Environmental Governance Regimes Research Articles

Constructing scale, eroding responsibility: The politics of project boundaries in Canadian pipeline reviews

Decisions about whether to approve fossil fuel projects have major implications for climate change, biodiversity, and Indigenous rights. In Canada, cumulative effects tend to be only weakly assessed, with each project reviewed on its own terms. This paper investigates how fossil fuel companies strategically define project boundaries to facilitate resource extraction. Drawing on a preliminary scan of applications to Canadian federal review bodies from 2010 to 2022, complemented by detailed document analysis of three selected cases, we ask: in what ways have oil and gas proponents actively constructed scale through their project plans – with what consequences for regulatory scrutiny? Through careful reading of project applications, hearing documents, and company websites, we identify three strategies: (1) splitting work on the same infrastructure into multiple applications; (2) incrementally expanding a network; and (3) portraying interdependent facilities as stand-alone projects. These tactics are within the law, yet they narrow the scope of issues that regulators assess and make it more onerous for affected communities to participate in multiple reviews. Case studies of the Line 9 pipeline, BC Pipeline network, and Gazoduq/Énergie Saguenay facilities show how regulators exempted smaller projects from more rigorous assessment, deemed cumulative effects assessment unnecessary, and excluded broader issues such as climate change and successive encroachment on Indigenous lands. Our findings contribute to work on the material consequences of relational scale, decolonial critiques of Canada's environmental governance regime, and efforts to advance climate justice by articulating how the legal geographies of energy projects shape responsibility for climate action.

Creating institutions to protect the environment: the role of Chinese central environmental inspection

ABSTRACT The working mechanism of Chinese central environmental inspection (CEI) has been evolving. Through integrating insights from the notions of institutional pillars, institutional work and the level of institutionalisation, this study constructs a framework that is suited to unravel the working mechanisms of the new CEI and to assess its potential in transforming local environmental governance regime. Through two sets of empirical evidence, we found that CEI has employed six types of institutional work to change both formal and informal institutions regarding environmental protection at local level, and has led to an increased in local governments’ political attention on environmental planning. The findings from this study make important supplement to current research on CEI, which have been dominated by evaluating CEI’s impact on curbing end-of-pipe pollutants through econometric models. Based on our findings, it is suggested that successive CEIs are required in the near future to further deepening the level of institutionalisation of environmental protection and prevent the situation regressing.

How do companies implement their zero-deforestation commitments

More than 500 companies engaged in supply chains of forest-risk commodity have adopted zero-deforestation commitments (ZDCs). We use corporate social responsibility strategy and policy implementation theories to analyse the processes and conditions for ZDC implementation. We base our study on 35 semi-structured interviews with company representatives and sector actors, publicly available ZDC data, and company reports. The objective is to understand the opportunities and challenges of ZDC implementation at the level of companies. While past research addressed ZDC coverage and effectiveness, knowledge is still lacking on companies' perspectives on the implementation of their commitments. This study provides a unique perspective by integrating the direct experience and knowledge of private actors on an environmental governance regime. We find that companies see implementation of ZDCs as a journey and often rely on voluntary sustainability standards, aligning their strategies and key performance indicators (KPIs) to these. They engage directly in the supply chain, conducting projects “on-the-ground.” Implementing ZDCs requires the involvement of procurement departments and upper management, and collaborations within and between companies. Companies rely on service providers for in-depth knowledge and field implementation. They use monitoring tools, e.g. remote sensing, and see supply chain traceability as a prerequisite for implementation. Companies face numerous implementation challenges. Internally, companies often lack leadership on their ZDC, struggle to align commitments with the organization's operations and to manage suppliers, especially smallholders, and allocate insufficient resources. Externally, they lack common standards and stakeholder support, and face challenging regulatory conditions and missing market incentives. An uneven playing field creates leakage markets. Companies identify better leadership, technology and pre-competitive collaboration as potential solutions. Zero-deforestation commitments are unlikely to greatly contribute to reducing deforestation until better implementation processes, mechanisms, and conditions are in place.

Achieving energy transition in OECD economies: Discovering the moderating roles of environmental governance

The OECD countries are failing to fulfil their obligation towards the implementation of the objectives of SDG 7 and SDG 13. The failure of OECD countries is major constraint concerning global progress on curbing GHG emissions and mitigation of climatic changes as it provides rationale for developing countries to avoid their commitments. Therefore, the major focus of COP26 was to explore policy options for sustainable transition of energy from fossil fuel to clean renewables. This study analyzes the impact of innovation in environmental technology along with various policy regimes on energy transition in OECD countries from 2000 to 2019. The driving factors of energy transition in OECD countries are analyzed, under moderation of environmental governance regimes. This objective is realized by constructing an Energy Transition Index that accounts for the movement along the energy ladder. This index is developed using the Energy Ladder Hypothesis. Using two-step system-GMM and segregating the sample across level of emissions, the results show that the regional authority augments the energy transition, while enforecement of the climate change laws shows mixed results. Based on the study outcomes, a policy framework is recommended for attaining the SDG objectives by realigning the climate change adaptation and mitigation policies.

