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The growing urgency of environmental problems, such as climate change, pollution, and waste management, has highlighted the importance of eco-innovation. It includes the development of sustainable solutions for goods and services. As corporations adopt sustainability practices, governments are increasingly essential in propelling eco-innovation. Innovation and economic growth are inextricably linked since innovation helps reduce costs, increases productivity, and builds knowledge. Eco-innovation, requiring stakeholders' collaboration and knowledge sharing where public policy plays a critical role in fostering eco-innovation, is frequently catalyzed by climate change and environmental issues. This paper provides an assessment of the public policy of several countries and its part in promoting eco-innovation. It explores how policy tools such as research and development investments, regulations, incentives, and infrastructure can be used successfully. It also explores how such instruments influence small and medium enterprises due to their importance in environmental sustainability policy. This research contributes to knowledge and adds to the literature by offering a global approach to the subject, complementing previous regional/single-country studies. It demonstrates the worldwide consequences of policy actions on eco-innovation and provides recommendations for policymakers, businesses, academics, and environmental stakeholders. The results highlight how governmental support is integral to ensuring the sustainability of a green future with economic benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

River basins provide a wide range of ecosystem services important for human well-being. Ecosystem functions and their value to humans have been thoroughly studied. However, the role of governance characteristics for the sustainable management of ecosystem services has been largely ignored up to now. To close this gap, this article introduces the latest modifications to a database building on the Management and Transition Framework (MTF) that serve to study the relationship between water governance and management systems and their performance with regard to impacts on ecosystem services. This comprehensive approach facilitates structured data collection and representation in order to analyze single case studies or compare case studies regarding the governance and management of water resources and associated ecosystem services. It allows the user to investigate whether certain water governance characteristics, such as stakeholder involvement or vertical integration of governance levels, are associated with a change in the management of ecosystem services or a measurable change in their state. A simplified case from South Africa shows how the database modifications allow addressing links between governance and management processes on the one side and ecosystem services and the way they are handled on the other side. Applying the MTF database leads to evidence-based insights into best practices as well as failed management approaches and interventions. This in turn provides knowledge that can be transferred from science to practice supporting sustainable governance of ecosystem services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the international agenda of conserving biodiversity and urban green planning, we explored how biodiversity-friendly political orientations in two European metropolises (Paris–France and Berlin–Germany) were translated in public urban park management. To do so, we used a mixed methods research strategy: we analyzed both cities’ strategies for biodiversity and landscape, conducted semi-structured interviews with park managers, surveyed park design and management, and administered questionnaire to specific city dwellers. We showed that the biodiversity strategies in both cities similarly aim at increasing urban biodiversity and city dwellers’ awareness; however, they are highly contrasted in their implementation, with Paris having a high level of control and top-down processes compared to Berlin. Accordingly, nature perceptions of city-dwellers differed between both capitals only in their willingness for nature-control (which was more present in Paris than in Berlin). With this example, we discuss how integrative environmental planning can encourage specific implementations of a global strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] This paper uses the framework of the co-production of knowledge and social order to examine how knowledge–action systems work in the context of urban sustainable governance. [•] The paper presents and applies the knowledge–action systems analysis (KASA) approach to operationalize dynamics of co-production. [•] Existing institutional configurations and dynamics shape how knowledge is produced and used in policy-making. [•] Sustainability involves managing networks, politics of knowledge, and diverse social visions. [•] KASA can be used as a foundation to design new knowledge systems or joint-knowledge production efforts. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The opportunities and limitations of electrically driven mobility are currently widely discussed in public debates on vehicles and future transport. E-mobility has by and large been communicated in the context of sustainable mobility and its central idea is an urban e-car. Questioning the hype for this technology, this paper presents the development of the hegemonic discourse of e-mobility focusing on the actors involved. The study is based on a media analysis of selected German print media. The various phases of the e-mobility discourse were reconstructed by the detailed study of thematic focuses brought about by various actors such as politicians, electric supply companies and traditional automotive industry, and by the temporal distribution of the articles dealing with e-mobility. In addition the actor configuration is clarified by reference to the statements of the actors in the articles. The phases in the e-mobility discourse can be explained by a certain constellation of actors and how they manage to enforce their claims and interests. While the government plays a prominent role in the current development of the e-mobility discourse, the change of the automobile industry''s common position towards the electric vehicle and the rising interests of the power supply industry also play an important role. Finally, the paper reveals the internal and external driving forces of the e-mobility discourse and evaluates whether it is promoted in a sustainable way. