Governance of a landscape: The role of formal and informal organizations

Formal governments alone struggle to effectively manage and navigate undesirable changes in social-ecological systems. Informal governance networks are often seen as essential to address shortcomings of government; however, the roles and influence of these networks are poorly understood. Given the increasing prominence of multiparty processes for environmental governance in the U.S. and beyond, it is critical to understand the shifting roles and influences of both formal and informal organizations in governing large-scale social-ecological systems—specifically regarding social-ecological regime shifts that result in undesirable outcomes. The current conversion of grasslands to woodlands in the U.S. Great Plains biome exemplifies such a social-ecological regime shift. We leverage this ongoing regime shift to better understand the roles of formal and informal organizations in environmental governance networks. Through a social science survey, we measured risk perceptions, organizational learning, organizational influence and social networks among Nebraska and Montana conservation professionals from organizations engaged in grassland governance. We found differences between formal and informal governance organization in risk perceptions and organizational priorities. Additionally, informal organizations demonstrated lower occupational similarity of conservation professionals' social networks. Our results suggest meaningful differences in how formal vs. informal governance organizations are responding to the regime shift and support the hypothesis that informal governance organizations bridge between sectors and enhance the nimbleness of environmental governance during times of social-ecological change. However, low representation of producers within conservation professionals’ networks, among other challenges with effective bottom-up environmental governance, illustrate important gaps for effectively governing social-ecological regime shifts.