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Imaginaries are increasingly recognised as influential in shaping climate knowledge and action and in fixing or unsettling particular visions of the future. Whilst the imbrication of discourse and materiality is key to the distinctiveness of the concept of imaginaries, attention has tended to focus on their symbolic and discursive aspects, overlooking the role of the material dimension. In this paper we seek to bring back the material into thinking about imaginaries by critically examining the relationship between climate imaginaries and the mediums through which they are produced and circulated. We argue that the medium is an active constituent of the productive work that imaginaries do. To construct this argument, we first distinguish the imaginary from associated debates around images and imagination, highlighting its theoretical utility in rebutting modernist dualism between the material and the ideal. Second, we propose the concept of ‘medium’ as a way of foregrounding the material dimensions of the imaginary without re-inscribing the binary between the virtual and the material or imputing an overly agentic or predetermined role for the latter. Deploying a co-productionist approach and foregrounding process of mediation, we signal the affordances and constraints of mediums in shaping climate imaginaries. Third, we provide a comparison between climate poetry and computerised climate scenario models to examine how each offers different potentials and limitations to the imaginaries that they co-produce, and how the medium matters to the production and circulation of climate change imaginaries. We conclude by outlining an emerging research agenda and highlighting some of the implications of attending to the role of the medium in climate change imaginaries for contemporary environmental governance debates.

Social-ecological fit has been a popular approach to assessing the connectedness between social and ecological systems in environmental governance. However, the role of projects in social-ecological fit has yet to be explicitly problematized and conceptualized. Given the centrality of projects - i.e. temporally limited organizations that bring various actors into collaboration to pursue clearly defined goals and tasks - in environmental governance, this is a serious shortcoming in the literature. In this paper, we fill this gap by drawing on the hitherto unconnected literatures on projectified environmental governance and social-ecological fit. We then assess the extent to which fit can be achieved in projectified environmental governance. To do this, we develop a novel framework for assessing the vertical and horizontal dimensions of social, spatial, and temporal fit and conduct an empirical study of the European Union’s LIFE Program and environmental projects funded by the program in Estonia. Our results suggest that the spatial and temporal fit of projects is contingent on social fit, i.e., the alignment of interests and needs of project-related actors. Frictions between various levels of decision-making also condition the possibilities of achieving fit horizontally across stakeholder groups and ecological systems as well as of sustaining project results over time. Highlights • Socio-ecological fit is a widely debated topic in environmental governance. • A critical analysis of the role of projects in social-ecological fit is currently lacking. • We explore social-ecological fit of Estonian EU LIFE projects. • The interconnectedness between different forms of fit needs to be addressed. • Pursuing socio-ecological fit is a multi-scale and multi-level effort.

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

Under the influence of international green trade barriers, export scale of China's heavily polluting enterprises is reduced. How to improve the export vitality and corporate image of polluting enterprises? Different from the existing studies, this paper focuses on green merger and acquisition (green M&A) of polluting enterprises which can quickly obtain clean enterprise resources, and compares the impact of different green M&A modes on export performance and export margin by refining the frequency, scale and geographical characteristics of green M&A. First, based on propensity score matching - double difference (PSM-DID) method, this paper finds that green M&A can increase export performance. The frequency and scale of green M&A are positively correlated with export performance. Geographic distance of green M&A enterprises is negatively correlated with export performance. Second, green M&A can increase export performance by promoting green innovation, government subsidies and bank financing capacity, and reduce export performance by increasing environmental governance costs. Third, by comparing different green M&A, this paper finds that horizontal green M&A can increase more exports than vertical green M&A. Forth, further compare the impact of green M&A on export binary margin, it is found that green M&A can promote export-expansion margin and has a U-shaped relationship on export-intensive margin. The conclusion is of great significance to improve export performance of polluting enterprises, and provides an empirical basis for adjusting green M&A strategy.

Across the globe, there is increasing interest in implementing circular approaches to urban sanitation and waste management to mitigate environmental challenges and promote sustainable business opportunities. In Latin America where 80% of the population live in urban areas, there is limited investigation into the enabling factors and governance barriers that are critical to implementing circular economy strategies in urban areas. This paper aims at assessing the governance capacity to implement resource recovery from organic waste streams in the municipality of Chía, Colombia, through applying the Governance Capacity Framework in a participatory process with local stakeholders. The findings highlight the importance of local initiatives for resource recovery that allow experimentation, raise awareness and foster collaboration, as well as mechanisms available for public participation in decision-making processes as enabling factors. Meanwhile, the inadequate monitoring and assessment of environmental strategies and policies, inadequate sharing of information among stakeholders and the relative low awareness of potential benefits of recovering resources from organic waste streams, especially among public sector actors, emerge as key barriers. Beyond Chía, the results provide insights on crucial factors for ensuring sufficient governance capacity in other urban areas in low- and middle-income countries which are considering circular approaches to urban sanitation and waste management. The findings also provide an empirical basis to advance the understanding of the governance conditions necessary for implementing resource recovery from organic waste streams, upon which further applications of the governance capacity framework along with participatory aspects in other similar urban contexts could build. Across the globe, there is increasing interest in implementing circular approaches to urban sanitation and waste management to mitigate environmental challenges and promote sustainable business opportunities. In Latin America where 80% of the population live in urban areas, there is limited investigation into the enabling factors and governance barriers that are critical to implementing circular economy strategies in urban areas. This paper aims at assessing the governance capacity to implement resource recovery from organic waste streams in the municipality of Chía, Colombia, through applying the Governance Capacity Framework in a participatory process with local stakeholders. The findings highlight the importance of local initiatives for resource recovery that allow experimentation, raise awareness and foster collaboration, as well as mechanisms available for public participation in decision-making processes as enabling factors. Meanwhile, the inadequate monitoring and assessment of environmental strategies and policies, inadequate sharing of information among stakeholders and the relative low awareness of potential benefits of recovering resources from organic waste streams, especially among public sector actors, emerge as key barriers. Beyond Chía, the results provide insights on crucial factors for ensuring sufficient governance capacity in other urban areas in low- and middle-income countries which are considering circular approaches to urban sanitation and waste management. The findings also provide an empirical basis to advance the understanding of the governance conditions necessary for implementing resource recovery from organic waste streams, upon which further applications of the governance capacity framework along with participatory aspects in other similar urban contexts could build.

Digital technologies play an increasingly important role in addressing environmental challenges, such as climate change and resource depletion. Yet, the characteristics and implications of digitalized environmental governance are still under-conceptualized. In this perspective, we distinguish three dimensions of governance: (1) seeing and knowing, (2) participation and engagement, and (3) interventions and actions. For each dimension, we provide a critical perspective on the shifts that digital technologies generate in governance. We argue against the assumption that the use of digital technologies automatically results in improved outcomes or in more democratic decision-making. Instead, attention needs to be paid to the wider political and normative context in which digital technologies are proposed, designed, and used as environmental governance tools. We conclude with key questions for academics and policymakers to broaden the debate on responsible design and use of digital technologies in environmental governance.

