Environmental Policy and Governance最新文献

Treated water releases into the Pacific from the Fukushima Dai'ichi nuclear plant in Japan have drawn opposition from fishing communities, who accused proponents of acting irresponsibly in commencing releases before gaining local support. The controversy reflects questions in social licence to operate and social impact assessment about how proponents' responsibilities to host communities encompass knowledge production and fit with broader visions for a locality. Research into geographies of responsibility—how society takes care and enacts responsibility across space and place—helps think through what it means to take responsibility for host communities. Focusing on the Fukushima Dai'ichi treated water releases, we therefore aim to explore how relational responsibility becomes manifest in a complex and emotive environmental situation. Through interviews with people working in coastal Fukushima fisheries, we find that alongside economic motivations, a desire to ‘defend’ the Fukushima coast for future generations drives cooperatives to continue fishing and demonstrate safety and quality of Fukushima seafood. Those working in fisheries understand marine radioactivity cannot neatly be managed across scales, and that providing more and better scientific data is unlikely to bring others on-side if proponents are not seen as taking responsibility for the Fukushima coast. We argue that in a complex and emotive environmental situation like Fukushima Dai'ichi, multiple actors may hold responsibilities to place and people, and that intermediary organisations are important in enabling relational responsibility. However, proponents must be cognisant of power and resourcing differentials, and ensure those assuming responsibility for place receive financial and technical support.

Venuti F., A. Heinilä, and P. R. Davids. 2025. “Regulations ‘Under the Weather’: Legal Factors of Stability and Change for the Implementation of Natural Stormwater Management in Finland.” Environmental Policy and Governance 35: 431–449. https://doi.org/10.1002/eet.2150.

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Open access publishing facilitated by Ita-Suomen yliopisto, as part of the Wiley–FinELib agreement.

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Social science inquiry into environmental governance is theoretically and methodologically diverse, resulting in a large array of isolated pieces of knowledge. Scholars' reflections around knowledge cumulation focus on how separate bits of knowledge can feasibly be integrated to build a broader, consensual state of knowledge. Yet, experience shows that transferring knowledge from existing research to a new case can lead to ill-adapted governance solutions. We argue that this points to a disconnect between scholars' approaches to knowledge cumulation and cumulation efforts that create actionable knowledge. Indeed, we find there is little concrete guidance offered to scholars on which rationale should guide knowledge cumulation, limiting their capacity to effectively produce actionable knowledge. In this article, we suggest giving precedence to epistemic justice instead of strict feasibility in knowledge cumulation. As a first step, we review common blind spots in knowledge cumulation efforts and argue that a perspective grounded in epistemic justice is best suited to address (global) environmental issues. As a second step, and while acknowledging the structural and institutional limits within which scholars operate, we propose that they can contribute to a shift in the principles guiding knowledge cumulation. This transformation towards epistemic justice should be pursued already at various stages of the knowledge production process, namely in conducting research, presenting and publishing research, and communicating research to policy-makers and communities. This article is primarily directed at environmental governance scholars in the social sciences but may offer valuable insights for anyone interested in inter/trans-disciplinary and boundary-spanning approaches to science and policy-making.

Novelty is a requirement demanded from scholars by reviewers holding the keys to publication as well as by funding bodies allocating project funds and thus sometimes enabling the possibility of an academic career. In fields such as water governance research, at the intersection of research and practice, an additional pressure comes from practitioners' need to find solutions and resources to try and implement different solutions for new and ongoing management problems. Academics find themselves spending a significant amount of time and effort presenting their results and contributions as novel findings, neglecting the importance of testing and refining existing theories (new or old) as a constitutive part of advancing the field. As a result, we observe a mushrooming of concepts and perspectives presented as novel and sometimes even as a new paradigm when such labels might not always be warranted. Through this commentary, we intend to discuss what role novelty plays in water governance research, including discussing if and to what extent such framing hinders knowledge cumulation. To substantiate our discussion, we interviewed four scholars with more than 30 years of experience in water governance research on their views about novelty and on whether striving for novelty impacts the scientific endeavor of knowledge cumulation. We also offer a reflection on possible ways forward to support an academic culture where the importance of testing theory and better utilization of previous work are given more attention.

