yield three insights. First, I highlight the
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
l
/
/
e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
/
1
7
4
9
1
8
1
8
1
2
2
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
4
2
6
p
d
.
l
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
Rebecca L. Gruby
(cid:129) 13
limitations of collective action oriented understandings of the emergence of
REG by drawing attention to the motivations for REG in Micronesia. These results
call attention to the mutually constitutive relationship between global and re-
gional environmental governance. Second, I complicate REG as an object of
analysis by showing the Micronesia Challenge to be a mutable scalar construc-
tion in which distinct and strategic forms of regionality emerge in practice and
in representation. Finally, I draw attention to the contingent and political func-
tionality of REG by examining the contextually specific ways diverse actors
leverage its regionality. The overall result is a more complex, politicized under-
standing of REG and of its global/local linkages that complicates the scholarly
search for an inherently more efficient or effective level of governance.
Making Micronesia: A Short History
The term Micronesia first emerged in the 1830s, when French geographers and
explorers cataloged the peoples of the Pacific islands into the Melanesian,
Polynesian, and Micronesian “culture regions” (Hanlon 1989, 2). Today the
Micronesian “culture region” encompasses the US territory of Guam, the US
Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), the Marshall Islands,
the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), Palau, Kiribati, and Nauru. These
political jurisdictions comprise thousands of islands with a total land area about
the size of Rhode Island spread across an ocean area larger than the continental
United States (Leibowitz 1989).
In addition to “cultural” Micronesia, a second version of the region is
recognized internationally. Diverse colonial experiences beginning in the
early 17th century divided cultural Micronesia along political lines. In short,
Guam, the CNMI, the Marshall Islands, the FSM, and Palau are all tied to
the US and one another through formal and informal political agreements.
They belong to a political region commonly referred to as the US-affiliated
islands of Micronesia. Because of their distinct colonial trajectories, Nauru and
Kiribati are absent from most contemporary forms of cooperation among the
US-affiliated islands of Micronesia, including the Micronesia Challenge
(Figure 1).
The remainder of this article focuses on political Micronesia—the version
of Micronesia reflected, and in some ways remade, through the Micronesia
Challenge. Today, the FSM, the Marshall Islands, and Palau are independent
nations tied to the US through international agreements called Compacts of
Free Association. These three “freely associated states” have their own constitu-
tions and associated governments and citizenship requirements. They conduct
their own foreign affairs, including entering into international treaties and
agreements, and they are all members of the United Nations and parties to
the CBD. Guam is an unincorporated territory of the US, and the CNMI is a
commonwealth in political union with the US.
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
l
/
/
e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
/
1
7
4
9
1
8
1
8
1
2
2
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
4
2
6
p
d
.
l
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
14 (cid:129) Critical Theory of Regional Environmental Governance
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
l
/
/
e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
Figure 1
‘Political’ versus ‘Cultural’ Micronesia
Methodology
Between 2010 and 2012, I used a “follow the policy” distended case study
approach to collect data on the Micronesia Challenge (Peck and Theodore
2012). “Follow the policy” is an innovative methodology drawing on multisite
ethnography and the extended case method to facilitate research on the mobil-
ity and mutation of policy models. To collect data on a mobile policy, one must
travel with it, tracking its transformations across geographical and political
spaces. Toward this end, I collected data on the Micronesia Challenge via inter-
views, policy documents, and participant observation at a global policy-making
arena (CBD CoP 10 in Nagoya, Japan, October 19–29, 2010), a regional policy-
making arena (the 17th Micronesian Chief Executive’s Summit in Guam, March
12–14, 2012), and at local sites of implementation in all five participating
jurisdictions (March 14–April 27, 2012). Event ethnographies at the global
and regional levels illuminated linkages among the Micronesia Challenge, the
global biodiversity regime, and the regional-level policy processes through
which the Micronesia Challenge is translated into programs of work. Local field
sites revealed how the Micronesia Challenge was transformed once again
through interpretations at sites of implementation.
f
/
/
/
/
/
1
7
4
9
1
8
1
8
1
2
2
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
4
2
6
p
d
.
l
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
Rebecca L. Gruby
(cid:129) 15
I conducted semi-structured interviews with 82 people who represent a
near-census sample of policy actors involved with the Micronesia Challenge
at the time, including two heads of state. All interviews were transcribed and,
along with policy documents and participant observation notes, uploaded
to QSR NVivo qualitative data analysis software for thematic coding, process
tracing, and conjunctural analysis. I used a combination of inductive and deduc-
tive thematic coding to identify broad themes for analysis. Process tracing
then allowed me to hone in not only on what occurred but how and why,
focusing on the interviewees’ perceptions. Finally, I used conjunctural analysis
to identify key moments through which actors, institutions, ideas, and practices
came together to produce a particular policy (Corson 2016).
