Most recent papers:

• Mapping Complexity in Environmental Governance: A comparative analysis of 37 priority issues in German water management.
  Sabrina Kirschke, Dietrich Borchardt, Jens Newig.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. October 19, 2017
  Environmental governance regularly has to cope with complex problems. However, ‘complexity’ has mostly been used as a heuristic concept and hardly made operable for empirical research. Drawing on psychological research on complex problem solving, we propose a structured operationalization of complexity in the five dimensions of (1) goals, (2) variables, (3) dynamics, (4) interconnectedness and (5) information uncertainty. Based on 65 semi‐standardized expert interviews and 158 assessments of complexity degrees, we analyse and map 37 water‐related problems in Germany with regard to their complexity. We find that these problems tend to exhibit medium degrees of complexity, based on 30 types of argument for complexity. Our analysis also reveals varying degrees of complexity and delineates the various natural, technical and social sources of complexity. Our approach and the results may facilitate more systematic discussion of governance strategies for complex problem solving across environmental policy fields and scales. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  October 19, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1778   open full text
• An Approach to Assess Learning Conditions, Effects and Outcomes in Environmental Governance.
  Derek Armitage, Angela Dzyundzyak, Julia Baird, Örjan Bodin, Ryan Plummer, Lisen Schultz.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. October 19, 2017
  We empirically examine relationships among the conditions that enable learning, learning effects and sustainability outcomes based on experiences in four biosphere reserves in Canada and Sweden. In doing so, we provide a novel approach to measure learning and address an important methodological and empirical challenge in assessments of learning processes in decision‐making contexts. Findings from this study highlight the effectiveness of different measures of learning, and how to differentiate the factors that foster learning with the outcomes of learning. Our approach provides a useful reference point for future empirical studies of learning in different environment, resource and sustainability settings. © 2017 The Authors. Environmental Policy and Governance published by ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

