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On November 1, 2021, the world’s nations will convene as the 26th meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP 26) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. This milestone convention was cr...

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) was conceived at the UN Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in June 1972. It was born six months later. Next year it will celebrate...

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In this special issue of Environment, we focus on what sustainability might look like in a post-COVID-19 era. With topics ranging from the nexus of zoonotic infectious diseases and nature, to how t...

This article responds to increasing public and academic discourses on social innovation, which often rest on the assumption that social innovation can drive societal change and empower actors to deal with societal challenges and a retreating welfare state. In order to scrutinise this assumption, this article proposes a set of concepts to study the dynamics of transformative social innovation and underlying processes of multi-actor (dis)empowerment.First, the concept of transformative social innovation is unpacked by proposing four foundational concepts to help distinguish between different pertinent ‘shades’ of change and innovation: 1) social innovation, (2) system innovation, (3) game-changers, and (4) narratives of change. These concepts, invoking insights from transitions studies and social innovations literature, are used to construct a conceptual account of how transformative social innovation emerges as a co-evolutionary interaction between diverse shades of change andinnovation. Second, the paper critically discusses the dialectic nature of multi-actor (dis)empowerment that underlies such processes of change and innovation. The paper then demonstrates how the conceptualisations areapplied to three empirical case-studies of transformative social innovation: Impact Hub, Time Banks and Credit Unions. In the conclusion we synthesise how the concepts and the empirical examples help to understand contemporary shifts in societal power relations and the changing role of the welfare state.

The idea of building an economy which supports sustainable development without degrading the environment has been widely debated and broadly embraced by politicians, civil servants, the media, academics and the public alike for several decades. This book explores the measures being trialled at various levels of governance in the European region to reduce the adverse impacts of human behaviour on the environment whilst simultaneously addressing society's economic and social needs as part of the intended shift towards a 'green' economy. It includes European case studies that scrutinise the efforts being undertaken at sub-national, national and regional tiers of governance to facilitate the transition to a low carbon economy. This book will be of interest to graduate students, researchers, practitioners, and policy makers working in environmental governance, European studies, environmental studies, political science, and management studies.

In this paper we use large scale spatially explicit modelling and case study based analyses to assess the links between recreational ecosystem services and the benefits for wellbeing of traditional livelihoods in the Brazilian Amazon. Our results show that, at the scale of the Brazilian Amazon, associations between recreational ecosystem services and extractivist activities of Brazil nut and rubber are very weak with no significant differences regarding Brazil nut (p = 0.61) and rubber (p = 0.41) income across the different tourism development classes. However, qualitative analysis of the case studies reveals that where there are multifunctional livelihoods, recreational ecosystem services are indeed helping to enhance non timber forest product extractivist social values that otherwise would be suppressed by prevailing “cattle ranching” lifestyles. We therefore support innovative ways to make both recreational ecosystem services and non timber forest products extraction not merely a juxtaposition of activities, but integrated into multifunctional livelihoods.

The fascinating trio of articles filling this issue vary widely in location, history, and content. Yet they are bound by a common theme. Sustainability is in sight but not yet in our grasp. The pie...

The precautionary principle carries great significance for “sustainability science.” It provides a powerful framework for improving the quality, decency, and reliability of decisions over technolog...

There is a unifying thread to the fascinating contributions which fill this issue. Science is reaching out to communities, and communities are informing science. This is not just a democratic nicet...

In honor of Earth Day 2020, for this issue we are choosing to take a look back at three seminal articles published in Environment in order to reflect on the changes that have occurred in sustainabi...