Urban-rural integrated development has been widely conducted in China, and plenty of resource consumption and environmental problems have arisen during this process. Meanwhile, the importance of environmental governance has been emphasized in social collaborative governance. Although existing studies have focused on the governance policies on urban and rural development, the residents’ participation willingness toward collaborative governance should not be neglected, especially in environmental governance. Accordingly, this study identified the determinants influencing the participation intention toward the collaborative environmental governance of residents in the Yangtze River Delta Region by a combined theoretical model, which added three decisive predictors from the theory of planned behavior to the norm-activation model. We collected 312 valid questionnaires and employed structural equation modeling for analysis. Results implied that, in order of significance, personal norm, behavioral attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control presented positive influences on behavioral intention. Personal norm was significantly underlain by awareness of consequence and ascription of responsibility, and the significant influence of awareness of consequence on behavioral intention was not demonstrated. This study proposes related managerial implications to improve public participation willingness regarding collaborative environmental governance during urban-rural integrated development processes in the Yangtze River Delta Region.

Innovations have the potential to help us address and overcome many of the challenges that agriculture is facing today. Yet, at the same time, they have the potential to create new, sometimes even more challenging, problems, especially when they are not governed in a sustainable way. Governing agricultural innovation sustainably requires understanding of all components that influence, and are influenced by, innovation processes, interactions across societal levels, and the normative and power dynamics that come together to shape the direction and outcomes of innovation processes. Hitherto, approaches to (agricultural) innovation and transition tend to specialize on a specific societal scale or sub-aspect of innovation or transition processes. In this article we aim to bring the strengths of some of the main approaches (Multi-Level Perspective, Agricultural Innovation Systems, Responsible Innovation, Innovation Management, Theory of Planned Behaviour) and insights from environmental governance literature together into a comprehensive framework. The framework describes seven key components and their interactions: macro context, governance system, immediate context, innovative and adaptive capacity of the actors, psychosocial factors, and the innovation process itself. Based on these, we present a subset of guiding questions that can be used diagnostically or for design purposes to support the sustainable governance of agricultural innovation processes.

Integrated water resources management (IWRM) has been central to water governance and management worldwide since the 1990s. Recognizing the significance of an integrated approach to water management as a way to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), IWRM was formally incorporated as part of the SDG global indicator framework, thus committing the UN and its Member States to achieving high IWRM implementation by 2030 and measuring progress through SDG indicator 6.5.1. This paper examines the extent to which the implementation of IWRM improves the sustainable management of water and the health of water-related ecosystems—a first-of-its-kind in terms of quantitative analysis on a global scale. To achieve this objective, we conducted regression analyses between SDG 6.5.1 (both IWRM (total score) and the dimensions of SDG 6.5.1) and key water-related environmental sustainability indicators: SDG 6.2.1a (access to basic sanitation), 6.3.1 (treated wastewater), 6.4.1 (water-use efficiency), 6.4.2 (water stress), 6.6.1 (freshwater ecosystems, although here the trophic state and turbidity variables were used) and 6.3.2 (ambient water quality). Our analysis covers 124 countries for all these SDGs, with the exception of SDG 6.3.1 and SDG 6.3.2, which cover 112 and 85 countries, respectively. Results show that IWRM—to different degrees—is mainly associated with the good status of water-related sustainability indicators, with the exception of water stress, water quality, and turbidity. We observe a strong impact of control variables such as governance arrangements, economic situation and environmental and geographical conditions. Lagged effects and the scope of the framework may also explain some observed variations in the degree of association. Our study highlights the importance of further uncovering the interlinkages between IWRM implementation and the achievement of water-related environmental sustainability. Overall, the results suggest that although IWRM implementation is primarily linked to sustainable water management and the health of water systems, context-specific factors should be taken into account when evaluating its effectiveness, to enable policy- and decision-makers to make the necessary adjustments to optimize its outcomes.

Recent research highlights the challenge of achieving environmental governance goals in the absence of collaboration among interdependent policy actors. This article explores factors contributing to the likelihood of “collaboration gaps” among actors who are interdependent because their jurisdictions overlap. Analysis of data on collaboration among organizations involved in wildfire risk governance in Oregon indicates that interdependent actors are more likely to collaborate. Despite this tendency, nearly 75 % of possible collaborations between interdependent actors were absent. In turn, these collaboration gaps tended to be brokered by third-party actors, especially those lacking the authority to manage land themselves and those for whom the benefits of brokerage may be more immediately apparent. Taken together, these findings shed light on actors’ strategies for navigating fragmented governance systems and highlight opportunities to improve risk mitigation outcomes by enabling greater coordination among interdependent actors.

Concerns with distributional justice invariably arise in environmental governance, especially in the conservation and management of common-pool resources. These initiatives generate an array of costs and benefits that are typically heterogeneously distributed. Distribution of these impacts in a way that is considered fair by local stakeholders is not only a moral imperative, but instrumental to achieving social and ecological success given perceived unfairness fosters conflict and undermines cooperation. However, understandings of local stakeholders’ conceptions of distributional fairness are rare because research often assesses distributional outcomes based on tacit assumptions about what constitutes fairness (e.g. equality). We examine what local stakeholders consider distributional fairness with respect to monetary benefits arising from a collective payment for ecosystem services scheme in a co-managed marine protected area in Fiji. In six villages associated with the co-managed marine protected area, we elicited individuals’ fairness judgements of five distributional justice principles: equality, need, and three forms of proportionality based on customary rights, fisheries opportunity-costs, and involvement in co-management. We examine how fairness judgements are associated with socio-demographic characteristics indicative of key identities, thereby building on socially-aggregated approaches typical of the nascent literature on perceived fairness. We find the rights-based principle was considered the ‘most fair’ and the opportunity-costs principle the ‘least fair’. Our findings challenge prevailing understandings of distributional justice in conservation and commons management, which favour the principles of equality or opportunity-cost. We also find that education was significantly positively related to fairness judgements of all principles, whilst wealth was significantly related to the equality and the opportunity-based principles. These results provide insights into how fairness judgements could be influenced by key elements of current social change in the Global South (e.g. increasing formal education, market engagement and wealth accumulation). Overall, our results suggest that fair environmental governance requires explicit identification of distributional fairness conceptions of those most affected by such initiatives, especially in a context of increasing globalisation of conservation knowledge and practice.