Selective border permeability: Governing complex environmental issues through and beyond COVID-19

COVID-19 has changed the permeability of borders in transboundary environmental governance regimes. While borders have always been selectively permeable, the pandemic has reconfigured the nature of cross-border flows of people, natural resources, finances and technologies. This has altered the availability of spaces for enacting sustainability initiatives within and between countries. In Southeast Asia, national governments and businesses seeking to expedite economic recovery from the pandemic-induced recession have selectively re-opened borders by accelerating production and revitalizing agro-export growth. Widening regional inequities have also contributed to increased cross-border flows of illicit commodities, such as trafficked wildlife. At the same time, border restrictions under the exigencies of controlling the pandemic have led to a rolling back and scaling down of transboundary environmental agreements, regulations and programs, with important implications for environmental democracy, socio-ecological justice and sustainability. Drawing on evidence from Southeast Asia, the article assesses the policy challenges and opportunities posed by the shifting permeability of borders for organising and operationalising environmental activities at different scales of transboundary governance.

More than floods and droughts: Understanding emergent water risks in South African fruit production networks

AbstractWater is indispensable to agricultural production and trade. Using a global production network (GPN) framework, this article explores the variegated ways water risks manifest in agricultural value chains. Moving beyond extreme events, such as floods and droughts, we explore how the emergence and convergence of political, economic and ecological perspectives during the past 25 years has led to more nuanced understandings of water risks. By doing so, we contribute to ongoing efforts to move the environmental dimension more centrally into GPN literature, emphasising how globalised production and trade enmesh with environmental governance regimes. Our argument draws on empirical evidence from the South African fruit industry, which illustrates how water risks have a physical, reputational and regulatory/political dimension. These water risks are actor and context specific, manifest relationally to each other, and largely originate beyond the individual farm gate. They are often underlying and ongoing rather than one‐off extreme events. These insights develop our understanding of how environmental risks are manifested and managed in GPNs.

Navigating climate crises in the Great Barrier Reef

A dramatic escalation of extreme climate events is challenging the capacity of environmental governance regimes to sustain and improve ecosystem outcomes. It has been argued that actors within adaptive governance regimes can help to steer environmental systems toward sustainability in times of crisis. Yet there is little empirical evidence of how acute climate crises are navigated by actors operating within adaptive governance regimes, and the factors that influence their responses. Here, we qualitatively assessed the actions key governance actors took in response to back-to-back mass coral bleaching – an extreme climate event – of the Great Barrier Reef in 2016 and 2017, and explored their perceptions of barriers and catalysts to these responses. This research was, in part, a product of collaboration and knowledge co-production with Great Barrier Reef governance actors aimed at improving responses to climate crises in the region. We found five major categories of activity that actors engaged with in the wake of recurrent mass coral bleaching: assessing the scale and extent of bleaching, sharing information, communicating bleaching to the public, building local resilience, and addressing global threats. These actions were both catalyzed and hindered by a range of factors that fall within different domains of adaptive capacity; such as assets, social organization, and agency. We discuss the implications of our findings as they relate to existing research on adaptive capacity and adaptive governance. We conclude by coalescing insights from our interviews and a participant engagement process to highlight four key ways in which the ability of governance actors, and the Great Barrier Reef governance regime more broadly, can be better prepared for, and more effectively respond to extreme climate events. Our research provides empirical insight into how crises are experienced by governance actors in a large-scale environmental system, potentially providing lessons for similar systems across the globe.

TRANSBOUNDARY ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE IN THE EU AND SOUTHEAST ASIA: CONTESTING HYBRIDITY IN THE BIOFUELS AND PALM OIL REGIMES

The research addresses the complexities of the European Union’s Renewable Energy Directives (EU RED and RED II), contextualising them within the palm oil sector in Southeast Asia, in which Indonesia and Malaysia are known to be the two largest producers and exporters of palm oil. It aims to question the effect of this expanding role of markets on power dynamics and political processes. Examining these developments at different organisational scales highlights the asymmetrical power relations that circulate through such transboundary networks to shape patterns of resource access and the distribution of environmental risks. Employing a qualitative approach, the research uses case study method to reflect on how market forces and broad political dynamics establish the hybrid environmental governance regime of biofuels. The research concludes that this transboundary market approach to biofuels and palm oil should be regarded with caution, as it (1) lowers regulatory quality within the biofuels sustainability regime, (2) undermines the sustainable palm oil market, and (3) indirectly bolsters unsustainable practices outside the palm oil sector.

