Forms Of Environmental Governance Research Articles

Digital financial inclusion role to promote renewable energy technology innovation in Chinese Prefectural cities: Moderating role of environmental governance

Renewable energy technology innovation is not only an important technical component of Chinese construction of low-carbon energy systems but also a key way to realize long-term, sustainable development. Digital inclusive finance plays an indispensable role in this process. Using panel data of 275 Chinese cities from 2011 to 2022, a two-step systematic methodology is used to assess the impacts and mechanisms of digital financial inclusion and the moderating role of different environmental governance models on qualitative and quantitative renewable energy innovation. The results indicate that digital inclusive finance has an incentive effect on both qualitative and quantitative renewable energy innovations, with a stronger incentive effect on qualitative behavior. This effect can act on renewable energy technology innovation by reducing financing constraints and incentivizing information disclosure mechanisms. Moreover, different forms of environmental governance have a positive, moderating effect, while the effect of top-down environmental governance is more manifested in quantitative renewable energy innovation. Furthermore, heterogeneity analyses show that the incentive effect of digital financial inclusion is more pronounced in the PV sector and the eastern regions. The findings provide a theoretical basis and practical insights that enable policy-makers to formulate relevant renewable energy technology innovation policies and promote low-carbon energy transition.

Comparing clubs: Analyzing ambitions in the G7 and the G20

Mini-lateral ‘clubs’ occupy an increasingly prominent place in the international environmental governance landscape. Yet few studies have looked at how differences between clubs influence the results they produce. This paper aims to fill this gap in understanding by testing hypotheses on how different clubs' membership constellations and leadership (connected to large events) affect ambitions in outcome documents of the G7 and the G20. It tests those hypotheses by employing text and data analytic techniques to compare stated ambitions in environmental documents of G7 and G20 over the past two decades. The analysis reveals that the G7’s language is generally stronger than the G20; and that strategic leadership connected to large events may contribute to raising those ambitions. These findings highlight the importance of mini-lateral clubs as forms of environmental governance and, more generally, illustrates the use of text mining in environmental governance research.

Enhancing green technology innovation through enterprise environmental governance: A life cycle perspective with moderator analysis of dynamic innovation capability

Consolidating the leadership of enterprises in Environmental Governance (EG) and enhancing their Green Technology Innovation (GTI) are vital for fostering global ecological civilization. Previous research has primarily focused on the non-linear relationship between EG and GTI but has overlooked the factors that contribute to varying GTI effects in response to EG constraints across different stages of a business's life cycle. Drawing on data from Chinese A-share listed enterprises, this study investigates the impact of EG on GTI by considering two typical forms of EG: cost-based and voluntary participation. Furthermore, it introduces the concept of dynamic innovation capability (DIC) based on the principles of open innovation paradigm. The findings reveal that, contrary to the positive influence observed during the growth and maturity stages, EG has no significant effect on GTI during the recession stage. One-way ANOVA results demonstrate that enterprises' DIC varies across different life cycle stages, with a declining trend observed during the maturity, growth, and recession stages. Moreover, the study finds that DIC, encompassing absorptive, operational, perceptual, and relational capabilities, positively moderates the impact of EG on GTI. These conclusions shed light on the differentiated effects of EG on enterprises' GTI at various life cycle stages.

Artificial intelligence in the new forms of environmental governance in the Chilean State: Towards an eco-algorithmic governance

One of the most popular fields of experimentation with technological solutions based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and algorithmic systems is environmental studies, particularly as it relates to climate change. The promise of mitigating the impact of human activity on the environment through the introduction of sensor technologies has given way to a series of narratives around their role and capabilities. Focusing on the case of Environmental Intelligence, an initiative developed by the Chilean government's Superintendency for the Environment that incorporates AI into the monitoring process, we offer arguments regarding the articulation of an eco-algorithmic governmentality in which the environment is desingularized and reduced to a series of metrics associated with regulatory compliance. The operations that serve to prototype and give shape to the initiative created a series of tensions around the possibility of arriving at other forms of involvement in and understanding of the environment. This article shows how this eco-algorithmic governmentality conceptualizes the environment as an entity that can be optimized and rationalized, generating epistemic frictions with other logics of relationality and situated and terrestrial sensibility.

