The aim of the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) is to achieve a “good” chemical and ecological status for all waters by 2027. Achieving this aim however is no easy task. The Greek philosopher Thales of Milete already argued that in the end everything is water. This may be a bit over the top, but it is fair to argue that water quality stressors are manifold. They range from point source waste water discharges to diffuse run offs from land, sediments and atmospheric deposition to water bed modifications and the introduction of invasive species. Each stressor may be addressed by different agents and different modes of governance may be manifest. Aim of this paper is to develop an empirically grounded model on the governability of biodiversity in surface waters. The model will emphasize the conditions under which different modes of governance will result in ecologically beneficial synergies. By reviewing academic literature we will identify factors that stimulate or hamper a successful performance of a mode of governance. We will make a distinction between centralized, decentralized, public-private, interactive and self-governance. In a next step we will argue under which conditions these modes may reinforce each other. The resulting model will be used in an empirical assessment of several case studies on the (successful) implementation of the Water Framework Directive in the Netherlands. In each case we will identify in what way governing actors have addressed water quality stressors, what results have been booked and what factors have influenced this. The analysis is based on in-depth review of national Dutch guiding documents for the implementation of the Water Framework Directive, regional policy documents and expert interviews. The case study findings will be synthesized into a model for successful governance of biodiversity in surface waters in the Netherlands. We will extrapolate our results and conclude the paper with some suggestions for a good meta-governance of water quality in Europe and beyond.

Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are ecosystem-based approaches that address societal challenges while simultaneously benefiting people and nature [1]. NbS have seen an increase in popularity recently thanks to its benefits to support climate adaptation and increase climate resilience, including heat stress mitigation or flood control. While ecological benefits are clear, the literature also acknowledges the negative impacts on already vulnerable communities such as deepening exclusion and green gentrification due to the interaction between NbS with existing social processes of inequalities or segregation [2]. Questions of social justice are still to be addressed [2,3].

In this paper, we aim to understand how NbS interact spatially with existing inequalities in the city by taking a socio-ecological approach. The interactions between people and nature are represented using the concept of ecosystem services. The ecosystem services concept captures the links between nature and human well-being, offering ways to understand where and when nature-based solutions deliver these benefits [3]. The concept also accounts for disservices and, thus, enables the assessment of trade-offs between social and ecological (dis)services associated with NbS [3]. Our case study focuses on the city of Cape Town, South Africa. The city has suffered from intense drought periods and is currently engaging with NbS measures to increase drought resilience. Cape Town also faces challenges associated with historical segregation processes.

Using a data-driven approach, we estimate the spatial scope of NbS across Cape Town. By mapping the spatial distribution of NbS ecosystem (dis)services against existing social inequalities, we identify areas of socio-ecological synergy and exposure. In synergy areas, NbS have the potential to address ecological (climate) challenges and social inequalities simultaneously. In contrast, exposure areas present the risk of intensifying both ecological and social issues due to NbS implementation. We also explore areas of trade-off, in which the enhancement of one ecosystem service leads to the reduction of another. These results contribute to (1) a comprehensive spatial understanding of the trade-offs between ecosystem services and disservices and (2) the development of evidence-based NbS planning and policy that incorporates social justice.

Nature-based solutions (NBSs) can play an important role in adaptation to climate change in river systems. River restoration, space for water, and other strategies to enhance the natural water storage capacity of river systems may play an important role in both drought and flood management. Differently from grey infrastructure, NBSs may also contribute to other agendas, such as nature development and biodiversity restoration. This paper presents the results of in-depth research on the implementation of NBSs within a cross-border river system, the Vechte-Dinkel river system shared by Germany and the Netherlands. Document analysis, in-depth interviews, and workshops revealed major challenges of coordination across (1) policy sectors, such as water management, spatial planning, nature policy and agriculture, (2) levels of government, such as EU, national and regional governments, and (3) national borders. In the paper it is first shown how both institutional and discursive factors hinder the coordination needed for the implementation of NBSs in the Vechte-Dinkel river system. Institutional factors concern the differences in planning systems, planning cultures, procedures and accustomed practices. Discursive differences concern the different meanings given to (the role of nature in) climate change adaptation within Germany and the Netherlands. Secondly, it is shown how a selective group of policy entrepreneurs managed to overcome these differences and coordination issues by initiating pilot projects with NBSs, seizing windows of opportunity, using discursive strategies, building networks and generating financial resources for their implementation. By doing so they not only managed to set up pilot projects but also contributed to the internal growth of these pilots.