  October 19, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1781   open full text
• Integrating Ecological Indicators into Federal‐State Fiscal Relations: A policy design study for Germany.
  Nils Droste, Irene Ring, Christoph Schröter‐Schlaack, Thomas Lenk.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. October 18, 2017
  Protected areas (PA) provide conservation benefits and ecosystem services that spill over the boundaries of jurisdictions to other regions. In this paper we analyse the foundations of and design options for ecological fiscal transfers (EFT) that may internalize such positive external effects. We propose a model for integrating ecological indicators into the intergovernmental fiscal transfer system between federal and state‐level governments in Germany. Our approach is performance oriented and would thus compensate those states that designate an above‐average share of their area for nature conservation purposes. The suggested EFT design builds upon the existing fiscal equalization system and complies with the legal requirements for indicators determining fiscal needs. We employ an econometric analysis to demonstrate that, on average, sparsely populated states in Germany provide more PA per capita and would thus be eligible for increased fiscal transfers. A quantitative model of the fiscal transfer scheme is then used to estimate the marginal financial effects of integrating ecological indicators into federal–state fiscal relations in Germany. Moving beyond the specific case presented, we discuss the implications in terms of the specific role of EFT as a policy instrument within the broader conservation policy mix. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  October 18, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1774   open full text
• Policy Mixes and their Alignment over Time: Patching and stretching in the oil sands reclamation regime in Alberta, Canada.
  Jeremy Rayner, Michael Howlett, Adam Wellstead.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. October 18, 2017
  When, why and how do policy mixes change and evolve? Much of the contemporary interest in such mixes is focused on distinguishing simple policies from more complex policy mixes, evaluating the relationships between single and multiple policy tools within a mix, and developing criteria to assess the likely performance of particular mixes. These are important and necessary analytical tasks. However, another required step in understanding policy mixes is to understand how and why mixes evolve and change over time and to determine whether any changes are an improvement. In this paper, we analyse the development of a complex policy mix in the case of reclamation and remediation of the Alberta oil sands from an earlier ‘simple goal, single instrument’ policy regime to a more complex one. This case study reveals the presence of at least two dynamic processes at work in policy mix development, with significant implications for the nature of the changes that result from them. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  October 18, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1773   open full text
• Adaptive Forest Governance in Northwestern Mato Grosso, Brazil: Pilot project outcomes across agrarian reform landscapes.
  Robert Brooks Davenport, Jorge Luiz Vivan, Peter Herman May, Paulo César Nunes, Lucila Nunes Vargas, William Leles Souza Costa, Amanda Ribeiro Oliveira, Raoni Lucas Rajão.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. October 18, 2017
  Recent research on deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has rarely included empirical observation of how land managers perceive and respond to forest governance rules. In this case study, we consider how two decades of pilot projects for integrated conservation and sustainable development (ICDPs) variously influenced forest governance across three agrarian reform settlements in northwestern Mato Grosso state. The analysis combines: i) remote sensing of deforestation from 1997–2015; ii) land use and economic data for individual settler farms and cooperatives; iii) settlers' perceptions regarding legitimacy and relevance of state policies, including land use regulations under the Brazilian Forest Code. Deforestation across settlements varied in association with synergies – or lack thereof – between policy instruments and socially embedded rules organizing economic alternatives to the dominant regional pattern of cattle ranching. In two of the settlements deforestation surpassed or was approaching 80% of their total area. In the third settlement deforestation stabilized at 45%, corresponding with the initiation of ICDP support for a pilot project focused on Brazil nut extractivism to consolidate community management of the settlement's collective forest reserve. The latter process involved a ‘policy mix’ or sequence of overlapping components: technical assistance, cooperative organization, environmental licensing, infrastructure, equitable contracts with surrounding indigenous communities and market development. Comparing with the two counterfactual cases, we suggest a framework for analysis of systemic socio‐ecological change in settlements in the Brazilian Amazon, and reconsider the role of ICDPs in landscape approaches to environmental governance in tropical forests. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  October 18, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1772   open full text
• An Assessment Framework for Benefit Sharing Mechanisms to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation within a Forest Policy Mix.
  Grace Yee Wong, Lasse Loft, Maria Brockhaus, Anastasia Lucy Yang, Thu Thuy Pham, Samuel Assembe‐Mvondo, Cecilia Luttrell.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. October 18, 2017
  Policy instruments for implementing the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation and the enhancement of forest carbon stocks (REDD+) mechanism operate within an orchestra of policy mixes that affect the forest and other land sectors. How will policymakers choose between the myriad of options for distributing REDD+ benefits, and be able to evaluate its potential effectiveness, efficiency and equity (3Es)? This is a pressing issue given the results‐based aspect of REDD+. We present here a three‐element assessment framework for evaluating the outcomes and performance of REDD+ benefit sharing mechanisms, using the criteria of effectiveness, efficiency and equity: (1) the structures (objective and policies) of a REDD+ benefit sharing mechanism; (2) the broader institutional and policy contexts underlying forest governance; (3) outcomes of REDD+ including emission reductions, ecosystem service provision and poverty alleviation. A strength of the assessment framework is its flexible design to incorporate indicators relevant to different contexts; this helps to generate a shared working understanding of what is to be evaluated in the different REDD+ benefit sharing mechanisms (BSMs) across complex socio‐political contexts. In applying the framework to case studies, the assessment highlights trade‐offs among the 3Es, and the need to better manage access to information, monitoring and evaluation, consideration of local perceptions of equity and inclusive decisionmaking processes. The framework does not aim to simplify complexity, but rather serves to identify actionable ways forward towards a more efficient, effective and equitable implementation and re‐evaluation of REDD+ BSMs as part of reflexive policymaking. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  October 18, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1771   open full text
• The Economic and Legal Sides of Additionality in Payments for Environmental Services.
  Alain Karsenty, Sigrid Aubert, Laura Brimont, Céline Dutilly, Sébastien Desbureaux, Driss Ezzine de Blas, Gwenole Le Velly.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. October 18, 2017
  This paper aims to clarify two distinct but complementary questions on economic and legal additionality in the payments for environmental services (PES) debate based on examples from the literature and direct observations made in Madagascar and Mexico. For the economic dimension of additionality, we explain two ‘regimes of justification’, efficiency on the one hand and social equity on the other, and discuss how analysts position themselves with regard to both regimes. For the legal dimension, we review and analyse specific cases in which PES are implemented in addition to existing environmental regulations. We propose a renewed framework of analysis to distinguish ‘compensation’ and ‘reward’ in PES by crossing the opportunity cost dimension and the legal constraint vis‐à‐vis the environment. We show how difficult it is to fully maintain the objective of efficiency when PES are implemented simultaneously across different combinations of opportunity costs and regulation constraints. We propose policy options to address the contradiction between incentive and coercive instruments. These options are land sparing, social targeting and chronological combinations. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  October 18, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1770   open full text
• Payments for Ecosystem Services as a Policy Mix: Demonstrating the institutional analysis and development framework on conservation policy instruments.
  David N. Barton, Karla Benavides, Adriana Chacon‐Cascante, Jean‐Francois Le Coq, Miriam Miranda Quiros, Ina Porras, Eeva Primmer, Irene Ring.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. October 18, 2017
  Policy mix analysis has been applied in research on energy, climate, urban and transport policy, and more recently biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services. However, policy mix analysis has thus far been employed at a high conceptual level, focusing on describing interactions between instrument types. Policy mix analysis rarely describes instrument ‘structure’ or functional characteristics in a way that would answer the question ‘what constitutes an instrument’? We describe how the rules‐in‐use taxonomy of the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, developed for research on common pool resource management, can be used to characterize conservation policy instrument interactions. We demonstrate the approach on the well‐known payments for ecosystem services (PES) program in Costa Rica and cross‐compliance policies, arguing that PES is a policy mix rather than a single economic instrument. Our analysis shows how design features of PES described in the economics literature map to ‘rules‐in‐use’ in the IAD framework. The framework provides a terminology for defining what constitutes institutional context, comparing economic, regulatory and information instruments, and studying their interactions. The rules‐in‐use taxonomy of IAD is a ‘structural’ diagnostic approach, which needs to be combined with other tools that analyse the role and ‘agency’ of actors, as part of integrative environmental governance research. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  October 18, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1769   open full text
• Two Sustainability Epistemologies in the Marketization of a Natural Resource.
  Filippa Säwe, Johan Hultman.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. October 11, 2017
  The normative implications of sustainable development mean that different understandings of how sustainability should be achieved will either facilitate or put at risk different values associated with economic, environmental and social aspects of sustainability. By a qualitative analysis of Swedish fishery legislation documents, we analyse and outline the consequences of two different and competing sustainability epistemologies: a top‐down system understanding and a bottom‐up experiential understanding. To define these two epistemologies, the case study adopts discourse analysis on one fishery law and one fishery regulation proposal, and the remittance answers to these documents. We demonstrate how a top‐down system approach shapes social reality according to its own logic of efficiency, and that pre‐defined principles of economic optimization prevail over social experience and continuity. We conclude that qualitative analysis holds promise to expand the understanding of the premises and consequences of alternative environmental governance trajectories due to its ability to uncover social constructions of meaning. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  October 11, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1784   open full text
• Private Sector Involvement in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: Using a UN Platform to Promote Market‐Based Instruments for Ecosystem Services.
  Marie Hrabanski.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. October 05, 2017
  The article analyses the implication of private sector representatives in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) (2001–2005). The article shows that, before this international biodiversity assessment, firms were involved in three coalitions: the greenhouse gas pro‐trading coalition, the voluntary private standard coalition and the payment for environmental services coalition. These three coalitions all advocated a particular style of regulation that gave overwhelming emphasis to market‐based policy instruments. Corporate experts from the three coalitions identified were recruited to participate in the MEA. Thanks to the political visibility given to the ecosystem services concept by the MEA, private industry was able to strengthen and legitimize its actions in favour of market‐based environmental governance. At the same time, associating private sector representatives with the MEA process made it easier to disseminate the concept of ecosystem services. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  October 05, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1780   open full text
• Forest Governance without Transparency? Evaluating state efforts to reduce deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.
  Eduardo Bizzo, Gregory Michener.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. August 25, 2017
  Over 60% of the Amazon basin is contained within nine federal Brazilian states. How transparent are state‐level governments about implementing and enforcing deforestation reduction policies? Advocates and officials can only influence forest conservation outcomes to the extent that they have information about the actions – the inputs and outputs – of front‐line local actors. Leveraging a recently adopted freedom of information (FOI) law, this paper evaluates how well governments comply with website‐based disclosure requirements (active transparency), and how effectively they respond to FOI requests (passive transparency) on the implementation and enforcement of deforestation reduction policies. By focusing on how subnational administrations disclose accountings of forest governance – the inputs and outputs of governance – the current study complements an already extensive body of scholarship on central government monitoring of forest cover – the transparency of outcomes. Comparing our results with an original database of transparency evaluations from Brazil, we find extremely low levels of compliance with FOI obligations. We do find, however, that government agencies possessing electronic FOI platforms, which help applicants send requests and appeals and accompany responses, fare better than those without. This and other findings have implications for the design of transparency systems, while global results speak to the policy challenges of federalism, especially dilemmas of subnational policy enforcement. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  August 25, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1776   open full text
• Power in Sustainability Transitions: Analysing power and (dis)empowerment in transformative change towards sustainability.
  Flor Avelino.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. August 17, 2017
  This paper conceptualizes power and empowerment in the context of sustainability transitions and transition governance. The field of transition studies has been critically interrogated for undermining the role of power, which has inspired various endeavours to theorize power and agency in transitions. This paper presents the POwer‐IN‐Transition framework (POINT), which is developed as a conceptual framework to analyse power and (dis)empowerment in transformative social change, integrating transition concepts and multiple power and empowerment theories. The first section introduces transitions studies and discusses its state‐of‐the‐art regarding power. This is followed by a typology of power relations and different types of power (reinforcive, innovative, transformative). These notions are then used to reframe transition concepts, in particular the multi‐level perspective, in terms of power dynamics. The critical challenges of (dis)empowerment and unintended power implications of discourses on and policies for ‘sustainability transitions’ are discussed. The paper concludes with a synthesis of the arguments and challenges for future research. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  August 17, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1777   open full text
• Policy Stability in Climate Governance: The case of the United Kingdom.
  Katharina Rietig, Timothy Laing.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. August 15, 2017
  ‘Super‐wicked’ problems such as climate change require ambitious policies within stable policy frameworks. Key for policy stability is to disincentivise future reversals to carbon‐intensive lifestyles resulting in unstoppable climate change. It requires lock‐in to a low‐carbon development trajectory, requires increasing popular support, and needs to be self‐reinforcing, with reversal costs rising over time as benefits increase. In parliamentary political systems (e.g. the UK), policies emerge more easily but are more difficult to maintain given that shifting political majorities can result in policy U‐turns, resulting in uncertainties for investment in low‐carbon transitions. We examine what factors determine policy stability in UK climate change policy that aims to reduce CO2 emissions by 85–90 per cent by 2050. Policy stability depends on favourable public opinion and the political system. In the case of parliamentary democracies the extent to which policy is embedded into a multilevel governance institutional framework and political cross‐party consensus is particularly important for stability. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  August 15, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1762   open full text
• The Ecosystem Approach to Management in Marine Environmental Governance: Institutional interplay in the Baltic Sea Region.
  Sara Söderström, Kristine Kern.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. August 10, 2017
  This article focuses on the use of the ecosystem approach to management (EAM) in the Baltic Sea Region (BSR). Based on selected criteria for EAM, the article traces and compares the impact of EAM on HELCOM's Baltic Sea Action Plan (BSAP), the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD), the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) and the EU Maritime Spatial Planning Directive (MSPD). Starting from the assumption that institutional interplay determines the impact of the EAM on marine policies, the article examines how different forms of interplay (interplay through cognition, commitment and compliance) affect the spread of EAM and its implementation in the BSR. The study finds strong interplay between HELCOM's BSAP and the EU's MSFD. Although HELCOM is still an important player in marine governance in the BSR, since it includes Russia, taking over responsibilities for the implementation of EU legislation has repercussions and affects its independence. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  August 10, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1775   open full text
• Caught Between Personal and Collective Values: Biodiversity conservation in European decision‐making.
  Eeva Primmer, Mette Termansen, Yennie Bredin, Malgorzata Blicharska, Marina García‐Llorente, Pam Berry, Tiina Jääskeläinen, Györgyi Bela, Veronika Fabok, Nicoleta Geamana, Paula A. Harrison, John R. Haslett, Georgia Lavinia Cosor, Anne H.K. Andersen.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. July 22, 2017
  Individual decision‐makers at different governance levels operate in social contexts, which means that they sometimes need to compromise their personal values. Yet, this dissonance is rarely the direct target of empirical analyses of environmental decision‐making. We undertake a Q‐analysis of decision‐makers' personal perspectives and the perspectives they perceive to dominate in their decision‐making contexts. Our empirical analysis addresses biodiversity conservation, which has traditionally been justified with intrinsic value‐ and science‐based arguments. The arguments have recently been broadened with the concept of ecosystem services, highlighting human benefits and values. This evolving context is interesting because of the new rise of anthropocentric values, which can lead to decision‐makers experiencing dissonance. Our analysis of interviews with 43 biodiversity conservation decision‐makers from nine European countries reveals four personally held perspectives that highlight different, yet partly overlapping, values – intrinsic, human benefit, conservation and connection – as well as three perspectives perceived to dominate in decision‐making – utilitarian, insurance and knowledge values. The comparison of personally held and perceived dominant perspectives points to one major conflict: those decision‐makers who personally associate with intrinsic values and perceive utilitarian values to dominate in decision‐making experience dissonance. By contrast, personally held human benefit values are accommodated well in decision‐making contexts and decision‐makers who perceive insurance values to dominate experience the least conflict with personally held values. These findings demonstrate the potential of arguments stressing long‐term benefits for easing tension and conflicts in conservation decision‐making, and the usefulness of empirically testing of the coincidence of individual and social values. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  July 22, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1763   open full text
• The Global Norm of Large Marine Protected Areas: Explaining variable adoption and implementation.
  Justin Alger, Peter Dauvergne.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. July 04, 2017
  Since 2006, governments have designated or announced 18 marine protected areas (MPAs) larger than 200 000 km2. Before then there was only one: Australia's Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, established in 1975. To explain this marked shift in state governance of marine biodiversity, this article points to the importance of a gradual strengthening over the past decade of a global norm that large MPAs, especially no‐take reserves, are valuable for meeting conservation objectives and targets. As is true for most global environmental norms, the large MPA norm emerged primarily out of civil society, especially from groups framing large MPAs as an effective way to help stop ocean decline. Importantly, however, the article demonstrates that the adoption of this norm is uneven across states, and implementation of large MPAs varies widely as governmental and non‐governmental forces interact – sometimes clashing, sometimes cooperating – with fishing, tourism and resource industries. For evidence, this article draws on fieldwork and 74 interviews across five large MPA cases: Papahānaumokouākea (2006) and the Pacific Remote Islands in the US (2009); the Coral Sea in Australia (2012); the Palau National Marine Sanctuary (2015); and the UK's Pitcairn reserve (2015). A comparative analysis of these cases reveals the influence of non‐governmental groups (especially The Pew Charitable Trusts and the National Geographic Society) on the gradual strengthening of the large MPA norm; the importance of the large MPA norm for the formation of marine policy; and the significance of domestic political economies for shaping variable norm adoption and state implementation. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  July 04, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1768   open full text
• The Role of Finance Ministries in Environmental Policy Making: The case of European Union Emissions Trading System reform in Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands.
  Jakob Skovgaard.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. July 04, 2017
  Environmental policy‐making increasingly involves ministries beyond environment ministries. In particular, finance ministries are important, since they control the public budget and address environmental issues from a perspective different from environmental actors. The role of finance ministries is especially salient in the European Union's (EU) Emissions Trading System (ETS), which has been subject to interventions to keep up the falling emission allowance price. The price of ETS allowances has dropped to a tenth of the expected price. The drop led to proposals for intervening in the ETS, including postponing the auctioning of emission allowances and structural reform. While the Netherlands and Denmark supported such intervention, Germany blocked an EU decision on the subject for months. To investigate whether the role of finance ministries explains the differences in government positions, this article analyses these three Member States. The analysis shows that finance ministries were involved in the policy processes and reluctantly supported intervening in the ETS. This position was due more to the desire to have a functioning ETS with minimal state intervention than to the fiscal impact of such intervention, as this impact was clouded in uncertainty. However, the finance ministries were not decisive in determining government positions, which were instead determined by the political orientation of the government (in Germany and the Netherlands) and by previous commitments to ambitious EU emission reduction targets (in Denmark). The analysis underlines the importance of studying the role of finance ministries and their different objectives (fiscal, macroeconomic) in environmental policy‐making. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  July 04, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1767   open full text
• Local Climate Governance in the Global South: The case of eThekwini Municipality and the Responsible Accommodation Campaign.
  Marita Lervik, Catherine Sutherland.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. June 14, 2017
  Local climate governance has become a key focus of the climate change agenda. Much research has been conducted on the topic in northern countries, but more research is needed in the South, where local governments often are less equipped to deal with challenges associated with climate change. This paper discusses different forms of local climate governance, with a specific focus on the relevance of networks. Local climate governance in eThekwini Municipality, South Africa, is used as a case study, particularly focusing on a campaign that was implemented in 2011 before the international climate conference (COP17). The modes of governing in eThekwini are considered through a framework of local climate governing and identified mainly as self‐governing and governing through enabling, the campaign being an example of the latter. The campaign also exemplifies how network governance can shape climate policy and significantly alter a project from initiation to implementation. While networks can contribute to improved communication and information exchange, there may be an inherent risk of private partners having a perverse incentive against implementing effective climate policies due to their own interests in maintaining current structures. It is not clear whether the change from regulative governance to governing by enabling will lead to more effective climate policies in the longer term. More research is required to determine this. While this study is too small to make broader generalizations, it does provide insight into how the introduction of network governance may impact climate governance at the local level in the South. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  June 14, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1757   open full text
• The Roles of Residents in Climate Adaptation: A systematic review in the case of the Netherlands.
  Dries L.T. Hegger, Heleen L.P. Mees, Peter P.J. Driessen, Hens A.C. Runhaar.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. June 14, 2017
  Climate adaptation literature has hitherto devoted limited attention to the roles of residents. Yet their role is crucial in addressing non‐ or maladaptation, as their initiative or consent is often necessary to take adaptation measures in or around the house. To address this knowledge gap, this paper explores mainstream and additional roles for residents through a literature review. Mainstream roles are those roles that residents usually take, while additional roles are more specific and local in nature. The latter may, however, provide the seeds for wider change. To structure the results, we made a distinction between three forms of residents' commitment to adaptation: as (1) citizens falling under the jurisdiction of various governmental levels; (2) consumers (including home owners) in the market; and (3) civil society members/partners. While this is an established categorization in other domains of environmental governance, it has not yet been systematically applied to the adaptation domain. The paper's empirical focus regarding mainstream and additional roles is on the Dutch adaptation domains of flood risk management, stormwater management and dealing with heat stress. We found scope for additional roles for residents, especially as consumers in the market and civil society members. The findings are of significance for the global debate on residents' roles in climate adaptation and suggest that addressing all three forms of commitment may enhance the implementation of measures as well as their legitimacy, residents' awareness and societies' potential to innovate. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  June 14, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1766   open full text
• Building Practical Authority for Community Forestry in and through Networks: The role of community‐based organisations in the U.S. West.
  Jesse Abrams, Emily Jane Davis, Cassandra Moseley, Branda Nowell.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. June 14, 2017
  Policy and economic changes in the late 20th century fundamentally reorganized the governance of public forestlands in the US West, throwing longstanding rural development trajectories into disarray. Place‐based NGOs emerged across the West in the wake of this transformation to help rural communities gain access to the benefits of new restoration‐oriented management paradigms. Here we analyse the practical efforts of two of these community‐based organizations, Wallowa Resources and the Watershed Research and Training Center, as they attempt to implement community forestry practices in highly complex institutional environments. We focus on the ways in which these organizations access and utilize social networks at multiple scales in order to build the ‘practical authority’ necessary to lead institutional change efforts in and on behalf of rural communities. We consider both the strategic advantages and the practical challenges of working in multiple forums at multiple scales in pursuit of linked community and environmental benefits. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  June 14, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1765   open full text
• Municipal Responses to Ecological Fiscal Transfers in Brazil: A microeconometric panel data approach.
  Nils Droste, Guilherme Rodrigues Lima, Peter Herman May, Irene Ring.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. May 30, 2017
  Ecological fiscal transfers in Brazil, the so‐called ICMS‐Ecológico or ICMS‐E, redistribute part of the state‐level value‐added tax revenues on the basis of ecological indicators to local governments. We analyze whether the introduction of this economic instrument in a state offers incentives to municipal responses in terms of further protected area (PA) designation. We provide a microeconomic model for the functioning of ICMS‐E and test the derived hypothesis empirically. Employing an econometric analysis on panel data for two decades we estimate the correlation of the introduction of ICMS‐E in Brazilian states with PA coverage. We find that the introduction of ICMS‐E correlates with a higher average PA share. While the introduction of ICMS‐E schemes may be a compensation for a high share of federal and state PA, we also find an incentive effect for municipalities to designate additional PA. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  May 30, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1760   open full text
• Governance in Shaky Societies: Experiences and lessons from Christchurch after the earthquakes.
  Melanie M. Bakema, Constanza Parra, Philip McCann, Paul Dalziel, Caroline Saunders.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. May 30, 2017
  Disasters have the potential to shake societies and their governance systems not only temporarily, but often for years afterwards as well. Studying disaster governance through lenses of social–ecological systems can provide essential insights in disaster contexts, as disasters occur through the interactions between nature and societies. Drawing upon debates on environmental governance, we examine the interactions between different spatial and temporal levels of governance in the face of disasters. Our analysis is based on an in‐depth case study of Christchurch, New Zealand, in the aftermath of the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes. International experts usually regard Christchurch as an exemplary recovery process. However, frustration is widespread among people in the city as they call for a more socially inclusive process. These diverging views can be explained by the variety of challenges that the earthquakes pose on the society and the consequent different needs and wishes related to different temporal stages and geographical areas. Homogenous governance approaches for post‐disaster recovery for all stages and areas are therefore inadequate, calling for hybrid, more flexible and sustainable governance constellations. A social–ecological approach highlights the dynamic and complex interactions between nature and society, and the hybrid, multi‐level character of governance, which both shapes and is shaped by the behaviour and responses of citizens. Regarding hybrid governance as a social–ecological system can therefore help to better understand post‐disaster realities and support the design of tailored, time‐ and place‐specific governance systems aiming for enhanced resilience and sustainability. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  May 30, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1764   open full text
• Monitoring for Adaptive Management or Modernity: Lessons from recent initiatives for holistic environmental management.
  Kerry A. Waylen, Kirsty L. Blackstock.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. May 11, 2017
  Recommendations for improving environmental management often advocate a holistic approach that supports both social and environmental objectives. This should be reflected in approaches to monitoring and evaluation; however, monitoring is often inadequate and hence limits our ability to implement adaptive management. It is important to understand if monitoring practices are changing, and if not, why. Thus, this paper considers the monitoring practices and priorities of 24 ‘Ecosystem Approach’ projects implementing holistic and participatory environmental management. We found project monitoring was often focused on biophysical indicators, such as indicators of water pollution, even when adaptive management might prioritize understanding different issues or using different data‐types. By contrast, aspects of social and economic aspects were monitored infrequently. Procedural aspects were rarely tracked. Project managers' aspirations did sometimes include such issues, but these were seen as more difficult or even impossible to measure. Schema were also shaped by the need to demonstrate accountability and quantify progress to funders. Our study suggests monitoring still falls short of theoretical recommendations. This is partially due to the misfit between new understandings of socio‐ecological systems and pre‐existing modernist paradigms, whose conceptions and expectations still have pervasive effects of our ways of thinking and working. Tackling this requires explicit attention to sticking points across the levels of institutions that shape environmental management. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  May 11, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1758   open full text
• Central‐local Relations and Renewable Energy Policy Implementation in a Developing Country.
  Jens Marquardt.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. May 05, 2017
  Implementing renewable energy policies is a complex governance challenge that involves numerous jurisdictional levels. Transforming an energy system towards renewables requires not only top‐down activities from the central government, but also bottom‐up developments at subnational jurisdictions. This article investigates how complex multi‐level governance arrangements affect renewable energy policy implementation in a developing country. Speaking to current conceptual debates in multi‐level governance research, insights from pluralist power theories are incorporated into a multi‐level governance framework to investigate the role of governance structures, resources and capacities. The approach is applied exemplarily to discuss the implementation of the Philippine Renewable Energy Act. The national government struggles to implement this law due to powerful local authorities. Political factors such as unclear responsibilities, conflicting regulations, weak local capacity, a lack of awareness for national intentions and missing consultation are identified as major obstacles for renewable energy policy implementation. Results are primarily derived from documents and qualitative expert interviews. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  May 05, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1756   open full text
• On the Necessity of an Integrated, Participative and Adaptive Approach to Sustainable Urban Environmental Quality Planning.
  Rien Stigt, Peter Driessen, Tejo Spit.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. May 05, 2017
  Based on a review of recent literature, this paper addresses the question of how urban planners can steer urban environmental quality, given the fact that it is multidimensional in character, is assessed largely in subjective terms and varies across time. A novel perspective of urban environmental quality is proposed, simultaneously exploring three questions that are at the core of planning and designing cities: ‘quality of what?’, ‘quality for whom?’ and ‘quality at what time?’. The dilemmas that urban planners face in answering these questions are illustrated using secondary material. This approach provides perspectives for action. Rather than further detailing the exact nature of urban quality, it calls for sustainable urban environmental quality planning that is integrated, participative and adaptive. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  May 05, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1759   open full text
• Reconsidering EU Compliance: Implementation performance in the field of environmental policy.
  Elena Bondarouk, Ellen Mastenbroek.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. May 05, 2017
  European Union (EU) environmental policy can only work in practice when it is implemented by and within the member states. Yet, despite its importance, we still lack a solid and cumulative understanding of the practical implementation of EU environmental policies, mainly because of the dominance of case‐specific empirical insights and the dichotomous conceptualization of compliant implementation. This paper proposes a conceptual framework for analysing implementation performance, which is built around three dimensions: substance, scope and effort. The framework's relevance and analytical quality are substantiated by a systematic review of empirical studies on practical implementation of 18 EU environmental directives. We find evidence of three types of knowledge deficits: there is neglect of the ‘scope’ and ‘effort’ dimensions of implementation; disproportionate attention to the Water Framework Directive, and the Northern and Western European member states. The proposed conceptual framework aims to inform future research on EU environmental implementation. © 2017 The Authors. Environmental Policy and Governance published by ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