Policy actors who live and work primarily within one island are cited as
Guam (GM1–GM9), the CNMI (CNMI1–CNMI14), the FSM (FSM1–FSM12),
the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI1–RMI16), and the Republic of Palau
(ROP1–ROP16). Actors working for international nongovernmental or inter-
governmental organizations are coded and cited as INGO1–INGO15. These in-
clude representatives of the Global Environment Facility, TNC, Conservation
International, the Micronesia Conservation Trust, the Micronesia Challenge
Regional Office, Rare, the Global Island Partnership, and the Micronesian Image
Institute.
The empirical data presented herein are current through 2012. Like any
dynamic policy process, the Micronesia Challenge has undergone changes in
form and function over time. Recognizing that all policy research reflects
snapshots in time, 2010–2012 is a valuable and appropriate period for this
analysis, for three reasons. First, during this period the emergence process was
still relatively fresh in the minds of interviewees, who were all directly involved.
Second, foundational elements of the institutional infrastructure had already
been put into place, and third, definitive interpretations of how the Micronesia
Challenge could and should function had been formulated in each of the
participating jurisdictions. These data thus provide a sufficient basis for explor-
ing the emergence, form, and function of the Micronesia Challenge at a partic-
ular moment in its history.
Emergence: How and Why Did Environmental Governance Emerge at
the Regional Scale in Micronesia?
My examination of the emergence of the Micronesia Challenge points to the
limitations of an efficiency-oriented explanation of how REG comes to be. As
this section will demonstrate, the Micronesia Challenge coalesced around the
political agendas of state and nonstate policy entrepreneurs, protected area
targets set by the US Coral Reef Task Force and the CBD, and a historically
institutionalized regionalism. Before the launch of the Micronesia Challenge,
both the US Coral Reef Task Force and the CBD had set numeric conservation
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
l
/
/
e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
/
1
7
4
9
1
8
1
8
1
2
2
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
4
2
6
p
d
.
l
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
16 (cid:129) Critical Theory of Regional Environmental Governance
targets. The task force had set graduated targets to protect at least 10 percent of
all coral reef and associated habitat types in each major island group and Florida
by 2005, and 20 percent by 2020. The Seventh Conference of the Parties (CoP 7)
to the CBD had also adopted a target and associated program of work on
protected areas in 2004, to protect 10 percent of Earth’s ecological regions by
2010. Demonstrable progress toward these targets was lagging and actively
sought. Global conservation actors had invested in the formulation and adop-
tion of the program of work on protected areas at CoP 7, and they were looking
for success stories to highlight at the upcoming CoP 8 in 2006: “We needed
something to say the program [of work on protected areas] is working, cause
everybody was saying oh, the COP 7 plan was a total waste of time…. we needed
something in 2006 to make a splash” (INGO11).
As the 14th US Coral Reef Task Force meeting and CBD CoP 8 approached
in 2005 and 2006, respectively, the president of Palau, his top advisors, and a
few TNC staff realized that they offered international stages upon which to
launch a target-driven conservation initiative that could demonstrate progress
toward both the US and global conservation targets, while attracting global
attention and resources to Micronesia (INGO14). Within these contexts, they
recognized the strategic importance of conveying progress at a globally signifi-
cant spatial scale. [The region] was a larger slice of the planet, and there is a
certain amount of attention that gets paid when dealing with global resources
and actions of global significance, when you can define a large area or a signif-
icant slice of biodiversity or a significant number of people (INGO14).
The Palauan government similarly saw the value of organizing regionally, as
a way to get ourselves on the map and then to be known internationally as
someone moving forward in the right direction. It’s very difficult to do that
when you’re in Micronesia, no one even knows where you are or who you
are. (ROP3)
For Palau, getting on the map in this context was not only a matter of global
visibility and reputation. It was also a means of attracting financial resources
from major international donors such as the Global Environment Facility and
international environmental NGOs: “[T]here was potential for bigger money to
come if we make it a regional effort, instead of just a Palauan effort” (ROP15).
In designing the Micronesia Challenge commitment, the initial policy
entrepreneurs set out to build on extant regional cooperation and local conser-
vation initiatives to produce a conservation success story that could be leveraged
by the US Coral Reef Task Force, the CBD, conservation NGOs, and Micronesian
jurisdictions. As an interviewee from the donor community later reflected:
How on earth are we going to make those [international] targets unless
governments really embrace it? And so the Micronesia Challenge was a very
clear and obvious example of governments taking on that challenge early.
(INGO9)
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
l
/
/
e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
/
1
7
4
9
1
8
1
8
1
2
2
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
4
2
6
p
d
.
l
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
Rebecca L. Gruby
(cid:129) 17
A set of regional conservation targets were selected on the basis of a calculus of
what was within reach for the US-affiliated islands of Micronesia, given pre-
existing conservation efforts. The Micronesia Challenge’s numeric targets had
arguably been reached by Palau, for example, before the challenge was de-
clared. The strategy was to package and leverage a major conservation success
story.
The diplomatic task of securing a formal, signed declaration of commit-
ment among five political entities within a relatively short period fell largely
to the administration of the president of Palau. The speed and success of
President Remengesau’s diplomacy was enabled in part by the close personal
and political ties among leaders in the US-affiliated islands of Micronesia,
several of whom had attended boarding school together and served together
in the Congress of Micronesia. Interviewees described the social and political
pressure to sign the Micronesia Challenge using the terms “peer pressure”,
“solidarity”, “brotherhood”, and the “nice island way”.