River systems naturally contribute to territorial valorisation through ecological continuity and reticularity. Developing policies and governance tools is however necessary to define ecological projects at the regional and local scales. Over the last 10 years, in France and Italy, many experimentations have been developed to strengthen the role of nature in cities and territories, enhance resilience and biodiversity, and meet United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). On the one hand, Italy has developed methods and guidelines and implemented planning actions to encourage the development of rural and urban ecological networks (for example, in 2014, the Province of Turin approved the “Linee Guida per la Rete Ecologica” - Guidelines for the Ecological Network within the framework of the provincial plan). Meanwhile, other governance tools, such as the River Agreements, were promoted to guide the development of nature-based solutions (NBS). On the other hand, France has developed a set of strategies (called “Trames Vertes et Bleues”), through different levels of government and spatial scales to promote and valorise biodiversity, starting from the river landscape. Ecological valorisation occurs through ecological patterns (the “trame”), but, additionally, other methods exist to evaluate the ecological functionality of territories (for example, River Agreements are functional to valorise water quality). From this perspective, we aim to compare different models by highlighting positive and critical aspects and measuring their effectiveness in terms of ecological restoration. In addition, the paper discusses how governance tools, guidelines and planning actions may contribute to coordination across governance levels and territorial scales, thus overcoming these as possible implementation barriers.

Effective ocean governance is urgently needed to address shared policy problems such as overfishing, illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing, the destruction of marine habitats and loss of marine biodiversity. Ocean governance is characterized by a complex and highly fragmented institutional landscape, with multiple international organizations addressing interconnected issues, exhibiting ‘functional overlaps’ across mandates, objectives and members states. Concerns have been raised that increasing institutional complexity could affect the ability of international organizations to solve shared policy problems, as it may result in contradictory policy responses, which can contribute to legal inconsistency and limit compliance, cause inefficiencies and duplicated efforts, while boosting competition across international organizations over resources and mandates. There is a widespread assumption that coordination across international organizations with functional overlaps is important for fostering effective governance that can create synergies rather than trade-offs, for example by strengthening policy coherence, clarifying divisions of labor and making use of different sources of information, knowledge and expertise. However, few studies have systematically studied coordination efforts across multiple international organizations, and how it affects the ability of these organizations to address shared policy problems. Ocean governance - being highly complex and fragmented in nature, provides an appropriate case for exploring coordination efforts across international organizations with functional overlaps operating within the same broadly defined issue area while addressing multiple specific policy problems within that issue area. Specifically, this paper asks: how and when do international organization with functional overlaps coordinate their work, and what are the implications for their ability to address shared policy problems? The findings of this paper will contribute to ongoing debates in the literature on institutional complexity on institutional overlap, coordination and policy coherence, as well as to the literature on problem-solving capacity of international organizations.

The marine environment and its biodiversity are currently being subjected to a large amount of pressure as a result of anthropogenic drivers such as climate change, ocean acidification, marine plastic, and marine noise. These significant stresses would indicate not only a dramatic shift in the marine environment but also a number of questions regarding the applicability of current instruments and how the existing institutions should respond to the complex marine environmental issues in the Anthropocene. This article looks into the existing variation of institutional architecture and their regulatory response for the protection of the marine environment and its marine biodiversity in the Sea of East Asia (SEA). It shows that a number of institutions and initiatives at the regional level have been established by Government in response to the need for the protection of the marine environment. As a result, this institutionalization gives rise to a multiplicity of regulations and policies, many of which are complex and overlap. Although the adoption of these institutions and initiatives appears to have a positive impact on the conservation of marine biodiversity, the implementation of several laws and policies adopted by these institutions is considered as one of the main gaps in the protection of the marine environment and biodiversity. This article explicitly examines three relevant institutions for the protection of the marine environment and its biodiversity in the SEA, including the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Coordinating Body on the Seas of East Asia (COBSEA) and Partnerships in Environmental Management for the Seas of East Asia (PEMSEA). This study claims that there are various areas of overlap between the duties of these institutions in protecting the maritime environment and marine biodiversity in the EAS region. Therefore, managing the institutional overlap is essential to enhance the efficiency and accountability of the ASEAN, COBSEA and PEMSEA for the protection of the marine environment. In this respect, the concept of interplay management may help to enhance the efficiency and accountability of the institutions involved in the protection of the marine environment and its biodiversity in the SEA.

