Challenges Of Environmental Governance Research Articles

From Health Risks to Environmental Actions: Research on the Pathway of Guiding Citizens to Participate in Pocket-Park Governance

The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened the demand for urban pocket parks near residential areas, posing new challenges for environmental governance. However, there is a lack of research on how to engage citizens in pocket-park governance to address both potential and unforeseen risks. This study combines social information processing theory with a norm activation model to develop a framework that identifies the shaping stages and influencing factors of citizens’ intentions to participate in pocket-park governance. Using partial least squares structural equation modeling, this research analyzed the relationships among external factors, attitudes, moral norms, and intentions to participate based on 719 responses from an online survey targeting Chinese citizens in November and December 2023. Results indicate that health risks and pocket-park environmental quality positively affect perceived usefulness. Attitudes and moral norms are indeed important factors mediating the positive effect of the external environment on the intention to participate. The pathway of guiding citizens to participate in pocket-park governance is clarified, which helps bolster the resilience of urban green spaces and improve the quality of life of residents after public crises.

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

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.

Navigating or adding to complexity? Exploring the role of catchment partnerships in collaborative governance

An enduring challenge for environmental governance is how to coordinate multiple actors to achieve more collaborative and holistic management of complex socio-ecological systems. Catchment partnerships are often thought able to achieve this, so here we ask: do such partnerships actually help navigate complexity, or merely add to it? We answer this question by analysing the experiences of four voluntary UK catchment partnerships. Our data combined a structured desk-based analysis of partnership documents, with semi-structured interviews with partnership coordinators, chairs and partner representatives. These data were analysed using a qualitative thematic approach informed by the literatures on catchment management and collaborative governance of complexity. We found that partnerships both add to and help navigate the complexity of holistic and inclusive environmental management. Maintaining partnerships entails costs for partners, and partnerships connect messily and multitudinously to other initiatives. However, the partnerships were all judged as worthwhile, and made progress towards goals for water quality, biodiversity and river restoration. They were especially valued for envisioning and initiating complex activities such as Natural Flood Management. Communication and networking by partnership coordinators and partners underpinned these achievements. Aspects of pre-existing governance systems both enabled and constrained the partnerships: in particular, statutory agencies responsible for policy delivery were always important partners, and delivering partnership plans often depended on public-sector grants. This draws attention to the pervasive effect of governmentality in collaborative governance. More attention to analysing—and supporting—such partnerships is worthwhile, complemented by reflection on the limits to environmental governance in the face of complexity.

Does vertical supervision promote regional green transformation? Evidence from Central Environmental Protection Inspection

Vertical supervision is an important institutional arrangement designed to overcome the challenges of environmental governance and promotion of green development in the region. Based on the panel data of 278 cities in China from 2010 to 2018, we use Central Environmental Protection Inspection (CEPI) as an exogenous policy and the multi-period Difference-in-Differences method to test the role of vertical supervision in promoting regional green transformation. Our findings indicate that CEPI, a typical vertical supervision policy, effectively promotes green transformation regionally by reducing local pollution emissions and improving total factor productivity. The analysis of mechanism shows that local governments mainly promote regional green transformation by increasing the investment in pollutant governance, research and development in green technologies, and updating fixed assets. Our study provides a valuable reference for the implementation of vertical supervision policies and effective governance of local governments by the central government.