Indigenous peoples are often presented as natural allies in countering pressing environmental problems. The norm that depicts Indigenous peoples as environmental stewards has allowed international actors with different priorities to become involved in environmental projects that aim at ensuring both conservation and indigenous territorial rights. Previous research has emphasized that whereas this norm has opened up for indigenous participation in environmental governance, it is based on a limited understanding of indigenous needs and rights. This article analyses how the conflicting goals and trade-offs are contested in the localization of this norm in conservation projects in the Peruvian Amazon. Empirically, our findings are based on ethnographic field research, 80 semi-structured interviews, and document analysis. Our analysis reveals how in the localization of the norm, Indigenous peoples’ territorial rights has become marginalized, contributing to reinforce conflicts and inequality, which ultimately undermine both environmental and social sustainability. By analyzing the localization of the environmental steward norm, we contribute to a better understanding of the processes at play in displacing the costs of global sustainability transformations to indigenous actors.

In environmental governance, the role of expertise is regarded as a crucial support to decision-making. Yet, in intergovernmental settings, studies aimed at understanding the relation between science and policy have predominantly focused on the fields of climate change and biodiversity. Through a fieldwork-based study of the Science-Policy Interface (SPI) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the Intergovernmental Technical Panel on Soils (ITPS) of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), this paper investigates the role of scientific expertise in the global governance of soil and land degradation. Drawing upon the concepts of boundary organization and hybrid management, the study shows that analytical tools deriving from the Science and Technology Studies (STS) tradition provide valuable understandings of science-policy dynamics at the intergovernmental level. The results of the analysis reveal that science-policy organizations match the definition of boundary organization to different degrees and that hybrid management strategies occur with different magnitudes, with significant implications for each organization's capacity to bridge science and policy. This implies that such STS concepts should not be regarded as purely descriptive labels, but as resources that can serve broad analytical purposes in the study of global environmental governance. In this respect, the study contributes to an on-going theoretical dialogue between STS and International Relations (IR), claiming that IR scholars should consider the adoption of relevant STS theoretical tools for the analysis of global environmental institutions.

Climate change and the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are simultaneously reshaping environmental conservation. This article reviews the intersection of these two trends. First, we review how AI has become integrated into existing climate knowledge infrastructures and decision-making systems. Second, we review how AI is reshaping decision-making processes in the face of climate change, focusing on the governance of changing biological systems. AI is transforming data collection and classification, conservation decision-making, and rule enforcement. A crucial theme is the changing temporality of environmental governance. We emphasize automated data collection and classification, dynamic optimization and predictive enforcement. Third, we turn to emergent problems in the ethics and politics of algorithmic conservation. AI’s increasingly prevalent role in conservation has the potential to introduce ethical dilemmas, redistribute power among stakeholders, and enable the emergence of new objects of knowledge and political struggles.

This paper examines new governmental technologies that are emerging in Indonesia to address socio-ecological crises resulting from the conversion of peat forest landscapes to large-scale agricultural plantations. The early implications of Indonesia’s ‘peatland-fire-free’ policy interventions for palm oil and pulpwood industries, including private sector resistance and contestation to this policy, are investigated. Drawing on the Foucauldian concept of disciplinary governmentality, this article analyses the Government of Indonesia’s (GoI) failed attempts to render large-scale peatland users governable. The GoI introduced two peatland disciplinary strategies: a spatial and hydro-governance approach to governing palm oil and pulpwood plantations in peatland landscapes. However, significant contestation and opposition arise from these policies as the state attempts to apply disciplinary logics upon powerful and prickly actors. In this context, contestation reflects the complexities of the existing political economy of peatland exploitation in Indonesia, which is decisively shaped through structural and environmental violence. The paper outlines the elements that limit the prospects for fully-fledged disciplinary governmentality over peatland areas and highlights the messy, insecure and unfinished nature of environmental governance.

Southeast Asia is considered to have some of the highest levels of marine plastic pollution in the world. It is therefore vitally important to increase our understanding of the impacts and risks of plastic pollution to marine ecosystems and the essential services they provide to support the development of mitigation measures in the region. An interdisciplinary, international network of experts (Australia, Indonesia, Ireland, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and Vietnam) set a research agenda for marine plastic pollution in the region, synthesizing current knowledge and highlighting areas for further research in Southeast Asia. Using an inductive method, 21 research questions emerged under five non-predefined key themes, grouping them according to which: (1) characterise marine plastic pollution in Southeast Asia; (2) explore its movement and fate across the region; (3) describe the biological and chemical modifications marine plastic pollution undergoes; (4) detail its environmental, social, and economic impacts; and, finally, (5) target regional policies and possible solutions. Questions relating to these research priority areas highlight the importance of better understanding the fate of marine plastic pollution, its degradation, and the impacts and risks it can generate across communities and different ecosystem services. Knowledge of these aspects will help support actions which currently suffer from transboundary problems, lack of responsibility, and inaction to tackle the issue from its point source in the region. Being profoundly affected by marine plastic pollution, Southeast Asian countries provide an opportunity to test the effectiveness of innovative and socially inclusive changes in marine plastic governance, as well as both high and low-tech solutions, which can offer insights and actionable models to the rest of the world.

The “National Comprehensive Demonstration City Selection of Energy Saving and Emission Reduction Fiscal Policy” (“ESER” demonstration city selection) is an important assessment-and-commendation policy to promote in-depth advancement of the construction of ecological civilization in China. Accurate evaluation of the environmental effect of the policy is of great significance to its promotion. A difference-in-differences (DID) model is used to explore the role of the “ESER” demonstration city policy in urban environmental governance. The results of empirical tests show that the policy has significantly reduced fine particulate matter (PM2.5), industrial dust, sulfur dioxide (SO2), and wastewater emissions by 39.1%, 61%, 18.3%, and 7.4%, respectively. The results of the multi-stage DID model show that the emission reduction effect of this policy increases significantly in the short term but decreases gradually in the long term. The results of the mediation effect model show that the emission reduction effect is driven mainly by increasing innovation capacity and reducing energy intensity; the effect is also more significant in cities on a larger scale, with higher levels of fiscal expenditure and financial development, more abundant human capital and higher levels of economic development. This study provides empirical support for China to further promote the assessment-and-commendation environmental policies represented by the “ESER” demonstration city policy nationwide.

China, the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide, has promised to become carbon neutral before 2060 and to begin cutting its pollutant emissions. Is China's environmental target achievable in the forthcoming 14th and 15th five-year periods (2021–2030)? Widespread attention has been devoted to end-of-pipe measurements. However, few efforts have been made to examine the optimal path of industrial upgradation with respect to the economy–energy–environment objectives. To fill this gap, this study proposes a dynamic optimization model to examine the desirable evolution path of industrial restructure. The main findings are as follows. First, to achieve the energy and environmental targets, the optimal share of tertiary industry should increase from 28% to 57% by 2030. Secondary industry should fall by 44.68%, and primary industry should be relatively stable. Second, coal will still dominate the total consumption despite a slight decline of 6.4% in the next decades. However, oil proportion may decline significantly from 26.7% to 15.2%. Non-fossil energy sources will increase from 10.6% to 28.5%. Third, with the optimization of economic structure, the GDP growth will decouple from energy consumption and gas emissions. By comparing different scenarios, it appears that the results are more sensitive to energy and emission efficiency rather than economic constraints. In the next decades, industrial upgradation will play a more important role than end-of-pipe treatment for the dual objective of economic development and environmental governance. The desirable restructuring roadmap can provide explicit guidance for future policy-making.

