Governing sustainability: a dialogue between Local Agenda 21 and transition management

Since the 1990s, the local level of governance has become increasingly important in addressing the challenge of sustainable development. In this article, we compare two approaches that seek to address sustainability locally, namely Local Agenda 21 and transition management. Discussing both approaches along six dimensions (history, aim, kind of change, governance understanding, process methodologies, and actors), we formulate general insights into the governance of sustainability in cities, towns, and neighbourhoods. This dialogue illustrates two related modes of thinking about sustainability governance. We touch upon the importance of an integrated perspective on sustainability transitions through which sustainability is made meaningful locally in collaborative processes. We suggest that the explicit orientation towards radical change is a precondition for governing sustainability in a way that addresses the root causes of societal challenges. Governing sustainability should address the tensions between aiming for radical change and working with status quo-oriented actors and governing settings. We conclude that governing sustainability should be about finding creative ways for opening spaces for participation, change, and experimentation, that is, for creating alternative ideas, practices, and social relations. These spaces for innovation encourage a reflexive stance on ways of working and one's own roles and attitudes, thereby preparing a fertile terrain for actors to engage in change from different perspectives.     

PACE2016中国环境治理国际研讨会综述

PACE2016中国环境治理国际研讨会就中国环境政府治理、环境市场治理、环境社会治理以及环境治理结构展开了深入研讨并达成以下共识:大国模式下的环境政府治理面临着突出的"污染避难所效应"、"公平与效率的两难"和"多层次治理体系"等问题;不成熟市场经济条件下环境市场治理必然面临"要不要走环境治理市场化之路"的疑虑,相关研究表明市场手段作为有效的环境治理方式正在逐渐地打消此等疑虑;中国环境治理最主要的短板在于社会治理,提高公众参与度的主要挑战在于改变地方政府的态度,然而社会企业家是环境社会治理的希望;多元环境治理结构是中国环境治理的必然选择,政府引领、企业自觉、公众参与的制衡机制是关键。     

Simulative governance: on the collaborative narrative of civil society participation in the CDM stakeholder framework

The Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is often cited as an exemplar of new, hybrid forms of global environmental governance operating at the public–private interface. Practically, enacting this arrangement involves a wide range of non-state actors. This broad involvement is here assumed to mark a shift towards more polycentric and networked modes of governance in which agents collaborate as ‘stakeholders’ in the process of consensual rule-setting and implementation. Using post-political critique, the depoliticising effects of the stakeholder framework on civil society actors are interrogated, using formal and informal participation opportunities to raise concerns regarding specific CDM projects. The analysis suggests that the CDM’s collaborative narrative of stakeholding structurally fails to stimulate public (re)engagement and is, instead, a prime example of simulative governance that struggles to achieve the simultaneity of two incompatibilities: the participatory revolution and the post-political turn.     

Globalization’s limits to the environmental state? Integrating telecoupling into global environmental governance

Globalization entails increased interdependence and interconnectivities among distal regions and social-ecological systems. This global interregional connectedness – telecoupling – gives rise to specific sustainability challenges, which require new governance solutions. Moving beyond ‘scaling-up’ governance to address global environmental problems, and exploring the implications of telecoupling for state-led environmental governance, ways the state can effectively address telecoupled environmental issues both within and beyond national borders are addressed, drawing on the example of soy trade between Brazil and Germany. This builds on recent contributions to the literature on governance of interregional ecological challenges to elaborate potential policy and governance options, ranging from classical bilateral, multilateral, and international agreements, to information-based, economic, and hybrid governance modes. While telecoupled environmental problems create governance challenges related to scale, knowledge gaps, coordination, and state capacity, the state has an important role to play. To explore this further, interdisciplinary inquiry is required that includes but moves beyond the state.     