The world ocean is a plastic soup. Approximately 8 Mt of land-based plastic enter the ocean each year, adding to a growing sink of mismanaged plastic waste estimated at 6300 million metric tons in 2016. Recent attention to the human and environmental health impacts of marine plastic pollution moved intergovernmental organisations, multinational corporations, and environmental non-governmental organisations to address this crisis. This has spurred the United Nations to enter into negotiations for a Global Plastics Treaty.

The transboundary and cross-jurisdictional nature of marine plastic pollution has made its governance insurmountably complex. While there is no integrated binding instrument for marine plastic pollution, it is affected by existing multilateral environmental agreements, regulatory standard-setting schemes, industry associations, advocacy campaigns, beach clean ups, and social-behavioural rules and norms. These institutions, and many others, govern marine debris. My PhD research aims to understand this evolving governance architecture in the light of a new international agreement on plastic pollution.

My PhD research employs interviews to conduct a social network analysis of the governance network for marine plastic pollution. I ask professionals working in public, private, and non-profit institutions at the national, regional, and international levels how they collaborate to address marine debris and whether this constitutes effective governance. I build on constructivist regime theory to contribute to the evolving literature on regime complexes and non-regimes. This lays the groundwork for research on how plastic is governed at the global level and provides original insights to help decision-makers cultivate institutional integration to address this tragedy of the commons.

The protection of the marine environment depends on the availability of ocean data and functioning monitoring systems to support and measure the implementation of the global sustainability agenda and the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. Although research has illustrated the need to integrate scientific, political and industrial efforts to increase the up-take of ocean science in decision-making, there is a lack of knowledge on how these relationships are formed in practice and how they already shape the monitoring of marine life.

By studying science-policy industry relations from the perspective of three marine biodiversity laboratories, this paper aims to advance our knowledge of the day-to-day practices and relations that underpin the co-production of knowledge on deep sea ecosystems. We conducted collaborative laboratory ethnography in Sao Paulo (Brazil), Brest (France) and San Diego (US) following a detailed field note taking guide and visual data collection to systematically observe the monitoring policies, practices and infrastructures in action and document the laboratory life in each of the three cases.

Our results illustrate close ties between marine science, policy and industry in each of the three laboratories, which we explain by overlapping monitoring interests in exploring, and exploiting marine resources and ecosystems. Yet, our results also indicate regional differences, which tend to be closely connected to 1) the research funding system of a country, 2) the scientific culture of the laboratory, 3) personal connections and ambitions, 4) marine resources and environmental conditions. We conclude by emphasising the need to consider laboratories and other spaces, where ocean science and knowledge is produced as transformative sites of global environmental agreement-making and power. This paper speaks to the general theme of the conference to bridge sciences and societies for sustainability transformations and analytical lens of adaptiveness and reflexivity.

Intermediaries act in the in-between world between the built-up of new and the break-down of old societal configurations to facilitate change and reconcile opposing world views. While there is a broad literature on experimentation to foster urban sustainability transitions, there is limited understanding of intermediaries acting as facilitators and translators in urban experimentation. By portraying intermediary roles within both niches and regimes, this empirical contribution seeks to elucidate and critically reflect on their role in urban experimentation. This serves to explore the politics and underlying normative assumptions, which shape and are revealed by experimentation. The question arises if experimentation does create spaces to mediate between competing political priorities and build consensus, or reproduces power struggles and dominant policy rationales.

The qualitative case study provides an empirical exploration of niche and regime intermediaries in local experimentation by analysing the transdisciplinary-transformative research project [Name of the project removed for anonymous review process]. The real-world laboratory created a space for experimentation with different forms of intermediation to develop new transformative governance approaches. The roles adopted by niche and regime intermediaries show the importance of combining change from below with change from above. Niche intermediaries acted more as visionaries, knowledge brokers and advocates of change, seeking to contribute to both reconfiguration and the scaling of experiments through knowledge transfer. By contrast, regime intermediaries have an ambivalent nature of acting within-and-beyond the regime. They acted more as guides and facilitators, creating a shared institutional infrastructure and coordinating local-level activities. Boundary concepts like co-creation were important to align different logics of action.