Digital ecologies: Materialities, encounters, governance

Digital technologies increasingly mediate relations between humans and nonhumans in a range of contexts including environmental governance, surveillance, and entertainment. Combining approaches from more-than-human and digital geographies, we proffer ‘digital ecologies’ as an analytical framework for examining digitally-mediated human–nonhuman entanglement. We identify entanglement as a compelling basis from which to articulate and critique digitally-mediated relations in diverse situated contexts. Three questions guide this approach: What digital technologies and infrastructures give rise to digital entanglement, and with what material consequences? What is at stake socially, politically, and economically when encounters with nonhumans are digitised? And how are digital technologies enrolled in programmes of environmental governance? We develop our digital ecologies framework across three core conceptual themes of wider interest to environmental geographers: (i) materialities, considering the infrastructures which enable digitally-mediated more-than-human connections and their socioenvironmental impacts; (ii) encounters, examining the political economic consequences and convivial potentials of digitising contact zones; (iii) governance, questioning how digital technologies produce novel forms of more-than-human governance. We affirm that digital mediations of more-than-human worlds can potentially cultivate environmentally progressive communities, convivial human–nonhuman encounters, and just forms of environmental governance, and as such note the urgency of these conversations.

Transparency in global sustainability governance: to what effect?

ABSTRACTTransparency in environmental governance is no longer an uncontroversial answer to problems of accountability and effectiveness. How to design effective transparency systems and in what policy contexts they are effective remain contested issues. This special section, consisting of this introduction and four research articles, interrogates complex and potentially conflicting links between transparency, accountability, empowerment and effectiveness in environmental governance. Building on existing literature and the four contributions, we discuss persisting diversity in varieties of transparency, the evolving dynamics of commodity chain transparency, and the consequences of emerging novel forms of digitalized transparency. As we show, the contributions to this special section interrogate in novel ways the transformative potential of transparency, through shedding light on the performative effects of transparency in ever more complex environmental governance contexts. These contexts may include, inter alia, the growing ubiquity of traceability in transnational commodity chains, the need for ever more anticipatory (ex-ante) forms of environmental governance, and an ever-broadening quest for digitally monitored environments. In particular, the impacts of the real-time ‘radical’ transparency engendered by use of novel digital technologies remain under-analyzed in the sustainability domain. We conclude by raising several critical concerns that deserve further scientific research and policy debate.

New forms: Anthropocene Festivals and experimental environmental governance

This paper is about the “Anthropocene Festival,” a concept we develop to explore proliferating and multi-faceted arts-based events, happenings, unconferences, and workshops which collectively model novel forms of environmental governance. The Anthropocene Festival mobilizes disruptive and creative possibilities at the juncture of digital and ecological life, while simultaneously embodying developments in the institutional form of green capitalism. To argue these points, we locate the Anthropocene Festival within a proliferation of new institutional environmentalisms, including biennales, hackathons, and initiatives in the neoliberal university. Next, we provide a survey of recent examples, observing across them an increasingly hegemonic template of environmental sociality—or model of collective interaction—rooted in digital technologies. Next, we discuss two examples of environmental governance propositions expressive of the Anthropocene Festival ethos: (1) Climate Symphony, a project that uses sonification techniques to facilitate new understandings of climate change, (2) Terra0, an art project which reconceptualizes forest ecology and non-human agency using blockchain technology. We conclude by arguing that the ontological generativity of the Anthropocene Festival arises from the dissenting approaches to conventional models of environmental governance it cultivates, but that the Anthropocene Festival does not necessarily carry a radical political valence because of this.

