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Environmental Governance: A Review of Relevant Literature
The field of environmental governance has grown unprecedentedly as a result of the increasing concern and occurrences of climate change-related events all over the world. Where social, political, and cultural movements and shifts have influenced human history over the years, the environment is taking the forefront as humanity -- societies and nations -- are threatened by one common force no amount of socio-political or cultural power could control or undermine: climate change. Indeed, events relating to climate change are more pervasive than ever, affecting not just specific groups of people or nations, but all of humanity. This is why literature on climate change and environmental sustainability, both popular and academic, have increased over the years, triggering a global debate about the future of the planet and the "plight" of the human race in the decades or centuries to come.
Beyond the issue of environmental sustainability, however, is also a compelling debate and discussion about the transformation of societies as we human s confront the realities of climate change and the alarmingly limited/scarce environmental resources in the world today. This review of current literature, as a response, looks into the issue of environmental / ecological sustainability from different lenses/perspectives, but ultimately looking at the way the issue has shaped social, political, and cultural structures,...
The institutionalist vision, meanwhile, takes the market liberalism approach to a larger and wider scale. "Institutionalists" believe that better global environment management requires not only an efficient and effective implementation of sustainable development, globalization and free markets in societies. More critical is how this synergy can be elevated from a national to international platform, wherein societies, organizations, and businesses all over the world are working efficiently together, strengthening their local/domestic socio-economic "capacities" while at the same time, effectively managing environmental affairs (233). Bioenvironmentalists take the pessimistic viewpoint to the challenge of ecological sustainability. For them, humans will face…
References
Clapp and Dauvergne. (2011). "Paths to a green world? Four visions of a healthy global environment." (faxed material).
Evans, J.P. (2011). Environmental governance. London: Routledge.
Levine, K., B. Cashore, and S. Bernstein. (2010). "Playing it forward: Path dependency, progressive incrementalism, and the "super wicked" problem of global climate change." Paper presented in Climate change: Global risks, challenges and decisions congress, March 2009.
Voss, J. And R. Kemp. (2006). "Sustainability and reflexive governance: introduction." (faxed material)
Politics of Reflexive Governance: Challenges for Designing Adaptive Management and Transition Management" by Voss and Bornemann (2011), really demonstrates a comprehensive, though somewhat unimaginative perspective on the pillars of adaptive governance. One of the savvier aspects of this article is that it is able to take into account is the necessity of a concept of governance which includes uncertainty and societal change. Few concepts of governance make allowances for
REDD+ Threaten to Recentralize Forest Governance" by Phelps and colleagues examines the phenomenon of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) movement and how this trend might lead to a disturbing tendency of decentralized forest management. Ultimately Phelps and associates argue that in order for the proper balance to be achieved, communities need to have the ultimate control over the design of REDD+ and the exact manner
Urban Environmental Air Pollution Urban Environmental Issue: Air Pollution and How to Combat It Because of the significant level of urbanization in many parts of the country, the natural landscape has been changed. This has contributed to pollution of the ecosystem, much of which is magnified within the urban environment by the inability for the pollutants to readily and easily escape the population-dense areas in the same way they could in more
Environmental Decision Making Ecosystems Approach What is the author's main point? The author's main point is to focus on the conflicting needs of stakeholders. He is developing an effective environmental management system to meet the conflicting interests. In these situations, Fish (2011) determined that a flexible and holistic approach must be utilized in conjunction with each other. The combination of these factors enables everyone to create a system that achieves the larger
Global Warming How global warming induced natural resource shortages will cause violent conflict in the Middle East Background on Climate Change Political Responses Implications for the Middle East Global warming, or climate change, is no longer begging the question of when the effects of this phenomenon will begin to unfold; rather the changes in the climate are already being witnessed. There are many at risk populations all over the world. Many of these populations already
Institutions are defined as the existence of formal rules, on the one hand, and informal conventions and norms (such as impolitic societal rules that constrain behavior and impose forms of conduct) on the other. A system of enforcement structures are set in place to ensure that society abides to both and the strength of that enforcement system generally determines the extent to which individuals of a particular society will