Environmental Policy and Governance最新文献

Energy systems are rapidly transforming towards sustainability, involving significant realignments in social, economic and political systems. New actors such as communities are seeking empowerment to engage in transformations. A range of actors has applied the concept of empowerment in energy transformations to signify different ideas for how communities can engage with energy. As such, its meaning is shaped by ambiguities, uncertainties and contestations. Traditionally, a neoliberal discourse has framed empowerment in energy, resulting in a hollowing of the term and questions around what it means, to whom and in which contexts. This paper contributes to this debate by unpacking empowerment in energy transformations in the context of community energy initiatives. Building on interviews and multicriteria mapping techniques, this paper concludes that all energy stakeholders prefer the strongest options for empowerment. However, empowerment is a co-produced phenomenon revealing a role for all stakeholders in its cultivation. Embracing diverse understandings of empowerment has implications for how governance can facilitate community empowerment in energy transformations.

The European Parliament adopted the Circular Economy Action Plan in 2021, with which it identifies the importance of the design phase to improve products' circularity and environmental impacts. With an environmental design approach – ecodesign – companies can proactively reduce, avoid, or eliminate adverse environmental impacts that occur during the life cycle of a product. However, the practical implementation of ecodesign is not widely studied, hence, there is little evidence indicating a comprehensive or structured use of ecodesign in companies. Moreover, current policies are not considered as sufficient to promote the systematic use of the concept. This research studies company views on drivers and barriers of ecodesign, its practical implementation means, and compiles the most important development areas for the public sector to support ecodesign implementation in companies. Based on our study, the key drivers and barriers relate to company values, customer demand, tools, information, competition, regulations, and standards, reflecting both internal and external factors. With regard to implementation, ecodesign has been a systemic and continuous activity in companies, ranging from products and services to processes and marketing, but often with no dedicated resources. Subsequently, the key development areas for public policy are the establishment of stable and predictable regulations; provision of clear and structured information; provision of ecodesign tools supporting decision-making and which are easily available for different purposes and sectors. These mutually supportive areas are important for promoting ecodesign more systemically. In future policy actions, it would be important to further introduce interlinkages and synergies between various policy tools.

While the world is still in the grasp of COVID-19, countries are contemplating how to get their economies back on their feet. With a unique opportunity to do so in a sustainable manner, there is an urgent need to revisit the governance of climate change. Opportunities are clearly there: the resurgence in top-down policies in the pandemic might spill-over to climate governance; green economic stimuli might cause an increase in market-based approaches; or an increased focus on solidarity, inclusion and collective buy-in may drive more inclusive network-based governance. Using the classic trichotomy of hierarchy, market and network governance, we have analysed the findings of 60 interviews with expert representatives from government, industry and third sector parties in the UK and the Netherlands. Their consideration of the key policies and measures needed to help the transition forward point towards a clear desire for a more hierarchical approach. In addition, mixing the three approaches, especially market and hierarchy, is considered the best way forward.

Despite the abundance of renewable resources, renewable energy accounts for less than 1% of the total installed power capacity in oil-producing Gulf Arab states. While the political–economic structures of oil-producing Gulf Arab states are thought to have played a role in determining these states' remarkably low uptake of renewable energy, these structures remain understudied. With a focus on Oman, we assess how political–economic structures have influenced its adoption of renewable energy. We implement an analytical framework that integrates insights from energy transition studies and the political–economic theory of rentier states. Drawing on secondary data and primary information from semi-structured interviews with renewable energy developers and energy experts, this study reveals that renewable energy roll-out in Oman has been delayed through three different strategies, namely the use media and public debate, a reduction of the power of renewable energy stakeholders, and the use of institutional mechanisms to strengthen hydrocarbon-based technologies. Oman's renewable energy transition efforts aim to protect rents from oil exports rather than advance low-carbon energy transition.

Governance of natural resources is challenging due to cross-sectoral dependencies across related sectors such as, for example, water, agriculture, and energy. Actors involved in natural resource governance create network contacts with each other, in order to deal with specific governance issues. An important resource for actors is information, and actors act according to the amount of information they have about other related sectors. In this article, we study how the information actors possess about different sectors is related to their contact network across sectors. We empirically study a case of water management in the Swiss mountain valley of Engadin. We use descriptive and inferential network analysis to show that actors with more information about other sectors establish more contacts in general, as well as with actors from those other sectors. We conclude that successful natural resource governance hinges upon the information that actors have about other sectors related to their sector.