While the findings showed an enabling function of municipalities for experimentation and transformative change, they also exposed the power asymmetries between regime intermediaries and niche actors arising from expertise and process knowledge. Moreover, regime intermediaries relied on dynamic governance configurations even though they had an official mandate to promote transformative change. They lacked integration in strategic political priorities and therefore operated outside and in parallel to overarching policy or planning processes. The findings further reveal the challenge for experimentation to transform projectified urban governance settings instead of reproducing them. This matters for intermediaries because they require long-term stability and financial support in order to shape transitions effectively.

Urban experimentation promises to solve two problems at the same time: Producing urban laboratories for demonstrating imagined future arrangements of materiality and meaning (Engels et al. 2019) and shaping these places to lend credibility to the futures enacted within them (Gieryn 2006). Such experiments entail major social, material, and temporal reorderings under the mandate of creating scalable models. According to the linear logic of experimentation, if proven successful, these models will be scaled in space, time and structural dimensions (Sengers et al. 2021). Assuming technological and infrastructural changes could scale in synchronized ways with social routines and practices, this logic foregrounds a solutionist approach that falls short of accounting for local and deviating transformation pathways (Pfotenhauer et al. 2021). In our analysis, we explore two pilot experiments in Munich and Barcelona, in which policy makers and researchers set up shared mobility spaces together with the residents in two respective neighborhoods as explicitly scalable models for their city and beyond. We address four tensions resulting from the specific chronopolitics (Felt 2016) embedded within the process of establishing scalable experiments: projectification, incongruency of time frames, socio-material persistence, and acceleration. Our analysis examines how the shared mobility spaces as initially limited measures for a few years, created a rigid temporal structure linked to funding periods and legislative cycles that were inscribed in the experimental setup. The project-like nature created pressure to get started and succeed in time to demonstrate scalable models, despite the uncertainty about the long-term viability of the emerging infrastructures. Both projects’ speeds stood in contrast to the already asynchronous rhythms and routines of society that were largely unaffected by the short-term interventions, destabilizing socio-material orders of the neighborhoods and causing significant initial protest. Only through iterative participation activities, inducing a long-term learning process for all involved actors, the resistance turned into majority support for the local transformations. In both cases, it was the citizens’ initiatives that maintained the shared mobility spaces beyond the project periods. In the following years, the initial scaling intentions of both models have not materialized. Instead, scaling beyond the pilot interventions was only viable through varying the nature of the interventions to account for diverse actors and asynchronous processes that stabilized the transformation pathways. The paper highlights the importance of considering the locally embedded temporal politics of scalable urban interventions and the need for a more holistic, inclusive, and power-sensitive approach for responsible transformation governance.

Cities need to take swift action to deal with the impacts of extreme climate events. The co-production of positive visions offers the potential to not only imagine but also intervene in guiding change towards more desirable urban futures. While participatory visioning continues to be used as a tool for urban planning, there needs to be a way of comparing and evaluating future visions so that they can inform decision-making. Traditional tools for comparison tend to favor quantitative modeling, which is limited in its ability to capture nuances or normative elements of visions. In this paper, we offer a qualitative method to assess the resilience, equity, and sustainability of future urban visions and demonstrate its use by applying it to 11 visions from Phoenix, AZ. The visions were co-produced at two different governance scales: five visions were created at the village (or borough) scale, and six visions were created at the regional (or metropolitan) scale. Our analysis reveals different emphases in the mechanisms present in the visions to advance resilience, sustainability, and equity. In particular, we note that regional future visions align with a green sustainability agenda, whereas village visions focus on social issues and emphasize equity-driven approaches. The visions have implications for future trajectories, and the priorities that manifest at the two scales speak of the political nature of visioning and the need to explore how these processes may interact in complementary, synergistic, or antagonistic ways.

