Journal Menu
► Journal MenuJournal Browser
► Journal BrowserSpecial Issue "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: 30 November 2021.
Special Issue Editors
Interests: political regulation; applied democratic theory; representation and state politics; environmental governance
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 papers will be 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 1900 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
Planned Papers
The below list represents only planned manuscripts. Some of these manuscripts have not been received by the Editorial Office yet. Papers submitted to MDPI journals are subject to peer-review.
Abstract:
Small island developing states (SIDS) ambitiously pursue their development agendas while facing resource and governance constraints. Global processes like the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) include governance norms with the potential to influence national institutional arrangements and policy priorities. National implementation processes are dynamic and contest, reinterpret and/or apply external norms in varied ways. Although much of the success in SDG implementation depends upon understanding these dynamic processes, surprisingly, the question has received little scholarly attention. This study explored the power of SDGs to act as a broker for sustainability governance. The study has two parts. First, I construct a framework of five governance norms with nine measures or implementation pathways that characterize the SDG governance. Second, using national reports to the United Nations, I provide evidence on how four Caribbean SIDS -St. Lucia, Guyana, the Bahamas, and Jamaica- apply this framework in the years immediately following the launch of the Agenda 2030. In most cases, states have not incorporated the implementation pathways though recognizing their value. The findings suggest that greater attention should be given to governance capacity building to support SIDS’ led sustainable development national agendas. The study contributes to discourses on the ability of global processes to improve national governance, to the constructivists’ norm penetration debates and to debates on SDGs and governance.
Authors: Dr. Michelle Scobie
Affiliation: International Law, Global Environmental Governance, Institute of International Relations, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad & Tobago