This paper reassesses the scope for shifting high-carbon personal behaviors in the light of prevailing insufficient political and regulatory action. Our previous research has shown that citizens regard such behavioral shifts as extremely daunting and create a number of psychological denial mechanisms that draw attention to the inaction of others, including governments. Further theoretical insights and relevant new findings have been attained from a more recent survey of more than 1000 German residents. This reveals that direct denial of anthropogenic climate change is replaced by a denial of responsibility for individual climate action. Ways of moral disengagement play a more dominant role, such as the diffusion and displacement of responsibility, although a majority is aware of—and very much concerned about—the climate crisis. More attention needs to be given for further reinterpretation of the role of moral disengagement to single out adequate strategies for different individuals and groups of people, such as making role models more visible to encourage social learning that could accelerate further necessary moral and behavioral transformations.

The prospect of a planet, intricately and marvellously attuned to almost any calamity, being stressed by the hand of humans in the twinkling of an evolutionary eye, became a high level political issue in many countries in the late 1980s. Climate change science is essentially the product of an amazing period of interdisciplinary networking and modelling by international groups of scientists working imaginatively and creatively over a period of approximately 20 years. For more than a hundred years scientists have been considering the possibility that human activities may change the earth’s climate. Over the past 20 years concern has concentrated on the fact that the concentrations of certain gases in the atmosphere are increasing and that this may lead to a warming of the earth’s surface and to climatic changes. The basis of this concern is the enhanced greenhouse effect. A culmination of scientific development in climate change analysis is the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

This chapter seeks to clarify how the notion of institution extends beyond organizational form, rules and relationships into more fundamental social and political factors that determine how people think, behave and devise rules through which they expect everyone else to play. For sociologists, the study of institutions is central to understanding the organization and functioning of all societies. Indeed, within the functionalist paradigm, sociology is ‘the science of institutions’ and other ‘social facts’. The study of institutions is undoubtedly experiencing a renaissance throughout the social sciences. In economics, politics, public choice, sociology and organizational analysis the study of institutions has emerged as a ‘new’ focus for analysis. According to Jordan and, Smith one of the most important institutions within which policy making and implementation takes place is the policy network or community.

The book provides a critical analysis of the political, moral and legal response to climate change in the midst of significant socio-economic policy shifts. Evolving from original EC commissioned research, this book examines how climate change was put on the policy agenda, with the evolution of the United Nations Framework Convention and subsequent Conference of Parties.

We have entered an unsettling new world where the long-established rules of democracy, already fraying, are in danger of disintegrating. In an increasing number of countries political leaders are b...

The environment and natural resources constitute a particularly urgent and complex governance domain. A linear relationship is commonly assumed between statehood and environmental performance, but this is not supported by the data, nor the expansive literatures that focus on communities and social networks, on the one hand, and on markets and voluntary action by market-based actors, on the other. ‘Hybrid’ or ‘mixed’ forms of governance involving collaboration between state, business, and civil society actors have emerged, but the effectiveness and legitimacy of such collaboration is likely constrained in areas with very limited statehood. As statehood increases, prospects for such mixed governance improve, though this depends inter alia on characteristics of the state, such as its commitment to participatory and deliberative decision-making. Overall, statehood clearly plays an important role in environmental governance and its outcomes, but in a more multidimensional and often indirect way than commonly assumed.

“Habitus” appears in the title of the fascinating article by Lei Ping in this issue. For some it may be an unfamiliar word, but its meaning is central to the conduct of sustainability. One of its a...

David Wallace-Wells. London: Allen Lane/Penguin, 2019 (ISBN: 978-0-241-35521-3).Bill McKibben. London: Wildfire/Headline Publishing, 2019 (ISBN: 978-1250178268).This magazine has published extensiv...

Shifting socially accustomed and personally habitual behavior is a tough task, and achieving dietary change away from livestock-based foods in developed, emerging, and developing economies offers p...

Continuing high consumption of livestock products in nearly all developed countries, and increasing demand for livestock-based foods in large transition economies, are creating serious problems of prolonged and persistent environmental and social degradation. These problems are further exacerbated and affected by climate change and risks, biodiversity loss, water stress, and water pollution. How do the associated socioeconomic aspects such as food security and personal health, together with impoverishment and displacement of communities, associated with livestock production consumption figure into the challenges? And how can we change livestock production consumption to reduce future environmental destruction going forward?