Despite the vast ocean space that the Micronesian islands of Kiribati and
Nauru could have added to the Micronesia Challenge’s conservation contribu-
tion, including them within the regional commitment was never seriously con-
sidered. When asked why, interviewees highlighted existing institutional and
political infrastructure within political Micronesia to which the Micronesia
Challenge could be attached. They also emphasized “practicalities” tied to colo-
nial legacies, such as the geography of air travel, whereby travel across the en-
during colonial boundaries to Kiribati and Nauru is circuitous and expensive by
comparison.
Preexisting cooperation within political Micronesia—and the decision not
to include Nauru and Kiribati—certainly reduced the transaction costs of for-
malizing the Micronesia Challenge. However, an efficiency-based explanation
of collective action in this case would be incomplete, because it fails to capture
the motivations to pursue a regional arrangement in the first place. For the
Micronesia Challenge’s chief architects, a large oceanic region could be seen
and heard on international stages, such as the CBD CoP 8, in a way that indi-
vidual Micronesian states could not. Framed at a globally relevant scale and
in alignment with international conservation agendas, a large-scale regional
commitment in Micronesia indeed attracted attention and support from a net-
work of powerful policy actors—including Micronesian political elites, TNC, Con-
servation International, and the CBD secretariat—for whom it could produce
success and legitimacy by demonstrating globally significant progress toward in-
ternational conservation targets. The policy entrepreneurs explicitly recognized
that the large regional scale of the agreement imbued it with this power.
This analysis also highlights the relational coproduction of regional and
global scales of environmental governance. Global conservation targets motivated
a large-scale regional initiative by providing an international stage upon which
microstates and territories cooperatively sought visibility, influence, and re-
sources. REG in Micronesia, in turn, legitimized global environmental governance
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
l
/
/
e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
/
1
7
4
9
1
8
1
8
1
2
2
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
4
2
6
p
d
.
l
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
18 (cid:129) Critical Theory of Regional Environmental Governance
by demonstrating significant progress toward international targets and
inspiring parallel initiatives in other regions. Since it emerged in 2006, the
Micronesia Challenge has been credited with inspiring additional “challenges”—
the Caribbean Challenge and the Western Indian Ocean Coastal Challenge—
which the CBD secretariat collectively lauded in 2010 as “a movement that
we see is catalyzing implementation of the convention in general.” Where
Conca (2012, 127) suggests that “the pull of the regional is rooted in the failure
of the global,” this analysis indicates that the pull of the regional may also be
rooted in the success of the global. That is, regional and global environmental
governance have a mutually constitutive relationship in Micronesia. The broader
implication is that if we are to fully understand the emergence of REG, scholars
should be more attentive to the multilevel institutional interactions and political
motivations driving it.
Form: How Is the Micronesia Challenge Regional, and How Regional Is
the Micronesia Challenge?
A scalar politics perspective emphasizes the dynamic nature of scalar con-
structions, such as regions, as they are continually made, contested, and
remade over time. This section thus turns to the representation and practice
of regionality within the Micronesia Challenge as it took shape in imple-
mentation stages, to emphasize the multidimensionality and contingency
of REG.
Balsiger and VanDeveer (2010) understand the territoriality of REG in
terms of the basis for delineating the geographic scope of cooperation—with
political boundaries on one end of a spectrum and naturally delineated
ecosystem boundaries on the other. As I explained above, the territoriality
of the Micronesia Challenge was initially shaped by historic and contem-
porary political boundaries. As an interviewee summarized, “I don’t think
there was even any consideration originally about ecological [boundaries]”
(GM2). However, this does not mean that policy actors were not consider-
ing the possibility that biologically significant regional connectivity exists
or representing their political region as an ecologically relevant basis for
cooperation.
Policy actors recognized the strategic value of territorial representations
that would resonate with global conservation agendas increasingly focused
on ecological connectivity across large spatial scales. Although the Micronesia
Challenge commitment applies only to the near-shore marine areas around
each individual participating island, the geographic scope of action in its out-
reach materials was sometimes represented by contiguous regional polygons and
associated statistics claiming that the Micronesia Challenge covers “6.7 million
square kilometers of ocean” and “represents more than 20% of the Pacific Island
region—and 5% of the largest ocean in the world.” Representations of regional
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
l
/
/
e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
/
1
7
4
9
1
8
1
8
1
2
2
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
4
2
6
p
d
.
l
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
Rebecca L. Gruby
(cid:129) 19
unity and connectivity extend to the human dimension, as well. The “One
Micronesia” regional communication plan, for example, advocates the “branding”
of a region united:
The message [of the One Micronesia campaign] is one of unity. That even
though Micronesia spans over 6.71 million square kilometers of the Pacific,
we are a singular community of island nations with one oceanic legacy.