Challenges for environmental governance: policy issue interdependencies might not lead to collaboration

Policy actors address complex environmental problems by engaging in multiple and often interdependent policy issues. Policy issue interdependencies imply that efforts by actors to address separate policy issues can either reinforce (‘win–win’) or counteract (‘trade-off’) each other. Thus, if interdependent issues are managed in isolation instead of being coordinated, the most effective and well-balanced solution to the underlying problem might never be realised. This study asks if reinforcing and counteracting interdependencies have different impacts on perception and collaboration. Our empirical study of collaborative water governance in the Norrström basin, Sweden, shows that policy actors often avoid collaborating when the policy issues exhibit reinforcing interdependencies. Our evidence indicates a perceived infeasibility of acting on reinforcing interdependencies. We also find that actors do not consider counteracting interdependencies (‘trade-offs’) at all when they engage in collaboration. Further, even though actors were aware of counteracting and reinforcing interdependencies, our analyses suggest they might be less aware of the former. These findings illustrate that actors either avoid each other due to policy issue interdependencies or, at best, ignore existing interdependencies when engaging in collaboration. Our study highlights the importance of problem perception in accomplishing integrated solutions to complex environmental problems, and of how understandings of different types of interdependencies shape collaboration in environmental governance.

Power, knowledge and the transformative potential of marine community science

Community science has gained momentum as a participatory knowledge production approach that can transform governance into more transparent, socially relevant, and democratic endeavours. In the marine context, where the rationalisation of economic knowledge and the marginalisation of local communities are growing concerns, community science is advanced as a potential solution to environmental governance challenges. By increasing monitoring efforts and empowering members of the public to take political action to protect the oceans, community science has helped to transform marine management to address issues, such as, sea-level rise, overfishing, and ocean acidification. However, many community science projects do not realise their transformative potential and, instead, contribute toward reinforcing the status quo of governance, meaning that management challenges remain unsolved. To understand how the full potential of community science can be achieved, research must reframe what transformation is and assess why projects often fail to instigate change. Within community science research, there is an under-appreciation of how transformational change must involve actions that challenge prevailing power relations. We seek to address this gap by initiating a discussion on the political and power dimensions of community science. Drawing on the broader field of co-production, we argue that community science has been depoliticised to reinforce, as opposed to alleviate, unequal arrangements of power that inhibit societal transformation. To combat this, we suggest that community science must develop a more explicit comprehension of power and how it relates to the use and production of knowledge. Informed by the Foucauldian concept of power/knowledge, we argue for a politicised paradigm of community science that recognises how transformation requires pluralism, the contestation of knowledge, and learning amongst all community science actors. This review concludes by considering how transformative community science could introduce new ways of knowing to marine governance and facilitate more active community participation.

A scoping review of environmental governance challenges in southern Africa from 2010 to 2020

SummaryThroughout southern Africa, there have been growing concerns about the rates of ecosystem degradation. This issue and natural resource governance concerns in general remain key challenges. We conducted a scoping review of 135 articles to inductively assess how governance challenges have manifested in natural resource management during 2010–2020 in southern Africa. The paper’s findings show that governance challenges in southern Africa are ‘hydra-headed’. The results suggest that governance challenges related to the maintenance of system integrity and functioning – specifically lack of coordination, accountability, capacity, skills and resources to define effective natural resource management – were the most reported in literature. Challenges related to achieving socially equitable governance were the second most mentioned, followed by those related to institutional robustness. Challenges related to the adaptability and flexibility of institutions, specifically learning, monitoring capacity and innovation, were the least identified, showing that these areas are poorly studied or that these attributes are considered less problematic for achieving sustainable outcomes. Furthermore, the review highlights critical gaps – the limited engagement with governance-related frameworks, specifically polycentricity, adaptive governance and social-ecological stewardship. In concluding, we highlight governance reforms and future research needs on the topic of natural resources in southern Africa.

Environmental governance for sustainable development in Asia

Because of the size of its population and economy, good environmental governance in Asia is fundamental not only for the well-being of the region's population but also for the health of the planet. This article introduces the challenges of governing the environment in Asia. The issue evaluates the outcomes and institutional changes in selected countries related to substantive environmental issues such as air pollution, water quality, municipal solid waste, transport, land use, and climate change. By synthesizing the main research issues, methodology and findings of the growing literature on the region, we highlight the trends in environmental governance and gaps in policy and research. Despite the efforts made, there are still remaining environmental governance challenges to be addressed by both the academics and practitioners in Asia.