In western Uganda, state biosecurity measures designed for the elimination of uncertainty through monitoring, control, and eradication of plant disease merely offload responsibility for uncertainty, placing it elsewhere, often in the arms of farmers. In this paper, I explore the ways in which uncertainty is operationalized and challenged by farmers in the face of banana Xanthomonas wilt (BXW), a deadly plant disease causing widespread losses across East Africa. Farmers negotiate differing claims to certainty regarding the disease and availability of agricultural extension from multiple actors, often through improvisation and experimentation. These practices highlight how knowledge networks between the state, farmers, and scientists are reshaped due to biosecurity and disease. The findings suggest the potential for a deeper entrenching of inequality as the improvised knowledge networks follow familiar patterns of state investment and social difference. Farmers with the social and economic capital to manage uncertainty are able to do so, while resource-poor farmers face a compounding uncertainty stemming from multiple sources which build on each other. On the other hand, compounding uncertainty may also produce space for strategic alliances between farmers and other actors as it draws multiple concerns together. Overall, these results reflect the importance of attending to the political ecology of knowledge in biosecurity regimes and in environmental governance more broadly.

The government's environmental governance may be affected by corruption and affect the implementation of environmental policies. Unfortunately, existing research only considers environmental regulations (ER) and ignores the role of anti-corruption (AC) in green development. Using China's provincial manufacturing industry data from 1998 to 2017 as an example, this study investigated the impact of AC and ER on the green development of manufacturing (MGD). This study first determined the MGD by combining the epsilon-based measure model and the Malmquist-Luenberger index. Then, a spatial Dubin model was used to handle spatial effects and a panel threshold model was employed to investigate nonlinear effects. The results showed that: (i) AC and ER significantly improved MGD, and the spatial spillover effect of MGD was 0.467. (ii) ER and MGD have a non-linear relationship, when AC is at a low level, the implementation effect of ER is low, and as AC increases and exceeds the threshold 3.105, the implementation effect of ER increases significantly from 0.094 to 0.171. To make the results robust, this study implements a robustness test by replacing variables. Finally, the policy implies that the government should pay attention to the role of AC in improving MGD and consider the spatial spillover effect of AC, and promote the implementation effect of ER on MGD.

The Amazon is the most concentrated expression of life on Earth and it is clearly threatened. Illegal deforestation and the setting of fires, expanding soy and beef agribusiness, and rapid shifts in the South American and global geopolitical landscape, coupled with a weakening of environmental governance, threaten the vitality of Indigenous Protected Areas (IPAs) and Protected Natural Areas (PNAs), perhaps the most important bulwarks against the destruction of the Amazon [1,2••,3–6] (Butler 2020; Lovejoy and Nobre 2018; Lovejoy and Nobre, 2019; Butler 2019; Walker et al., 2020; Sheil et al., 2015). In the eight Amazon nations, as much as 4 million km2 form a patchwork of Indigenous territories and PNAs [5••] (Walker et al., 2020). Amazon IPAs are increasingly impacted by forest degradation and disturbance, which diminish carbon storage and erode ecological integrity [5••,7••,8,9••] (Walker et al. 2020; Blackman ad Veit 2018; Makondo and Thomas 2018; Brito et al., 2019). A growing number of studies indicate that the protection of IPAs creates a fortification against deforestation, forest fires, and in turn, climate change [5••,7••,8,10,11] (Walker et al. 2020; Blackman ad Veit 2018; Makondo and Thomas 2018; Londono et al., 2016; Walker et al., 2009).

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has adopted a new law and policy framework, Vision 2030, designed to deliver a transition to a diversified and low-carbon economy. This paper analyses from an environmental law and policy perspective how law is providing opportunities and challenges in achieving the outcomes of this national masterplan. The paper employs traditional legal scholarship to assess the law itself and also explores its impact in practice, via an analysis of findings from expert stakeholder interviews. Key issues around environmental governance are discussed in depth in the light of Vision 2030. One of the key issues of focus is that of integration, in terms of the design and practice of law, institutions and outcomes. To date, it is clear that the further policies needed to ensure that environmental integration and a low-carbon transition take place are currently being created in the effort to deliver the aims of the Vision. This study finds that the transition to a low-carbon economy in the KSA is under-researched and under-explored in practice, from an environmental perspective. The findings attest that although some significant actions have been initiated, further action needs to be taken, given the importance of this transition, in the KSA in the light of the promising nature of Vision 2030 in this regard.

Twenty-five years after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into force, what impact has it had on the US-Mexico border environment? This paper asks what lessons NAFTA offers to contemporary debates about trade and environmental governance through analysis of time series data and expert perceptions on the environment of the US-Mexico borderlands. In the early 1990s, scholars and activists argued that NAFTA would have mostly negative impacts on the US-Mexico border, creating water scarcity and increasing air, land and water pollution; degrading ecosystems; and causing health problems. The debate over NAFTA was part of the larger discussion on the environmental impacts of trade and globalization. In response to these concerns, several governance institutions were created to monitor the environment (the Commission for Environmental Cooperation) and to certify and fund improvements to environmental infrastructure along the US-Mexico border (the Border Environment Cooperation Commission and North American Development Bank). NAFTA was recently replaced with a new trade deal (the USMCA). In this paper we review trends in environmental conditions over the past 25 years, mostly on the Mexican side of the border where greater impacts were anticipated, through datasets, institutional reports and scholarly literature. We also present and discuss the results of semi-structured interviews and surveys with 49 experts (researchers, activists, government personnel, and other border institutional actors) to understand the varied legacy of NAFTA on the border environment at 25 years. Although missing data and challenges in attribution complicated our analysis, we found both positive and negative trends in environmental indicators and the literature.

Protected areas are considered key to conserving ecosystems and safeguarding biodiversity worldwide. Local stakeholders’ involvement in decision-making in area-based conservation approaches may help to mitigate environmental inequalities and to improve social and ecological outcomes. However, sound and in-depth evidence on the relationship between participation and protected area outcomes is piecemeal. To synthesize the available knowledge, we provide evidence from a systematic literature review of 52 empirical case studies from the scientific literature examining the social and ecological outcomes of protected-area-related decision-making processes in which local stakeholders participated. In a first step, we defined factors that are linked to social and ecological protected area outcomes as success. Based on these factors, we then categorized success indicators which we quantitatively linked to features of participation. Our review provides evidence of the relationship between protected area successes and the following four features of participation: 1. Genuine devolution of power to the local level; 2. Involvement of diverse actors and multiple perspectives through fair and inclusive processes; 3. Long-term external support; 4. Devolution of rights. Even though the degree and form of participation require adjustment to specific local contexts, this overview of features provides sound evidence based on the relation between participatory decision-making and social and ecological effectiveness in protected areas. These insights can be used to design more effective participatory conservation interventions that meet both biodiversity conservation and human well-being.