(www.micronesiachallenge.org/, accessed 2012)
The “One Micronesia” campaign is directed both outward, to international
tourists, donors, and conservationists, and also inward, to an audience including
“The Native Micronesia Islander” (Source: www.micronesiachallenge.org/,
accessed 2012). It is motivated in part by a recognition that “One Micronesia”
doesn’t exist. One goal of the campaign was to combat tensions among culturally,
politically, and linguistically diverse peoples who shared a recent or continuing
colonial history in which they struggled for their independence from the US and
one another (INGO1).
By drawing attention to the strategic construction and representation of
socio-spatial territoriality through REG, a scalar politics perspective reveals
the territoriality of the Micronesia Challenge to be simultaneously political
(in its emergence) and social and natural (in its representation). Though
boundaries were decidedly political at its onset, representations of a large
oceanic region united both spatially and socially are being put to work to
garner support for the Micronesia Challenge both within Micronesia and
abroad.
As for governance, the Micronesian chief executives established five re-
gional bodies to coordinate the regional-level work of the Micronesia Chal-
lenge shortly after it was launched. All but one of these bodies included
participation from both state and nonstate actors. In 2007, the Micronesia
Conservation Trust was designated the host of a regional endowment for
the Micronesia Challenge. Although the Micronesia Challenge signatories
are governments, in practice two NGOs—The Nature Conservancy and the
Micronesia Conservation Trust—were recognized as key drivers for active
regional coordination.
The regionalization of governance practices for the Micronesia Challenge
falls largely into the categories of fundraising, goal setting, and monitoring/
reporting. During the first Micronesia Challenge planning meeting in 2006, “the
group highlighted the importance of considering truly regional options for
fundraising for the Challenge” (Micronesia Challenge 2006b, 9). Six years later,
interviewees would conclude that there were actually few truly regional options
for fundraising, due to the different political statuses and associated eligibility
for international funding within the US jurisdictions of Guam and the CNMI,
on the one hand, and the freely associated states of the FSM, Palau, and the
Marshall Islands, on the other. As of 2011, regional fundraising exclusively
served the freely associated states. The political status of Guam and the CNMI
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
l
/
/
e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
/
1
7
4
9
1
8
1
8
1
2
2
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
4
2
6
p
d
.
l
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
20 (cid:129) Critical Theory of Regional Environmental Governance
has also complicated international fundraising for the other three jurisdictions.
As one interviewee explained:
[W]e’re not successful in getting China to give their stimulus grant toward
the [Micronesia Challenge] endowment…. no matter how many times we
can confirm to [China] that none of this money goes to Guam and CNMI
for some reason … it was a sticking point. (INGO4)
Closely tied to regional fundraising was the task of monitoring and report-
ing collective progress toward the Micronesia Challenge’s goal of effectively con-
serving 20 percent of forest and 30 percent of near-shore marine resources.
Regional monitoring and reporting was pursued through the development of
common ecological and social indicators, a regionally standardized sampling
design, and shared definitions for key terms related to the Micronesia Challenge
target: effective conservation, terrestrial resources, and near-shore marine resources
(Montambault et al. 2015). This process, however, was complicated by differ-
ential scientific and technical capacities across the participating jurisdictions.
The initial set of indicators that the Micronesia Challenge Measures Working
Group created were deemed to be “extremely ambitious and may not be possi-
ble for all jurisdictions” (Micronesia Challenge Steering Committee 2011, 6). As
a result, a more narrow and basic set of indicators for measuring collective prog-
ress had to be developed, which meant backtracking for the CNMI and Guam,
which had more sophisticated technical and scientific capacities. Although
progress toward regional targets is measured and reported regionally, the
identification and implementation of activities that count toward the Micro-
nesia Challenge targets is decentralized to jurisdictional governments: “we’re
not making decisions regionally on how we’re going implement this”
(INGO4).
While the Micronesia Challenge attempts to regionalize environmental
governance through decision-making, goal-setting, and fundraising organizations
and processes, inherent regional diversity constantly challenges the construction
of regional-scale governance: the regionalization of fundraising is challenged by
political diversity, the regionalization of monitoring and reporting is challenged
by diverse scientific and technical capacities, and the formal regionalization of
conservation strategies for meeting the Micronesia Challenge targets was blocked
from the beginning. In representations, however, this regional diversity is glossed
over—and strategically so. The Micronesia Challenge presents regional progress
toward a collective goal by “One Micronesia” that can be seen, heard, and
valued by international and global conservation actors, processes, and
agendas. In this sense, strategic scalar representations work to fix the “prob-
lem” of heterogeneity by fixing in time and space a stylized version of One
Micronesia that resonates with global audiences. To be clear, this observation
is not meant as a critique. I interpret this strategic scalar representation as a
politically astute attempt to co-opt an imposed regionalism and put it to work
for diverse Micronesians.