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Over the past decade UK government policy has been promoting bioenergy innovation in the name of the public good. This has been envisaged through sociotechnical imaginaries – feasible, desirable future visions dependent upon technoscientific advance. UK bioenergy has had three major imaginaries: localisation, agri-diversification and oil substitution. Through these imaginaries, technoscientific innovation is promoted as an essential means to gain societal benefits, to avoid harm and/or to overcome obstacles. Each imaginary combines specific models of environmental sustainability and economic advantage. These models arise from discursive resonances among research managers, government departments and other public-sector bodies. While such imaginaries have a decade-long history, they have been elaborated more persuasively for specific innovation pathways. Some linkages between imaginaries and innovation pathways have been consolidated more strongly than others; key bodies have been convinced to provide a stronger policy commitment and material support. Warnings about unsustainable biomass have been discursively accommodated via prospects for future innovation which will enhance sustainability, alongside R&D funds to realise those prospects. Meanwhile bioenergy policy attempts to leave open future options which may generate more benefits. In such ways, UK bioenergy policy links epistemic claims for future sustainability with political authority for targets, subsidy and other incentives. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This special issue contributes to a better understanding of science–policy interactions in environmental governance, by assembling studies based on interpretative policy analysis. We introduce the theory and use of interpretative approaches in the analysis of science–policy interactions and draw on Stone''s Policy Paradox (2002) to demonstrate how policy discourses are constituted by expertise but also by interests and rhetoric. This enables us to show how policy discourses are shaped by, but also shape their environment, especially when they become dominant and suppress alternative discourses and related knowledge claims and governance practices. In particular, we highlight the role of scientific and other technical expertise in the establishment and interpretation of policy discourses in different settings and argue that current environmental policy discourses afford considerable space for science and expertise to calculate the state of the environment, evaluate the sustainability of policies and forge solutions for green economic growth. In the conclusion we underscore the importance of reflexivity on the part of scientists working at the science–policy interface regarding the political choices implicit in the policy discourses they both work within and help to establish. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Evidence on the role of information and knowledge for policy making shows that policy actors seldom use information as a direct input to their decisions. Similar patterns of (non)use have been identified in the case of indicators in the environmental and sustainable development policy domains. The objective of the paper is to elucidate the patterns of environmental indicator use and to argue for the introduction of a ‘politics of policy indicators’. With a limited set of characteristics (e.g. legitimacy, credibility and salience) of indicators, which help to apprehend the usability of indicators, we argue that the usability profile of indicators can be analysed as a matter of construction and deliberation by indicator creators and policy actors. The performance of indicators as policy tools – as rendered with their usability profile – is co-dependent of the institutional embeddedness of the indicators. Our conclusion makes the case that if environmental improvements towards more sustainability are partly relying on the quality and uptake of information into policy processes in order to steer decisions, then the ‘usability profile’ of indicators itself should be subject to collective and conscious steering. This call to ‘steer the steering’ is supported by the wider calls to initiate patterns of ‘reflexive governance’ within the sustainability policy domain. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Shifting from traditional, large, centralised infrastructure to alternative, distributed technologies is widely accepted as essential for enabling sustainable water management. Despite technical advances in sustainable urban water management over recent decades, the shift from traditional to more sustainable approaches remains slow. Current research on socio-institutional barriers suggests this poor implementation relates to a limited understanding of the different forms of governance needed to support alternative approaches, rather than the potential ineffectiveness of the technologies and practices. While some governance scholars express preferences for ideal hierarchical, market or network governance approaches, others suggest a hybrid of these approaches may be more appropriate for achieving sustainability. Currently, there is limited commentary about the potential characteristics of sustainable urban water governance. To extend the current scholarship, this paper systematically draws on the tacit knowledge of expert sustainability practitioners to identify potential governance characteristics of sustainable urban water management. In comparison with current urban water scholarship, which is supportive of a network governance approach at a conceptual level, the results strongly suggest that sustainability practitioners see the need for hybrid governance arrangements at a practical and operational level. These hybrid arrangements tended to comprise network and hierarchical approaches with market governance instruments. These insights from practitioners to help identify future research needs, focused on examining interaction among governance approaches at a variety of scales and locations. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: A number of different tools for analysing environmental impacts of different systems have been developed. These include procedural tools such as strategic environmental assessment (SEA) and environmental management systems (EMS) as well as analytical ones such as life cycle assessment (LCA), life cycle costing (LCC), cost–benefit analysis (CBA) and the system of economic and environmental accounts (SEEA) including input–output analysis (IOA). Descriptions or scenarios of the future are typically relevant elements in these tools, since they are often used to describe impacts in the future. For futures studies a number of different approaches and techniques have been developed. In an earlier paper we have presented a typology of different types of scenarios that respond to different types of questions. These include predictive scenarios, explorative scenarios and normative scenarios. The aim of this paper is to explore connections between selected tools for environmental systems analysis and different scenario types. Although there is a clear need for futures studies in several tools for environmental systems analysis, it is interesting to note that the literature on methodologies for and case studies of combinations of futures studies and environmental systems analysis tools is rather limited. This suggests that there is a need for further research in this area including both methodology and practical case studies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]