Rural Industrialization and Environmental Governance Challenges in the Red River Delta, Vietnam

This article examines factors and root causes of dilemma and environmental governance challenges in the Red River Delta of Vietnam. Since the Renovation ( Đổi Mới) period, there has been an accelerating growth of craft villages and industrial clusters in rural areas. While these processes contribute to creating jobs, increasing rural income, and assuaging rural–urban migration pressures, little attention is devoted to environmental effects they have caused at the village level. Drawing on case studies in the Red River Delta and desk reviews, this study suggests that rural industrialization has witnessed rapid expansion of craft villages and intense market competition among them, leading to environmental pollution and resource depletion. Although the Vietnamese government has issued directives and environmental laws to regulate and control environmental pollution, the situations remain unabated. This study calls for sound environmental policies to sustain the operation of craft villages while ensuring the effective governance of rural industrialization.

Environmental Governance of China's Belt and Road Initiative

AbstractChina's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched in 2013, is rapidly subsuming much of China's political and economic involvement abroad. As a far‐reaching infrastructure development and investment strategy, officially involving more than 130 countries, the expansion of the BRI raises important questions about its environmental impacts and its implications for environmental governance. This article examines how China is actively and rapidly developing an institutional architecture for its envisioned “green BRI,” considering the key actors, policies, and initiatives involved in the environmental governance of the BRI. We find that the current institutional architecture of the “green BRI” relies on voluntary corporate self‐governance and a multitude of international and transnational sustainability initiatives. The effectiveness of the environmental governance of the BRI not only hinges on China's priorities and commitments, but also on the political willingness and capacity of BRI partner countries to maintain, implement, and enforce stringent environmental laws and regulations. We conclude by outlining several environmental governance challenges and an agenda for future research.

Common institutional design, divergent results: A comparative case study of collaborative governance platforms for regional water planning

Environmental governance challenges often span geographic and sectoral boundaries, requiring collaboration between diverse stakeholders and multilateral decision making. To facilitate such efforts, policymakers and public managers create and support platforms that provide a structured framework for promoting collaborative governance. As the collaborative platform model is often centrally initiated – e.g., when state or national actors create a system of local collaborative resource management platforms – cross-case comparison is particularly important for understanding how a common design leads to variance in procedures and outputs in local contexts. Many collaborative platforms leave a “paper trail” of documents such as meeting records and plans. This analysis compares 10 identically designed and simultaneously initiated regional water planning platforms in the State of Georgia. Drawing on 106 meeting reports, we apply topic modeling to these meeting documents to generate replicable and scalable measures of how participant actions and interest representation unfold over time. Specifically, we measure topical focus on water planning issues over time, and compare these process-phase measures between councils and against the content of the resulting plan developed by each planning council. While existing literature has focused on how institutional design features such as representation and decision-rules shape procedural outcomes and outputs, we observe considerable variation in procedural behavior and plan outputs despite the fact that all 10 platforms share a common design. The consulting firm selected to direct each local platform is shown to be associated with both the topical focus of each regions’ planning discussion and the BMPs selected in regional plans. This comports with recent evidence pointing to the important – and largely overlooked – role that technical consultants play in environmental governance and regulatory processes.

The Protean Environmental State in Dongguan: Reconceptualising the local state and ecological development in China

How China copes with the deep-rooted challenges of improving its environmental quality raises questions about how economic and environmental tensions arise, whether they can be reconciled, and if so, how that might be achieved. In this paper, we critically examine evolving environmental governance challenges at the city level since it is here that much public policy delivery takes place. In major urban areas, problems of poor waste management, and air and water pollution have been experienced by citizens for some time. What is novel is that municipal governments now have some capacity to act to improve local environmental conditions. Moreover, municipal governments are being assisted, to some extent, in their rethinking of environment–economy relations by a central government policy agenda that is moving from an overwhelming preoccupation with development to taking on board welfare and environmental concerns. This is demanding a reconceptualisation of the local state from being one that is almost wholly development oriented to one that recognises environmental imperatives. The paper outlines key perspectives on the local state, particularly the ideas of a developmental, entrepreneurial and green state. It draws on these accounts to produce a more nuanced analysis of the multi-faceted nature of environmental governance. We call this the Protean Environmental State. To put these debates into a local context we analyse how one early industrialising city, Dongguan, is facing up to its polluted environment and seeking to steer its way towards a new, more ecologically friendly development pathway.