Rare earths are important key metal minerals, but their exploitation, smelting and separation leads to the emission of environmental pollutants. China has taken a series of measures to control and govern the environmental pollution caused by mixed rare earth development in northern China, but currently, environmental pollution still exists. Environmental pollution affects the lives of local residents, and this impact can be measured by the nonuse value of the environmental pollution caused by rare earth development. Willingness to pay (WTP) is widely used to assess the nonuse value of environmental goods or services. By investigating residents' WTP for environmental improvement with respect to mixed rare earth development in northern China, we can better promote environmental governance and provide a decision-making basis for the government to propose quantitative and feasible environmental governance policies. Northern Chinese mixed rare earths are located mainly in Baotou in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. In this study, we conducted a questionnaire survey of residents around the Baotou rare earth mine regarding their basic personal situation, environmental cognition of rare earth development and WTP for environmental pollution control. Based on our findings, we used a double-bounded dichotomous choice (DC) model to calculate the average amount that residents are willing to pay for the treatment of environmental pollution, and we obtained the estimated mean value of their WTP. From February to April 2019, we obtained 568 valid questionnaires in the Hondlon District and Bayan Obo Mining District of Baotou. The analysis results show that the average value of the respondents’ WTP under the double-bounded DC model is 153.63 CNY per year and that the total value of the respondents’ WTP for environmental improvement with respect to rare earth development in Baotou is 442 million CNY per year. In addition, regarding the direct influencing factors of WTP, gender, the degree of cognition of environmental pollution, the degree of perception of bodily influence and the degree of expectations regarding environmental remediation have a significant positive correlation with WTP; moreover, the perception of bodily influence is the most important factor. Regarding the factors indirectly influencing WTP, age and place of residence affect the respondents' environmental cognition, which, in turn, affect the respondents’ WTP. Based on these influencing factors, the government can implement distinct environmental governance policies for different groups to effectively support the implementation of environmental policies.

The notion of blended finance has increasingly gained traction within development policy as a way to fill a series of “financing gaps” related to the Sustainable Development Goals. Recently, blended finance has received increased attention as a way to create biodiversity markets and attract private capital. Building on qualitative research on efforts to create markets for private investments in marine conservation, this paper analyses how an ensemble of non-governmental organisations, development finance institutions and philanthropists seek to fill the financing gap for marine conservation in the “Blue Economy” by using blended finance as a guiding principle. I argue that by offsetting the uncertainties related to investing in a new conservation finance space, blended finance is applied as a way to fix investors’ fictional expectations and gradually transform uncertainty into risk. In doing so, this paper contributes to the literature on for-profit biodiversity conservation by highlighting how capital's risk interpretations are constitutive of the effort to create new markets. While blended finance is applied to create new markets from below, I discuss two other possible futures that might emerge as blended finance is applied in this new frontier. On the one hand, it risks becoming a development rent that is captured by the financial sector. On the other hand, blended finance can become a technical solution that enables the maintenance of a primordial faith in market-based environmental governance.

With the continuous development of cloud computing and internet of things technology, the integration of internet and haze governance has broad prospects and infinite potential. Through the internet platform and technology, environmental monitoring can be done by the internet, and realize the intellectualization of environmental management, improve the early warning ability of environmental pollution emergencies, and facilitate the public's in-depth participation in environmental supervision. The dynamic spatial Durbin model and the quantile regression model are employed to analyze the effect and mechanism of the internet development on China's haze pollution on the basis of provincial panel data in China from 2006 to 2017. The results indicate that there is an inverted “U” curve between internet development and haze pollution in China, and the conclusion is still valid after a series of robustness tests. There is significant heterogeneity between direct and indirect spillover effects. Meanwhile, from the perspective of different regions in China (such as the east-central region and western regions), the inverted “U” curve between internet development and air pollution still exists. Besides, quantile regression results also show that the suppression effect of the internet on haze pollution is getting stronger with the increase of haze concentration. The regression results of the mediation effect indicate that internet development mainly affects haze pollution by improving technological innovation and environmental governance efficiency.

This article identifies three methodological approaches for ethnography of environmental governance: place-based ethnography, institutional ethnography, and organizational ethnography. These approaches are ideal types distinguished by how they define the ‘field’ where the ethnographer works. Place-based ethnography is well-established methodologically, but institutional and organizational ethnography are frequently conflated, and methodological guidance for ethnography of environmental organizations is scant. Organizational ethnography makes vital contributions to environmental governance scholarship, however, by revealing internal logics and everyday rationalities of powerful environmental actors and processes. The article therefore expands on the methodological foundations for organizational ethnography of environmental governance, using ethnographic research on the tropical forest conservation programs of an international environmental organization to illustrate research practicalities and substantive contributions of an organizational approach.

In recent times, two global phenomena have converged: the growing demand for natural resources and a mobilized citizenry that claims participation in the decisions about their territories. Thus, socio-environmental conflicts often arise where communities, appealing to environmental and cultural values, confront transnational companies and governments interested in natural resources exploitation. Despite the multiplication of literature and environmental governance strategies, these disputes continue to be characterized more by the trend toward radicalized conflict than by consensus and democratic resolutions. Aiming to deepen the understanding of this phenomena, we study the conflicts unleashed from the installation of open-pit mining projects in the provinces of Catamarca and La Rioja in Argentina. We look for the characteristics of the interactions between the State, the civil society and the business sector that hinder the progress towards governance processes that bring by democratic resolutions to mining conflicts. Based on a comparative study at the subnational level, it is shown that mining conflicts are characterized by not developing effective governance processes. We argue that this is related to three central factors. First, a failed articulation between the actors, ineffective negotiation instances, disparate normative and cognitive frameworks, inefficient external agents, and the absence of joint public policy proposals. Second, the lack of will and capacity of the provincial governments combined with the weakness of the institutional mechanisms. And finally, the generation of a deep antagonism in the positions and discourses of the actors provoked by the particularities of the mining projects.

Why do some communities develop better environmental governance outcomes than others? Past research tends to focus on national governments, explaining how states with better environmental governance outcomes tend to have more resources, such as stronger government capacity, or fewer obstacles, like fewer ties to major polluting industries. This study tests whether the social capital and community-building policies of local governments improve their environmental governance outcomes. This mixed-methods study looks at the case of all 1741 Japanese municipalities from 2005 to 2017, modeling greenhouse gas emissions across 4 different sectors of the economy, paired with three case studies of high performing municipalities. This study finds that cities with stronger bonding and bridging social capital bolster the institutional capacity of cities, improving the effectiveness of their emissions reduction programs. By leveraging citizens’ social ties, cities can accelerate the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions while improving civic engagement locally.