Demands for ambitious climate measures have been accompanied by calls for a just transition, implying policies that take into account aspects of social justice in climate change mitigation. In many countries, deliberative mini-publics, such as Citizens' Assemblies and Citizens' Juries, have been convened to develop recommendations for socially just climate policies. While experimental studies have established individuals' propensity for outcome favorability in fairness assessments, proponents of deliberative mini-publics maintain that deliberation helps launder self-interested views and produces so-called meta-consensus regarding values, beliefs, and preferences. However, deliberative mini-publics' capability to advance shared interpretations of justice in the context of climate policies has been scarcely examined. To complement this gap, this paper researches two Citizens' Juries, organized in Finland, which discussed fairness of climate policies in the fields of transport and forest use. The study applies Q methodology to map jurors' subjective justice perceptions at the beginning and at the end of the juries. Changes in the perceptions are then examined to assess whether deliberation induces the acknowledgment of the divergent notions of justice. The findings indicate, firstly, that deliberative mini-publics can enhance consensus on vulnerabilities that should be considered in policy-making. Secondly, deliberative mini-publics can help to clarify the key conflicts in perceptions of justice, even when meta-consensus on the different perceptions would not be attained.

Studies on climate policy coherence often focus on policy components as the essential element of success by examining their objectives, instruments, and implementation practices. However, while some studies have demonstrated that it is essential to evaluate the programs or actions that translate policies into success, few have focused specifically on program coherence. This research uses monitoring sheets for programs (N = 177) funded under the Québec Climate Change Action Plan (CCAP) 2013–2020 to perform a comprehensive analysis of program coherence, combining relational content analysis and social network analysis. Findings suggest a failure to achieve the action plan and provide pertinent shortcomings and gaps related to the program's objectives and indicators, including challenges with collaboration and coordination. Given the complexity and cross-cutting nature of climate issues, this study contributes to the literature on policy coherence and argues in favor of program coherence for a better design and assessment of the effectiveness of climate policies and programs. Moreover, through an integrative framework for policy coherence, the study suggests adding public programs to the existing policy components for policy coherence assessment. While relying on effective collaboration and coordination, implications for practitioners include a rigorous use of various program management tools used to design, monitor, and implement public programs.

Environmental governance research (EGR) has been criticized for not being cumulative, despite the importance of cumulative knowledge for evidence-informed decision-making in addressing global sustainability problems. However, defining, measuring, and assessing knowledge cumulation in EGR remain challenging. This study presents a systematic effort to address this challenge. Next to conceptualizing knowledge cumulation, we developed metrics to gauge the potential of EGR for knowledge cumulation on the levels of individual articles and scientific community. We applied those metrics to the “Earth System Governance” (ESG) research community within the field of EGR and analyzed its body of research through publications emerging from the first seven ESG conferences, resulting in 362 journal articles. Employing a comprehensive coding scheme, we further analyzed a random sample of 100 of those articles. Our findings suggest limited potentials for knowledge cumulation within ESG research. At the community level, we found a diverse journal landscape, a core-periphery structure in citation networks and co-authorship patterns, heterogeneous research questions, and only a few shared reference works, concepts, frameworks, and variables. At the article level, we observed few literature reviews, little data sharing, infrequent application of theories and frameworks, a shortage of clear definitions, and insufficient reflection on limitations. Moreover, we found that midsized author teams advance the knowledge cumulation potential. The ESG community aligns with Whitley's notion of a “fragmented adhocracy” characterized by diverse but disjointed research efforts, which still may foster interdisciplinary exchange. Our suggested conceptualizations, metrics, and results lay the foundation for future comparative and in-depth research on cumulating knowledge.

The role of cities in addressing the challenge of climate change is growing and becoming more noticeable in global debates and actions on the ground. However, transformative innovations needed for addressing complex and wicked societal challenges cannot be achieved by cities alone and require concerted efforts also at national and international levels. In addition to multi-level governance collaborations between cities, regions and the state or horizontal networks between cities, unconventional polycentric governance arrangements are emerging that still need to be explored and understood better. This study analyses the case of the Swedish Strategic Innovation programme ‘Viable Cities’ and its ‘Climate-neutral Cities 2030’ (CNC2030) initiative over the period of 6 years. Our analysis shows how during this time, Viable Cities successfully mediated the design and implementation across governance levels (urban, national and European) of a number of governance instruments that influenced the work of Swedish municipalities towards the goals of climate-neutrality in their cities. Through mutual commitments, learning platforms and an alignment of instruments, this governance innovation increases the collective capacity of Swedish cities to act in the climate transition. Our study shows how intermediaries can facilitate innovative arrangements grounded in multi-level governance alignments and inter-urban interactions to enact and shape transformative innovation policy for urban climate transition.