Harnessing the transformative potential of the constitutional human right to a clean and healthy environment in the context of corporate environmental damage in Kenya: a critical perspective

Corporate environmental damage in Kenya manifests as a complex mix of humanitarian and ecological harms superimposed over serious environmental governance challenges. The existing legal framework is neither a sufficient deterrent to prevent the occurrence of harm, nor does it offer optimal remedies whenever harm occurs. The limitations inherent in law are primarily because laws are designed to reflect an economic rationality that prioritizes economic growth and profit maximization above all else. Even in cases where a causal relationship between such a rationality and the design of law cannot be ascertained, the limitations of law ultimately inure to the benefit of corporate perpetrators of harm. As a result, the law facilitates the externalization of the costs of environmental damage to the advantage of corporate perpetrators. The constitutional human right to a clean and healthy environment stands as law's response to this problem. Drawing on insights from critical theories of human rights, this article argues that the right can be an effective instrument against corporate environmental damage if it is construed in a manner that prioritizes maximum protection of the well-being of humans and ecosystems. Constructing the right in this way assumes that the new norm is itself a reflection of a new rationality, constituted by a set of values different from those that have played a predominant role in shaping legal and institutional responses to environmental damage so far. These values should guide courts, administrators and legislators in the exercise of their respective environmental protection duties.

Land-use and socioeconomic changes related to armed conflicts: A Colombian regional case study

Colombia has endured one of the longest armed conflicts in the world, influencing land use, local economies, and the environment. The Department of Córdoba, which is part of the Colombian Caribbean region, was a setting of territorial disputes between illegal armed groups. Recently, peace agreements have been reached, thereby leading to a post-conflict period in which conflict-driven socioeconomic and environmental conditions need to be addressed. We used geoenvironmental satellite information and census data to describe land-use evolution in the Department of Córdoba. Our results explain relationships between socioeconomic and geographic variables by using two factors, namely: (1) natural land cover and armed conflict, and (2) pastures and livestock. Five clusters comprised of smaller Colombian territorial units were obtained, exhibiting challenges of environmental governance, conservation of protected areas, and sustainable livestock and agricultural practices. This information provides critical input for institutional decisions during the current post-conflict period.

The Veer from Frontier Economics to Eco-development Paradigm: Approaches, Policies and Strategies of Sustainable Development - The Case of Environmental Governance in Ethiopia

Ethiopia is one of the richest countries in natural resource endowment. Nevertheless, due to pressures from socioeconomic changes coupled with improper governance practices the country has been threatened by prolonged resource degradation with subsequent results. This paper was sought to assess paradigms, approaches, and strategies for sustainable development in case of environmental governance in Ethiopia. To achieve this objective, published and unpublished professional literature including important policy documents were reviewed. The institutional based environmental governance for sustainable use of natural resources in Ethiopia was started at the late of 19th C while Minilik II established central Government. The natural resource laws during Italian occupation (1936-41) focused on selection of economic forest and use-oriented paradigm. As a result natural resources were exploited in destructive way under a condition where there was no ownership. The environmental governance thinking/paradigm/ during the Haile Silassie regime was almost similar to previous one; frontier economics, rather than being ecological oriented. The misperception to natural resources; misguided intervention and irrational land distribution and tenure insecurity have led intensive natural degradation. After the Derg regime took the power, all natural resources were nationalized and governed through application of centralized frontier economics based on socialism ideology. Frequent redistribution of land, resettlement and villagization; involuntary participation of community weakened the effects of natural resource management practices applied during Derg regime. Political instability and civil war had its own sizable challenge on environmental governance. The environmental governance ideology, during EPRDF has been veered from pure frontier economics to Eco-development. Environmental issues have been handled by independent institutions through decentralized and local-community based approaches. Additionally, different bylaws and sustainable development strategies have been adopted by current government to handle environmental issues and have environmentally sustainable and green economic growth. However, still now, environmental governance is not successful and faces challenges from institutional instability; inadequate capacity and political commitment, feeble policy implementation &geophysical variables. Thus, all responsible bodies and key actors must work jointly to overcome challenges of environmental governance and realize environmentally sustainable development.