China's idea of a community of a shared future for humanity (CSFH) has become the guiding principle and norm to be further embedded and integrated into the country's approach to environmental governance. Under the Paris Agreement and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, China strongly emphasizes the implementation of its national strategy to mitigate the global climate crisis, and construct international environmental institutions by advocating fair cooperation resulting in mutual gain. China's role as a responsible major country is expected to be more proactive in international process. In particular, the concept of CSFH exerts positive, far-reaching impacts on the greening of the Belt and Road Initiative and the construction of solid South–South relations. Based on the renewed perception, China shall undertake its responsibilities in the reform of the global environmental governance system by leading multilateralism to strengthen the capacity of relevant international institutions such as the UN. Driven by China's political will, this concept reflects China's more confident attitude toward global environmental governance. Most profoundly, mainstreaming the vision of CSFH will elevate China's role to a new level in the coming years in terms of norm creation in international environmental institutions.

Access to high-quality, timely and comparable data is a prerequisite for any effective decision-making process and having such data available for the environment is absolutely fundamental to efficient and evidence-based policymaking. This article reviews the establishment of a Shared Environmental Information System (SEIS) in Europe and Central Asia to improve our understanding of how environmental data value chains are being employed to produce, share and use reliable data on the environment and whether this data is used in policymaking. Three sources of data are utilised to analyse whether relevant environmental data and information are being drawn upon by policymakers, namely, the 2019 SEIS mid-term review, SEIS Factsheets and SEIS Gap Analysis Reports. The results reveal that the pan-European region still faces significant data harmonisation problems, owing in part to differences in types and methods of data collection, data definitions and legislation. Whilst problems in some individual country’s participation have persisted since the launch of the SEIS initiative in the pan-European region, the development and successful piloting of the SEIS self-assessment framework is considered as evidence of positive progress. However, it remains difficult to adequately assess to what extent the data flows covered by this study impact on policymaking, nevertheless, the analysis serves to highlight the inter-linkages between environmental data flows, policymakers and environmental governance. In practical terms, the paper demonstrate a disconnect between data production and data use in policymaking and emphasises the need to both improve our understanding of the political determinants of data use and to further investigate how the uptake of environmental data and information can be facilitated in policymaking.

To study the regional spatial pattern of China's green development and environmental governance, this paper adopts a spatial autocorrelation model to study the spatial differentiation and agglomeration effects of environmental pollution sources in 338 prefecture-level or direct-controlled municipality administrative units in China based on the emission of environmental pollutants and socio-economic cross-section data. Additionally, this research analyzes the spatial patterns of environmental pollution sources and emissions. On this basis, from the perspective of the environment and China's practice, a non-parametric method is used to construct a producer emissions reduction behavior model to depict three economic development models, including “extensive” development, “bottom-line” development and green development. The difference in environmental emissions and economic output between the “bottom-line” development model and the green development model is quantitatively measured to simulate the impact of the change in development mode on China's environmental economy. The results show the following: (1) There are significant regional differences in the structure of environmental pollution sources in China. Environmental pollution sources are mainly agricultural sources, urban life sources, and urban life and agricultural sources. (2) The change in development mode will reduce China's emissions level by approximately 16-22% compared with the current level. Within the sample interval, the environmental effect maintains the overall trend of a stable increase. (3) The change in development mode will have two opposite effects on China's economy, namely, a “crowding-out” effect and an innovation compensation effect. Because the innovation compensation effect brought by the change in development mode is significantly larger than the "crowding-out" effect, a win-win scenario of environmental and economic development can be achieved.

Highlights • Digital sequence information (DSI) on genetic resources polarise global ABS governance. • Assemblage theory offers novel ways to unpack the problematisation of DSI. • DSI’s disruptions reveal faultlines and fragility of the ABS assemblage. • DNA can be understood on a material/expressive axis, not a physical/digital binary. • DSI necessitates reform or an entire reworking of the Nagoya Protocol., Technological leaps in DNA sequencing and synthesis are disrupting tenuous access and benefit-sharing (ABS) arrangements between ‘users’ and ‘providers’ of genetic resources. For some this signals a new era of open-source gene banks to address global challenges, but to others it threatens a new wave of unjust digital biopiracy. This paper explores the issue of digital sequence information (DSI) at the 2016 Cancun negotiations of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity and its Nagoya Protocol on ABS, and its continued relevance today. While some research has addressed potential solutions to digital sequencing and ABS, little attention has been paid to the problematization of the issue itself. This paper addresses this gap with a fine-grained view of the negotiations as an ethnographic site of contestation. We approach the Nagoya Protocol as an assemblage seeking to govern ABS. We trace how the unruly component of DSI threatens this already fragile assemblage by disrupting simplified notions of genetic resources, scientific discovery, and R&D. Our data from the negotiations reveals three major points of tension: the materiality of genetic resources; the problem’s novelty; and the problem’s urgency. Two opposing solutions raised in response to these contestations reveal underlying faultlines that we argue will continue to destabilise the broader ABS assemblage if left unresolved. Our attention to processes of assemblage (trans)formation offers insights to the historically fragile arrangements of ABS and, more broadly, assemblages of global environmental governance in the context of rapid technological change.

Indigenous peoples have fought for recognition and inclusion in state-driven resource governance in Labrador for generations. At the same time, the settler state has tried to limit their inclusion by restricting the boundaries of indigeneity. By arguing that Indigenous peoples are not present in the project area or are not doing "traditional" activities, it aims to exclude some groups from the decision-making, monitoring, and benefits of extractivist projects. In rendering indigeneity as spatially and economically contained, government and industry pursue settler colonial fantasies of Indigenous erasure and absence. This paper uses a recent public inquiry into the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric project as a mechanism to trace how indigeneity has been mobilized in resource conflicts between the state, industry, and numerous Indigenous peoples of the Labrador peninsula since the 18th century. Linking hydroelectric developments with examples of mining, logging, and commercial fishing, the paper explores the dynamic between government efforts to facilitate extractive industry by containing indigeneity and Indigenous assertions of a more flexible and dynamic reality. Instead of abiding to the state's limiting version of indigeneity, the Indigenous peoples of the Labrador peninsula are challenging and reforming environmental governance by demonstrating that they are, in fact, elsewhere and otherwise.

This study seeks to gain a better understanding of the implications of Indigenous community-based monitoring (ICBM) for Indigenous governance in resource extractive regions. Using a comprehensive review of the literature and the author team's personal involvement, we review an ICBM program in the oil sands region of Alberta, Canada. We use sustainable self-determination, as a sub-set of Indigenous governance, as a critical theoretical lens to assess outcomes of this program and its role in the broader environmental governance of the oil sands region. To conclude, we propose some recommendations to advance a sustainable self-determination lens for ICBM. As these programs continue to proliferate across the country, now is the time to incorporate such a lens in order to simultaneously support meaningful monitoring of environmental, economic, and social change, while also advancing the resurgence of Indigenous Nations.

