The vast majority of the world's scientists agree: we have reached a point in history where we are in grave danger of destroying Earth's life-sustaining capacity. But our attempts to protect natural ecosystems are increasingly ineffective because our very conception of the problem is limited; we treat 'the environment' as its own separate realm, taking for granted prevailing but outmoded conceptions of economics, national sovereignty and international law. Green Governance is a direct response to the mounting calls for a paradigm shift in the way humans relate to the natural environment. It opens the door to a new set of solutions by proposing a compelling new synthesis of environmental protection based on broader notions of economics and human rights and on commons-based governance. Going beyond speculative abstractions, the book proposes a new architecture of environmental law and public policy that is as practical as it is theoretically sound.

This innovative book is one of the first to conduct a systematic comprehensive analysis of the ideals and practices of the evolving green state. It draws on elements of political theory, feminist theory, post-structuralism, governance and institutional theory to conceptualise the green state and advances thinking on how to understand its emergence in the context of climate and sustainability transitions. Focusing on the state as an actor in environmental, climate and sustainability politics, the book explores different principles guiding the emergence of the green state and examines the performance of states and institutional responses to the sustainable and climate transitions in the European and Nordic context in particular. The book’s unique focus on the Nordic countries underlines the important to learn from Nordics, which are perceived to be in the forefront of climate and sustainability governance as well as historically strong welfare states. With chapter contributions from leading international scholars in political science, sociology, economics, energy and environmental systems and climate policy studies, this book will be of great value to postgraduate students and researchers working on sustainability transitions, environmental politics and governance, and those with an area studies focus on the Nordic countries.

This book is open access under a CC-BY license. The multiple purposes of nature – livelihood for communities, revenues for states, commodities for companies, and biodiversity for conservationists – have turned environmental governance in Latin America into a highly contested arena. In such a resource-rich region, unequal power relations, conflicting priorities, and trade-offs among multiple goals have led to a myriad of contrasting initiatives that are reshaping social relations and rural territories. This edited collection addresses these tensions by unpacking environmental governance as a complex process of formulating and contesting values, procedures and practices shaping the access, control and use of natural resources. Contributors from various fields address the challenges, limitations, and possibilities for a more sustainable, equal, and fair development. In this book, environmental governance is seen as an overarching concept defining the dynamic and multi-layered repertoire of society-nature interactions, where images of nature and discourses on the use of natural resources are mediated by contextual processes at multiple scales.

Yet many of its fundamental elements remain unclear in both theory and practice.

Despite its tiny size and seeming marginality to world affairs, the Central American republic of Costa Rica has long been considered an important site for experimentation in cutting-edge environmental policy. From protected area management to ecotourism to payment for environmental services (PES) and beyond, for the past half-century the country has successfully positioned itself at the forefront of novel trends in environmental governance and sustainable development. Yet the increasingly urgent dilemma of how to achieve equitable economic development in a world of ecosystem decline and climate change presents new challenges, testing Costa Rica’s ability to remain a leader in innovative environmental governance. This book explores these challenges, how Costa Rica is responding to them, and the lessons this holds for current and future trends regarding environmental governance and sustainable development. It provides the first comprehensive assessment of successes and challenges as they play out in a variety of sectors, including agricultural development, biodiversity conservation, water management, resource extraction, and climate change policy. By framing Costa Rica as an “ecolaboratory,” the contributors in this volume examine the lessons learned and offer a path for the future of sustainable development research and policy in Central America and beyond.

The common denominator of modern environmental governance is co-operation between public and private parties. Of course, co-operation is nothing new in itself. The novelty lies in its planned form. In co-operative environmental governance the parties commit themselves, through a more or less binding agreement, to resolve specific environmental difficulties. When co-operation is embedded in environmental policy, it becomes a means to achieve the environmental objectives of the state. The essays which make up this volume explore this new option in environmental governance: the nature of the approach, the preconditions and its chances of success. They take an interdisciplinary approach to the task, analyzing theoretical issues and practical experiences in a number of countries.

The idea of building an economy which supports sustainable development without degrading the environment has been widely debated and broadly embraced by politicians, civil servants, the media, academics and the public alike for several decades. This book explores the measures being trialled at various levels of governance in the European region to reduce the adverse impacts of human behaviour on the environment whilst simultaneously addressing society's economic and social needs as part of the intended shift towards a 'green' economy. It includes European case studies that scrutinise the efforts being undertaken at sub-national, national and regional tiers of governance to facilitate the transition to a low carbon economy. This book will be of interest to graduate students, researchers, practitioners, and policy makers working in environmental governance, European studies, environmental studies, political science, and management studies.

More than twenty years after the Bruntland Commission report, Our Common Future, we have yet to secure the basis for a serious approach to global environmental governance. The failed 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development showed the need for a new approach to globalization and sustainability. Taking a critical perspective, rooted in political economy, regulation theory, and post-sovereign international relations, this book explores questions concerning the governance of environmental sustainability in a globalizing economy. With contributions from leading international scholars, the book offers a comprehensive framework on globalization, governance, and sustainability, and examines institutional mechanisms and arrangements to achieve sustainable environmental governance. It: considers current failures in the framework of global environmental governance addresses the problematic relationship between sustainability and globalization explores controversies of development and environment that have led to new processes of institution building examines the marketization of environmental policy-making; stakeholder politics and environmental policy-making; socio-economic justice; the political origins of sustainable consumption; the role of transnational actors; and processes of multi-level global governance. This book will be of interest to students and researchers of political science, international studies, political economy and environmental studies.

Explores the growing role of global civil society and local environmental activism in the management and protection of the environment worldwide.

This book presents an overview of the field of environmental law and policies within the European Union, from theoretical foundations to major issues and applied governance solutions. Drawing on expertise from renowned academics and practitioners from different disciplines, EU Environmental Governance: Current and Future Challenges helps readers to understand the main legal, political and economic issues of environmental protection since the adoption of the Paris Agreement by the European Union in 2015, until the 2020 Brexit, European Green Deal and coronavirus outbreak. The authors examine a broad range of sensitive and topical environmental issues including climate change, air pollution, waste management and circular economy, nuclear waste, biodiversity, agriculture, chemicals, nanotechnology, the environmental impacts of trade and environmental conflicts, presenting both current insights and future challenges. Overall, this volume exposes the reader to a vast array of empirical case studies, which will bolster their training and help tackle the environmental challenges faced by Europe today. This book is a valuable resource for students, researchers and policymakers across a broad range of fields, including environmental law and policies, environmental economics, climate science and environmental sociology.