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
l
/
/
e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
/
1
7
4
9
1
8
1
8
1
2
2
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
4
2
6
p
d
.
l
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
Rebecca L. Gruby
(cid:129) 21
The broader implication here is that both regions and REG defy simplistic
characterization. By directing the analyst to better understand the regionality of
REG in practice and representation, a scalar perspective complicates the object
of analysis in studies of REG. Approached as a scaling process, REG is shown to
be uneven, contingent, and strategic. The implication is that scholars of REG
must develop more complex understandings of their subject as a dynamic scal-
ing process shaped by political agendas and inherent regional diversity.
Function: How Is Regionality Mobilized Through the
Micronesia Challenge?
This final empirical section considers how local and global policy actors embed,
contest, and/or mobilize the Micronesia Challenge within participating juris-
dictions and at the global level. This section is not a comprehensive accounting
of Micronesia Challenge outcomes. Rather, consistent with a scalar politics
approach, the focus is on the contextually specific ways in which policy actors
attempt to put REG to work toward particular agendas. Approached as such, the
Micronesia Challenge functions generally fall within three themes: resource
mobilization, global visibility and influence, and environmental conservation.
This section draws attention to the contingency and heterogeneity of REG out-
comes, and the functionality of REG as a tool of scalar politics in struggles for
power and resources.
Resource Mobilization
Nearly all interviewees from the three freely associated states understood the
Micronesia Challenge foremost as a mechanism for mobilizing international
funding and support for preexisting conservation policies and activities. Inter-
viewees in Palau, for example, described the Micronesia Challenge as a “market-
ing tool to get financial support” (ROP7), a “fundraising gimmick” (ROP6), and
a way to “attract donors by regionalizing” (ROP5). Interpretations were similar
in the Marshall Islands and FSM. Interviewees linked this leverage to the region-
ality of the agreement, which they strategically market to donors interested in
administrative convenience and large-scale impact: “one of the attractive things
about the Micronesia Challenge is its regional scope…. [Since donors] want to
stretch the value of [their] dollar, what better initiative to fund than this one
because you can claim that you are supporting an area larger than the conti-
nental US” (INGO6).
Interviewees also described leverage in terms of increased power in
influencing international donor agendas. As one interviewee put it: “[the Micro-
nesia Challenge] kind of empowers us to say this is what we are working toward
and what we want to accomplish. And so based on what you fund, this is what
you can do for us” (INGO8). In a session at the CBD CoP 10, a Palauan delegate
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
l
/
/
e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
/
1
7
4
9
1
8
1
8
1
2
2
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
4
2
6
p
d
.
l
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
22 (cid:129) Critical Theory of Regional Environmental Governance
similarly argued “When we started the challenge, the number one ingredient is
ownership and number two is control…. When you have ownership and you
know what you want, donors will come looking for you.”
But to whom does this power accrue? Although they acknowledged that
the Micronesia Challenge was increasing the overall amount of conservation
funding coming into the region, several smaller conservation NGOs based in
the region raised concerns about the potential for regional fundraising to crowd
out their direct fundraising efforts and relationships: “one of the downsides of
doing a regional [fundraising] … you sort of give up most of your bilateral
leverage” (RMI1). Interviewees in the FSM and Palau raised similar concerns
about the redistribution of international resources first “up” to such regional
organizations as TNC and the Micronesia Conservation Trust, and then “down”
to local organizations and governments. While the Micronesia Challenge may
attract a larger overall pool of resources to the region, it also empowers regional
NGOs, to some extent, “to direct how and why that funding should come to
this region” (INGO7). Regional organizations are aware of this tension and
attempt to minimize competition by targeting sources of funding that may
otherwise be inaccessible to smaller, local organizations.
Guam and the CNMI receive funding for environmental management and
conservation from the US federal government and are ineligible for most
sources of international funding. Because of this, some interviewees questioned
the uneven benefits accruing to participating jurisdictions and resented that they
would not directly benefit from regional fundraising: “we said, well what are we
doing here?” (CNMI7).
Global Visibility and Influence
Interviewees, particularly from the Marshall Islands, Guam, and the CNMI, also
focused on the ability of the Micronesia Challenge to bring global visibility to
locally specific issues. A high-level official in the Marshall Islands, for example,
saw the Micronesia Challenge as a way to access new political forums and attract
international attention to the lingering impacts of historic nuclear testing1 and
the future threat of climate change: “I think the Challenge has an opportunity, if
used wisely, to talk about these other issues” (RMI1). Policy actors within the
CNMI and Guam also saw the Micronesia Challenge as a vehicle for seeking
locally relevant influence and representation within global forums. There the
vision was to mobilize horizontal ties to the freely associated states (member
states of the United Nations) through the Micronesia Challenge as a means to
represent their interests within global environmental forums in which the US
1. The Marshall Islands is still seeking reparations to fulfill outstanding personal injury claims
linked to US nuclear tests conducted between 1946 and 1958.