Science-policy interface organizations and initiatives (SPIORG) are a key component of environmental governance designed to make links between science and society. However, the science­policy interface literature lacks a structured approach to explaining the impacts of context on and by these initiatives. To better understand these impacts on and interactions with governance, this paper uses the concept of the governance ‘meshwork’ to explore how dynamic processes – encompassing prior, current and anticipated interactions – co­produce knowledge and impact via processes, negotiation and networking activities at multiple governance levels. To illustrate the interactions between SPIORGs and governance meshwork we use five cases representing archetypal SPIORGs. These cases demonstrate how all initiatives and organizations link to their contexts in complex and unique ways, yet also identifies ten important aspects that connect the governance meshwork to SPIORGs. These aspects of the meshwork, together with the typology of organizations, provide a comprehensive framework that can help make sense how the SPIORGs are embedded in the surrounding governance contexts. We highlight that SPIORGs must purposively consider and engage with their contexts to increase their potential impact on knowledge co-­production and policy making.

This article demonstrates the analytical added value of combining the Institutional Resource Regime (IRR) approach with the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF). To this end, we use the example of Swiss wind power policy and demonstrate the necessity of combining the two theoretical frameworks so as to understand why a more supportive policy regime (market incentives, clearer environmental regulations, inter-sectoral coordination mechanisms) for Swiss wind power during the 2000s and 2010s, did not lead to an increase in the number of wind turbines in Switzerland. In order to evaluate the explanatory capacity of such a theoretical combination, we analyze and compare two cases of wind power policy implementation: the successful case of Mont-Crosin and the failure of Tramelan. More concretely, we first analyze each of the cases through the institutional lenses of the IRR framework. After assessing IRR explanatory capacities and shortcomings, we then test the explanatory added value of the ACF and demonstrate that policy beliefs and advocacy coalitions are central explanatory factors of wind power project siting success or failure. We conclude by discussing the theoretical potential of combining the two frameworks in a future research agenda.

Debate continues regarding which policy instrument should be used to ensure land, water, and environmental governance that promotes the sustainability of social-ecological systems (SESs). Policy instruments and Social Ecological Systems have played important roles in the theoretical development of natural resource governance systems. They, however, have been considered in isolation from one another. This study aims to bridge between the two by interpreting policy instruments as rules of interaction in a social-ecological system. Specifically, a longitudinal study on Victorian Acts was conducted to understand how policy instruments for land, water, and environmental governances adopted from 1860 to 2016 worked in the governance of SESs. Through a content analysis of the Acts, we constructed a simple typology of the ways in which policy instruments manage components of SESs. This typology includes the reserve regime, authority regime, information regime and integration regime. The study shows the circumstances under which interactions among components of biophysical and social systems deserve attention as partial shapers of policy instruments. The present work can be used to understand, examine and reflect on policy instruments currently used for resource governance and to make strategic improvements that account for current conditions rather than adopting new policies without understanding the existing context.

The state of the environment continues declining despite improved global responses towards environmental protection. This mismatch could be because government policymakers and bureaucrats tend to focus on the tangible and controllable aspects of interventions – such as resources and actions – rather than the consequences of these interventions. We test this assumption by classifying governance indicators in the environmental sector according to a logic model: an evidence-based causal chain articulating the causes, effects and consequences of management interventions. In this paper, we synthesized consensus on logic models and developed a decision tree to classify governance indicators depending on whether they measured inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes and impacts. We then applied this decision tree to indicators from the South African government’s national environmental outcomes delivery agreement and found that environmental governance indicators tended to be at the activity or output levels. The shortage of indicators at the outcome level may explain why the state of the environment continues declining despite the environmental sector consistently meeting governance targets. Inappropriately aligned environmental governance indicators mean that officials work on interventions without knowing whether these are effective or not. Therefore, the environmental sector should prioritise the monitoring of the effectiveness of government interventions, rather than the interventions themselves.

Despite the existence of a comprehensive set of environmental regulations, China’s environmental issues continue largely unabated and are increasingly leading to discontent among its citizens. Mirroring recent governance trends in China, the central government has increasingly taken a more hands-on-role to ensure the enforcement of environmental regulations by local government officials. One manifestation of this effort to re-centralize environmental institutions has been the establishment and deployment of Central Environmental Inspection Teams (CEITs). CEITs report directly to the central government and are dispatched to carry out crackdowns where the central government has reason to believe that environmental regulations are not being enforced. With over 29,000 companies fined and around 18,000 local government officials disciplined, the CEIT has been heralded as a great success by the central government. Using a combination of primary and secondary data, we partially reconstruct the inaugural CEIT deployment in Hebei province in 2016 from the perspectives of government officials, private and state-owned companies, and local residents. While we generally find that the CEIT has proven effective in identifying and rectifying violations of environmental regulations, as an institutional solution it is inefficient and highly-resource intensive, likely to generate unintended governance outcomes in the medium-to-longer run, and has significant social justice implications.

This paper interrogates the parallel goals of global environmental assessments (GEAs) to be both authoritative and meaningful sources of environmental expertise. It explores authority and meaning as distinct ‘organisational logics’ that guide the development of GEAs. Through the case of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the paper examines the organisation of expertise using an analytical framework of six organisational modes: the modes of foundation, incorporation, representation, convention, exhibition and transformation. Drawing on interviews and document analysis, the paper finds that the logic of authority and the logic of meaning often promote distinct organisational arrangements that are at times mutually reinforcing and at times in tension. The analysis suggests that balancing these two pursuits is not without its challenges. However, it highlights the potential to recognise GEAs as experimental and evolutionary organisations for environmental governance.

In a water-scarce, coal-producing region of Colombia, frictions are intensifying over the environmental impact of the diversion of a creek. Through ethnographic observation, this article examines the different positions on what this article refers to as the Bruno Creek Controversy and the enactments of scientific expertise deployed to influence decision making. On the one hand, there are officials from the mining company, who believe the risks associated with the creek diversion are negligible and manageable, potentially offset by interventions implemented under Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs. On the other hand, a group of activists, equipped with local knowledge and partnered with experts, claims the project would cause unacceptable damage, furthermore arguing that the creek is a part of a sensitive broader ecosystem. At the same time, environmental authorities reveal how their enactment of expertise is bounded to political relations. This article argues that expertise is a performative, ideological, and interactional phenomenon that is authorized by existing power relationships. Controversies such as Bruno Creek, therefore, are highly productive sites for shaping environmental governance, whether through the increasing influence of local communities in decision-making, activist scientists' ability to inform policy, or through a shifting of temporal and geographical scales to better understand the implications of resource extraction.