More data, more problems? Incompatible uncertainty in Indonesia’s climate change mitigation projects

Within environmental governance regimes such as the United Nations’ Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+), uncertainty surrounding forest carbon offset commensurability is often regarded as a technical failing that can be resolved through additional data collection or new scientific methods. Though efforts to reduce uncertainty through extensive carbon accounting has generated immense datasets, uncertainty surrounding the commensurability of forest carbon offsets remains, emerging from the neoliberal political economic context as much as from scientific data gaps. Drawing on an analysis of a REDD+ project in Indonesia’s peatlands, this article shows that incompatibilities between scientific uncertainty and financial uncertainty emerged through this forest carbon offset project and, more broadly, that incompatible uncertainty acts as a knowledge regime in the context of hegemonic discourses that connect Indonesia’s degraded peatlands to climate change. This article thus argues that in neoliberal land use-based climate change mitigation projects, it is not the inevitable, enduring presence of scientific or market-based uncertainty that stymies project implementation but the incompatibility of these two forms of uncertainty. By exploring how the drive for more data leads to more uncertainty, in turn spurring the pursuit of more data in lieu of other forms of project action, this article contributes to scholarship on the politics of knowing and un-knowing in environmental governance.

The democratisation of European nature governance 1992\u20132015: introducing the comparative nature governance index

European environmental governance has radically transformed over the past two decades. While traditionally enforcement of environmental law has been the responsibility of public authorities (public authorities of the EU Member States, themselves policed by the European Commission), this paradigm has now taken a democratic turn. Led by changes in international environmental law and in particular the UNECE Aarhus Convention (UNECE, United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Convention (1998). Convention on access to information, public participation in decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (the Aarhus Convention), signed on June 25, 1998.), EU law now gives important legal rights to members of the public and environmental non-governmental organisations (“ENGOs”) to become involved in environmental governance, by means of accessing environmental information, participating in environmental decision-making and bringing legal proceedings. While doctrinal legal and regulatory scholarship on this embrace of “bottom-up” private environmental governance is now substantial, there has been relatively little quantitative research in the field. This article represents a first step in mapping this evolution of environmental governance laws in the EU. We employ a leximetrics methodology, coding over 6000 environmental governance laws from three levels of legal sources (international, EU and national), to provide the first systematic data showing the transformation of European environmental governance regimes. We develop the Nature Governance Index (“NGI”) to measure how the enforcement tools deployed in international, EU and national law have changed over time, from the birth of the EU’s flagship nature conservation law, the 1992 Habitats Directive (Directive 92/43/EEC). At the national level, we focus on three EU Member States (France, Ireland and the Netherlands) to enable a fine-grained measurement of the changes in national nature governance laws over time. This article introduces our unique datasets and the NGI, describes the process used to collect the datasets and its limitations, and compares the evolution in laws at the international, EU and national levels over the 23-year period from 1992–2015. Our findings provide strong empirical confirmation of the democratic turn in European environmental governance, while revealing the significant divergences between legal systems that remain absent express harmonisation of the Aarhus Convention’s principles in EU law. Our data also set the foundations for future quantitative legal research, enabling deeper analysis of the relationships between the different levels of multilevel environmental governance.

Peacebuilding Functions of International Environmental Governance

This article seeks to focus on ‘peacebuilding’ as a construct of peace among groups that have previously been in conflict. This calls for moving beyond peacemaking and conflict resolution to consider the longer-term efforts at establishing sustainable peace. Notwithstanding the longstanding efforts of UNEP’s Post-Conflict and Disaster Management Branch, there has been very limited development of international normative and institutional structures targeting the process of post-conflict sustainable peacebuilding. The article considers how far the current international environmental governance (IEG) regimes are responsive to the specific challenges to post-conflict situations. It seeks to briefly consider four key characteristics of IEG regimes: (i) Ad- hoc and subject specific; (ii) Incremental and facilitative; (iii) Degree of reciprocity; and (iv) Science-based.