Existing studies on environmental policy implementation in China have largely been focused on the inadequacy of environmental policy implementation at local levels and the adversarial campaign-style enforcement used to remedy it, while overlooked other approaches to addressing environmental issues. We present a case in which a consensual approach was used to control water pollution and identify key factors contributing to the adoption and success of such an approach. The research unit is the process of water pollution control in Shandong Province from 2002 to 2011. During the case period, the pulp and paper industry (the leading polluting source) was regulated with gradually tightened water pollution discharge standards which were made and implemented in a consensual way, surface water quality was greatly improved, and the economic output of the regulated industry grew rapidly. Key factors contributing to the adoption and success of such an approach include the presence of a capable policy entrepreneur who played an important role in policy innovation, forging consensus building in policy making and facilitating consensual policy implementation; the deep and wide involvement of the regulated firms in the policy making process which allowed them to share know-how and express preferences; and the strong political support from provincial higher-ups which signaled strong political wills. The findings enrich our understanding of environmental policy enforcement in China by adding a set of internal factors to a literature pool focusing more on the the influence of such external factors as institutional incentiveson policy processes and outcomes.

Prominent conceptualizations of policy coherence for sustainable development focus primarily on the roles of intra-governmental policy processes and institutional interactions in shaping coherence between various agendas and policies. These technocratic understandings of coherence overlook the more political drivers of coherence, such as the vested interests or ideologies that may encourage or hinder efforts to achieve coherence. This paper addresses this gap by drawing on the comparative politics literature to facilitate a political understanding of policy coherence. It introduces an analytical framework hypothesizing how ideas, institutions, and interests (the three I's) may influence policy coherence at different policy stages. As such, it includes measures of how policy coherence is applied by different actors and institutions, and whose ideas and interests may be served by pursuing or not pursuing coherence. This article provides an example of how the framework can be applied to study policy coherence between two prominent international agendas: Agenda 2030 (incorporating the Sustainable Development Goals) and the Paris Agreement. Overall, the paper argues that the three I's influence policy options and shape the ambition and importance given to different agendas, goals and actors in pursuing or resisting policy coherence. This framework is suited for assessing the political divers of policy coherence through being applied to empirical data at global or national levels.

The extensive research on waste management has primarily remained confined to metro cities and focused on economic and environmental issues. The present study explores waste management in smaller urban areas from an institutional standpoint, mapping formal and informal players onto a two-dimensional framework: institutional type and institutional strength. The analysis is based on data accumulated through in-depth interviews and focus group discussions in three towns of India. Despite the absence of formal acknowledgment, it establishes a continuum between formal and informal actors whose efforts to collect waste and provide public goods and services are mutually supportive. Although the informal sector is ranked lower, there is little variation in institutional strength between the formal and informal sectors. A formal-informal hierarchy hinders informal waste collectors from moving up the value chain. The paper argues against separating the formal and informal actors in urban policy and planning. A waste management system that is formally integrated is required to extract greater economic value from waste and to strengthen the informal-formal continuum. This should enhance both the wages and working conditions of waste workers.

Regulation is often seen as a barrier to innovation. However, if done properly, it can actually serve as a driver of innovation. To understand how environmental regulation can be designed to stimulate innovation, we scrutinise the scientific literature related to regulation, innovation and the environment. Fifty one carefully selected studies are examined with regard to their scope, results and geographical affiliation, and their findings were distilled into ten lessons on how to design environmental regulation to stimulate innovation. Subsequently, we discuss the validity and implications of the lessons. We find that the lessons are overarching concepts of principal nature that are applicable for most regulatory settings. We also find that recent EU regulations on plastics, nanomaterials and waste support many of the lessons learned, while some are completely neglected. The lessons offer important guidance and can be seen as a checklist of what regulators must consider when designing new regulation.

Research on norm domestication in multi-level governance structures is overlooked in urban climate governance and policy literature. This paper conceptualizes multi-scalar interactions of norm domestication for local climate actions. The city of Phoenix, which operates under the “purple” (blue cities and red legislatures) state of Arizona, is analyzed to illustrate how a local government can take up the climate actions left in the void at the state and federal levels. The empirical findings reveal important temporal politics at the state level that influenced the local government's climate norm domestication. The period of Democratic party leadership diffused climate norms at the state-level and positioned the local government more as a climate policy-taker, adopting decisions from the state legislature. Swings in the state-level executive orders under the subsequent period of Republican leadership, however, forced the local government to seek some common ground for norm domestication, usually related to the nonpartisan goals of economic development. Consequently, local climate actions are subject to depoliticization of climate change from the higher-level governance structures. Overall, decarbonization targets are not being directed in ways that lead to a broader shift in the socio-technical system but would support short-term emission reductions if multiple institutions, both at the state and sub-state levels, created spaces for collaboration rather than competition.