With the national push for an ecological civilization under way, Chinese environmental governance is becoming more authoritarian as the central government exerts a stronger control over the enforcement of environmental policies. In this paper, I examine how the ecological civilization project has become a key driver of change in extractive regions, constituting new eco-politics of extractive governance that can be characterized by heightened authoritarian environmentalism, with the Central Environmental Inspection Team as a particularly important mechanism through which the centralization of environmental governance is achieved. I argue that the ambitious environmental goals of an ecological civilization are achieved by sacrificing the interests of extractive communities. As these vulnerable communities are highly dependent on their extractive industries and often face significant diversification difficulties, the eco-civilization project has devastating local socioeconomic impacts and are likely to accelerate structural decline and population shrinkage if not promptly addressed through external support. I argue that this constitutes a form of environmental injustice, where environmental policies impose unfair burdens on disadvantaged individuals and communities. In particular, extractive communities bear the greatest burden of both environmental exploitation and environmental protection. Achieving socially just environmental sustainability should be an important aspect of ecological civilization.

Across sub-Saharan Africa the performance of Community Based Management (CBM) for rural water has been disappointing, with studies indicating insufficient funds collected for necessary repairs to the handpumps used to access groundwater, upon which millions depend. Free-riding, usually representing a crime against the collective good, is endemic here because peer sanctioning of transgressors proves socially divisive. This study, the result of extensive fieldwork, presents original data on the outcomes of an alternative model, CBM-lite, piloted in mid-west Uganda. A Water Operator from the community was financially incentivised to collect the user fees, though graduated sanctions were still to be determined and enforced by community structures. CBM-lite saw the repair of handpumps utilising funds released by a microfinance institution due to regular deposits. People are prepared to pay for reactive maintenance, but reject the concept of preventative contributions: free-riding resumed once handpumps were functional because sanctioning again proved too challenging. The paper makes a number of significant contributions to environmental governance debates. First, any management model not designed to overcome the public good problem of free-riding will fail to achieve sustainable results. Second, the research identified deeply ingrained social norms that counter-intuitively consider individual advancement a greater crime than free-riding, condoning social-levelling peer punishment of the pilot Water Operators. Depersonalising interactions via pre-payment technologies may hold potential. Equally, differentiating a hierarchy of social norms may present some leverage for nudging, with context appropriate communication, of less culturally ingrained behaviour, to promote for example an acceptance of preventative maintenance.

China's 40-year history of reform and opening-up includes rapid economic development as well as pollution and environmental governance. Using a four-stage division, this study explores the evolution trend and structural decomposition of China's green value-added by constructing a non-competitive input-output table for environmental pollution from 1978 to 2017. The results indicate that pollution production coefficients increased continuously, and the green value-added index decreased. Additionally, the structural decomposition showed that investment and export were critical for economic growth during the period, though they were accompanied by serious pollution problems. The pollution generated by the raw material (represented by coal mining) and processing industries (represented by the textiles) were not controlled effectively. Pollution treatment for these industries should be strengthened in the future. The study has implications for government officials, policy makers, and academics. First, China should make green development a core concept for economic development, increase environmental pollution governance, develop a “green GDP,” incorporate the external costs of environmental pollution into the national economic accounting system. Second, it must change the investment and export structure as well as the traditional economic development pattern that exacerbates pollution. Specifically, the country should develop industries with low pollution and promote the export of industries producing high value-added products and increase green GDP per capita. Third, it should closely monitor the development of highly polluting industries. Upgrading technology to reduce pollution and strengthening pollution treatment will reduce the number of polluting industries and improve environmental governance efficiency.

Perfecting the natural resource system and auditing natural resource assets are requirements in protecting natural resources and developing an ecological civilization in practice. While the natural resource asset audit both confirms and quantifies natural resources, the nature of such resources makes it difficult to identify their ownership. Further, these resources' diversity creates complex measurement standards and activities, all of which require relevant institutional guarantees. However, the existing audit system for natural resource assets includes insufficient stock, incremental difficulties, and poor guidance, which cannot meet the requirements for environmental governance and an ecological civilization. Thus, it is necessary to define natural resource assets’ rights and measurement systems and responsibility regulations, among others; construct an auditing participation system, technical regulations, and evaluation criterion for natural resource assets; amend the Audit Law in a timely manner; and enact natural resource asset legislation. Ultimately, such efforts would eliminate the bottleneck in the natural resource asset auditing system and facilitate the construction of a resource-saving, environmentally friendly society.

We present two new approaches for assessing the relative contributions of different types of actors to heterogeneous brokerage in networks. These approaches distinguish between the tendency of certain types of actors to (1) mediate between dissimilar actors (heterogeneous brokerage “activity”), and (2) be the sole mediators between dissimilar actors (“exclusivity”). We present methods for implementing these approaches, using baseline models of tie formation and node removal, respectively. To illustrate the value of both approaches, independently and in combination, we apply them to evaluate horizontal and vertical heterogeneous brokerage in two environmental governance networks. Our analysis reveals certain types of actors with high heterogeneous brokerage activity but low exclusivity (and vice versa), which has important implications for governance processes and outcomes. Likewise, results show many similarities across the evaluated networks, but also some notable differences, suggesting that the incentives and constraints for heterogeneous brokerage vary not only by actor type, but also by network-level contextual differences.

Despite numerous efforts to promote and implement more integrated approaches, coordination problems persist and impede sustainable water governance and management. This paper introduces a framework for guiding a transdisciplinary diagnostic approach (i.e. a context-sensitive assessment of multi-level water governance, which is combined with a change management process) to address such coordination problems. The approach aims at addressing some of the challenges identified in scientific scholarship and water governance practice by combining context-specific participatory assessments of individual cases with comparative case analysis guided by a generic conceptual framework. The focus is on implementation processes at regional and local scale and their embedding in a multi-level water governance system and a specific environmental and societal context. A coherent approach and formalized representation across individual cases is essential to develop cumulative knowledge and to improve the diagnostic strength of the approach. Based on a broad literature review and exploratory study of multiple, diverse cases conceptual framework identifies a variety of factors that are expected to be important for understanding the performance of environmental governance and management systems. The paper makes explicit the hypotheses on relationships between core variables that resulted from framework development. The framework, including the collection of hypotheses, offers a structured approach for analysing a phenomenon as complex and multi-facetted as coordination. It allows identification of multiple pathways that may lead an improvement or a decline in performance, respectively. The framework can find more widespread application in supporting comparative case study analyses with a focus on improving the understanding of policy implementation also beyond the field of water governance and management.

Nexus thinking represents a novel approach to managing sustainability challenges, but little is known about how and to what extent it is being employed by companies. By examining documents from 14 companies identified as “comprehensive-disclosers,” this paper reveals important insights into corporate responses to multiple, interconnected sustainability issues or “nexus challenges”. Using qualitative content analysis of companies’ responses to the CDP (formerly, Carbon Disclosure Project) climate change, water, forests and supply chain surveys as well as their sustainability reports, we find that while companies largely continue with silo-based approaches to addressing sustainable development challenges, some are beginning to employ more integrated approaches suggestive of embryonic “nexus thinking.” Our research provides the first empirical evidence of its kind and contributes to broader debates on the utility of the nexus concept in corporate environmental governance and policymaking.