Changes and controls of aboveground net primary production in response to grassland policy in Inner Mongolian grasslands of China

Over-reclamation of grassland resources has increasingly contributed to environmental degradation in China. With grassland degradation, actions have been taken to maintain or restore natural grasslands through efforts such as ecological engineering. Inner Mongolia is considered being one of the most severely degraded areas in China and consequently almost all of the national land restoration projects for environmental protection were implemented there, making it the province with the highest investment in environmental restoration programs in China. In this study, we use the estimation model relationship established between the vegetation index extracted from remote sensing images and the measured biomass in the field to inversely calculate the biomass in the study area. And then we focused on the changes in the aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) of these grassland ecosystems, which is crucial for gaining a better understanding of grassland changes in the light of rapidly changing environmental policies and governance regimes in China. The interannual variation of ANPP fluctuated greatly (fluctuated from 87.81 g/m2 to 88.5234 g/m2 between 2000 and 2017). The grassland changes in the whole region are basically stable, but the changes in individual areas are more serious. The ANPP was negatively correlated with the mean annual temperature and positively correlated with the annual precipitation. The hydrothermal conditions directly affected the distribution and accumulation of ANPP along meadow, typical and desert grasslands. Different stages of grassland policy have different target orientations and have positive and negative impacts on ANPP.

Financiamiento climático internacional y los desafíos de su catalización. Debates sobre la brecha entre necesidades climáticas y financiamiento, de Bali (2007) a París (2015)

El cambio climático es uno de los grandes desafíos de la agenda global. Para resolver estas cuestiones, desde el Plan de Acción de Bali en 2007 se ha consolidado a nivel global una arquitectura internacional de financiamiento climático altamente compleja, multi-institucional y multi-escalar. Aunque el sistema funciona en muchos casos, varios aspectos obstaculizan la capacidad de catalizar el volumen completo de recursos, así como la implementación eficiente del financiamiento para lograr cambios transformacionales importantes, particularmente en aquellas “áreas difíciles de mitigar”. Se sostiene así que el marco de un régimen policéntrico de la gobernanza financiera ambiental y de excesiva fragmentación organizacional e institucional del esquema de financiamiento de recursos climáticos, implica múltiples exigencias a nivel país que no necesariamente redundan en una asignación eficaz de las respuestas financieras al deterioro climático. Para este trabajo se utilizó un método cualitativo. Para ello se recolectaron datos a través de la revisión bibliográfica de documentos y trabajos de investigación disponibles en organismos multilaterales de crédito y de organismos especializados de la cooperación ambiental internacional. Dichos datos fueron analizados mediante un análisis temático. Con este trabajo, se pretende contribuir a las discusiones sobre cooperación internacional climática.

Marine Pollution in Indonesia and the Regulatory Framework

Abstract Oil pollution and marine plastic pollution (MPP) in Indonesian waters have been causing concerns for decades. This article examines the adequacy of the existing Indonesian legislation on oil pollution and MPP consistent with international environmental governance regimes. It is argued that the current Indonesian laws and regulations for dealing with oil pollution and marine debris are inadequate tools to effectively combat the environmental threats from oil pollution and MPP. This article demonstrates the gaps remaining in implementing the relevant legal framework, namely through the rules of a strict liability and MPP, to address marine pollution in Indonesian waters.

The materiality of air pollution: Urban political ecologies of tourism in Thailand

Between February and April of each year, air pollution blankets much of northern Thailand and severely impacts the livelihoods of tourism practitioners and farmers in the region. Environmental narratives among lowland, urban residents attribute haze to biomass burning among highland farmers. Highland farmers, however, contend that environmental governance regimes have lengthened and exacerbated what is now regarded as the annually recurring haze crisis. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among urban tourism practitioners, rural farmers, and natural scientists, I demonstrate how, as a physical and symbolic entity, air pollution circulates between urban and rural spaces in ways that reshape tourism and urban-rural social relations. In doing so, I bring emerging work at the intersection of urban political ecology and new materialism to bear on tourism to reveal the more-than-human sociality of air pollution in northern Thailand.

Youth climate activists meet environmental governance: ageist depictions of the FFF movement and Greta Thunberg in German newspaper coverage

ABSTRACT In this paper, the domination of the youth climate movement by the use of derogatory ageist language in German newspapers is uncovered. We find that German newspapers use different ageist media images, including ‘pupils’, ‘absentees’ and ‘dreamers’, to de-legitimize the FridaysForFuture movement. Greta Thunberg is presented as a ‘young hero’, who is held responsible for youngsters’ absenteeism. FAZ and taz present a paternalist discourse in which the central narrative is that the young climate activists are pupils who are ignorant and still need to learn; and who are obliged by law to go to school. We argue that German newspapers align with the exclusive hegemony of an established environmental governance regime that struggles with the problematic phasing out of coal in Germany. Instead, a common practice of reluctancy and skepticism appears inherited in conservative discussions on climate action led by FAZ and the so-called coal commission.