Policy design to support cross-boundary land management: The example of the Joint Chiefs Landscape Restoration Partnership

There is a mismatch between large-scale, dynamic, ecological processes and the scales at which individual land management agency units have the capacity and authority to work. To improve environmental governance, scholars across disciplines emphasize the need to work across jurisdictional and organizational boundaries to support collective action and address scale mismatches. An important question now is how to design policies that support collaborative management across jurisdictional boundaries to produce improved outcomes. Our research evaluated the Joint Chiefs Landscape Restoration Partnership, a new policy tool in use by the US federal government to support forest restoration activities across the public-private divide, to investigate two research questions: 1) Did the policy design of the Joint Chiefs Partnership effectively support cross-boundary work? And, 2) What underlying conditions helped or hindered the ability of project participants to undertake cross-boundary work using this policy approach? To glean program-wide understanding of the Joint Chiefs Partnership, we conducted 62 semi-structured interviews with agency staff and external participants in the program. We found that the requirement to collaborate and infusion of committed, multi-year funding supported faster implementation of planned work and increased coordination across jurisdictions and partners. Previously established collaborative relationships were reported as the most critical factor underlying success, while limited agency capacity was reported as significantly impeding project success. Our findings suggest that this policy tool, which incorporates proposed policy design principles to support improved governance, was successful for supporting cross-boundary management and collective action. The results from this study also raise practical questions about tradeoffs under programs that prioritize funding investments and about navigating among the variables that affect policy implementation. Our study contributes to the broader literature on policy design for complex environmental governance challenges and provides an empirical evalution of a policy tool in a specific legal, administrative, and land management context.

Governance analysis of a community managed small-scale crab fishery in Madagascar: novel use of an empirical framework

The Marine Protected Area Governance (MPAG) framework was developed to offer a structured, empirical approach for analysing governance and has been applied to marine prottabected areas (MPAs) around the world. This study sees the novel application of the MPAG framework to a small-scale mangrove crab fishery in northwest Madagascar. The country typifies developing country environmental governance challenges, due to its poverty, political instability and lack of state capacity, with bottom-up approaches often identified as a potential solution. In this context, small-scale fisheries (SSF) play a vital role in food security and poverty alleviation but are vulnerable to over-exploitation. The case study examines community-based management, including the role of three nascent fishing association managing portions of the fishery, within a mangrove ecosystem. Despite issues with underrepresentation of fishers in local resource management organizations that have partial responsibility for the mangrove habitats, some management measures and incentives have been applied, including the replantation of mangroves and fishery-wide gear restrictions. However, the analysis highlights market forces and migration are drivers with negative synergistic effects that cannot be controlled by bottom-up management. Incentives identified as needed or in need or strengthening require the support of external actors, the state, industry and or NGO(s). Thus, governance approaches should seek integration and move away from polarised solutions (top-down vs- bottom-up). As shown by other MPAG case studies, effective governance is dependent on achieving ‘resilience through diversity’, in terms of the diversity of both the actors and the incentives they are able to collectively employ.