The Many Modalities of Social Networking: The Role of Twitter in Greens Politics

The popular microblogging service, Twitter, contains a variety of potential orientations—interpersonal, broadcast, news, advertising, public service, political, and so on—in its operation and applications. As an evolving social media platform, specificity and context are essential in understanding its significance and use-value. This paper investigates the multiple modalities of Twitter in the context of formal politics and, in particular, the Greens party in Australia. Presenting original evidence drawn from the Greens Members of Parliament and their advisers, it is shown how Twitter is mobilized in response to particular news agendas and stories, unfolding political events and processes, and an ongoing need for the Greens to speak simultaneously to committed environmentalists and the broader electorate. These uses reveal that Twitter is an important addition to the “media ecology mix” in the conduct of environmental politics, playing a direct role in political communication, strategies, and actions.     

河湖水环境问题及管理和治理模式

本文首先介绍了我国当前的河湖水环境现状,分析了我国水资源存在的一系列问题,主要问题包括水体污染和富营养化;河湖面积严重萎缩,河湖水的功能逐渐退化;难以降解的有机污染物污染量加大。有针对性地提出了改善我国河湖水环境的管理以及治理模式,进一步落实了保护河湖水环境工作,加强水资源周围生态环境的文明建设,实现河湖水环境的可持续发展。     

基于复合治理理论的基层应急管理模式优化*

为弥补传统基层应急管理模式的短板,解决信息壁垒、协调困难、公众参与不足等问题。从复合性视角出发,阐述复合治理理论内涵,探讨复合治理与应急管理在主体、思维、过程、空间、目标上的契合性,并进一步分析基层应急管理的现实背景和困境,进而构建基于复合治理理论的基层应急管理模式,阐明模式基本结构和工作流程,最终提出理念树立、平台搭建、机制保障、队伍建设、制度安排、文化营造、技术支撑方面的优化路径。结果表明:复合治理理论的应用可以加强基层应急管理能力,促进多元主体协同共治。     

生态文明治理体系和治理能力现代化的几个核心问题研究

生态文明治理现代化是国家治理现代化的重要组成部分,本文从国家治理现代化出发,分析了我国生态文明治理体系和治理能力现代化的概念与内涵,针对当前生态文明治理体系和治理能力存在的五个方面问题,提出了生态文明治理体系现代化需要坚持完善的生态环境保护、资源高效利用、生态保护修复、生态环保责任等四个重点方向,提出了生态文明治理能力现代化需要改革创新的领导能力、决策能力、法治能力、科学精准治理能力、基础保障能力、市场化治理能力、公众参与能力等七大关键领域,这是加快推进生态文明治理体系和治理能力现代化的迫切需求。     

Listing for change? Exploring the politics of relief lists in Bangladesh after Cyclone Sidr

Ideal notions of efficient aid are challenged continuously by realities on the ground in the wake of major disasters, such as dire needs, limited resources, and opportunism. This paper demonstrates how ‘relief lists’ can be productive entry points for a systematic inquiry into the pervasive politics of disaster assistance. Through an analysis of qualitative data collected during the five years after Cyclone Sidr struck Bangladesh on 15 November 2007, it examines how relief lists featured in both physical and phantom forms and then developed beyond their transparency-making aims, becoming elevated sites of struggle for post-disaster resources. Three list processes, selected to indicate the temporal, material, and spatial dynamics of relief encounters, are assessed in depth. Although recipients of cyclone relief appreciated its value, the paper argues that list politics also stimulated structures of vulnerability, including inequality. Gradually, relief, as governed after Sidr, also served to restore the differential vulnerability of the country's coastal poor.     

The importance of context for effective public engagement: learning from the governance of waste

This paper takes a new look at the importance of context – institutional and political – in effective public engagement processes. It does so through a rare comparative opportunity to examine the effectiveness of processes of public engagement in two UK waste authorities, where the same waste company was involved as both the primary contractor for the delivery of the waste management service (including new energy-from-waste facilities) and, furthermore, the same staff delivered the public engagement. Interrogating these cases affords the opportunity to place flesh on the bones of the sometimes ‘abstract’ skeleton of context. While engagement processes support effective local governance in an era of partnerships and deliberative democracy, the paper identifies that the methods adopted cannot be played out devoid of detailed understanding and response to local context, including the strength of partnership working between the public and private sector, the degree of political support for engagement, and the extent to which a traditional institutional paternalism still dominates.