Contesting neoliberal knowledge politics in restoration governance: the restorationist’s dilemma

ABSTRACTThe success of ecological restoration efforts is tightly coupled with the effectiveness of many U.S. environmental policies. Yet scholars have raised questions about the ability of restoration to produce intended results. We use a case study of tidal wetland restoration planning in Oregon to examine how neoliberal environmental governance exercises influence through a set of knowledge politics that produces subpar outcomes. We present three main findings: (1) restoration policies produce a restoration economy based on a conception of wetland as commodity (2) practitioners in this restoration economy exhibit competitive behavior resulting in a piecemeal rather than a landscape approach to restoration; and (3) limited monitoring prevents changes to existing policies. Practitioners offer insight into the challenge of treating wetlands as a commodity and call for more monitoring to challenge the assumptions of hegemonic knowledge practices that reinforce a neoliberal environmental governance regime. The divergent ideas of reflexive practitioners, though not yet manifest as action, show where changes to restoration governance might be possible.

Mental wellbeing, air pollution and the ecological state.

The ecological State puts environmental considerations at the centre of its actions. To explores its role in the association between air pollution and mental wellbeing, this work employs a hierarchical three-level analysis on the third wave (2011-2012) of the European Quality of Life Survey (Ncitizens = 25007, Nregions = 216, Ncountries = 20). It uses a classification of Environmental Governance Regimes, subjective and objective indicators of air pollution, and the WHO-5 index of mental wellbeing. The findings show that the perception of major air pollution problems and worse mental wellbeing go hand in hand only in partial and established environmental States.

Bajo la mira: efectos de las políticas y mecanismos ambientales en las prácticas de cacería por habitantes de la Reserva de la Biósfera Montes Azules, Chiapas

The article seeks to explain the changes in hunting, capture, and even conservation of wildlife practices, by residents of ejido Emiliano Zapata and some neighboring agrarian locations, considering the transformations of environmental policies implemented in Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve. Initially, the text proposes a periodization of environmental policies deployed regionally: from an initial authoritarian sense to its current character, partially co-participative. In this regard, the main argument is that the combination of environmental policies, mechanisms, resources, discourses and subjects, currently shape a tenuous and disputed hegemonic project of environmental governance (Roseberry, 2002 [1994]); Foucault, 2006 [1978]; Trench, 2008). In relation to hunting, the article proposes a very elementary classification of the types and senses with which the inhabitants practice it: self-consumption, but also for the protection of the cattle —when they hunt wild felines—, the crops —when hunting a series of herbivores—, and themselves —for example, by killing snakes—. Analyzing the multiple ways in which increasing environmental interventions influence the senses and intensity of hunting practices, the article reviews cases of: erasure of regulations and simulation in their fulfillment; partial and strategic adoption by the subjects, of some of the precepts and narratives that restrict the practice —the idea that the decrease in hunting “will produce” more animals—; Interested and functional adaptation of the practice, to the current territorial configuration and definition —they do not hunt for being “part of what tourists want to see”—; The conditioning by inhabitants of not carrying out the hunt in exchange for a greater involvement in the projects, spaces and resources related to environmental care; Convergence and divergence on the arguments of environmental specialists and part of the population —as in the case of hunting jaguars that attack cattle, which for some inhabitants represent “nahuales”—. The conclusions point, not to the lack of environmental interventions that regulate hunting, but to the way in which multiple transformations of the practice seem to promote a greater degree of intensity in the environmental governance regime.

Influence of environmental governance regimes on the capacity of Indigenous Peoples to participate in conservation management

A range of international, national and local policy instruments and governance regimes acknowledge Indigenous and local people’s knowledge as a key platform for managing biodiversity and ecosystems, but translation of these commitments into negotiation of conservation priorities with appropriately empowered local communities remains inconsistent. Drawing on a review of conservation area management plans in Australian bioregions identified as having high potential for Indigenous engagement in threatened species management, we examined how the potential for local Indigenous communities to pursue their conservation objectives and the extent to which they are involved in management of significant species, cultural heritage and fire is influenced by different environmental governance regimes. We found that there is currently more scope for Indigenous communities to participate in cultural heritage management than in species or fire management, despite evidence that Indigenous communities seek to engage in managing all aspects of their traditional estates. Species management priorities in Indigenous-driven co-governance regime plans centre on culturally significant species rather than threatened species. We conclude that the current potential for local Indigenous communities to participate in conservation management on equitable terms depends upon the establishment of Indigenous-driven co-governance regimes, and argue that improving levels of engagement of Indigenous Peoples in agency governance regimes requires agencies to better recognise Indigenous worldviews in planning conservation approaches..