Rescaling environmental governance, rethinking the state: A three-dimensional review

Abstract

In light of significant interest by scholars in environmental geography and in studies of social-ecological systems in the multiscalar, multistakeholder aspects of environmental decision-making, we focus this review on multilevel systems of environmental governance in which multiple actors exercise different levels of power, authority, and action to determine ‘who gets what’ and ‘who gets to decide’. We describe literature documenting how new geographies of governance have emerged as state functions have been dispersed upwards, downwards, and outwards to non-state actors. We consider ‘What is the role of the state in this reconfiguration of scale and environmental governance?’ We focus on how scale and spatiality is being reconceptualized and how borders are reformed materially and socially through new governance practices, and consider the implications for advancing geographic theory and sound public policy.