  May 05, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1761   open full text
• Multi‐level Climate Governance in China.
  Miranda Schreurs.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. April 18, 2017
  China is setting increasingly ambitious greenhouse gas targets and backing them up with a wide array of policies and programmes. How successful China will be in slowing and eventually reversing the growth in its greenhouse gas emissions will depend significantly on how well it does with policy implementation at the local and regional levels. This article examines how climate governance works in China's multi‐level governance structure. It explores why the Chinese leadership is taking climate change seriously, the nature of the policies and programmes being introduced, and the steps being taken to promote local environmental innovation and improve policy compliance. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  April 18, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1751   open full text
• Deploying Low‐carbon Technologies in Developing Countries: A view from India's buildings sector.
  Radhika Khosla, Ambuj Sagar, Ajay Mathur.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. April 18, 2017
  The climate change arena comprises a diverse set of interacting actors from international, national and local levels. The multilevel architecture has implications for low‐carbon technology deployment in developing countries, an issue salient to both development and climate objectives. The paper examines this theme through two inter‐related questions: how do (or don't) low‐carbon technologies get deployed in India's built environment, and what implications can be drawn from the Indian case for effective low‐carbon technology development and transfer for developing countries? By examining the multilevel linkages in India's buildings sector, the paper shows how the interactions between governance levels can both support and hinder technology deployment, ultimately leading to inadequate outcomes. The potential of these linkages is hobbled by aspects of the national context (federated energy governance and developing‐country capacity limitations), yet can also be enabled by other features (the climate policy context, which may motivate international actors to fill domestic capacity lacunae). Reflecting on the India case, the paper makes recommendations for improved low‐carbon technology deployment in developing countries: (1) technology development and transfer collaboration on a ‘need‐driven’ approach, (2) development of the specific types of capacity required across the entire innovation chain and (3) domestic strengthening of the coordination and agendas across and between governance levels. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  April 18, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1750   open full text
• Low Carbon Governance in Multi‐level Structures: EU–India relations on energy and climate.
  Kirsten Jörgensen, Christian Wagner.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. April 18, 2017
  Since 2000, the European Union (EU), a leader in global climate politics, has been looking for alternative avenues to enforce climate relations with other countries. Employing a multi‐level governance lens, this article focuses on the EU–India bilateral relations on energy and climate. The analysis finds strong opportunities for mutually beneficial cooperation on low carbon development, a potential that has not yet been realized. The stimulating and accelerating impact that multi‐level reinforcement could have in the energy and climate relations between the EU and India has not been exploited by either side yet. The various forms of cooperation that include the national government and the states in India offer more room for linkages which might move the Indian/European climate cooperation ahead further. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  April 18, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1749   open full text
• Multi‐level Reinforcement in European Climate and Energy Governance: Mobilizing economic interests at the sub‐national levels.
  Martin Jänicke, Rainer Quitzow.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. April 18, 2017
  This article explains the relatively successful performance of the European Union (EU) in climate and energy governance by two factors: (1) multi‐level reinforcement and (2) the mobilization of economic interests at different levels of governance through low‐carbon industrial policy. The article adds to the literature by further developing existing arguments on multi‐level reinforcement in climate and energy policy. We stress the point that economic co‐benefits of climate protection have been successfully mobilized at all levels of governance, including the sub‐national level, in recent times. This is illustrated by examples from pioneer countries as well as laggards and waverers in terms of national climate and energy policy. While it is far from certain whether the EU will indeed deliver the needed CO2 reductions to reach its internationally agreed targets, this paper, nevertheless, highlights why the EU system of climate governance remains relatively robust in light of the various challenges it currently faces. © 2017 The Authors. Environmental Policy and Governance published by ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

  April 18, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1748   open full text
• The Multi‐level System of Global Climate Governance – the Model and its Current State.
  Martin Jänicke.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. April 18, 2017
  Multi‐level global governance was introduced at the United Nations summit in Rio in 1992 as a new model to achieve a broad global mobilization of different actors in sustainable development. This model has been extended to climate governance. It has become a global system with its own inherent logic, dynamics and stabilization mechanisms. This article deals with the systemic dimension (the architecture) of global multi‐level climate governance across levels and sectors. It refers to the model and its practical implementation at different levels. The text poses four hypotheses: (1) the global multi‐level system of climate governance can be regarded as a structure which offers opportunities for ambitious innovation‐based climate strategies; (2) each level of the global system has its own specific responsibilities, challenges, opportunities and mechanisms for lesson‐drawing; (3) the main lesson to be learned is to make use of the co‐benefits characteristic to climate mitigation; and (4) the system's multi‐sectoral and multi‐actor structure provides additional opportunities to address such co‐benefits and to mobilize different interests in the pursuit of climate policy objectives. After outlining these hypotheses in more detail, the article will then conclude with a set of policy recommendations. © 2017 The Authors. Environmental Policy and Governance published by ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