Pamela Matson, William C. Clark, and Krister Andersson. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016 (ISBN 978-0-691-15761-0).Creating a short and readable text explaining and exemplifying susta...

This article favors a progressive policy and management shift in the establishment and implementation of biosphere reserves (BRs). In the new era of the Anthropocene, BRs will need to pursue the implementation of sustainable development goals as their central purpose and interpret them even further toward more integrated and consequent forms of sustainable livelihoods. This means placing people even more in the center of policy and management: they are the pioneers and ambassadors making sustainability real. This also means that we have to change the criteria for designating and managing BRs away from representativeness of landscapes toward an integration of their ecological, social, and economic potentials and set in a framework of genuine sustainability governance.

The year 2018 has ended, and for many it brought suffering and a sense of foreboding. The future obscures the view of what 2019 will bring, but for many the prospect of further suffering is overwhe...

This paper adopts two perspectives. The first is a framing process aimed at defining and examining the conditions for adopting adaptive coastal governance. The second applies to relevant themes of changing coastal policy, central to the testing of adaptive coastal governance, namely cooperative science, risk-sensitive planning, socially fair insurance cover and effective ways to design, finance and engage with local communities over actual coastal change. We illuminate both missions through case studies in North Norfolk (England) and Portugal, all notably affected by coastal change. In England and Portugal, there is a broad understanding and acceptance of the likely effects of climate change. This recognition encourages debates over risk-averse planning, the design of proactive insurance cover, creative relocation of endangered property and new ways of predicting and paying for coastal adjustment. Yet, moving from a basic willingness to engage with coastal change to actual practices of landscape adjustment through such policy shifts is proving very difficult. In this research, we find that coastal landscapes are lived experiences, resigned acceptances of inevitable change and hopeful imaginings. Coastal management institutions are not geared to resolving this incompatibility and this paper explains why.

I consider the record of failure of the current arrangements of capitalism to deliver sustainability: the failure to anticipate tipping points; the over-optimism of business to deliver sustainability; the immorality of markets; and the increasing loss of public trust in democracy. I consider how to resurrect the meaning and definition of sustainability for the emerging age of human wellbeing and betterment. It is possible that the manner in which our governing institutions function actually contributes to the acceleration and intensity of critical thresholds. I discuss the relationship between international, national and local levels of governing to bring about a transition in the coming decade. I review the conditions to promote citizenship opportunities for otherwise unemployed young people and consider the prospects for the success of such initiatives at the local level. These are not perfectly connected solutions: but they are relevant ingredients for any transition to sustainability.

