We live in an era of human-dominated ecosystems in which the demand for environmental governance is rising rapidly. At the same time, confidence in the capacity of governments to meet this demand is waning. How can we address the resultant governance deficit and achieve sustainable development? This book brings together perspectives from economics, management, and political science in order to identify innovative approaches to governance and bring them to bear on environmental issues. The authors' analysis of important cases demonstrates how governance systems need to fit their specific setting and how effective policies can be developed without relying exclusively on government. They argue that the future of environmental policies lies in coordinated systems that simultaneously engage actors located in the public sector, the private sector, and civil society. Governance for the Environment draws attention to cutting-edge questions for practitioners and analysts interested in environmental governance.

In the opinion of many, the most crucial issue confronting the world today lies in achieving a sustainable nexus among global trade, economic development, and the environment. This book, written by a prominent diplomat with extensive direct experience in this field, presents a much-needed critical perspective on the conflict of norms among the three policy regimes, focusing on the dilemma of reconciling approaches regarding harmonized global governance and a more diverse community-based approach. It is the first and only in-depth treatment to systematically study a series of deliberations in the World Trade Organization’s Committee on Trade and Environment (CTE), highlighting perspectives taken by both developed and developing economies. The book demonstrates that the CTE’s contributions to the evolving trade and environment policy framework have been, contrary to popular perception, both substantial and relevant. In his review of how the particular characteristics of twenty key work outputs of the CTE impact current practice in trade and environment policy discussions, the author discusses such key issues and topics as the following: a singular harmonized global governance framework versus the centrifugal force of community-based, localized or regional solutions that emphasize diversity and multifaceted institution building; drawbacks and continuing relevance of the CTE Work Agenda; issues related to carbon, intellectual property rights, and services; market access for environmental goods; requirements for environmental purposes relating to products, including standards and technical regulations, packaging, labeling, and recycling; and ways forward for combining global regimes with local solutions in an environmental context. Given the urgent need for making economic policies more coherent with sustainability and environmental goals, and for overcoming the ongoing stalemate between developed and developing countries on this matter, this book is sure to be warmly welcomed by policy makers and negotiators in the areas of both trade and environment, as well as by academics, theorists, and experts in the field of global governance interested in formulating practical approaches to trade and environment governance and minimizing potential policy conflicts.

Theoretical and empirical accounts of the role of business in shaping international environmental policies.

With the growing number, complexity, and importance of environmental problems come demands to include a full range of intellectual disciplines and scholarly traditions to help define and eventually manage such problems more effectively. Decision Making for the Environment: Social and Behavioral Science Research Priorities is the result of a 2-year effort by 12 social and behavioral scientists, scholars, and practitioners. The report sets research priorities for the social and behavioral sciences as they relate to several different kinds of environmental problems.

This book presents fresh analyses of a number of well-known cases, but does so from one comprehensive view, the so-called policy arrangement approach. Cases discussed range over organic farming, integrated water management, nature policy, cultural heritage policy, integrated region-oriented policy, corporate environmental management and target group policy, always in search of the commonality of experience and conclusions to be drawn in understanding the past and in formulating future perspectives.

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.