  April 18, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1747   open full text
• Discourses, Narratives and Purposeful Action – Unraveling the Social–Ecological Complexity within the Brahmaputra Basin in India.
  Navarun Varma, Arabinda Mishra.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. March 20, 2017
  Issues of disaster and governance in the Brahmaputra Basin of India have been part of different debates within the epistemic boundaries. This study of a social–ecological regime shift, from a prosperous paddy cultivated region within the north bank of the Upper Brahmaputra Valley to a sediment deposited wasteland, unravels the complex relations between narratives of a problem and purposeful action. It is found that policy and practice solutions may not always be grounded in the problem situation but can be shaped by wider discourses and social learning. The study illustrates the continuation of engineering solutions without deeper understanding of their influence on social dynamics, the typification of community behaviour with an ignorance of cultural legacies, and a lack of prioritization of adaptation needs in the novel social–ecological conditions of the region. The conceptual frameworks of flood control debates contribute to distinct discourses influencing policy and praxis, while the discontented riparian community is motivated, by actors influenced by identity and space politics, towards political autonomy. Such influences of opposing discourses may reinforce the narrative of a trust gap between the Indian polity and its Northeast Region. The study further identifies a latent capacity for flexibility in the community, which requires more attention from policy and praxis to explore management solutions in such a complex social–ecological system. The paper argues for science, policy and practice engagements in such contexts and the use of transdisciplinary heuristics for their design to facilitate shared understanding. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  March 20, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1745   open full text
• Sustainability and the Governance of the Financial System: What role for full reserve banking?
  Inge Røpke.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. March 20, 2017
  The financial crisis demonstrated the importance of money and finance for the key concerns of ecological economics: inequality, wellbeing and the conditions for sustainability transitions. To cope with the combined challenge of economic and environmental crises, one of the most popular governance proposals within the ecological economics community is to introduce full reserve banking, where retail banks are required to fully back demand deposits with reserves of government‐issued money. Banks can have separate investment activities where they lend funds from time deposits and equity capital, but they are no longer allowed to create new money. In principle, money creation is left to the state and the central bank. Proponents argue that such a system would increase economic stability, remove the undue profits that banks earn due to money creation and make this money available for social purposes instead. However, the idea has met substantial criticism from Post‐Keynesians, who are seen as natural allies of ecological economics. The purpose of this paper is to explore the usefulness of the proposal as a response to the combined challenge of governing economic and environmental crises. First, the roots of the present economic crisis are sketched out, and the key ecological economic concerns related to the crisis are outlined. Then, the main arguments in the debate on full reserve banking are explored, concluding that an intermediate position that combines tough restrictions on finance with increased public money creation is a better option. Finally, the discussion is put into a broader perspective. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  March 20, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1753   open full text
• Preadaptative Transactions and Institutional Change: Wolf‐critical activism in southwestern Finland.
  Juha Hiedanpää, Jani Pellikka.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. February 24, 2017
  Finland has had problems protecting the grey wolf (Canis lupus) for decades. Over the past few years, the government of Finland has taken several steps to improve its policy on wolves. In this paper, we explore the grassroots activism that institutional adjustments have triggered. This work builds on ethnographic presence in two southwestern Finnish wolf territories. Theoretically, we draw from institutional theory and use transactions as the unit of analysis. We identify four ways in which wolf‐critical civil society has provided an institutional basis for particular changes: (i) questioning the purity of the wolf, (ii) making scientific evidence fallible, (iii) producing negative emotional effects and (iv) maintaining strong policy pressure against the presence of the wolf. In the discussion, we explain how these modifications have functioned. Actors critical of the wolf have exercised the politics of disturbance, produced various epistemic cues and created conditions for reframing existing rights and the emergence of new ones. Due to these bottom‐up preadaptive transactions, wolf‐policy‐related institutional adjustments have, in many respects, taken on volitional and spontaneous features. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  February 24, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1754   open full text
• Using Social Network Analysis to Monitor and Assess the Effectiveness of Knowledge Brokers at Connecting Scientists and Decision‐Makers: An Australian case study.
  C. Cvitanovic, R. Cunningham, A‐M. Dowd, S.M. Howden, E.I. Putten.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. February 21, 2017
  Despite growing rhetoric regarding the potential benefits of using knowledge brokers in relation to environmental challenges and decision‐making processes, the evidence in support of such claims is mostly anecdotal. This is, in part, due to the lack of established methods to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of knowledge brokers. To address this gap we assess the utility of social network analysis (SNA) to evaluate the effectiveness of knowledge brokers in connecting scientists and decision‐makers. Specifically, using a case‐study approach, we undertake longitudinal SNA over a 12‐month period to evaluate the extent to which the knowledge broker developed networks between producers and users of knowledge across different organizations. We also undertook a qualitative survey of scientists (n = 29) who worked in the same organization as the knowledge broker to understand the extent to which the knowledge broker increased the impact of scientific research for decision‐making purposes. Results show that the knowledge broker developed an extensive stakeholder network of 192 individuals spanning over 30 organizations. The results of the SNA found that over time this network increased in density and became more cohesive, both key elements underpinning successful knowledge exchange. Furthermore, the qualitative survey found that the knowledge broker also had a positive impact in other ways, including helping researchers understand the operating environments within decision‐making agencies and the best approaches for engaging with specific decision‐makers. Thus, this study demonstrates the value of SNA for evaluating knowledge brokers and provides empirical support for the use of knowledge brokers in the environmental sector. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  February 21, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1752   open full text
• Evaluating Conditions for Integrated Water Resource Management at Sub‐basin Scale. A Comparison of the Flemish Sub‐basin Boards and Walloon River Contracts.
  Hannelore Mees, Cathy Suykens, Ann Crabbé.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. January 09, 2017
  Integrated water resource management (IWRM) has long been advocated in academia and politics but appears difficult to pursue in practice. Defenders of IWRM call for governance institutions adapted to hydrological boundaries, but these would be at odds with existing administrative ones. In this paper, we investigate how coordination platforms at sub‐basin scale can contribute to IWRM. Most IWRM literature focuses on the catchment scale. It is however acknowledged by several authors that coordination is also needed at a lower level. Through document analysis and semi‐structured interviews, a comparison is made of the Flemish sub‐basin boards and the Walloon river contracts, two types of coordination platform in different regions of Belgium. Belonging to the same federal state, they form valuable cases to compare divergent systems rooted in similar administrative settings. A number of key factors appear to contribute to the effectiveness of the coordination platforms, as it is perceived by their stakeholders. These factors are a clear but flexible legislative framework, (financial) support of a higher government rather than command‐and‐control steering, the personal commitment of their coordinators, an independent status of their staff, a sense of urgency and a good connection with civil society and the wider public. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  January 09, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1736   open full text
• The Impact of Resource Protection on the Transformation of Property Regimes: The cases of Moose hunting and Cod fishing in Norway.
  Sigurd Rysstad, Bernt Aarset.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. January 06, 2017
  Moose and cod, two traditional natural resources in Norway, exhibited remarkable growth rates in biomass beginning in the 1950s (moose) and 1990s (cod). We explore the evolution of governance institutions for these two resource systems, utilizing a combined longitudinal and comparative approach. We propose that the evolution of species‐specific property regimes paved the way for public governance institutions. While the institutional set‐ups of the property regimes differ for cod and moose resources, responses to critical resource conditions include limitation of access and withdrawal, and increased transferability. The development of the institutions governing these two resources develops towards closure along similar lines set off by endogenous incidents, but the processes are not historically coordinated. We argue that a closed proportional cooperative creates a relative stability in the management of both common pool resources. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  January 06, 2017   doi: 10.1002/eet.1744   open full text
• Decisions at Street Level: Assessing and explaining the implementation of the European water framework directive in Sweden.
  Mikael Sevä, Annica Sandström.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. December 12, 2016
  This study addresses the role of street‐level bureaucrats in water management and examines what factors influence the implementation of the programme of measures that are part of the European Water Framework Directive. The impact of two factors – the bureaucrats' policy understandings and their implementation resources – on implementation is examined through a qualitative case study at sub‐national level in Sweden. The results verify the critical role of these bureaucrats as only one‐third make decisions, or take action, based on the programme of measures. The results further suggest that the bureaucrats’ understandings of how coherent the policies are, and whom they consult in cases of uncertainty, are important. The implementing bureaucrats perceive policy as coherent and have rich networks of advice, including responsible government authorities, while the non‐implementing bureaucrats experience significant policy incoherencies and have sparse advice networks. Thus, policy‐makers can support implementation by adjusting policy and by improving existing, and organizing new, resources to provide these bureaucrats with guidance. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  December 12, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1734   open full text
• Contemporary Challenges in Environmental Governance: Technology, governance and the social licence.
  Coco Cullen‐Knox, Richard Eccleston, Marcus Haward, Elizabeth Lester, Joanna Vince.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. December 12, 2016
  The process through which societal actors can exert direct influence on the behaviour of organizations has gained increasing attention over the past two decades and is increasingly referred to as ‘social licence’ or ‘social licence to operate’. This paper documents the rise of social licence and analyses the relationship between information and communication technology (ICT), governance and the social licence. We argue that contemporary social licence and the increasingly prominent role societal actors have in private governance has been facilitated by technological innovation in the fields of media and communications, allowing interest groups to have a far greater reach, and direct interaction and engagement with the public, other interest groups and the industries concerned. Now, a larger population can rapidly contest traditional practices regardless of national borders, the issue concerned or the actors involved. The unpredictable, dynamic and subjective nature of social licence has prompted concerns regarding legitimacy of stakeholders, the information they disseminate and outcomes they promote. Subsequently, in an attempt to maintain political and corporate legitimacy, business interests are demanding more adaptable regulatory regimes. These political dynamics are resulting in the proliferation of network style governance that can adapt and cope with changing information, attitudes, values and beliefs. As a result a new era of experimentation and trialling alternative governance regimes has been born. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  December 12, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1743   open full text
• Developing Environmental NGO Power for Domestic Battles in a Multilevel Context: Lessons from a Slovenian case.
  Romina Rodela, Andrej Udovč, Magnus Boström.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. December 05, 2016
  Many have discussed the crucial role that environmental nongovernmental organizations (ENGOs) have played in the implementation of nature protection policies across European member states. However, there are important differences in the opportunity structures among new and old member states that influence how ENGOs can act and undertake activities. This article seeks to clarify the role of ENGO capacity building within the context of multilevel environmental governance and focuses on a case in which Slovene ENGOs mobilized against the siting of 80 windmills in a natural area suggested for protection under the EU Birds and Habitats Directive. The dispute involved ENGOs seeking to pursue nature protection objectives against state authorities who prioritized green energy infrastructural development. The article analyses the mobilization strategies pursued and the combination of material, cognitive, social and symbolic resources used. The results suggest that these resources had to be mobilized and organized along both horizontal (domestic) and vertical (international) axes, and that this combination appears key in advancing an environmental protection agenda. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  December 05, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1735   open full text
• Mainstreaming Payments for Ecosystem Services in the Global Water Discourse.
  Marianne Henkel.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. December 02, 2016
  In recent years, awareness of ecosystem ‘services’ to human society has increased significantly. With it, economic tools for their conservation have gained attention in international environmental governance discourses, including in the global water discourse. The present paper uses a discourse analytical approach to trace how payments for ecosystem services are increasingly mainstreamed into the discourse on integrated water resource management (IWRM). Notably, international organizations with an environmental or conservation mandate draw on the environmental principle of the IWRM paradigm to raise concern for water‐related ecosystem services, and on the notion of water as an economic good to suggest payments for their conservation. While some actors and practices of the IWRM discourse have endorsed the extended storyline, it has been received reluctantly by most of the central actors in the global water platform. The Green Economy discourse spurred by the Rio + 20 conference has given the mainstreaming process a new dynamic. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  December 02, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1730   open full text
• Corporate Strategies in Environmental Governance: Marine harvest and regulatory change for sustainable aquaculture.
  Irja Vormedal.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. December 01, 2016
  Focusing on Marine Harvest ASA, the world's largest salmon producer, this article examines the role of corporations in promoting sustainable aquaculture and regulation, exploring why a leading multinational may choose to adopt and implement a proactive sustainability strategy. It develops a neo‐pluralist model for conceptualizing drivers behind proactive strategy formation, and finds that a company‐specific combination of simple and mixed motives linking profit‐maximization and risk calculations to a longer‐term normative sustainability agenda can explain why corporations become entrepreneurs for sustainability. It concludes with some reflections on implications of the findings for understanding business in environmental governance more broadly. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  December 01, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1732   open full text
• On the Benefits of Using Process Indicators in Local Sustainability Monitoring: Lessons from a Dutch municipal ranking (1999–2014).
  Ludger Niemann, Thomas Hoppe, Frans Coenen.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. September 30, 2016
  The sustainability performance of cities is subject to an ever‐growing number of monitoring tools. While most initiatives work with outcome indicators that are generally associated with limited direct policy relevance, a minority of tools focuses on sustainability‐related processes and particularly local government policies. In this article, we explore the benefits, limitations and conditions under which this approach can function. While several process‐oriented tools offered to European local governments have lacked participation and foundered, the Local Sustainability Meter (LSM) has been widely used in the Netherlands, with close to 90% of all Dutch municipalities participating since 1999 in some of its multi‐year editions. An evaluative case study presented in this article shows that the LSM stimulated competition for policy performance, conceptual learning and the strengthening of local governance and inter‐municipal networks. The LSM's design choices of combining voluntary, transparent self‐assessments at periodic intervals with public rankings and awards proved to be an effective – and economic – way of disseminating sustainability policies. Its limitations include an inherent focus on generic, standardized policy prescriptions and little knowledge on actual sustainability outcomes. These findings are relevant for policy‐makers and developers of (local) sustainability monitoring tools. This study contributes to the growing literature on (i) sustainability policies and (ii) municipal monitoring and ranking tools. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  September 30, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1733   open full text
• Applying Governance Principles to Systematic Conservation Decision‐Making in Queensland.
  Milena Kiatkoski Kim, Louisa Evans, Lea M. Scherl, Helene Marsh.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. August 31, 2016
  The literature on the science‐policy interface suggests that stakeholders' perceptions of environmental planning and decision‐making processes can affect the uptake of conservation plans. Despite calls for more and better stakeholder engagement in conservation planning there is currently no empirical evidence on participants' perceptions of such processes. We asked participants of a conservation planning process and other key informants to evaluate their engagement experiences using normative governance principles (legitimacy, inclusiveness, fairness, accountability, integration, adaptability, transparency and capability). We analysed a large‐scale case‐study of species prioritization in Queensland, Australia. Conceptually, our systematic use of governance principles to interrogate perceptions of engagement showcased the utility of this analytical approach to uncover important issues influencing science‐policy uptake. Empirically, we showed that there remains considerable debate about how a normative conservation planning process should be. Our data revealed different interpretations of species prioritization, ranging from a deliberative process to define priorities in biodiversity conservation, to a technical, expert‐based process. Matters of ‘who’ was included affected stakeholders' perceptions of species prioritization. Perceived limitations of ‘how’ the process was conducted were also important, affected by the: (1) institutional culture of the Queensland Government; (2) lack of transparency; (3) limited flexibility to incorporate both emerging data and participants' suggestions in programme management; and (4) limited capability for implementation. These empirical data support existing evidence from studies in the broader field of collaborative planning. We draw from this literature to suggest how conservation planners can overcome the barriers to the uptake of prioritization priorities identified in or research. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  August 31, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1731   open full text
• Scale Implications of Integrated Water Resource Management Politics: Lessons from New Zealand.
  Jeffrey McNeill.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. August 18, 2016
  Successful integrated water resource management (IWRM) is predicated on increased stakeholder participation and achieving environmental outcomes by locating decision‐making at the catchment scale of management. However, geographic scale impacts opportunities for participation and privileges some actors within the functional and spatial scope of decision‐making. Accordingly, rescaling may merely reconfigure rather than redistribute power. With its dual national and regional management of freshwater based on river catchments, New Zealand's experience of integrated environmental management provides insights for wider theory and practice. In response to recent significant freshwater quality decline from agricultural non‐point discharges over the last two decades and related public concern, the national government and regional councils have redefined participation constellations at national and regional government levels. This paper compares stakeholder diversity and policy effectiveness of regulatory agencies and collaborative initiatives at both national and regional levels, using the Manawatu River catchment as a case study. It detects low participator diversity within regulatory agencies, but relatively high policy salience. In contrast, the collaborative forums' low policy salience, despite their high participator diversity, raises questions about the substantive value of non‐regulatory collaborative initiatives. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  August 18, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1719   open full text
• River Management and Stakeholders' Participation: The case of the Rhone River, a fragmented institutional setting.
  Christian Bréthaut.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. August 18, 2016
  There have been many authors who have examined the question of participation and the extent of its influence in water management. The empowerment of stakeholders in decision‐making processes has been a major issue in this field. The involvement of different types of public actor can be enacted in different manners and depends strongly on how the decision‐making process works in reality, on the extent to which actors are truly able to be active in this new participatory process and on who holds the responsibility for its implementation. These variables underline the various obstacles that face the implementation of a true intersectoral participation, one that successfully involves all water users. This article uses the case study of the Rhone River to explore the issues of public participation within a transboundary river where no international basin organization has been able to successfully regroup the different initiatives. I consider this example to be particularly interesting, as it allows for a comparison between different arenas that are not linked, yet are active within the same river basin. In acknowledgement of the increasing number of participatory initiatives, the article highlights and considers the difficulties associated with the implementation of participation within and between fragmented participation arenas. This article proposes an analysis of the different participation arenas of the river through the lens of three analytical variables: social efficiency, substantial efficiency and procedural efficiency. The focus turns to the impact of such a participation structure and questions the increased number of arenas in which stakeholders participate regarding watershed management. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  August 18, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1718   open full text
• Transboundary Cooperation in European Water Governance – A set‐theoretic analysis of International River Basins.
  Nicolas W. Jager.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. August 18, 2016
  The pursuit of more integrated water resource management based on hydrological boundaries (i.e. river basins) poses significant challenges for domestic environmental governance, let alone in situations where rivers transcend national borders. This paper examines which conditions of governance (and beyond) favour cooperative transboundary river basin management practices under the European Water Framework Directive. This directive, with its detailed procedural provisions for (international) river basin management planning, offers an excellent test bed to investigate and assess the factors and mechanisms of transboundary river basin management. Postulates of neo‐liberal theory of international cooperation, drawn from international relations, help to identify relevant conditions for analysis, covering the two dimensions of state interests and transaction costs. Results of a qualitative comparative analysis show that transaction costs have a strong mitigating influence on the occurrence of cooperative river basin planning. However, reduced transaction costs alone do not suffice for states to enter into cooperation, but the latter have to be activated by a favourable incentive structure, i.e. high problem pressure or legal or domestic incentives. While these insights hold for most cooperative river basin districts, a few basins that follow a contradictory pattern without reduced transaction costs deserve further attention. The findings shed further light on the influence of contextual factors in shaping water governance. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  August 18, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1717   open full text
• Policy Diffusion in the Context of International River Basin Management.
  Florence Metz, Manuel Fischer.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. August 18, 2016
  This paper deals with policy diffusion across countries in the context of collaborative river basin management. Borrowing from the literature on policy diffusion and ‘smart strategies’ of small European Union member states, we argue that policy diffusion is fostered by structural and agency‐related factors. We illustrate our theoretical ideas with a case study on the new Swiss policy on micropollutants in surface waters. Based on a rich set of documents and interviews with key actors, we show that the integration of Switzerland into formal and informal transnational networks fosters the diffusion of its micropollutants policy to other Rhine riparian countries. In addition, we analyse agency‐related factors favouring policy diffusion in river basins, such as a country's pioneer role, its expertise, the fact that its policy is in line with general policy goals in other countries and the political acceptance of the policy at home. Our analysis suggests that policy diffusion can be an important phenomenon in integrated water resources management. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