Continuing economic turbulence has fuelled debates about social and political reform as much as it has stimulated actions and initiatives aimed at a more fundamental transition of dominant economic systems. This paper takes a transition perspective to explore, from a Western European viewpoint, how the economic crisis is actually viewed through a variety of interpretations and responded to through a range of practices. We argue that framing societal phenomena such as the economic crisis as "symptoms of transition" through alternative narratives and actions can give rise to the potential for (seemingly) short-term pressures to become game changers. Game changers are then defined as the combination of: specific events, the subsequent or parallel framing of events in systemic terms by engaged societal actors, and (eventually) the emergence of (diverse) alternative narratives and practices (in response to the systemic framing of events). Game changers, when understood in these terms, help to orient, legitimize, guide, and accelerate deep changes in society. We conclude that such dynamics in which game changers gain momentum might also come to play a critical role in transitions. Therefore, we argue for developing a better understanding of and methodologies to further study the coevolutionary dynamics associated with game changers, as well as exploring the implications for governance.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development came into force in January 2016 as the central United Nations (UN) platform for achieving ‘integrated and indivisible’ goals and targets across the three characteristic dimensions of sustainable development: the social, environmental and economic. We argue that, despite the UN adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a framework for operationalising them in an integrated fashion is lacking. This article puts forth a framework for integrating health and well-being across the SDGs as both preconditions and outcomes of sustainable development. We present a rationale for this approach, and identify the challenges and opportunities for implementing and monitoring such a framework through a series of examples. We encourage other sectors to develop similar integrating frameworks for supporting a more coordinated approach for operationalising the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Assessing the ways in which rural agrarian areas provide Cultural Ecosystem Services (CES) is proving difficult to achieve. This research has developed an innovative methodological approach named as Multi Scale Indicator Framework (MSIF) for capturing the CES embedded into the rural agrarian areas. This framework reconciles a literature review with a trans-disciplinary participatory workshop. Both of these sources reveal that societal preferences diverge upon judgemental criteria which in turn relate to different visual concepts that can be drawn from analysing attributes, elements, features and characteristics of rural areas. We contend that it is now possible to list a group of possible multi scale indicators for stewardship, diversity and aesthetics. These results might also be of use for improving any existing European indicators frameworks by also including CES. This research carries major implications for policy at different levels of governance, as it makes possible to target and monitor policy instruments to the physical rural settings so that cultural dimensions are adequately considered. There is still work to be developed on regional specific values and thresholds for each criteria and its indicator set. In practical terms, by developing the conceptual design within a common framework as described in this paper, a considerable step forward towards the inclusion of the cultural dimension in European wide assessments can be made.

10.1080/00139157.2012.657136-F0001 Botafogo Bay in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where Rio+20 will take place. During the third week of June 2012, the United Nations will convene Rio+20, officially known...

This paper investigates the implementation of governance for sustainable landscapes, based on a catchment case study in lowland England. A participatory research process, spanning six and a half years, employed formal and informal in-depth interviews, focus group work and workshop techniques with 71 stakeholders representative of a wide range of interests in the catchment. A scenario design process within a GIS framework was used as a focus for capturing the key issues and visions of the stakeholders. Two contrasting but plausible scenarios for 2020 emerged from this process; one scenario was driven by the sustainable intensification of agricultural production and world trade, the other by the enhanced protection of ecosystem services and multi-objective land use. It was clear from discussions with stakeholders that the mechanisms for delivering an integrated approach to landscape management are not currently in place, although there have been some policy successes that could be built upon. There is also a need for new approaches to land tenure which include tax incentives and improved forms of cooperation and leadership in both policy and contiguous landscape stewardship. The methodology itself was appreciated by the stakeholders who found it useful to think more holistically. In addition, the study demonstrates an approach that individual practitioners and researchers can develop the skills to implement.

If there is a strong argument in favour of multifunctional forest management, there is also controversy regarding the types of multifunctionality able to instil virtuous circles across landscapes. Managing forests in such a way that user groups, sustainability practitioners and forestry institutions all agree to, is not easy. For any reliable consensus to occur, via viable landscape design procedures, through which multiple functions (production, environmental protection and recreation) may be coordinated by means of innovative planning, there is a need to negotiate a set of common objectives and shared responsibilities. This paper examines the policy dimensions of multifunctional forest management, and, through an exploratory case study, proposes an approach for cooperative planning and institutional design. The case study involved two parishes in the Minho region of Portugal (Gavieira and Entre Ambos-os-Rios) combining the local communities, the National Park, and local forestry officers. The case study created, developed and validated two scenario storylines through a series of participatory processes (two focus group meetings, one comprehensive workshop, and one expert meeting). One scenario focussed on continuity of the traditional management patterns, with an emphasis on direct goods such as timber and livestock grazing (traditional multifunctionality). The other concentrated on indirect ecological services, such as soil and water protection, as well as carbon sequestration (new multifunctionality). An attempt was also made to implement the scenario storylines through initiating a pilot project in both of the case study areas. However, there were neither robust planning mechanisms nor adaptive governance systems with the capacity to put into place forest management “futures” likely to deliver more sustainable landscape-scale uses in these areas. This paper illustrates the difficulties in forging governance systems that have the capacity and the vision to be able to put sustainable development concepts into practice, even when a coherent package of planning measures are tried out, given a policy setting that is confused, contradictory, and where the “status quo” tends to be given prominence.