Unless urban experimentation initiatives are embedded in local government processes from the very beginning, their effects often remain locally isolated and short-lived. How can this be changed? Together with local partners, the “Transformative Urban Coalitions” action-research project has facilitated the establishment of participatory multi-actor Urban Labs (UL) in five cities in Mexico (León and Naucalpan), Brazil (Recife and Teresina) and Argentina (Villa 20 in Buenos Aires) since 2021. While the ULs also develop local catalyst projects to showcase the potential of urban sustainability innovations, their focus is on establishing a new and complementary mode of collaborative urban governance. Using this governance mode, existing structural inequalities, local developmental priorities, and climate change mitigation and adaptation necessities should be dealt with in a more integrated way. Midway through the project (which runs until 2026), the ULs have now generated some interest by other cities as well as national and international actors. However, despite this welcome interest, a purely linear idea of “scaling” this governance approach seems inappropriate. One of the reasons is that – unlike many other types of ULs which focus on technical and material innovations – these Urban Governance Labs more directly address questions of politics, power, and inequality. Acknowledging that political changes are more difficult and more complex than technical changes, we are looking for an alternative to the concept of “scaling” and try to develop a less technical and more politically aware understanding for inspiring other actors to learn from and experiment with this approach. Rather than assuming a linear process, the idea is to proceed in ways that systematically exploit temporal and structural windows of opportunity in a given context. This approach is strategic and opportunistic at the same time which is why instead of “scaling” it could be referred to as “strategic diffusion” or “strategic scattering”. Some of the key features of this approach are that it is politically savvy, locally led, network driven, and highly adaptive. The paper will present this approach in more conceptual detail and will provide empirical illustrations from the five cities as input for a critical discussion.

Images and aesthetic representation tell powerful stories about the ways international actors see themselves and want to be seen by their peers. In the case of climate change, we often see dystopian images of the threats and urgency facing our global community. However, when we look to the governance documents, particularly climate plans offered by cities globally, we see a radically different and almost hopeful narrative presented through stories and images. How do cities see the future of climate change and communicate those narratives to their residents and the global community at large? To understand the narratives cities construct about their own futurity in the face of climate, I engage in two interpretive content analysis methods -- patterning and narrative text analysis —to analyze the images and narratives presented by C40 member cities (n=95) through their Climate Action Plans (CAPs). I discuss the implications of how cities construct climate futures, considering issues of who is included (and excluded) through these narratives, how these narratives align or diverge from reality, and how these narratives and images of futurity impact global city engagement on climate governance around issues including environmental justice, equity, and urgency.

Just transitions are at the centre of the global policy agenda, as recognised (implicitly and explicitly) in the Paris Agreement and the “Glasgow Climate Pact” from COP26. In a broader sense, just transitions reconcile two critical challenges that we face. The structural, transformative efforts needed to eliminate emissions and limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius could also underpin efforts to meet other Sustainable Development Goals, such as those focusing on reductions in poverty and inequality. Addressing both issues simultaneously is of instrumental significance to the goal of just transitions. In fact, not considering the social dimensions of climate policies might make it difficult to implement some emissions reduction measures due to their low social acceptability. Many reforms have already been blocked for these reasons in recent years; and research has found that fairness is the most important driver of public acceptability of climate policies. Therefore, paying attention to poverty and inequality reduction both strengthens the political economy and makes more ambitious climate policies possible. The current context and the focus on just transitions also offers opportunities, as climate change mitigation and improvements in social protection can go hand in hand. For example, ambitious climate action to substantially decrease carbon emissions until 2030, requires carbon pricing policies and fossil fuel subsidy reforms that create fiscal space. Such revenues could fund social protection programmes to support households with increased energy prices, thereby benefiting the just transition process.

A systematic analysis of social protection measures in climate policies is critical, as several governments plan carbon pricing and subsidy reforms to achieve climate targets. Particularly, vulnerable households require protection as well as promoting measures to deal with the impacts of climate mitigation and adaptation policies in the coming years. To increase the understanding of the underlying policy processes and political economy factors that influence the success of such climate policies and the role of social protection, we build a database that collects data on carbon pricing and fossil fuel subsidy reform cases. These reforms cases are identified through a systematic literature review and relevant datasets. For all reforms episodes, we collect process and context variables that influence the implementation. By means of statistical analysis, we aim to establish patterns in the use of social protection in carbon pricing and subsidy reforms, and how social protection policies depend on other political economy factors.

In the last two decades, countries all over the world have implemented carbon pricing policies as part of their fight against climate change. In Africa, however, no such policy was adopted until South Africa started taxing greenhouse gas emissions in 2019. More recently though, an increasing number of African countries have decided to design carbon pricing policies. Be it a carbon tax or an emission trading scheme, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Nigeria, Morocco, Malawi, Botswana, and Gabon are designing their carbon pricing policy at the moment.