  August 18, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1716   open full text
• In the Eye of the Beholder: Network location and sustainability perception in flood prevention.
  Jörg Balsiger, Karin Ingold.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. August 18, 2016
  The aim of this paper is to investigate how sustainability perceptions are emergent properties of collaborative networks in flood governance in Switzerland. In recent decades, the impact of global warming and multiple stresses on water regimes has influenced the design of new approaches to flood risk management, especially in Western Europe. The use of non‐structural measures such as planning tools and watershed campaigns indicates a change from technocratic to more integrated flood governance perspectives. Flood governance is increasingly influenced by the principle of sustainability, understood as stronger horizontal integration of its social, economic and environmental dimensions. The paper examines the integration of sustainability in the design of flood prevention and policies, suggesting that integration relates to participating actors’ perceptions of sustainability and that these perceptions are reflected in network structures. Focusing on four regional case studies, we use survey data and social network analysis to investigate how actors relate to each other and how they rank sustainability indicators. Results show that sustainability perceptions differ strongly across cases, and tend to be more balanced (assigning equal importance to environmental, economic and social indicators) within and sometimes even across actor types and sectors. We find that while actors in central network positions tend to have more balanced sustainability perceptions, context‐ and project‐specific factors impact sustainability perceptions even more. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  August 18, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1715   open full text
• Collaborative Water Resource Management: What makes up a supportive governance system?
  Cheryl Boer, Joanne Vinke‐de Kruijf, Gül Özerol, Hans Bressers.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. August 18, 2016
  Collaboration is increasingly seen as an important aspect of successful water management, and yet it remains insufficiently understood. This paper examines how collaboration is influenced by the governance system that guides and organizes the related actions and interactions. Building upon an existing governance assessment tool, this paper provides the basis for predicting how supportive (or restrictive) a governance system will be towards collaboration, according to eight different governance system classes. The validity of this framework is reflected upon in case studies from five countries: Mexico, the Netherlands, Canada, Romania and Turkey. The collaborative processes in Mexico, Romania and Turkey are embedded in restrictive governance systems and show low levels of collaboration. The governance system in the Canadian case is assessed as neutral and shows a medium level of collaboration, whereas the governance system in the Netherlands shows high levels of collaboration and is assessed as supportive. The results are encouraging, as the case studies demonstrate the predicted influences of a governance system on collaboration. Yet, the case studies also highlight the potential importance of characteristics of the collaborative process and collaborating actors. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  August 18, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1714   open full text
• Water Management Across Borders, Scales and Sectors: Recent developments and future challenges in water policy analysis.
  Karin Ingold, Manuel Fischer, Cheryl Boer, Peter P. Mollinga.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. August 18, 2016
  Integrated water resource management (IWRM) is widely accepted and has been implemented though international, national and regional water management guidelines. Nonetheless, concrete implementation of IWRM gives rise to new questions for policy analysis. Scholars interested in water regulation, the design of effective and efficient policy instruments, and structures of participative and multi‐level policy processes face challenges regarding research design, concepts and empirical approaches. This special issue integrates research about regional, national and transboundary policy perspectives on water management in seven countries, four continents and two transnational water bodies. From the six articles presented in this special issue, we learn more about how to define integration, to think about borders and scales and to theoretically and empirically study collaborative management in water policy analysis. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  August 18, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1713   open full text
• How Does Hybrid Governance Emerge? Role of the elite in building a Green Municipality in the Eastern Brazilian Amazon.
  Cecilia Viana, Emilie Coudel, Jos Barlow, Joice Ferreira, Toby Gardner, Luke Parry.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. August 05, 2016
  Decentralized governance can facilitate the participation of non‐government actors in natural resource management. Yet efforts to increase participation can also enhance the power of existing elites. Here, we analyse the role of landowning elites in developing and operating a hybrid governance arrangement in response to the decentralization of anti‐deforestation policy in the Brazilian Amazon. We employ a framework that permits examination of the role played by different actors, the rationale that promoted collaboration in the first place, and the distribution of power that shapes the still evolving governance arrangement. By engaging state and non‐state actors in a hybrid governance partnership, the local landowning elite in Paragominas, a municipality in the Eastern Brazilian Amazon, successfully achieved the specific goals set by federal policies to be removed from a high deforestation ‘Red List’. Yet the local governors, together with the rural elite, transformed the crisis generated by inclusion in the Red List into an opportunity to shift the rural economy on a path towards more legalized large‐scale agriculture. By aligning production and conservation objectives, the project attracted medium and large landowners, but also failed to prevent − or potentially exacerbated − the further marginalization of smallholders. Rural elites can effectively mobilize hybrid government arrangements in pursuit of their own interests while also producing wider benefits such as a more stimulated urban economy and strengthened environmental compliance. However, inclusion of more marginalized populations in this process remains a severe and largely unaddressed challenge. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  August 05, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1720   open full text
• The Indignados as a Socio‐Environmental Movement: Framing the Crisis and Democracy.
  Viviana Asara.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. August 05, 2016
  This study analyses the framing processes of the Indignados movement in Barcelona, as an exemplar of the latest wave of protests, and argues that it expresses a new ecological–economic way out of the crisis. It finds that the movement was not just a reaction to the economic crisis and austerity policies, but that it put forward a metapolitical critique of the social imaginary and (neo)liberal representative democracy. The diagnostic frames of the movement denunciate the subjugation of politics and justice to economics, and reject the logic of economism. The prognostic frames of the movement advance a vision of socio‐ecological sustainability and of ‘real democracy’, each articulated differently by a ‘pragmatist’ and an ‘autonomist’ faction within the movement. It argues that frames are overarching outer boundaries that accommodate different ideologies. Ideologies can nevertheless also be put into question by antagonizing frames. Furthermore, through the lens of the Indignados critique, the distinction between materialist and post‐materialist values that characterizes the New Social Movement literature is criticized, as ‘real democracy’ is connected to social and environmental justice as well as to a critique of economism and the ‘imperial mode of living’. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  August 05, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1721   open full text
• The Role of Trade Associations in Environmental Compliance Under Limited Enforcement: The case of small businesses.
  Eungkyoon Lee, Chan Su Jung, Jooyoung Kwak.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. August 05, 2016
  Although a substantial body of research has considered the role of non‐state actors in establishing regulatory policies, relatively little research has focused on the influence of such actors at the implementation phase. To fill this gap in the literature, we extend the research on compliance motivations and institutional theory by exploring the role of trade associations in facilitating environmental compliance of small businesses, an area in which the problem of limited enforcement is particularly acute. Using data from dry‐cleaning facilities, we investigate the ways in which a trade association contributes to improvements in environmental performance among its members. The results reveal that the trade association can promote compliance by helping its members to become familiar with regulatory requirements and to develop technical capacity to meet them. Based on the findings, we propose ways to increase the practical involvement of non‐state actors to compensate for enforcement shortfalls. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  August 05, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1723   open full text
• The Gold Rush: The popularity of the Gold Tier in Leed Certification.
  Pavel Sandoval, Aseem Prakash.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. August 05, 2016
  Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification is the most prominent voluntary environmental program for built environments. It has four tiers: Platinum, Gold, Silver and Certified. As of 2015, in the United States, 14% of certified buildings are in the Certified tier, 33% in the Silver tier, 45% in the Gold tier and 8% in the Platinum tier. Why is the Gold tier the most popular although it is neither the least expensive option nor the most environmentally friendly one? To investigate this subject, we conducted interviews with owners of 144 properties across 27 US states and Washington, DC. We find that program design, specifically requirements/points for certifying to a specific tier, influences benefits–costs for certifying to different tiers. Other factors driving tier choice include the region in which the property is located, prior experience of the builder/owner with a particular LEED tier, the availability of subcontractors and the norms for leasing time frames. Finally, the nomenclature of different LEED tiers also shapes the value perception. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  August 05, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1724   open full text
• Biodiversity Governance from a Cross‐Level and Cross‐Scale Perspective: The case of the Atlantic Forest biome in Brazil.
  Claudia Oliveira Faria, Alessandra Magrini.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. August 05, 2016
  Biodiversity has gained international relevance with the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). An important signatory of the agreement, Brazil is a megadiverse country with vast biomes. Internally, the Brazilian federative organization is characterized by discrepancies between the jurisdictional scale and natural boundaries. From a governance perspective, this article analyzes how political administrative bodies deal with biome subsets, using the Atlantic Forest biome as reference. The problem was researched through the dynamics between scales and levels, considering the action of governmental and non‐governmental actors in the process, in the context of an adaptive approach. To overcome the mismatches between the federative structure and the biome, we present the ‘governance of scales’ model, which proposes articulation between the spatial scale and jurisdictional scale, through the institutional and management scales. Previous experiences of the Brazilian government in harmonizing watersheds and the coastal region with federalism enhance the feasibility of our biome‐level proposal. The model is a useful contribution to biodiversity governance in favor of novel arrangements to improve the fit between social and ecological systems. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  August 05, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1728   open full text
• The Governance of Climate Change Adaptation Through Urban Policy Experiments.
  Eric K. Chu.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. August 03, 2016
  Climate change is increasingly posing risks to infrastructure and public services in cities across the global South. Building on ideas of policy experimentation at the nexus of institutional and transition theories, this paper assesses six climate change adaptation experiments across the cities of Surat, Indore and Bhubaneswar in India to uncover the politics behind how experiments are conceived of, implemented, and supported in light of local development needs. Through employing both embedded and cross‐case comparative methods, I argue that policy experiments are often framed around achieving tangible urban economic benefits and maximizing specific project complementarities, which allow emerging adaptation priorities access to established policy directives and funding streams. However, I conclude that despite being arenas for testing new ideas, quantifying climate and development co‐benefits, and engaging private and civil society actors, adaptation policy experiments must be coherent with urban political economic contexts in order for them to affect sustained, equitable and transformative programmatic change. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  August 03, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1727   open full text
• ‘Frame Conflicts’ in Natural Resource Use: Exploring Framings Around Arctic Offshore Petroleum Using Q‐Methodology.
  William Davies, James Van Alstine, Jon C. Lovett.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. August 03, 2016
  Environmental and natural resource issues are often framed in multiple ways by different stakeholders. Given their complexity, how these issues are framed can diverge significantly, leading to ‘frame conflicts’. Frame conflicts have implications for decision makers when addressing socio‐ecological problems; this is especially the case for Arctic offshore petroleum. Q‐methodology is used to explore framings found across a group of stakeholders on the issue of Arctic offshore petroleum development, to empirically demonstrate the extent of frame conflicts and to explore possible bridges for consensus between these framings. The issue was framed in various ways: a global sustainability concern, a development panacea for Arctic communities, an issue where economic reality clashes with environmental idealism and an issue centred on local sustainability concerns. Despite significant divergence across framings, some potential bridges of consensus were evident, centring on ideas of traditional livelihoods, the importance of emphasizing ‘human’ aspects of the debate and the inherent risks involved in Arctic offshore petroleum. The implications and challenges of frame conflicts around Arctic offshore petroleum are discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  August 03, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1729   open full text
• Civil Society Organizations’ Experiences of Participative Environmental Mainstreaming: A Political Systems Perspective of a Regional European Polity.
  Paul Chaney.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. July 20, 2016
  This paper addresses a lacuna in the literature on environmental policy integration by exploring civil society organizations' (CSOs) experiences of participative environmental mainstreaming – a policy imperative to embed environmental concerns in all aspects of policy‐making. A raft of international treaties and laws require this to be operationalized through knowledge exchange and critical engagement between governing elites and exogenous groups. Findings reveal how CSOs’ participation is shaped by electoral politics, party dynamics, veto players and strategic bridging. Respondents also questioned whether mainstreaming is more concerned with legitimation, performativity and the appearance of participative policy‐making than with outcomes. The wider contribution of the study is three‐fold: it reveals the issues and challenges facing CSOs, it underlines the need for adaptive engagement strategies and it shows the contingent nature of state attempts to foster civil society participation in environmental policy‐making. © 2016 The Authors Environmental Policy and Governance published by ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

