Environmental Governance

Abstract

Environmental governance denotes the processes through which different actors govern the environment. Geographers have actively researched them from empirical, theoretical, and normative perspectives. From an empirical perspective, environmental governance involves a variety of actors (including governments and also businesses, nongovernmental organizations, and local communities), modes of governing (such as actor networks), and the means to achieve governance (which includes regulation and also taxation, voluntary approaches, and information provision). When viewed historically, the locus of environmental decision‐making has extended, both vertically and horizontally, from local or subnational levels prior to the late 1960s to national and international scales in the early twenty‐first century. Different theories, such as those focusing on networks of actors, can be employed by geographers to understand the emergence of new forms of governance. Finally, many normative arguments exist on the potential form that environmental governance should take, as well as what objectives to aim at.