Research has shown that in the agenda-setting phase as well as the policy design phase, external (f)actors have been involved. In fact, as of 2010, the decision of nations to pursue a carbon pricing policy was mainly the result of international factors such as climate commitments and external influence. Next, in the policy design phase, external actors, like multilateral organizations or development agencies, are often involved by offering technical support or capacity development activities. Through these kinds of supporting activities, they can play an important role in the policy-making process by accelerating or delaying policy change. Against this background, the following question arises: which actors are engaged in the carbon pricing policy-making process, how and why do they get involved?

This paper looks at the domestic, regional, and international actors that are active in the field of carbon pricing in the abovementioned countries, uncovers the nature of their activities, and explains their motivations to act this way. Based on a document analysis as well as interviews, the analysis provides a mapping of all the actors and will explain their linkages and relationships. By doing so, this study contributes to the understanding of climate policy-making in African countries and the role of external involvement.

We are currently witnessing a boom in mineral extraction driven by exploding demand for green technologies. Rare earth elements, lithium, cobalt, tungsten, nickel and other ‘critical minerals’ are essential components for batteries, magnets and electronic components that enable electric vehicles, renewable energy and advanced devices. Given their urgent role in addressing climate change, critical mineral extraction benefits from an assumed level of legitimacy compared to fossil fuels. Can the ethical legitimacy of critical minerals translate into stronger environmental and social conditions around extraction? Or will the climate imperative trump other ethical concerns? The answer to these questions depends on the balance of economic and political power of corporations, consumers, states and communities within governance regimes and global production networks.

Powerful actors – from multinational corporations, to powerful politicians – are harnessing the renewed extractivist drive to pursue their pre-existing interests in profitability and development. Extractive accumulation is the collection of strategies and relationships at local, national and global scales that enable corporations to first secure natural resources and then profit from their extraction. That initial acquisition of resources (resource grabbing) necessitates the dispossession of someone else, generating rapid changes in existing political, social and economic relations. These changes and their resultant conflicts are driving the creation of new governance standards and associations like the Institute for Responsible Mining Assurance and the World Economic Forum’s Global Battery Alliance.

This paper reviews global social and environmental conflicts over the extraction of critical minerals before analysing emerging global governance standards. Like governance mechanisms in extractive industries more broadly, these establish standards for participation of affected communities and civil society at various sites and scales. What is new about the governance of critical minerals is mechanisms that bring together actors operating along global production networks from mine site to consumer, potentially giving lead firms more control over the conditions of extraction.

Market-based instruments have long become the central elements of international response to climate change, with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process facilitating the constant expansion of carbon markets, both in their geographical and sectoral scope. Apart from a brief resistance during the initial years of conceptualising these market-based solutions within the UNFCCC process, there has been broad—and enthusiastic—support from many governments of the global South to these mechanisms, including from some of those which have traditionally been flag-bearers of climate justice at the international stage. This lies in contrast to the vibrant climate justice movement from the ground up, which remains heavily critical of resorting to carbon markets for any kind of climate action. They point out how carbon markets only serve to compound the climate crisis by postponing the much-needed emission reductions at source far into the future and deepen carbon colonialism as well as potentially leading to loss of control for the local communities on their natural resources like forests. With the announcement of plans in 2022 to set up a national carbon market by the Indian government, these issues gain even more significance for the future trajectory of climate politics in the global South.

This paper seeks to interrogate the contestations between the notions of climate justice vis-à-vis the market-based mechanisms between States in the global South, taking the case of India, and those of grassroots climate justice advocates. Tracing the evolution of the domestic policy in India related to market mechanisms, including the state-level initiatives within the country to set up carbon markets along with the negotiating stance(s) of the country on the international stage over time, this paper critically examines the climate governance architecture anchored in the neoliberal free market economic framework. The paper highlights how the postcolonial elites in India have partaken in furthering the process of commodification of nature for the greater appropriation of carbon wealth, which promotes their consolidation of power. Finally, the implications for notions of climate justice and democracy in the global South due to these neoliberal climate change policies are discussed in this paper.

