Society & Natural Resources

Opening the ‘black box’ of distrust in environmental and natural resource management

Distrust is an under-researched phenomenon in environmental and natural resource management scholarship (Ericksen & Biedenweg, 2022). This has resulted in an opaque and limited understanding of its effects on collaborative performance and collective action in different contexts. Nevertheless, distrust is perhaps the most prevalent phenomenon in common pool natural resource management settings internationally, due in part to inter-generational legacies of dislocation, dispossession, cultural genocide, exclusion and deceit in the pursuit of resource extraction goals concerned with centralization, efficiency and hierarchy. With many government agencies now turning towards more networked forms of co-management and collaborative governance involving strategies such as devolution, participation, empowerment, inclusion and information sharing, the roles of distrust in sustainable NRM requires more attention.

That is why we initatied this special issue. We are particularly invite contributions focussing on better understanding the antecedents and consequences of multi-dimensional distrust in different natural resource settings (e.g. rural planning, environmental governance, resource management, urban ecosystems, inter-organizational collaboration for resource protection) in contexts around the globe. We invite papers dealing with the following topics:

• Studies that particularly focus on distrust situations in collaborative natural resource management networks (formal and informal).
• Studies on dynamics between trust and distrust over time in common pool resource management settings (e.g., forests, fish, water, biodiversity, soil, etc).
• Studies on the methodological challenges associated with studying distrust in NRM settings, and the implications for collaborative governance scholarship.

We invite authors interested in the topic of distrust and trust in natural resources management to submit their paper to the journal. Please select this special issue in the submission process.