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
l
/
/
e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
/
1
7
4
9
1
8
1
8
1
2
2
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
4
2
6
p
d
.
l
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
Rebecca L. Gruby
(cid:129) 23
does not provide locally relevant representation. Guam’s Micronesia Challenge
implementation strategy states, for example:
It is most appropriate for Guam to be involved in the Convention on
Biological Diversity, the World Summit on Sustainable Development and
the Millennium Development Goals from the perspective of a resource-limited
small island, not the perspective of a world economic and political leader, the
United States. Greater involvement in regional organizations and appropriate
representation in such global groups will result from Guam’s participation in
the Micronesia Challenge.
A majority of interviewees across the region also articulated a more general
function that the Micronesia Challenge serves for their individual jurisdictions
and the region collectively: securing a global voice and recognition that will help
them push back in both material and discursive terms against a discourse of the
Pacific islands as small, isolated, vulnerable, and dependent. As one interviewee
put it, “the countries themselves will have more self-determination” (INGO8).
Again, the regional scale of the Micronesia Challenge is recognized as the central
point of leverage toward this end. A regional agreement can be used to “put us
on the map” (FSM1) or help Micronesians “to be recognized by the world”
(CNMI6). The benefits of this global visibility may accrue not only to signatory
states, but to global conservation actors as well. As one interviewee summarized:
“[the Micronesia Challenge has] given us NGOs who are aligned up with these
little countries a voice we’ve never had before” (INGO11).
Environmental Conservation
Policy actors were generally not trying to leverage the Micronesia Challenge
to change domestic environmental policy. Within Palau, the Marshall Islands,
and the FSM, most interviewees interpreted the Micronesia Challenge as a tool
for supporting preexisting conservation efforts through capacity building and
fundraising. At the time of research, Palau was the only Micronesia Challenge
signatory to have a legally specified implementation mechanism: a national
protected-area network established in 2003, three years before the Micronesia
Challenge was declared. As one interviewee in Palau explained: “no, actually,
Micronesia Challenge wasn’t designed to … change policy. It was designed to
attract donors” (ROP5). Interviewees in the Marshall Islands similarly asserted
their vision of the Micronesia Challenge as “a commitment of ensuring that we
continue to do the things that we’ve been doing all along” (RMI12). In 2008,
the Marshall Islands formally documented existing practice in “Reimaanlok,” a
community-based conservation area planning framework for the Marshall
Islands that is serving as their national strategy for achieving the Micronesia
Challenge. Within the FSM, no formal implementation mechanism was speci-
fied at the time of research. When asked how the FSM is meeting its commit-
ments, policy actors asserted that “nothing that we speak of in the Micronesia
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
l
/
/
e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
/
1
7
4
9
1
8
1
8
1
2
2
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
4
2
6
p
d
.
l
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
24 (cid:129) Critical Theory of Regional Environmental Governance
Challenge in my view is all new stuff … it’s part of the way that we live, but
you’re just naming it a little bit differently” (FSM8).
The interpretation of the Micronesia Challenge in Guam and the CNMI
was more controversial, with conflict surrounding assessments of what counts
as effective conservation, how much effective conservation was already in place,
and how the numeric targets should be met. Although some in Guam and the
CNMI felt that the Micronesia Challenge should be used to put new protections
in place, ultimately both jurisdictions agreed to undertake a watershed approach
to meeting the Micronesia Challenge commitments that fits with preexisting
management efforts and focuses on reducing land-based sources of pollution
to coral reefs in priority watersheds.
Although a disappointment for some, the focus of the Micronesia Challenge
on mobilizing resources and support for preexisting environmental policies,
especially in resource-poor contexts, has presented an opportunity to advance
conservation in alignment with locally defined priorities and practices. In case
studies of areas within Palau, the FSM (Pohnpei and Yap), and the CNMI that have
received funding through the Micronesia Challenge, Montambault et al. (2015)
found that conservation practitioners are using monitoring data to advance
marine conservation in contextually appropriate ways—for example, through
the implementation of more effective enforcement, or by adjusting the bound-
aries of marine conservation areas.
In summary, the Micronesia Challenge is being leveraged to raise conserva-
tion funding in some corners of Micronesia, not to trigger large-scale changes in
environmental policy. Interviewees rarely focused on specific policy or
environmental change as a goal when describing the overall function of the
regional commitment. Instead, their focus was on how they attempted to
mobilize REG in support of contextualized agendas linked to resource mobiliza-
tion for preexisting conservation efforts and in support of global visibility and in-
fluence. These agendas were not shared uniformly across the region, however, and
the associated benefits may come at a cost. The rescaling of fundraising to the re-
gion has meant that national and local actors in the freely associated states may
face competition from NGOs operating at the regional level—for example, for
international conservation resources and associated decision-making power.
Overall, it may be true that the Micronesia Challenge, as one interviewee put
it, has “given these little countries a voice at a level that they’ve never had before”
(INGO11). By fixing in time and space a united large ocean region that can be seen,
heard, and valued by global donors, processes, and agendas, REG in Micronesia is
serving as a tenuous scalar fix for the limitations posed by geopolitical smallness.