Translating Water Fund Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Ecuadorian Andes

ABSTRACTAs a form of environmental governance, Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) is imbued with ideological values that can conflict with those of participating rural communities. The discursive frame surrounding PES may be contentious, even if the conservation activities promoted by these initiatives are not. Moving PES into practice therefore requires a process of translation from urban‐based practitioners to rural communities. Drawing upon an empirical case study of FONAG, a water fund from Ecuador that is often promoted as the ideal type, this article employs data from participant observation, key informant interviews and textual materials to examine this process of translation. The article focuses particularly on the efforts to negotiate the discourse of PES that move the projects into on‐the‐ground practice. While Ecuador's political context has softened the emphasis on economically valuing ecosystem services, FONAG uses neoliberal conservation narratives that identify rural poverty as the main cause of environmental degradation and target the reform of local people through economic incentives. To enrol communities, however, intermediaries are needed to translate water fund PES to appeal to local perspectives, values and institutions. The author argues that contrasting narratives of PES can exist simultaneously between the entities that are implementing PES and the targets of that implementation.

Adaptive governance in a changing climate situation: exploring a practical approach to manage depleting water resources in Gurgaon, India

Adaptive governance is an emergent form of environmental governance in the face of the complexities and uncertainties associated with climate change. This article highlights its importance in the context of the water sector which has witnessed an impact due to changing scenarios. The key drivers and dimensions in adaptive governance are discussed using a case study in the villages of Haryana. Though there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution, the study helps to examine the practical tools used to implement adaptive governance. Objective indicators can be complemented to further understand its benefits in a context-specific situation.

It’s about Time: Adaptive Resource Management, Environmental Governance, and Science Studies

This article examines adaptive resource management (ARM) as it has been applied to the US horseshoe crab fishery over the past decade. As a critical yet constructive exercise, I have three goals: to suggest how adaptive management, for all its promise, can still be improved; to add a nuanced case study to the literatures on the quantification of nature and environmental decision-making; and to use the example of ARM to make certain temporal aspects of contemporary natural resource management more salient to science and technology studies scholars—that is, to show the ways in which time matters in environmental science, policy, and the analysis thereof. I draw attention to the time-related aspects of adaptive management by developing the notions of temporal orientation and chronological accountability. Temporal orientation refers to the time-based perspectives and epistemological commitments—that is, past-facing empiricism versus future-oriented modeling—that scientists of different types bring to bear on environmental problems. Chronological accountability refers to the missing link in adaptive forms of environmental governance: firm time lines and commitments to reflexively revisit management decisions. The time-related aspects of natural resource management deserve greater attention among both environmental managers and analysts of environmental policy.

REDD+ for Red Books? Negotiating rights to land and livelihoods through carbon governance in the Central Highlands of Vietnam

In Vietnam, initial programs to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) have proliferated through international finance and new governance regimes for climate change mitigation. National capacity and legal frameworks have been adjusted to make the country eligible for REDD+ financing. In some local areas, activities have been implemented to ‘produce’ carbon credits intended for the international voluntary carbon market. Through a case study of a pilot REDD+ project in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, we examine how REDD+ has intersected with property rights institutions and agrarian change to influence changing property relations and commodity markets. Our findings show that REDD+ implemented through state and local institutions has articulated with the local political economy to coproduce conditions that embody local norms, needs, and desires. Specifically, local actors negotiate state-sanctioned tenurial instruments used for REDD+ governance, not for the purposes of carbon sequestration but instead in order to reassert their rights to land and forest for the cultivation of boom crops—the antithesis of REDD+ objectives. In the fine balancing act of adjusting local forestland holdings, REDD+ implementation has effectively facilitated increased opportunities for upland villagers to strategically claim land titles from local political authorities in the form of communal land certificates for forests called ‘Red Books’. In securing communal Red Books, villagers redefine or co-constitute the purpose of REDD+ to secure land for cash crop and commercial timber production. As with other forms of environmental governance, REDD+ is thus co-constituted locally in line with state and local institutions and histories and present day realities.

