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Sustainability
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Pathways and Obstacles to Sustainable Environmental Governance
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Pathways and Obstacles to Sustainable Environmental Governance

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Sustainability and Applications".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2021) | Viewed by 6478

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Bruce Cain

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Stanford Woods Institution of Environment, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
Interests: political regulation; applied democratic theory; representation and state politics; environmental governance
Dr. Iris Hui

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Bill Lane Center for the American West, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
Interests: state politics and policy; political methodology and elections; environmental politics; intersection of politics and geography

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Governance plays a critical role in protecting natural resources, achieving environmental sustainability, and dealing with climate change. Governance refers not only to the actions of government officials but also to the entire political ecosystem of interest groups, businesses, nonprofits, and others who help to determine environmental policy. This Special Issue will examine the pathways and obstacles to successful environmental governance practices. We are particularly interested in the following questions:

  • What roles do different political actors play in environmental governance and how does that vary in different institutional settings?
  • What are some of the "best practices" and examples of instances where governance (e.g. through economic incentives, regulation, or collaboration with communities) contributed to achieving sustainability goals?
  • NIMBYism, human inertia, misperceptions, and various forms of self-interest can contribute to myopic policies that undermine long-term environmental sustainability goals. How can governments better align private incentives with pro-environmental policies?
  • In the U.S. and many western democracies, how does hyper-partisanship and political polarization undermine the effective functioning of environmental governance. What are some of the ways to promote bipartisan policy support for a sustainable environment?
  • In the U.S. and many western democracies, structural, and functional governmental fragmentation complicate the task of creating effective environmental governance? What are some of the innovative ways to overcome these problems?
  • In other countries characterized by stronger central control, does the concentration of power facilitate or simply produce different types of environmental governance problems? What are some of the ways these systems attempt to address those challenges?

We are open to research methodology and orientation. We welcome papers that advance our existing theoretical framework, as well as empirical works that expand our current understanding. We also welcome papers that examine environmental governance in other realms that are not covered by our research questions.

Prof. Dr. Bruce Cain
Dr. Iris Hui
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • environmental governance
  • institutional settings
  • fragmentation
  • centralization
  • partisan polarization
  • bipartisan support
  • policy incentives

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

13 pages, 1789 KiB  
Article
Environmental Governance at an Asymmetric Border, the Case of the U.S.–Mexico Border Region
by Gabriela Munoz-Melendez and Sarah E. Martinez-Pellegrini
Sustainability 2022, 14(3), 1712; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14031712 - 1 Feb 2022
Viewed by 2321
Abstract
Environmental issues at the U.S.–Mexico border have been approached in a fragmented way and considered of minor political interest; even though they have been addressed in treaties and agreements, regional environmental pollution persists. One may ask what sort of measures should be taken [...] Read more.
Environmental issues at the U.S.–Mexico border have been approached in a fragmented way and considered of minor political interest; even though they have been addressed in treaties and agreements, regional environmental pollution persists. One may ask what sort of measures should be taken to address the complex and long-term environmental problems in the U.S.–Mexico border region. To answer this question, an environmental cross-border governance proposal was evaluated by applying Qualitative Analysis of Textual Data to the text of Chapter 24 of the USMCA treaty. The results indicated that the environmental policies concerning the border region still lack a coherent systemic approach, and hence will lead to inefficiency. Territorial development is heavily dependent on national environmental governance and priorities; however, environmental issues should be understood in an integral, complex and deeply entangled way if they are to be effectively addressed. Otherwise, environmental degradation is likely to expand due to population growth and events associated with climate change. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Pathways and Obstacles to Sustainable Environmental Governance)
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22 pages, 1680 KiB  
Article
When Collaborative Water Governance Meets Authoritarian Environmentalism: The Dilemma of Safe Water Supply Project in Coal Mining Villages of China’s Shanxi Province
by Jian Yan, Rongrong Li and Ran Ran
Sustainability 2022, 14(3), 1277; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14031277 - 24 Jan 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 3014
Abstract
The framework of collaborative water governance (CWG) has been championed as a promising model for water management across the globe. China is a country confronted by serious water pollution and shortage problems. In recent years, many scholars and practitioners have turned to CWG [...] Read more.
The framework of collaborative water governance (CWG) has been championed as a promising model for water management across the globe. China is a country confronted by serious water pollution and shortage problems. In recent years, many scholars and practitioners have turned to CWG as an effective model for water crisis management in China. However, the political nature of CWG and China’s Authoritarian Environmentalism is inherently conflictual, hence, the development of CWG in China poses a theoretical puzzle, i.e., how the bottom-up CWG model can coexist with the top-down Authoritarian Environmentalism in China’s water politics. To better understand this puzzle, this article explores CWG’s intertwinement with environmental authoritarianism through a case study of “safe water supply project” in 11 coal-mining villages in Shanxi province of North China. Drawing on fieldwork between 2019 and 2021 in H city of Shangxi province, this research shows that the central government’s pledge to provide safe water to every villager in rural China has not materialized so far. The dilemma of safe water supply in coal mining villages in H city shows that, on one side, the central government attempted to show its great will and commitment to providing safe water to everyone in rural China through an approach of environmental authoritarianism; while on the other side, the local governments tended to select the CWG model as a method for practical implementation as well as a blame avoidance strategy. Our study identifies five stakeholders in the villages’ safe water supply projects: the Department of Water Resources of the City Government, the Township Government, Coal Mining Enterprises, village cadres and villagers. The outcome of the safe water supply project in these villages is constrained by the transparency and trust deficit among stakeholders when facing cooperation and conflict management obstacles. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Pathways and Obstacles to Sustainable Environmental Governance)
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