  July 20, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1725   open full text
• Regulating Automakers for Climate Change: US Reforms in Global Context.
  Mark J. Richards.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. July 20, 2016
  US President Barack Obama's first major domestic climate policy achievement was the enactment of a cluster of environmental policies regarding automotive firms, in particular significant increases in fuel economy standards. Considering automakers' long history of opposition to environmental regulations in the US, Obama's achievement poses an intriguing research puzzle: how was the US able to enact environmental policy regarding the automotive industry? This article considers conventional explanations of policy adoption but also examines whether globalization, including compliance with global regulations, as well as global competition that left US manufacturers in a weakened economic and political state, influenced firms to acquiesce to environmental regulation. This article finds that globalization concerns motivated nearly all firms to acquiesce to the new policies. Policy enactment was facilitated by conditions within the industry, including global competition and production, technological developments, compliance with carbon and fuel economy regulations across the globe, and the financial and political weakness of domestic firms. Conventional explanations also help to explain policy enactment. Where executive authority existed, President Obama enacted policy via the executive branch rather than working with Congress. Policies created by the passage of legislation in Congress were shaped by presidential leadership, partisan control and outside events. Finally, policymakers built coalitions of support among domestic automakers, labor, environmental and consumer groups, and the public. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  July 20, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1726   open full text
• Municipal Governance and Sustainability: The Role of Local Governments in Promoting Transitions.
  Nora Smedby, Maj‐Britt Quitzau.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. July 18, 2016
  This research addresses local governance for building energy efficiency. In order to turn an increasingly proactive environmental policy agenda at subnational levels into practice, local governments experiment with new forms of governance. One important policy area in this regard is building energy use, often addressed through urban development projects. Such initiatives provide important insight into the role that local governments may play in terms of pushing developers from mainstream building practices towards the uptake of more radical energy efficient solutions by enabling socio‐technical translation. The analysis is based on two case studies from Sweden and Denmark, where the local governments have actively sought to challenge mainstream building practices through a combination of different modes of governing. It is shown how this combination of different modes of governing at the local level provides several translation entries for local governments seeking to foster sustainability transitions. The article concludes that more attention should be directed towards translation as part of the practical environmental governing at the local level. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  July 18, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1708   open full text
• Striking the Balance Between Renewable Energy Generation and Water Status Protection: Hydropower in the context of the European Renewable Energy Directive and Water Framework Directive.
  Jonida Abazaj, Øystein Moen, Audun Ruud.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. June 29, 2016
  This article addresses the theoretical and practical challenge faced by the European policy community and Member States trying to simultaneously pursue renewable energy and environmental goals, as incorporated in the EU Renewable Energy Directive and the Water Framework Directive. Through the case of hydropower, which is today at a crossroads between being a renewable electricity source − answering to climate change and energy security concerns − and a local environmental challenge in the light of degradation of river ecosystems and local biodiversity, the article explores the way renewable energy and water protection objectives are integrated inside the Common Implementation Strategy at the EU level. Based on document analysis and interviews, the mapping of the different frameworks shows that old conflicts and controversies related to the hydropower technology have been reopened and reframed to accommodate both the issue of energy security and the discourse on EU sustainability and climate change. Conclusions reveal that despite the creation of a multi‐stakeholder platform for negotiation and collaboration, the Common Implementation Strategy fails on several occasions to explain how to achieve the right balance and leaves unclear what specifically has to be integrated and to what degree. Hence, given the plurality and diversity of values, interests and concerns in relation to hydropower and goals of the Water Framework Directive, a prioritization between water, climate and energy policy goals might be needed, with the possibility of having real winners and losers of the integration process. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  June 29, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1710   open full text
• Do Non‐State Perspectives Matter for Treaty Ratification and Implementation? The case of the European Consultation on the Nagoya protocol.
  Amandine Orsini.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. June 29, 2016
  This article investigates what happens when governmental actors foster the participation of non‐state actors (NSAs) in treaty ratification and implementation decisions. NSAs, being non‐governmental organizations, business groups, citizens, or research institutions, among others, represent interests that will be ultimately impacted by policy choices. While governments have long consulted them on an ad hoc basis, a ‘deliberative turn’ happened in the 2000s to encourage their involvement, for greater legitimacy and transparency through, among others, the use of public consultations. This proactive turn raises questions about public consultations: are such instruments effective? Do they encourage new thinking? Do they matter for final decisions? This article answers these questions by investigating, using lexicometry as main research tool, the public consultation organized by the European Commission in 2011 before the ratification of the Nagoya Protocol on access and benefit sharing by the European Union in 2014. The results are mixed. Although the studied public consultation favoured the expression of small national NSAs, the process remains poorly inclusive. NSAs did not propose any fresh ideas on the access and benefit sharing issue and their final influence on European decision‐makers is blurred by the diversity of interests expressed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  June 29, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1712   open full text
• Low Carbon Governance: Mobilizing Community Energy through Top‐Down Support?
  Marianna Markantoni.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. June 17, 2016
  Community energy makes an important contribution to sustainable energy generation, reduction and management, and is a desirable feature of a low carbon future. Renewable community energy is increasingly gaining momentum even in the centralized UK energy market. The challenge of low carbon transitions is faced by multiple territorial governments, and requires inclusive governance arrangements in which a combination of actors work together to implement community strategies towards a climate‐resilient future. Low carbon governance is a multi‐level and (co‐)evolving process, especially in the complex interactions between actors of the core, inner periphery and civil periphery. The devolution of power within the UK has enabled Scotland to establish an ambitious policy agenda for renewable energy. By exploring an established national community energy programme, this study examines the interplay among different actors and looks into how multi‐level governance can be strengthened. This paper combines multi‐level and evolutionary governance theory to understand the extent to which top‐down initiatives facilitate community renewable energy projects and help drive wider system transformations. It concludes that in an evolving policy environment, top‐down support for community energy is a necessary motivator. This requires the state to play a dominant role in directing low carbon transitions, while acting in concert with non‐state, local and regional actors. If communities are to benefit from energy transitions, wider policies must be aligned with community needs, otherwise community energy will be pushed to the margins of the next energy revolution. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  June 17, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1722   open full text
• Elusive Practices: Considerations on limits and possibilities of environmental policy for sustainable consumption.
  René John, Melanie Jaeger‐Erben, Jana Rückert‐John.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. April 20, 2016
  The Earth Summit on Sustainable Development in 1992 brought about a fundamental shift in the mandate of environmental policy. How to protect the environment and nature from citizens was no longer the main issue. Rather, the focus was how to organize majorities among citizens for a collective effort on a societal transformation towards sustainability. The environmental effects of citizens’ everyday routines of consumption came into focus and ways of influencing them were sought. In this paper, one of the strategies German environmental policy employs for observing the everyday consumption of citizens is analyzed. How this approach has evolved during the last decades will be shown, as well as shortcomings of the current approach. Drawing on considerations from theories of social practice, three kinds of reason for these shortcomings are discussed. The first one lies in an ambivalent (or paradoxical) relation of environmental policy‐makers to consumers’ ‘rationality’. The second reason is related to the first and refers to the different horizons of consumers’ everyday practices and practices of environmental policy. The third reason is rooted in the excessive and unrealistic demand on environmental policy that accompanies the sustainability mandate. The paper concludes by suggesting a social innovation‐oriented policy as a way of connecting political goals to actual changes in consumption practices. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  April 20, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1706   open full text
• Normality against Sustainability – Mobility practices of well‐to‐do households.
  Riikka Aro.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. April 20, 2016
  By focusing on the daily and leisure mobility of well‐to‐do people in Finland, this study contributes to the discordant discussion on the sustainability of well‐to‐do consumers, whose consumption levels are relatively the highest, and concerns whether they are both aware of environmental matters and willing to pay for environmental protection. The interview analysis revealed that, despite general knowledge of environmental issues, sustainability is not relevant to daily practices, and the well‐to‐do studied here are not to any significant degree engaged in sustainable mobility practices, but in a complex organization of daily life. This study also shows that, while there is a shared understanding of saving money and saving time, ‘living according to one's means’ and having more money results in more travel, for instance. Furthermore, repetition and being used to a certain way of doing things resist change in ‘normal’ mobility practices, such as car‐driving and travel by plane, to which dispersed and incoherent policy measures, as well as the inconvenience of alternatives, further contribute. Doing sustainability is mostly viewed as an inconvenience not contributing to personal or family well‐being, and as requiring time. Allocating time for it is not prioritized when organizing a hectic professional life and active leisure time. These findings set a further challenge for the pursuit of sustainable mobility, as they accentuate the need to recognize the forceful nature of ‘normal’ practices co‐evolving with technologies and policies in transforming the unsustainable matters of course, as well as the need for coherent, strong and integrated policy measures. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  April 20, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1705   open full text
• Dirtying Linen: Re‐evaluating the sustainability of domestic laundry.
  Luke Yates, David Evans.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. April 20, 2016
  In tackling and negotiating responsibility for anthropogenic climate change, governments and businesses are increasingly concerned with shaping ‘consumer behaviour’, understood broadly as the ways in which people acquire, appropriate and appreciate goods and services. One intervention considered successful in this respect has been that of encouraging the low‐temperature washing of laundry in the UK in the last decade. This paper draws on data from a quantitative survey of laundry practices conducted in Britain in 2013 (N = 1502) in order to situate the intervention, and the phenomenon of low‐temperature washing, in its wider socio‐cultural context. Our starting point is that laundry habits are a useful example of a household practice in which changes in consumer behaviour have occurred, yet which continue to be increasingly environmentally problematic. Our analysis examines the use of washing machines and the temperature at which people do their laundry in detail; however, it also explores the broader processes through which clothing and other items become designated ‘dirty’ and go on to become ‘clean’. We argue that, in contrast to the well‐documented hegemonic position of the washing machine in UK homes, there is much diversity in how households organize the other tasks involved in doing laundry, particularly in separating, sorting and drying, with important implications for energy use. To conclude, we reconsider low‐temperature washing as an intervention, and outline some policy implications of a more thorough understanding of how laundry, and domestic consumption more generally, is currently handled in the UK. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  April 20, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1704   open full text
• Why are Food Practices not (More) Environmentally Friendly in France? The role of collective standards and symbolic boundaries in food practices.
  Sophie Dubuisson‐Quellier, Séverine Gojard.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. April 20, 2016
  Despite concern about environmental issues, the majority of French households do not adopt eco‐friendly practices. We propose a practice theory approach, enriched by key concepts from Bourdieu (distinction) and Lamont (symbolic boundaries), to understand the links between individual practices and collective frameworks. Drawing on an ethnographic study of 30 households in France, we explore food practices and the way people describe them. Our results are twofold: first, individuals see eco‐friendly practices as strongly related to specific groups and normative standards, from which they may want to distinguish themselves. Even when people display eco‐friendly practices, they associate them with other rationales. Second, because eco‐friendly practices are not widely valued, they do not provide the same rewards as the implementation of other standards that are more consensual. We draw some practical implications for public policies from these results. A desegmentation of eco‐friendly practices might prove useful, allowing them to be associated with wider social groups and to convey more collective positive meanings. Moreover, a large proportion of eco‐friendly practices are in continuity with what individuals are already doing. Their implementation could benefit if it were made coherent with other practices, rather than being portrayed in public discourse as requiring a radical change. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  April 20, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1703   open full text
• Policy and Governance for Sustainable Consumption at the Crossroads of Theories and Concepts.
  Margit Keller, Bente Halkier, Terhi‐Anna Wilska.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. April 20, 2016
  This introductory article of the special issue compares different conceptual underpinnings of efforts to make the everyday activities of consumers more sustainable. As social practice theory (SPT) is the main theoretical foundation of the articles collected here, we outline its strengths and limitations, when compared with the dominant individual‐oriented behaviour change approach, and we focus on theories of planned behaviour, social marketing as well as ‘choice architecture’, based on behavioural economics. This article analyses SPT's usefulness, particularly from the applied point of view for policy‐makers and social change programme designers. In the final section we provide some recommendations. These consider the need for greater reflexivity and experimentation with the practices of policy‐ and programme‐making and the building of coalitions of ‘distributed interveners’. They also relate to the need for more focus on consumers' workplace practices alongside domestic practices and analysis of and intervention in the material environments and objects in which social practices are embedded. Finally, they are concerned with the identification of moments of transition in consumers' lives and they focus on the ‘transition practices’ that familiarize people with their new life situations. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  April 20, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1702   open full text
• Increasing the Use of Evaluation Through Participation: The experience of a rural sustainable development plan evaluation.
  María‐Angeles Díez, Beatriz Izquierdo, Eduardo Malagón.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. March 31, 2016
  In recent decades, the use of evaluation has been one of the main concerns of both academics and practitioners, and there has been much controversy throughout the evaluation literature. Different perspectives of evaluation can determine the way evaluation findings are used and the contribution of evaluation to individual and organizational learning is conditioned by stakeholder participation. In this article, our main hypothesis is that stakeholder participation increases evaluation significance, ownership and utilization and, as a consequence, participatory evaluation approaches improve programme governance. We focus on the evaluation of the Rural Sustainable Development Plan in the Basque Country, a context that reveals a complex institutional network (at regional and local level) with a limited tradition of evaluation. To enhance the full scope of participatory evaluation, this article: (i) briefly reviews the theoretical discourse on evaluation utilization; (ii) describes the evaluation context (rural development policy and its governance); (iii) presents the evaluation model as applied to the mid‐term evaluation of the Basque Rural Sustainable Development Plan; and (iv) analyses the use of the evaluation findings and processes according to four dimensions, namely information generation, knowledge generation, orientated‐action utilization and orientated‐policy utilization. Finally, we provide guidance to improve knowledge about evaluation use, participation and good governance, which could be all considered as basic tools for solid institutionalization of sustainable development strategies. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  March 31, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1711   open full text
• Landscape Perceptions and Social Evaluation of Heritage‐Building Processes.
  Alberto Rodríguez‐Darias, Agustín Santana‐Talavera, Pablo Díaz‐Rodríguez.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. March 30, 2016
  According to the European Landscape Convention, landscapes are how populations perceive and identify their territory. The evaluation of these landscapes and their preservation processes depends on a complex interaction of economic, socio‐demographic and cultural variables. In this paper, we present the results of a quantitative and qualitative study on the influences that gender, place of birth, occupation, income, level of education and proximity of residence to a protected environmental area have on people's evaluation of the process to declare a national park on the island of Fuerteventura (Canary Islands). The results show that the degree and type of involvement with the territory are the most significant variables related to the evaluation of such a process. These variables are essential to consider when reaching agreements with different groups of stakeholders in ‘step zero’ of the declaration of a protected area. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  March 30, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1709   open full text
• Beyond Mandated Participation: Dealing with hydropower in the context of the water framework directive.
  Judith Feichtinger, Michael Pregernig.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. March 24, 2016
  This article examines public–private interactions in the implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD). Empirically, the study analyses the processes of master planning in the highly contested arena of hydropower in Austria and Bavaria. While the WFD foresees various legally required, ‘mandated’ types of participation, the instrument of master plans was sought and employed as an additional participatory mechanism to develop strategies for mitigating water pressures caused by hydropower. In theoretical terms, the article contributes to the debate on participatory governance and public–private interactions. An analytical framework is developed and applied that recognizes four forms of public–private interaction: state governing, consultative governance, collaborative governance and lobbying. The study shows that in Bavaria the planning process showed some elements of consultation in the early phases, but later on governmental actors backed out and conventional state governing prevailed. In Austria, state governing and traditional lobbying were found to be the dominant patterns of interaction throughout the process. Neither water administration nor hydropower stakeholders opted for more far‐reaching forms of collaboration. The low levels of participation observed in both case study regions can be explained, on the one hand, by the strategic motivations and interests of the involved actors and, on the other hand, by the distinctive politico‐historical context with special discursive dynamics in energy and climate policy. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  March 24, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1699   open full text
• From Risk Governance to City–Citizen Collaboration: Capitalizing on individual adaptation to climate change.
  Christine Wamsler.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. February 24, 2016
  Urban societies are increasingly affected by climatic variability and extremes. In theory, adaptation policy creates the conditions needed to support autonomous adaptation – or deliver public adaptation if autonomous adaptation fails to develop. However, little attention has been given to autonomous adaptation by private households and individuals, and how it is taken into account in cities’ strategic adaptation planning. Against this background, this paper examines the synergies between measures taken by city authorities and citizens, and, more specifically, how public adaptation planning enhances or inhibits private (individual) adaptation. Based on a literature review and an in‐depth study of German municipalities, existing types of city–citizen interaction are systematized. The results show that targeted city–citizen collaboration for climate change adaptation is practically non‐existent. City authorities rarely pay sufficient attention to financial and structural aid for individual adaptation. Conversely, the available municipal support for individual adaptation has little take‐up by members of the public. Furthermore, urban policy and planning often counteract collaboration and the implementation of measures that meet citizens’ capacities and needs. The paper concludes that improving city–citizen collaboration for adaptation co‐production is an important step in fostering transformative adaptation, if the barriers and driving forces identified in the study are addressed. The framework that is presented advances theory on city–citizen interactions for adaptation co‐production, providing a basis for related analyses, action and further research. © 2016 The Authors. Environmental Policy and Governance published by ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

