 the United Kingdom. Five elements are selected to act as a lens with which to frame the analysis – administration and implementation, integration, participation, monitoring and independent review. This background paper concludes that although there appears to be no optimal institutional framework that can be applied to all countries, the five elements above, when developed in light of the unique characteristics and resources within each country, have generally resulted in the publication of a definitive NSDS. More publications looking in more detail at the New Zealand experience can be found from the SustainableFuture website.
Network Governance of the Commons This paper by Lars Carlsson and Annica SandstrÃ¶m acknowledges that the survival of the commons is closely associated with the potential to find ways to strengthen contemporary management systems. There is a need to make them more responsive to a number of complexities, like the dynamics of ecosystems and related, but often fragmented, institutions. A discussion on the desirability of finding ways to establish so called cross-scale linkages, i.e. connections among different actors from different levels of organisation and geographical settings, recently has been vitalised in the literature. The establishment of such linkages is believed to have many advantages for the sustainable management of the commons. In the same vein, concepts like adaptive management, comanagement and adaptive co-management have been discussed. In essence, these ways of organizing management to generate alternative governance systems are more closely related to network governance and social network theory, than to political administrative hierarchy.
Using participatory and learning-based approaches for environmental management to help achieve constructive behaviour change This report from Will Allen, Margaret Kilvington, and Chrys Horn looks at how agencies can influence people’s behaviour to improve environmental management. It highlights new approaches that work with multi-stakeholder groups and teams, in particular those which improve motivation, information flows, and collaborative learning. The report covers four main areas: i) a review of contemporary approaches to environmental policy making; ii) a review of frameworks for supporting behaviour change; iii) providing an outline of the key concepts for managing participation in practice; and iv) a description of techniques for building group capacity for environmental change.
Editorial: Governance for sustainability This editorial by Derk Loorbach in “Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy” talks about the Dutch experiences with “transition management” as a novel governance paradigm dealing with long-term social change. Transition management is a coordinated effort to influence the speed and direction of large-scale social change based on the concepts of social transitions and sustainable development. In this sense he argues, transition management as governance for sustainability is a collective process of learning-by-doing and doing-by-learning based on a shared way of thinking. The approach is not to achieve fixed goals, but to gradually work towards common ambitions through innovation, integration, and transition. And the beauty is that everyone can contribute in his or her own way and in doing so the search itself becomes the process of governance for sustainable development.
Conceptualizing climate change governance beyond the international regime: a review of four theoretical approaches This paper by Chukwumerije Okereke and Harriet Bulkeley reviews four theoretical approaches for considering the governance of climate change at the international level â€“ regime theory, global governance, neo-Gramscian and governmentality perspectives â€“ to assess their respective strengths and weaknesses. Based on the review, the authors draw out some concepts around which future research on the involvement of non-nation state actors (NNSAs) in global climate governance might be framed. These include: (i) the nature of the state; (ii) the 