Environmental Governance Networks and Geography: A Research Agenda at the Confluence of Critical Concepts for Navigating Rapid Environmental Change

Abstract

Social networks are foundational to modern environmental governance, and particularly influential in supporting societal navigation of rapid environmental change. Social network science crosses disciplinary boundaries and provides theoretical and methodological tools to predict and assess relationships between network characteristics, structures, and the diffusion of information and innovations critical to navigating environmental governance challenges such as climate change and biodiversity loss. Most network studies examine networks that operate at a particular spatial scale, and research questions often rest on the relationships between simple network structures and characteristics of individual network actors and their associations. Geographers are poised to further develop theory underlying social network science specifically relevant to navigating human–environment governance challenges by disentangling the influences of scale, place, and identity in network studies. In this article, we advance the concept of environmental governance networks as multiscale, multilevel, and multi-identity social networks formed organically in response to environmental governance challenges. We propose that geographers are well positioned to expose the socially constructed nature of environmental governance networks as barriers and opportunities for societal navigation of rapid environmental change by explicitly theorizing critical influences across time, space, place, levels of social organization, and the multiple roles and social identities individual network actors hold. We develop a research agenda that leverages geographic theory to expand network science questions relative to concepts such as network proximity, affiliation, interaction, and intra-individual roles and identities to better understand the position and potential of environmental governance networks as a social structure for navigating rapid environmental change.