Performance of Ontario's Benthos Biomonitoring Network: impacts on participants' social capital, environmental action, and problem-solving ability.

Abstract

The Ontario Benthos Biomonitoring Network (OBBN) is a collaborative initiative that monitors bottom-dwelling aquatic invertebrates to assess ecological condition. The Network is led by Ontario's Ministry of Environment and Environment Canada's Ecological Monitoring and Assessment Network Coordinating Office, and is part of the Canadian Aquatic Biomonitoring Network. This paper evaluates OBBN performance, emphasizing impacts on participants' social capital, environmental action, and problem-solving ability. A questionnaire was used to characterize participants' reasons for joining, their experience and degree of involvement, their satisfaction with the Network, and their socioeconomic status and demography. Three hypotheses were tested: (1) that participants' social capital has increased as a result of Network involvement; (2) that OBBN involvement has catalyzed an increase in participants' civic environmental action, or the effectiveness of that action; and (3) that Network members' problem-solving abilities have improved as a result of their participation. Evidence supports all three hypotheses, and participants' subjective assessments suggest that the Network is performing well. New participants join the Ontario Benthos Biomonitoring Network for a variety of water-management-related and social reasons. Most participants categorize the government-participant relationship in the OBBN as a voluntary partnership or collaboration, with an acceptable distribution of funding burden among partners. Participants are generally satisfied with the OBBN, and most believe it to be credible, relevant, legitimate, and inclusive.

Le Ontario Benthos Biomonitoring Network (OBBN) est une initiative de collaboration dont l'objet est la surveillance des invertebres aquatiques de fond dans le but d'evaluer la situation ecologique. Le reseau est dirige par le ministere de l'Environnement de l'Ontario et par le bureau de coordination du Reseau d'evaluation et de surveillance ecologique (RESE) d'Environnement Canada, et fait partie du Reseau canadien de biosurveillance aquatique (RCBA). On evalue dans cet article les resultats du OBBN, en mettant l'accent sur les repercussions sur le capital social des participants, leur action environnementale et leur capacite de resolution de problemes. On a utilise un questionnaire pour caracteriser les motifs qui ont pousse les participants a s'engager, leur experience et leur degre de participation, leur satisfaction par rapport au reseau, leur situation economique et demo-graphique. On a verifie les trois hypotheses suivantes voulant que: 1) le capital social des participants ait augmente a la suite de leur engagement dans le reseau; 2) la participation au OBBN ait catalyse et augmente l'action civique environnementale, ou l'efficacite de cette action, chez les participants; et 3) les capacites de resolution de problemes des membres du reseaux se soient ameliorees a la suite de leur participation. Les elements de preuve observes soutiennent les trois hypotheses. La participation au reseau est motivee par une variete de resultats souhaitables de nature sociale et lies a la gestion de l'eau. La plupart des participants ont classe la relation gouvernement-participant au sein du reseau (OBBN) comme un partenariat benevole ou une collaboration, avec une repartition acceptable du fardeau du financement parmi les partenaires. De maniere generale, les participants sont satisfaits du OBBN et croient pour la plupart qu'il est credible, pertinent, legitime et complet.

Keywords

Benthic macroinvertebrates, biomonitoring, Ontario, social capital, environmental action, problem solving

Introduction

The multi-partner Ontario Benthos Biomonitoring Network (OBBN) enables bioassessment of inland streams, lakes, and wetlands using benthic macroinvertebrates. The Network was co-founded in 2003 by Ontario's Ministry of Environment and Environment Canada; it complements an existing provincial water-chemistry monitoring program by enabling aquatic ecosystem condition to be assessed biologically, and it contributes information to Canada's national aquatic biomonitoring network. The OBBN has five components:

* Standard sampling procedures (Jones et al. 2005);

* Training and certification;

* Access to Canada's national benthos database, which allows data to be shared among participants;

* Analytical software (under development) that defines biocriteria and calculates tests of the bioassessment null-hypothesis--that a test-site is normal, or in reference condition (e.g., Wright et al. 2000, Bailey et al. 2004, Bowman and Somers 2005); and

* A collaborative, applied research, program.

This paper is one part of an OBBN performance evaluation: it reports results from a survey that was designed to gain information about participants' reasons for joining the OBBN, their experience and degree of involvement, their satisfaction with the Network, and their socioeconomic status and demography. Using this survey data, we test three hypotheses: That involvement in, or association with, the OBBN has: (1) increased social capital (i.e., the value of participants' individual social networks, and the value of the collective biomonitoring-related social network in Ontario); (2) increased participants' civic environmental action, and the effectiveness of that action; and (3) increased participants' ability to overcome environmental challenges.

Concepts

We define social capital as the value of social networks among people and organizations--characterized by trust, cooperation, community involvement, and information sharing--that build capacity to solve problems and accomplish goals of mutual benefit (e.g., Schuurman 2003, Krishna 2004, Larsen et al. 2004, Mansuri and Rao 2004, Overdevest et al. 2004, Parisi et al. 2004). One's social capital can be estimated by evaluating one's social network, which we define as a map of the relationships among individuals connected through various social familiarities ranging from casual acquaintance, to professional association, to close familial bonds (adapted from Barnes [1954]). Herein, we investigate both bonding social capital and bridging social capital. Bonding social capital is the type of social capital that strengthens ties among individuals (e.g., Larsen et al. 2004, Paavola and Adger 2005). We evaluated OBBN influences on bonding social capital with survey questions dealing with solidarity, unity, reciprocity, trust, frequency of communication, and the use of common terminology. Bridging social capital is the type of social capital that extends social contact beyond members' own personal social networks, thereby facilitating collective action across a broader segment of society (e.g., Larsen et al. 2004, Paavola and Adger 2005). Impacts on bridging social capital were evaluated based on participants' social network size, cooperation, access to information, knowledge, and their perceived influence or impact. (1)

Although the questionnaire used in our survey did not directly query OBBN effects on participants' capacities to solve environmental problems, we argue that several elements of social capital are also measures of environmental problem-solving ability. For example, the level of cooperation, reciprocity, solidarity, and trust one has within one's social network, the size of that network, how knowledgeable a person is, one's access to information, the frequency of one's communication with others, the strength of connections one has with others, and the influence or impact one has, are all measures of a person's ability to help solve their community's environmental problems. We consider evidence of increased knowledge to be particularly strong evidence of improved problem-solving ability (e.g., Dobell 2000, Cross and Sproull 2004): environmental problems tend to be very complex (e.g., Grant 1997, Pollard et al. 2001, Thornton and Laurin 2005, Millenium Ecosystem Assessment Board 2005), but the more comprehensive one's understanding of a given problem is, the more tractable that problem is.

Several survey questions were designed to provide information about Network members that could be used to investigate sector-related, gender-related, Network-experience-related, or other biases in responses; we refer to the variables provided by these questions as predictor variables, whereas questions related to Network performance and social capital were considered response variables.

Methods

Survey Questionnaire

Our survey questionnaire provided information on 137 variables: 17 predictors; 16 social, economic, and demographic measures; and 104 response variables (Jones 2005 and Table 1). It was written according to the principles of Chakrapani and Deal (1992) and Suskie (1996). For example: when composing questions, we kept to one-dimensional queries written with simple, direct language; we accommodated all possible answers including (for most questions) don't know, not applicable or no opinion; and we posed questions in an emotionally-neutral, non-threatening way to avoid biasing answers. In addition, we made the questionnaire as short as possible, minimized navigational branching through lines of questioning, and varied question formats (e.g., multiple-choice, numeric, and open-ended) to avoid habituation in response sets.