  February 24, 2016   doi: 10.1002/eet.1707   open full text
• European Climate Change Perceptions: Public support for mitigation and adaptation policies.
  Bjoern Hagen, Ariane Middel, David Pijawka.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. December 30, 2015
  This paper presents results from a large multi‐country study focusing on public perceptions of climate change and relevant mitigation and adaptation policies in Spain, Netherlands, UK and Germany. The purpose of this paper is two‐fold: first, to understand the nature of public perceptions of global climate change in different countries; and secondly, to gauge the public's support of climate change measures in terms of mitigation and adaptation policies. Our analysis shows high levels of public indecisiveness regarding the danger climate change poses, which source of climate change information to trust and whether to support any mitigation or adaptation strategies. The high levels of uncertainty present an opportunity to increase policy support and foster behavioural changes in the future through well‐designed communication programmes. Therefore, this study has identified several aspects that need to be considered in future communication programmes. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  December 30, 2015   doi: 10.1002/eet.1701   open full text
• Interagency Aspects of Environmental Policy: The Case of Environmental Health.
  Maya Negev.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. November 17, 2015
  National government agencies typically are fragmented into fields, such as health, environment, transportation, economy and agriculture. Yet, advancing environmental health (EH) policy requires collaboration across agencies. This paper maps instruments for interagency EH cooperation, explores EH policy dynamics in Israel and identifies implications for policy integration. Twenty‐six semi‐structured interviews were conducted with policy‐makers and other stakeholders, and two integration instruments were explored in depth: an interministerial committee and a parliamentary committee. The examination revealed that integration of EH considerations may occur in various policy‐making settings and is sensitive to other inhibiting and facilitating factors, e.g. power relations and political will. In this preliminary qualitative study, higher levels of integration in the policy process did not result in more integrated EH outputs. We conclude that integration of EH considerations can take many forms and levels of cooperation, but always requires attention to the local setting, specific inhibitors and evaluation of outcomes. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  November 17, 2015   doi: 10.1002/eet.1700   open full text
• Multi‐Level Environmental Governance: Exploring the economic explanations.
  Jouni Paavola.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. September 17, 2015
  Multi‐level environmental governance (MLEG) has become commonplace, yet few attempts have been made to explain in economic terms why it should have emerged. This article examines four economic explanations for MLEG. The first considers it as a solution for overcoming collective action challenges when a large number of actors are involved. The second explanation is that multiple levels of environmental governance may be needed to minimize governance costs. Thirdly, path dependence could explain MLEG. Fourthly, complex and multifunctional resource systems may generate ecosystem service flows that have benefit catchments of different size, and multi‐level governance solutions may be needed to link providers and beneficiaries. While they are to a degree complementary, the analysis suggests that the multi‐functionality explanation is the most nuanced one of them and offers the best diagnostic for governance challenges that an environmental resource system poses. © 2015 The Authors. Environmental Policy and Governance published by ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

  September 17, 2015   doi: 10.1002/eet.1698   open full text
• Climate Change Agenda at Subnational Level in Mexico: Policy coordination or policy competition?
  Jose Maria Valenzuela.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. May 30, 2014
  The paper analyses the political challenges and opportunities of advancing the climate change agenda in a developing country under constraints and channels imposed by divided authority at the vertical level and political fragmentation within the state. The articles focuses on historical and political institutional arrangements to approach the current framework of climate change agenda‐setting in Mexico, later analysing the potential changes to the outcomes due to the influence of an international climate change regime. On the one hand, the literature suggests that federalism poses serious limitations to government efficacy due to division of competences, and a similar argument is posed about presidentialism under a politically fragmented regime; on the second hand, transnationalism is depicted to enhance subnational state and non‐state actor leadership roles in many areas, including economic and environmental policy setting. Evidence shows that federalism and the political fragmentation of the presidential regime in Mexico has prevented the federal government from taking assertive steps to influence subnational governments, while some of the heads of politically relevant subnational governments have assumed policy leadership roles, enabled by transnational networks and the Kyoto climate change regime. This balance may change according to the nature of the post‐Kyoto regime, either strengthening the federal government if more responsibility on actions and disbursement is placed on national governments; or enabling subnational government to foster their position, if decentralized and transnational networks are strengthened. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  May 30, 2014   doi: 10.1002/eet.1638   open full text
• What Role for Public Participation in Implementing the EU Floods Directive? A Comparison With the Water Framework Directive, Early Evidence from Germany and a Research Agenda.
  Jens Newig, Edward Challies, Nicolas Jager, Elisa Kochskämper.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. May 23, 2014
  We examine the roles and functions of non‐state actor participation in implementing the EU Floods Directive of 2007 (FD). We draw on experiences with participation under the Water Framework Directive (WFD), because of important links between the two directives. Comparing the legal bases and the different functions for participation, we observe the paradoxical situation that while the WFD has fervently advocated public participation public interest has remained low, whereas the FD is less sanguine about participation despite citizens being potentially more affected by flood management issues – particularly given the current trend towards a ‘risk management’ approach under the FD. Our examination of current FD implementation in Germany reveals a considerable variety of participation approaches, as well as a general trend to ‘less’ rather than ‘more’ participation as compared with the WFD. The paper closes by discussing implications for future flood management planning and avenues for comparative research. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  May 23, 2014   doi: 10.1002/eet.1650   open full text
• Policy Deliberation and the Trading Zone Metaphor: Evaluating Expert Participation in the Reform of Finnish Waste Policy.
  Jarkko Levänen.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. May 23, 2014
  Policy deliberation is considered an integral part of good policy‐making. In many policy sectors, however, the processes of participation are not developed enough to support the potential for policy deliberation. Expert deliberation carried out as a part of a wider policy process creates a challenging situation because participants are simultaneously expected to solve policy problems collectively while coping with the diverse interests of various stakeholder groups. In this article, I evaluate expert participation in three sequences of a waste policy reformulation process. Two of the sequences represent formal expert participation and the third a more informal one. Of particular interest in the evaluation is the participants’ ability to produce novel solutions for politically sensitive policy problems. The analytical framework for the evaluation is built on the trading zone metaphor inspired by Peter Galison's work. The results of the study indicate that the formal sequences of expert participation were characterized by the strategic behaviour of the participants, which made knowledge networking and the generation of novel ideas difficult, whereas the more informal sequence that was organized around one issue at a time was more capable of producing solutions to long‐standing policy problems. Additionally, the sequences with more formal participation did not contain the elements of interactional expertise associated with successful knowledge networking. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  May 23, 2014   doi: 10.1002/eet.1651   open full text
• Rescaling Environmental Governance – the Influence of European Transnational Cooperation Initiatives.
  Dominic Stead.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. May 09, 2014
  The increasing transboundary nature of many environmental problems has not only elevated the importance of international environmental governance it has also contributed to shifts in the scales at which these problems are addressed and at which environmental programmes are implemented. The result is that environmental governance is experiencing rescaling which often involves a combination of changes including shifts in powers to other layers of decision‐making, the emergence of new scales of policy intervention and alternative forms of intervention, and the appearance of new actor constellations. The emergence of ‘soft’ policy and programming spaces – multi‐area sub‐regions in which strategy is being made between or alongside formal institutions and decision‐making processes – is another phenomena associated with rescaling. This paper charts the rescaling of environmental governance in part of Europe – the Baltic Sea Region (BSR) – and examines the influence of European macro‐regional cooperation initiatives on the changing nature of environmental governance in the region. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  May 09, 2014   doi: 10.1002/eet.1649   open full text
• Barriers to Resource Efficiency Innovations and Opportunities for Smart Regulations − the Case of Germany.
  Nino David Jordan, Thomas Lemken, Christa Liedtke.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. April 04, 2014
  There are a variety of economic and ecological benefits to increased resource efficiency. Social, institutional and technical innovations can all contribute towards efficiency increases. Companies face different hurdles in fostering such innovation. Small and medium‐sized companies are subject to specific constraints that may prevent them from benefiting from innovation‐induced resource efficiency improvements. Qualitative interviews were conducted among German small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) and intermediaries to identify barriers for resource efficiency innovations and to elaborate a policy mix at the federal level that could help SMEs to overcome these. We found five major barriers to resource efficiency innovations in German SMEs, comprising deficits in innovation culture, inter‐firm cooperation along the value chain, finance, awareness and take‐up of government funds. We propose a distinct policy mix as a response to this situation. The policy mix comprises the interlocking and synergistic elements of government funding schemes, innovation agents and innovation laboratories. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