Assembling the ‘Field’: Conducting Research in Indonesia’s Emerging Green Economy

New forms of environmental governance, such as the green economy, premise reconfigurations of social relations and rearticulations of scale, which raise myriad questions for field researchers, not least of all, what actually constitutes ‘the field’, and where it is to be found. These questions – practical, methodological, political, and personal – are integral to research itself and can tell us much about the dynamic forms that social organization and emerging governance structures take in practice. This contribution discusses the methodological challenges associated with ‘doing fieldwork’ in the amorphous networks of an emerging environmental governance assemblage – the green economy. Drawing on my fieldwork in East Kalimantan, Indonesia, I argue that by interrogating the positionality of different actors in relation to this assemblage, while remaining critically reflexive about one’s own role in this production, field researchers can capture something of the rich embodied practices through which knowledge is produced and exchanged. Moreover, this relational focus on networks of knowledge, actors, and policy can help us to explore the processes of translation and negotiation that underlie the implementation of new forms of environmental governance.

Revealing inadvertent elitism in stakeholder models of environmental governance: assessing procedural justice in sustainability organizations

Consensus-based multi-stakeholder forms of environmental governance involving government, private and civil society actors, have become popular for advancing sustainability, but have been criticized for failing to achieve procedural justice objectives including recognition, participation and strengthening capabilities. Yet, how such models have functioned within non-governmental organizations dedicated to advancing sustainability has been underexplored. This paper assesses the procedural elements of consensus-based multi-stakeholder models used within Canadian biosphere reserves and model forests, two organizations working to address environment and sustainability issues. We draw on strategic documents and semi-structured interviews from five organizations in Canada to analyze their governance structures and processes against a framework for procedural justice. We find the organizational structure reproduces elitism and professionalism associated with stakeholder models more generally and reproduces challenges associated with recognition, participation and building capabilities found in other stakeholder approaches. Meeting broader sustainability challenges requires organizations to address procedural justice issues in addition to their traditional environmental concerns.

Exploring participation in new forms of environmental governance: a case study of payments for environmental services in Nicaragua

This article discusses a “payments for ecosystem services” project in Nicaragua involving different public and private actors. The main contribution of this paper to the literature is that this study shows how the participation of the poor and marginalized in environmental governance projects, particularly in payments for environmental services (PES) projects, is shaped by asymmetrical and preexisting power relations that do not simply disappear with the inception of a project. This study also contributes to better understand and to nuance the motives of different actors to engage in PES projects, and my analysis confirms that a sole focus on economic incentives is too narrow and insufficient explanation for actors’ involvement in the project. The project constitutes a hybrid arena where different ideas meet. One of the outcomes of such hybridity is that the expansion of the activities of corporate actors remains unquestioned and their perspectives are favoured, while at the same time claiming to promote the conservation of natural resources. The study reveals the engagement of international development agencies in influencing the relations between private and public actors. Powerful actors are able to draw the borders of what is possible to discuss and negotiate in “invited” spaces for participation like this PES project.

Wild Commodities and Environmental Governance: Transforming Lives and Markets in China and Japan

This paper explores the relationship between forms of environmental governance and a transnational commodity chain for a wild mushroom that is picked in China and shipped to Japan. I argue that unlike some portrayals of environmental governance that largely assume a unified system working towards similar goals, governance comes from a number of sources and exhibits a range of forms, which at times overlap and contradict each other. In particular, this paper reflects on notions of commodification that are often argued to be part of neoliberal environmental governance. I show that diverse forms of environmental governance are shaping the texture of commodity chains, but not always working towards the overall increase in commodification. For example, in the last decade, the matsutake economy in China has been strongly influenced by several forms of environmental governance, such as a large-scale logging ban, the declaration of the matsutake as an endangered species, and its scrutiny in Japan as a potential object of contamination. I suggest that each of these forms of governance shapes the conditions of possibility and inflects the dynamics of this chain in different ways.

Global assemblages, resilience, and Earth Stewardship in the Anthropocene

In this paper, we argue that the Anthropocene is an epoch characterized not only by the anthropogenic dominance of the Earth's ecosystems but also by new forms of environmental governance and institutions. Echoing the literature in political ecology, we call these new forms of environmental governance “global assemblages”. Socioecological changes associated with global assemblages disproportionately impact poorer nations and communities along the development continuum, or the “Global South”, and others who depend on natural resources for subsistence. Although global assemblages are powerful mechanisms of socioecological change, we show how transnational networks of grassroots organizations are able to resist their negative social and environmental impacts, and thus foster socioecological resilience.