Although additional progress will be needed to meet the Micronesia Challenge’s
conservation goals (Houk et al. 2015), promising steps have also been taken to-
ward “fixing” the very real environmental problems in the region (Montambault
et al. 2015). As this analysis reveals, however, underlying the so-called regional
voice is not one but many voices that are seeking both shared and context-specific
goals in political struggles that are simultaneously local, regional, and global. The
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
l
/
/
e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
/
1
7
4
9
1
8
1
8
1
2
2
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
4
2
6
p
d
.
l
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
Rebecca L. Gruby
(cid:129) 25
implication is that the regional scale of environmental governance is unlikely to be
inherently more or less functional than any other scale of environmental gover-
nance. If we really want to understand the functioning of REG, we must ask:
who is mobilizing it, and toward what ends? Scholars of REG should acknowledge
its contingent functionality and pay attention to the contextually specific ways in
which diverse actors put regions and REG to work for particular agendas including,
but not limited to, environmental governance.
Conclusions
This article engages the human geography literature on scale and scalar politics
to complicate and politicize our understanding of REG. Drawing on a case study
of the emergence, form, and function of the Micronesia Challenge, I offer three
main observations with broad implications for scholars and practitioners of a
regional approach to environmental governance. First, the emergence of REG is
embedded within struggles for resources, recognition, and legitimacy within
interlinked political and policy processes at multiple levels. Rather than looking
to REG as a more efficient or effective alternative to global environmental gov-
ernance, we need to better understand the mutually constitutive relationship
between these levels of governance. Second, the expression of regionality in
REG is not a static feature that can be accurately characterized or fully under-
stood by reading a policy text. Rather, it is dynamic and varies in representation
and practice. Scholars of REG need to deeply understand our object of analysis
by developing nuanced understandings of the ways in which REG is and is not
regional. Third, and perhaps most important, the functioning of REG extends
beyond environmental governance. In a famous essay, scholar/activist Epeli
Hau’ofa called for an independent regionalism in Oceania that could empower
Pacific Islanders to act more autonomously within global political and eco-
nomic systems (Hau’ofa 2008). In some ways the Micronesia Challenge may
be understood as a brilliant example of this. Through the Micronesia Challenge,
small islands became a large region that raised a $17.5 million endowment in
support of locally defined conservation projects and policies (as of September
2016). However, the power of REG to deliver agency and autonomy is both
enabled and constrained by external agendas. The ability of “One Micronesia”
to attain global visibility and mobilize resources is drawn in part from the
construction and mobilization of a particular form of institutionalized region-
ality that resonates with global conservation governance agendas and funding
priorities: a large-scale conservation commitment. At the same time, actors
within all participating jurisdictions are finding ways to leverage the regionalism
of the Micronesia Challenge in pursuit of their particular interests within its
institutional scaffolding. This possibility of REG to empower geopolitically
subaltern groups while advancing conservation goals is a promising yet under-
studied dimension of REG that deserves more attention in future work.
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
l
/
/
e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
/
1
7
4
9
1
8
1
8
1
2
2
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
4
2
6
p
d
.
l
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
26 (cid:129) Critical Theory of Regional Environmental Governance
As scholars interrogate the promise of REG as an alternative or complement to
global environmental governance, more complete understandings will be needed of
the social and political processes that shape its emergence, form, and function. As
this article has demonstrated, a human geography perspective can reveal critical
understudied dimensions of REG, including motivations for scaling environmental
governance to regions, the co-production of regional and global environmental gov-
ernance, the mutability of REG, and its embeddedness within multiscalar power
struggles and policy processes. Ultimately, this article advances a situated theory
of REG as a political scaling process through which regions are made and mobilized
in support of diverse agendas that may interact with environmental governance ob-
jectives in context-dependent ways. In this sense, REG should be approached analyt-
ically and theoretically as an expression of a distinctly scalar politics that may
produce significant but contingent outcomes. As the research agenda on REG de-
velops, I hope to see geographers, political scientists, and others continue to create
a “space of dialogue” (Debarbieux 2012) around REG in a collective effort to under-
stand and harness the potential of this prolific model of environmental governance.
References
Agnew, John. 1997. The Dramaturgy of Horizons: Geographical Scale in the “Reconstruction
of Italy” by the New Italian Political Parties, 1992–1995. Political Geography 16 (2):
99–121.
Balsiger, Jörg, and Miriam Prys. 2014. Regional Agreements in International Environ-
mental Politics. International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics
16 (2): 239–260.
Balsiger, Jörg, and Stacy D. VanDeveer. 2010. Regional Governance and Environmental
Problems. In The International Studies Encyclopedia, edited by Robert A. Denemark,
6179–6200. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Balsiger, Jörg, and Stacy D. VanDeveer. 2012. Navigating Regional Environmental Gover-
nance. Global Environmental Politics 12 (3): 1–17.
Brown, J. Christopher, and Mark Purcell. 2005. There’s Nothing Inherent About Scale:
Political Ecology, the Local Trap, and the Politics of Development in the Brazilian
Amazon. Geoforum 36: 607–624.
Bulkeley, Harriet. 2005. Reconfiguring Environmental Governance: Towards a Politics of
Scales and Networks. Political Geography 24 (8): 875–902.