  April 04, 2014   doi: 10.1002/eet.1632   open full text
• Towards a Systematic Framework for the Analysis of Environmental Policy Integration.
  Hens Runhaar, Peter Driessen, Caroline Uittenbroek.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. April 04, 2014
  Environmental policy integration (EPI) refers to the incorporation of environmental concerns in non‐environmental policy sectors. EPI aims to avoid conflicts between environmental and other policy objectives and to enhance environmental policy by directly targeting the driving forces of environmental degradation. In practice, however, the potential of EPI has not been fully utilized. Scientific knowledge of EPI is found in several, largely isolated, bodies of literature (on EPI, climate policy integration and environmental impact assessment/strategic environmental assessment) and does not provide an adequate answer to the question of what EPI strategies work, where and why. A systematic framework based on comparative empirical research is required to contribute to more effective EPI strategies. In this paper we formulate a research agenda for the development of such a framework on the governance of EPI that is robust, i.e. builds on other theories of environmental governance and policy change and that envisages large‐scale, international comparative empirical analysis. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  April 04, 2014   doi: 10.1002/eet.1647   open full text
• Rescaling of Resource Governance as Institutional Change: Explaining the Transformation of Water Governance in Southern Spain.
  Andreas Thiel.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. April 04, 2014
  This paper develops a conceptual framework highlighting the functional and constitutional (two‐level) negotiation aspects of water governance rescaling, illustrated by the case of southern Spanish water governance reorganization for the Guadalquivir River Basin. The framework is derived from theories of institutional change and multi‐level governance. A necessary precondition for rescaling is changes in actor‐specific perceptions concerning how to best address priorities of water management through water governance. Predominant in rescaling is its coincidence with a contingent political majority of these actors enabling agreement on changes in governance conforming to existing constitutional rules for negotiation. Ultimately, in southern Spain, the constitutional setting prevented re‐scaling. It had initially been promoted by regional actors benefitting from a contingent political majority at the federal as well as at the state level. The paper highlights that, in the context of transformations of European water governance, in Spain supranational policy‐making is of low significance domestically. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  April 04, 2014   doi: 10.1002/eet.1644   open full text
• When is Participatory Local Environmental Governance Likely to Emerge? A study of collective action in participatory municipal environmental councils in Brazil.
  Frank Laerhoven.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. March 14, 2014
  Why is local environmental governance in Brazil shaped through the collective action of many, frequently interacting actors in some municipalities, whilst in others it does not take the form of deliberative and inclusive decision‐making? I address this question by zooming in on Brazil's Conselhos Municipais de Meio Ambiente (participatory municipal environmental councils). Through multivariate logistical regression (n = 5202), I show that a large business community, combined with ‘small local government’, adds significantly to the likelihood of finding participatory forms of solving environmental problems in a municipality, especially when communities have learned from prior experience with participatory policy‐making in other areas. Through multivariate linear regression (n = 1365), I establish that depth and breadth of participatory environmental governance processes is more likely to increase when, amongst other things, people have previous experience with other types of participatory council, and when there are fewer local government officials per capita. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  March 14, 2014   doi: 10.1002/eet.1646   open full text
• Non‐Governmental Organizations as Governance Actors for Sustainable Development: The Case of Green Building Councils.
  Sabine Sedlacek.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. March 14, 2014
  This article examines the role of non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) in environmental governance systems with a particular emphasis on non‐state market‐driven governance in the green building industry. Based on an extensive literature review, a conceptual framework of the function of NGOs in environmental governance is developed, focusing on five core aspects – role, power, accountability, legitimacy and acceptance – that define the position of NGOs in a governance system in relation to other stakeholders. The World Green Building Council's (WGBC's) global environmental governance movement has been identified as a dynamic market‐driven governance system. Thus, the paper explores the role of regional green building councils (RGBCs) listed in the WGBC's directory within this newly deployed governance system. The results confirm the proposition that RGBCs grow in their governance and third‐party role as they progress through the development stages proposed by the WGBC. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  March 14, 2014   doi: 10.1002/eet.1643   open full text
• Policy Learning and Central–Local Relations: A Case Study of the Pricing Policies for Wind Energy in China (from 1994 to 2009).
  Daphne Ngar‐yin Mah, Peter R. Hills.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. March 14, 2014
  This paper brings together the key concepts of policy learning and central–local relations to examine how the efficacy of sustainability policies can be improved, with a particular reference to pricing policies for wind energy in China. Based on our comparative case studies of three provinces, Guangdong, Shanghai and Xinjiang, we critically examine how central–local relations may facilitate or impede policy learning. Our analysis focuses on policy changes at the national level, including the move away from the tendering policy to a fixed‐price policy in 2009, and the diversity of local policy responses, which include a local fixed‐price policy in Guangdong, a two‐tiered model in Shanghai and a de facto fixed‐price policy in Xinjiang. We have three major key findings. First, we found that technical and conceptual forms of policy learning have taken place in China, but the progression towards the highest form of policy learning, social learning, is limited. Secondly, we found that the established fabric of central–local relations has created facilitating conditions for as well as limitations to the advancements towards social learning. A national policy framework, a multi‐level governance system, institutional arrangements for knowledge creation and learning, and a more participatory form of governance for civil society are some of the facilitating conditions. However, over‐centralization, the inertia against institutional changes and the failure to recognize the need for a more deliberative decision‐making process are identified as key barriers. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  March 14, 2014   doi: 10.1002/eet.1639   open full text
• A Green Star Fading? A Critical Assessment of Swedish Environmental Policy Change.
  Erik Hysing.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. March 14, 2014
  Frontrunner states have been shown to be highly important for the development and diffusion of progressive environmental policies. History shows, however, that frontrunner status is dynamic and that previous leader countries have become laggards. Here I assess recent policy changes in Sweden – a state widely recognized as an environmental frontrunner – arguing that environmental policy practice within areas prioritized by the Government (biodiversity, sustainable energy, the marine environment and climate change) has experienced high‐profile, and from a green perspective highly controversial policy changes. This policy development raises critical concerns for the future role of Sweden as an environmental frontrunner. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  March 14, 2014   doi: 10.1002/eet.1645   open full text
• Local Environmental Enforcement Constrained by Central–Local Relations in China.
  Ye Qi, Lingyun Zhang.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. March 14, 2014
  Environmental pollution has become a major health concern and has escalated to a major political issue in China. It has been identified that enforcement of environmental regulation is the weakest link in environmental protection. Local government is often the focus of study because of its legal obligation for enforcement under national environmental law, and for its significance in the complex and intriguing central–local relations in the Chinese government system. We propose an interpretative framework to explain the local environmental enforcement dilemma in China, based on an institutional approach. Local governments tend to underperform. We argue that the overall national institutional environment that defines central–local relations in both political and financial terms is key for explaining why local governments fail to meet their obligations. Local governments tend to promote economic growth and maximize tax revenue, by attracting external investment and protecting polluting businesses, at the expense of environmental quality. Inadequate disclosure of environmental data and occasionally intentionally distorting information obstruct public participation and supervision – a key factor for ensuring the accountability of local enforcement. The policy implications of this analysis are that central government, in its capacity as the rule‐maker, must take action to adjust the existing central–local relations with respect to the political promotion system and the tax‐sharing mechanism. In addition, more stringent procedures and standards must be made by central government regarding the disclosure of environmental data to enable effective public participation. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  March 14, 2014   doi: 10.1002/eet.1640   open full text
• ‘Going Green’?: The Limitations of Behaviour Change Programmes as a Policy Response to Escalating Resource Consumption.
  Susie Moloney, Yolande Strengers.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. March 04, 2014
  This paper contributes to a growing body of literature highlighting the limitations of behaviour change and the emergence of a social practice approach to reframe responses to escalating resource consumption. Drawing insights from interviews with Australian households and workshops with behaviour change practitioners, we demonstrate how the ‘Going Green’ discourse, which focuses on targeting individuals to participate in ‘easy’ sustainability actions, overlooks the majority of consumption implicated in everyday practices. This leaves unchallenged the complex ways in which our lives are becoming more resource intensive. We argue for an ontological framing of social change underpinned by theories of social practice. Rather than considering policies, regulations and infrastructures involving urban form, housing, transport and infrastructure provision as ‘external factors’ separate from behaviour, practice theories accord them integral status in the constitution of social order and change. This represents a more challenging agenda for practitioners and governments in shifting and transforming everyday life. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  March 04, 2014   doi: 10.1002/eet.1642   open full text
• Which Way Does the Wind Blow? Analysing the State Context for Renewable Energy Deployment in the United States.
  Miriam Fischlein, Andrea M. Feldpausch‐Parker, Tarla R. Peterson, Jennie C. Stephens, Elizabeth J. Wilson.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. March 04, 2014
  Wind power is an important low‐carbon technology and the most rapidly growing renewable energy technology in the US, but there is significant state‐by‐state variation in wind power distribution. This variation cannot be explained solely by wind resource patterns or US state policy and points to the importance of both local and central governance. We outline the national context for wind deployment in the US and then explore the sub‐national, state‐level factors shaping wind deployment patterns. We probe the socio‐political context across four US states by integrating multiple research methods. Through comparative state‐level analysis of the energy system, energy policy, public discourse as represented in the media and state‐level, energy policy stakeholders' perceptions we examine variation in the context for wind deployment in Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana and Texas. Our results demonstrate that different patterns of wind deployment and different debates about wind power have emerged in each locale. Participants across the different states appear to frame the risks and benefits of wind power in significantly different ways. We discuss the impact of risks and benefit frames on energy policy outcomes. The comparative assessment highlights the complex interplay between central and local governance and explores the significant socio‐political variation between states. The study contributes to the understanding of energy technology deployment processes, decision‐making and energy policy outcomes. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

  March 04, 2014   doi: 10.1002/eet.1636   open full text
• Leveling the Playing Field: Fostering Collaborative Governance Towards On‐Going Reconciliation.
  Melanie Zurba.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. December 28, 2013
  This paper looks at the potential for collaborative governance for land and resources to become a form of on‐going reconciliation in societies transitioning from past oppression and on‐going social injustice. Structural violence in the form of capacity disparities and policy configuration are explored in order to frame the discussion. Canada and South Africa are presented as two countries that have been going through different experiences in terms of transition, but have had similar experiences in regards to a need to foster new ways of working towards more equitable forms of governance. Here, much like reconciliation, governance is presented as a process, which under the right conditions can lead to relationship building and mutually desirable outcomes. This process creates a platform for establishing common ground, as well as the potential to negotiate solutions to structural violence. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

  December 28, 2013   doi: 10.1002/eet.1631   open full text
• Environmental Policy Can Happen: Shuttle Diplomacy and the Reality of Reg Neg Lite.
  Sara Rinfret, Jeffrey Cook.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. December 28, 2013
  In an era of congressional gridlock, innovation and pathways for the future of environmental policymaking are needed. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has long been an innovator in environmental decisionmaking, reconciling stakeholder differences. Yet, with the decline of negotiated rulemaking (‘reg neg’), the purpose of our examination is to offer insights into how a contemporary US EPA creates rules. This exploratory study examines original interview data from actors involved during the creation of EPA rules to suggest that a present‐day EPA uses a new approach, shuttle diplomacy, to develop rules. The findings from our research suggest that this new rule development method can help agencies that might operate in an adversarial environment to reconcile stakeholder differences while writing the language of a proposed rule before publishing a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. We argue that this new rule development model is important for understanding the next generation of environmental rulemaking, not only in the US, but internationally as well. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

  December 28, 2013   doi: 10.1002/eet.1641   open full text
• The Significance of the Non‐Timber Forest Products Policy for Forest Ecology Management: A Case Study in West Bengal, India.
  Somnath Ghosal.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. December 28, 2013
  A precise non‐timber forest products (NTFPs) policy can play an important role in the preservation of the forest resource base. By promoting systematic and sustainable harvesting of forest products, the exploitation of forest resources can be reduced and the socio‐economic status of marginal forest dwellers can also be improved, which will subsequently reduce illegal timber harvesting. In India, brief guidelines for the harvesting of NTFPs are placed in the Joint Forest Management resolution. However, these guidelines are not equally effective in all states because of micro‐level geophysical variances, forest–human relationships and the characteristics of the forests. Therefore, some south Indian states such as Tamil Nadu, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh have developed their own NTFP harvesting policy for the sustainable management of forests through the socio‐economic enhancement of forest dwellers. However, in West Bengal the central government's guidelines are still followed. This paper examines the need for a precise NTFP harvesting policy for the management of forests in West Bengal through the socio‐economic improvement of forest fringe tribal communities. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  December 28, 2013   doi: 10.1002/eet.1630   open full text
• Central‐Local Relations in French Energy Policy‐Making: Towards a New Pattern of Territorial Governance.
  François‐Mathieu Poupeau.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. December 28, 2013
  After a long period of centralization, local authorities have been taking a new place in the French energy sector. This revival began in the 1990s with the process of deregulation, which gave them new room for manoeuvre. This continued into the 2000s, when energy efficiency and climate change issues were set on the political agenda. This process led many practitioners and academic researchers to consider these two last decades as a turning point, which initiates a new model of governance, one that is far more decentralized than in the past. Here, we discuss this hypothesis and show that this recent ‘activism’ at local level associated with a change in State intervention has been leading to a new pattern of territorial governance in France that is not at odds with the past but rather is in continuity with it. Using the neo‐institutional approach developed by James Mahoney and Kathleen Thelen, we focus on three main dimensions that play a ‘homeostatic’ role: the production structure, ideas and institutional arrangements. This leads us to develop an interpretation of ongoing changes in terms of an ‘aggiornamento’ of the former pattern of governance, rather than any real breakdown. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  December 28, 2013   doi: 10.1002/eet.1637   open full text
• Understanding the Implications of Environmental taxes: The Case of the Danish Weight Based Packaging Product Charge.
  Enian Cela, Shinji Kaneko.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. August 14, 2013
  Packaging products, in particular those made from plastic, are playing an increasingly significant role in our everyday life. Because of the environmental issues associated with packaging, European countries, in particular EU member states, have long applied various policies to deal with this issue. One policy option that is rarely applied to packaging is taxation in the form of material levies or product charges. However, Denmark has applied product charges in the form of weight based tariffs since 1999. The purpose of the product charge is to stimulate a decrease in the demand for virgin packaging (packaging newly entering the market). This paper examines the effectiveness of Denmark's packaging charge, with a focus on non‐beverage plastic packaging. Applying a trade gravitation regression model incorporating import quantity as the dependent variable and a tax dummy amongst the explanatory variables, the analysis explores the effectiveness of the tax policy in reducing import demand. From a sample of 19 major exporters and an analysis covering the period between 1994 and 2007, we conclude that the product charge policy did not produce the desired effect. We conclude by suggesting that policy makers adopt a cautious approach to the adoption of environmental taxes. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  August 14, 2013   doi: 10.1002/eet.1608   open full text
• Growing Green Democracy? Barriers to Ecological Modernization in Democratizing States.
  Thomas O'Brien.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. August 14, 2013
  Ecological modernization has established an important position in the field of environmental politics. The adoption of technocratic solutions to environmental challenges is attractive to policymakers. Ecological modernization enables such an approach, in combination with mechanisms for participation and reflexive policy development. However, there are questions regarding the applicability of the concept to political contexts differing from those in the Northern European states in which it first emerged. This paper examines the challenges associated with adopting ecological modernization in the context of democratization and draws on analysis of the development of environmental politics in Bulgaria to illustrate the difficulties identified. The findings suggest that the adoption of ecological modernization during a period of democratization may lead to the hardening of closed technocratic policy‐making, limiting wider participation and preventing the development of stronger and more reflexive forms of ecological modernization. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

  August 14, 2013   doi: 10.1002/eet.1617   open full text
• When Policy Hits the Ground. An Empirical Study of the Communication Practices of Project Managers of a Water Board in Conversations for Collaborative Governance.
  P. Lems, N. Aarts, C. M. J. Woerkum.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. August 14, 2013
  Civil servants organize collaborations with private actors with the aim of developing policy outcomes that fit environmental policy frameworks, shaping the course and outcome of collaborations through their communication practices. To investigate these practices and their effect, we conducted a case study, shadowing project managers from a Dutch water board. We identified two distinct communication practices: frame incorporation and frame amplification. These practices respectively expanded or narrowed a process of collaborative governance, either purposefully by building social capital or unintentionally by distancing the conversation partner and his concern. The structural difference between these practices suggests that civil servants lack shared practices that foster collaboration. Interestingly, in neither practice do the civil servants discursively acknowledge their dependence on their conversation partner's support, and thus they deny that they are participating in a negotiation process: they claim that their conversation partner should cooperate. In effect, their conversation partners bypass the incorporation and amplification practices. The research suggests that, of the two practices identified, only incorporation builds the social capital that enables civil servants to switch to another approach in future interactions and start an integrative negotiation on problems and solutions. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  August 14, 2013   doi: 10.1002/eet.1618   open full text
• Compact City Development and the Challenge of Environmental Policy Integration: A Multi‐Level Governance Perspective.
  Rien Stigt, Peter P. J. Driessen, Tejo J. M. Spit.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. August 14, 2013
  Sustainable urban development entails integration of environmental interests into decision‐making at the local level. To achieve this, higher tiers of government may compel municipalities to explicitly consider environmental objectives or even prioritize them by demanding compliance with national standards, thus, at least theoretically, restricting local government's room to manoeuvre in balancing all relevant interests. This paper explores the extent to which national standards narrow the range of local options and what this means for sustainable urban development. Adopting a multi‐level governance perspective on three cases of inner‐city redevelopment, we find that environmental standards are either not problematically restrictive or, if they are, sectoral policy offers ways to circumvent them. From a sustainability perspective, this may lead to undesirable outcomes. A combination of approaches may solve this predicament. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

  August 14, 2013   doi: 10.1002/eet.1615   open full text
• Linking Environmental Citizenship and Civic Engagement to Public Trust and Environmental Sacrifice in the Asian Context.
  Myung H. Jin, Avrum J. Shriar.
  Environmental Policy and Governance. June 25, 2013
  Despite the increasing interest in collaborative governance, existing literature on the subject focuses mostly on what government can do for citizens while ignoring the roles of citizens. Utilizing data from the 2010 International Social Survey Program on an environment this study builds on previous work on the link between citizen participation and public trust by comparing the effects of environmental citizenship and other methods of civic engagement on trust in government and on citizens’ willingness to sacrifice for environmental causes. The main findings suggest that while environmental citizenship is generally a consistent predictor of both public trust in government and citizens’ willingness to sacrifice for environmental causes, civic engagement experience was significantly associated only with enhancing willingness to sacrifice for environmental causes. Implications are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

  June 25, 2013   doi: 10.1002/eet.1613   open full text