Assessing Nature? The Genesis of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)

On the basis of an analysis of the creation of an Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), our contribution addresses the progressive stabilisation of an institutional design for assessing Nature. Social science literature has widely promoted norms of transparency, openness and participation regarding the implementation of new forms of environmental governance. But so far, few researchers have focused on the way this disclosure model now concretely weighs down on real institutions and institutionalisation processes. Moreover, little attention has been paid to the way this requirement can combine with other requirements or older models of action. In the case of IPBES, our goal is to question how the requirements of participation and transparency are put into practice. We will highlight the role of UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) in the institutionalisation process of IPBES and see how the disclosure model is combined with other requirements that simultaneously involve the re-creation of ‘enclosure’ (that is, the need for academic sound–science, or the usual way in which things are done at UNEP—that is, bureaucratic practices). Our work is based on an empirical study including documentation analysis (official reports available on websites) and interviews.

Forms of collaboration and social fit in wildlife management: A comparison of policy networks in Alaska

Rapid environmental change in the Arctic has led to calls for new forms of environmental governance that consciously fit policy solutions to both the policy problem as well as the underlying social–ecological system dynamics. While efforts to evaluate the ecological fit of institutions to place have become more sophisticated, efforts to measure the social fit of policy remains underdeveloped. In order to examine the effect of institutional form on policy processes and socially relevant outcomes, I employ a mixed methods approach including ethnographic data and social network analysis to compare the implementation of two international wildlife regimes in two indigenous Iñupiaq towns in Alaska. My results yield three findings: (1) that separate institutions create differently structured policy networks, (2) differences in network structures and levels of power-sharing correlate with perceptions of policy, and (3) networks that reflect local social patterns are more likely to be considered fair and inclusive. These findings support congruence theory, which posits that public policy reflective of local constructions of legitimacy will achieve greater success than policy that is not reflective.

FISHING FROM THE SAME POOL: THE INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE ON LOCAL CLIMATE CHANGE ACTIONS IN SCOTLAND AND THE US PACIFIC NORTHWEST

The impact of environmental governance on the delivery of local climate change plans is examined by comparing two transatlantic sub-national jurisdictions which have adopted stringent targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions: Scotland and the Pacific Northwest region of the United States of America. The former relies on dirigiste top-down environmental governance, through which central government sets targets and imposes statutory duties that apply equally to all local councils. In the latter, a bottom-up multi-level form of environmental governance has emerged to compensate for the absence of a federal mandate. Specific action plans from a climate change pioneer in each location are assessed to test the strengths and limitations of these alternative modes of environmental governance: Portland in Oregon and Fife in Scotland. The Scottish dirigiste approach offers its local councils a consistent policy framework, allowing them to focus on specific measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while avoiding concerns about free-rider effects from non-participating councils. The asymmetrical uptake of climate change measures by United States municipalities exposes their domestic market to the risks of carbon leakage that America sought to avoid in global markets during negotiations over the Kyoto Protocol.

The Commodification of Pollution and a Preemptive Double Movement in Environmental Governance

The management of environmental pollution has traditionally been accomplished via the regulatory power of the state, but more recently the rise of a new, market-based form of governance has been observed. This article examines the sector of water quality trading, in which caps are placed on surface water pollution and polluters can purchase “offset credits” from farms or other polluters who are under their cap. Using a content analysis of program case studies and federal and state trading rules, the author analyzes this emergent form of environmental governance using an expanded Polanyian framework that he terms the preemptive double movement. Instead of the state reacting to the dangers of a new market form after the fact, here the state uses its existing authority to constrain the market so that further environmental damage does not result. The author describes eight specific regulatory mechanisms that illustrate this preemptive double movement at work.