Cohen, Alice, and James McCarthy. 2015. Reviewing Rescaling: Strengthening the Case
for Environmental Considerations. Progress in Human Geography 39 (1): 3–25.
Conca, Ken. 2012. The Rise of the Region in Global Environmental Politics. Global
Environmental Politics 12 (3): 127–133.
Corson, Catherine. 2016. Corridors of Power: The Politics of Environmental Aid to Madagascar.
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Debarbieux, Bernard. 2012. How Regional Is Regional Environmental Governance? Global
Environmental Politics 12 (3): 119–126.
Debarbieux, Bernard, Jörg Balsiger, Dusan Djordjevic, Simon Gaberell, and Gilles Rudaz.
2014. Scientific Collectives in Region-Building Processes. Environmental Science &
Policy 42: 149–159.
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
l
/
/
e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
/
1
7
4
9
1
8
1
8
1
2
2
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
4
2
6
p
d
.
l
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
Rebecca L. Gruby
(cid:129) 27
Gray, Noella J., Rebecca L. Gruby, and Lisa M. Campbell. 2014. Boundary Objects and
Global Consensus: Scalar Narratives of Marine Conservation in the Convention on
Biological Diversity. Global Environmental Politics 14 (3): 64–83.
Gruby, Rebecca L., and Lisa M. Campbell. 2013. Scalar Politics and the Region: Strategies
for Transcending Pacific Island Smallness on a Global Environmental Governance
Stage. Environment and Planning A 45 (9): 2046–2063.
Hanlon, David. 1989. Micronesia: Writing and Rewriting the Histories of a Nonentity.
Pacific Studies 12 (2): 1–21.
Hau’ofa, E. 2008. We Are the Ocean: Selected Works. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press.
Houk, Peter, Rodney Camacho, Steven Johnson, Matthew McLean, Selino Maxin, Jorg
Anson, Eugene Joseph, Osamu Nedlic, Marston Luckymis, Katrina Adams, Don
Hess, Emma Kabua, Anthony Yalon, Eva Buthung, Curtis Graham, Trina Leberer,
Brett Taylor, and Robert van Woesik. 2015. The Micronesia Challenge: Assessing
the Relative Contribution of Stressors on Coral Reefs to Facilitate Science-to-
Management Feedback. PLoS ONE 10 (6): e0130823:1–17.
Leibowitz, Arnold H. 1989. Defining Status: A Comprehensive Analysis of United States
Territorial Relations. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
McCann, Eugene J. 2003. Framing Space and Time in the City: Urban Policy and the
Politics of Spatial and Temporal Scale. Journal of Urban Affairs 25 (2): 159–178.
McCarthy, James. 2005. Scale, Sovereignty, and Strategy in Environmental Governance.
Antipode 37 (4): 731–753.
McCay, Bonnie J. 2002. Emergence of Institutions for the Commons: Contexts, Situations,
and Events. In The Drama of the Commons, edited by Elinor Ostrom, Thomas Dietz,
Nives Dolsak, Paul C. Stern, Susan Stonich, and Elke U. Weber, 361–402. Washington,
DC: National Academy Press.
Micronesia Challenge. 2006a. Declaration of Commitment: “The Micronesia Challenge.”
Available at http://bit.ly/2wo8sP9, accessed August 7, 2017.
Micronesia Challenge. 2006b. Micronesia Challenge: Action Planning Meeting,
December 4–7, 2006, Republic of Palau. Undated Report.
Micronesia Challenge Steering Committee. 2011. A Report on Progress to Implement the
Micronesia Challenge 2006–2011.
Montambault, Jensen Reitz, Supin Wongbusarakum, Trina Leberer, Eugene Joseph,
Wayne Andrew, Fran Castro, Brooke Nevitt, Yimnang Golbuu, Noelle W. Oldiais,
Craig R. Groves, Willy Kosta, and Peter Houk. 2015. Use of Monitoring Data to
Support Conservation Management and Policy Decisions in Micronesia. Conservation
Biology 29 (5): 1279–1289.
Paasi, Anssi. 2004. Place and Region: Looking Through the Prism of Scale. Progress in
Human Geography 28 (4): 536–546.
Peck, Jamie, and Nik Theodore. 2012. Follow the Policy: A Distended Case Approach.
Environment and Planning A 44 (1): 21–30.
Selin, Henrik. 2012. Global Environmental Governance and Regional Centers. Global
Environmental Politics 12 (3): 18–37.
Sievanen, Leila, Rebecca L. Gruby, and Lisa M. Campbell. 2013. Fixing Marine Governance
in Fiji? The New Scalar Narrative of Ecosystem-Based Management. Global Environ-
mental Change 23 (1): 206–216.
Swyngedouw, Erik. 2000. Authoritarian Governance, Power, and the Politics of Rescaling.
Environmental and Planning D 18 (1): 63–76.
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
l
/
/
e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
/
1
7
4
9
1
8
1
8
1
2
2
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
4
2
6
p
d
.
l
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3