Governance

Environmental Governance

The term environmental governance signifies the pursuit of governance with reference to issues that broadly pertain to sustainability issues. The [Page 1358]concept of environmental governance can occur at the global scale, as with concern about climate change; at the regional scale, as in transboundary watershed management; and at the local scale, as in decision making on recycling initiatives, landfills, or other local environmental issues. The appropriate scale for addressing environmental governance concerns is often influenced by the biophysical limits of the resource in question, with the stakeholders who are then involved defined by their interest in the resource in question. For example, while good governance of water is a concern shared by many people, the practical challenges of managing water vary greatly in different locations based on factors such as water availability, population, climate, and biogeography. Water's biophysical boundary is the watershed, which often complicates establishing effective governance institutions because the biophysical boundary often does not correspond to political boundaries. Hence, good governance at the watershed scale could include planners from multiple government jurisdictions and the range of often conflicting nongovernmental interests with competing demands for limited water.

For shared environmental resources, an underlying concern is to devise workable and equitable solutions that encompass both intergenerational and intragenerational equity. Intergenerational equity is particularly challenging because, while future generations have a stake in the protection of resources for the future, they (as well as the resources, wildlife or a habitat) cannot participate on their own behalf and depend on the advocacy of stakeholders such as environmental nongovernmental organizations. Part of the rationale for widening participation through environmental governance is that politicians and bureaucrats lack the mandate to take into account the needs of future generations or of nature itself (often popularly explained as “people vote and bunnies don't”) and that, through governance with involvement that extends beyond government, these considerations can be better integrated into decision making.

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