Using the capability approach to analyze contemporary environmental governance challenges in coastal Brazil

Conservation and development are often framed as a dichotomy, requiring trade-offs. But trade-offs can be due to the particular political situation and to relationships of domination, and are not necessarily the inevitable result of intractable situations. Amartya Sen’s capability approach, which centers on human development, has enjoyed increasing applications in the environment area, but little in the commons literature. This article applies the capability approach framework to analyze human development in Trindade, Brazil, by answering key questions that are central to this approach (1) What kind of lives are people able to live? Are they able to be or do what they have reason to value? and (2) What is the quality of economic, social and political relations in Trindade? Three main 'shocks' emerge: (a) Conflict with external commercial developers, (b) Paving of access road into community, and (c) Enforcement of protected area regulations on historical community land and sea space. Capability priorities were established for women, men, older adults, and people with disabilities. The impacts of development and conservation policies are different for the four groups, as are the priorities for capabilities. The case demonstrates that space for public participation is not sufficient to ensure that the people who are trying to improve their wellbeing, and be the author of their own lives, can influence the outcome. It also shows that regular contact through public participation does not necessarily create empathy, as Sen assumed in The Idea of Justice.

Ecological restoration and the law: recovering nature’s past for the future

Environmental law worldwide dwells on nature’s future, not its past. The plethora of environmental regulations and policies orients society, ostensibly, to avoid impending threats and nurture long-term stewardship of natural resources. The ‘past’, in the sense of the natural world’s historic condition before the human onslaught, is relegated for protection in discrete enclaves we commonly call national parks while the much larger, remaining spaces have been left open for dramatic transformation for anthropocentric needs. With each successive human generation, our memories of nature’s former riches are dissipated. Incremental, attritional environmental decline unfolds mostly too gradually to be observed by individuals within their own lives, thereby rendering most insouciant about their degrading surroundings. We see congested roads, sprawling housing, busy shopping malls and so on, as the environment’s ‘normal’ condition, oblivious to the biodiversity riches that once graced the landscape. To the extent that environmental law looks to the past, to undo some of our mischief, it tends to intervene only in spatially and temporally narrow parameters such as to rehabilitate former mining sites or to remediate pollution contamination. Rarely does the law seek to repair holistically the ubiquitous degraded landscapes and ecosystems in our midst despite emerging duties on states to do so in transnational environmental law.1 The challenges for environmental governance are thus particularly onerous in a world infatuated with its future.2

A framework for a joint hydro-meteorological-social analysis of drought

This article presents an innovative framework for analysing environmental governance challenges by focusing on their Drivers, Responses and Impacts (DRI). It builds on and modifies the widely applied Drivers, Pressures, States, Impacts and Responses (DPSIR) model. It suggests, firstly and most importantly, that the various temporal and spatial scales at which Drivers, Responses and Impacts operate should be included in the DRI conceptual framework. Secondly, the framework focuses on Drivers, Impacts and Responses in order to provide a parsimonious account of a drought system that can be informed by a range of social science, humanities and science data. ‘Pressures’ are therefore considered as a sub-category of ‘Drivers’. ‘States’ are a sub-category of ‘Impacts’. Thirdly, and most fundamentally in order to facilitate cross-disciplinary research of droughts, the DRI framework defines each of its elements, ‘Drivers’, ‘Pressures’, ‘States’, ‘Impacts’ and ‘Responses’ as capable of being shaped by both linked natural and social factors. This is different from existing DPSIR models which often see ‘Responses’ and ‘Impacts’ as located mainly in the social world, while ‘States’ are considered to be states within the natural environment only. The article illustrates this argument through an application of the DRI framework to the 1976 and 2003–6 droughts. The article also starts to address how - in cross-disciplinary research that encompasses physical and social sciences – claims about relationships between Drivers as well as Impacts of and Responses to drought over time can be methodologically justified. While the DRI framework has been inductively developed out of research on droughts we argue that it can be applied to a range of environmental governance challenges.