This paper makes the case for advancing sustainability science partnerships (SSPs) both within universities and through innovative means of integrating universities with external public-private and civil sectors. It links the basic principles of sustainable development with an emerging science of cooperative learning that connects researchers to a wide range of partners. SSPs are specifically designed to be transformational through becoming active agents for societal change. Universities play a special role here because they can act both as communication networks and as laboratories for developing the capability to design and manage SSPs in the creative transition to sustainability. It is gratifying to note that these ideas are beginning to emerge in a number of universities, with European examples being highlighted in this paper. Further steps towards introducing full-blooded SSPs across the university spectrum are suggested.

The most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) presents unequivocal evidence of climate change. Coastal areas are projected to be exposed to increased risks of coastal erosion and flooding due to greater storminess and sea level rise. One challenge is to work out how coasts may alter in terms of flood and erosion risk. Quite another is to understand the associated economic, social, and environmental consequences so that meaningful adaptation measures can be developed and put in place well before the ‘future’ happens. This paper examines the shift in policy in coastal management in England, informed by the outcomes of various case studies involving participatory techniques designed to enable local communities to envisage ways of adapting to a changing coastline. A key stumbling block is that ‘future coasts’ are all but impossible to visualise; the evidence base is uncertain, and policy measures to ensure sustainable coastal futures are not in place; they have not yet been de...

The mobile nature of soft coasts means that coastal communities face uncertainty in their property values and peace of mind when the existing coastal defense is lowered or removed. The acceptance by the U.K. government that coastal realignment in areas of low population density and limited ecological value is unavoidable means that the current state of affairs, where coastal residents have broadly come to assume that they will be defended if they make enough fuss, cannot continue. The government is currently unwilling to confront this consternation and continues to refuse to pay compensation for lost property value. This is creating an outcry over loss of fairness of treatment. This dispute raises important questions of governance for coastal change. This participatory research project worked closely with English Nature, North Norfolk District Council, local residents associations, the Environment Agency, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. What emerged in the analysis were unresol...

In May 2006 the Prime Minister made it publicly clear to the incoming Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, David Miliband, that limiting the emissions of greenhouse gases, and dealing with climate change generally, is his top priority.1 Indeed, all policies and institutional arrangements will need to be challenged to achieve the ambition of 60 per cent reduction of carbon dioxide by 2050 (DTI 2003). How may this ambition be delivered sustainably? The UK Sustainable Development Strategy (HM Government 2005) placed an emphasis on the principles and practices of sustainability at all levels of government in the UK. Eventually all of these different levels will be expected to produce sustainable development action plans, beginning with all central government departments, regional administrations and devolved administrations in 2006 (HM Government 2005 2006). The regions have a vital role to play in delivering adequate responses to climate change, both in adapting to its impacts and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Crucial are the Regional Spatial Strategies, since these guide mid-range planning decisions on settlement, transport and energy (see also HM Government 2006). However, it is clear that integrating governance-for-sustainability into emerging regionalism and localism in the UK is still at the embryonic stage (O’Riordan 2004). The UK Sustainable Development Commission (2005) reviewed the regional policy machinery with a view to improving its capability to achieve sustainable development. It proposed that regional sustainable development frameworks should be established at the highest level of integration both for evaluating and progressing sustainability. In its response (HM Government 2006, 17), the Government called for the use of evidence-based scenarios, stakeholder involvement, integrated visions, clear targets, sustainability appraisal techniques and regular monitoring and reporting via independent regional sustainable development round tables.