In recent years, the complex system of international institutions addressing the role of finance in climate change mitigation and adaptation has grown exponentially. New transnational governance networks are created, and International Organizations (IO) launch new frameworks and initiatives each year. Particularly the G20-initiated Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) has become dominantly influential over other climate finance governance initiatives led by different IOs, such as the UNEP Financial Initiative. The TCFD, chaired by Michael Bloomberg, provides climate-related financial disclosure recommendations to decarbonize financial assets. Many old and new transnational networks adopt or integrate the TCFD rules into their governance mechanisms. What makes the TCFD an influential agent in the current global climate governance architecture? This paper explores what constitutes the power of the TCFD, drawing on Barnett and Duvall’s different concepts of power. Of note, the TCFD emphasizes climate’s impact on business actors instead of companies’ impact on society and nature (i.e., focusing on single-materiality over double-materiality). This characteristic seemingly represents business interests that could reinforce power asymmetries among actors that damage the legitimacy of global climate finance governance. Therefore, understanding the power of the TCFD is important for addressing the power inequalities in global climate finance governance that hinder just sustainability transformations. Based on qualitative document analysis, surveys, and expert interviews, we investigate forty transnational climate finance networks that have adopted the TCFD rules and examine what perceptions, interests, and institutional settings trigger their TCFD rule-taking and increase the TCFD’s influence among various governance institutions. This issue resonates with the power-related questions of the second conference stream: democracy and power for sustainable transformations.

When TikTok launched in 2018, it became one of the world's most downloaded apps and fastest-growing social media platforms. What began as an online space for dance and lip-syncing videos has now developed a large community of eco-influencers conscious of the environment and sustainability. Between March 2021 and 2022, the number of views on environmental content six folded, with the trend continuing. Videos revolve around three main trends: sustainable lifestyles, environmental awareness, and waste clean-up. Notwithstanding TikTok's rise as a means of environmental communication, there is a gap in our understanding of how environmental issues are framed and disseminated on the platform. The objective of this study is to explore how TikTok is used by activists to address two urgent environmental issues: plastic pollution and deforestation. Drawing on an original dataset containing the top 250 English-language videos tagged with the hashtags #plasticpollution and #deforestation, I conduct a quantitative content analysis using predetermined content characteristics and a qualitative inductive thematic analysis to explore how these environmental problems are framed and presented. The key dimensions I explore are: the problem definition, possible solutions, responsibility attributions, future vision, communication approach, and justice considerations. The insights of this research expand existing environmental-communication scholarship, focusing on the context of social media, and allows us to comprehend how the next generation navigates complex global developments. Given the substantial influence of this platform on public opinion and the ability to bridge science and society for sustainable change, this study has significant implications for environmental governance.

As the oil palm plantations continue to develop in a resource-dependent country like Indonesia, the current debate is focused on building a sustainable business practice in the palm oil industry due to the environmental destruction the industry has caused. With the proliferation of ICTs and social media, digital activism has gained traction to facilitate environmental movement through ‘clicktivism.’ Social media users have employed this medium to advocate more sustainable management in palm oil. However, there is a dearth in the literature documenting different narratives on and providing evidence of the critical roles of digital activism in changing business practices, especially in Twitter targeting palm oil. Thus, this research sets out to explore different narratives of social media users participating in an environmental campaign on Twitter concerning palm oil. Grounded in a qualitative approach, this study employed a textual analysis by analyzing 5,000 Tweets in 2022 through NVivo. The results of this study map out characteristics of different narratives perceived by social media users in palm oil-producing countries and consuming nations under sustainability themes related to environmental, economic, and social issues. This study contributes to understanding the debates about whether ‘clicktivism’ provides an alternative to traditional forms of environmental movements. Besides, it provides insights into ways businesses should promote more ethical management practices from production and consumption perspectives and workable interventions to promote sustainable practices in palm oil.

The conversion of real-world phenomena into data for processing and analysis is generally regarded as a technical, a-political and universal mode of governing in climate crisis. The emerging reliance on sophisticated surveillance technologies and advanced data processing methods in global climate governance, however, raises urgent questions about the power and agency of data. Examples include global climate databases, such as the UNFCCC’s Global Climate Action Portal; transnational data-collection efforts, for instance through cross-border alliances like the Covenant of Mayors; satellite-based emission monitoring systems, such as Climate TRACE; or platforms which have begun to explore the potential of machine learning, such as AI for the Planet. Mobilising data, and related data collection and processing technologies, each of these initiatives produces climate change as a particular governance problem. Adopting a critical perspective, this paper explores how data are mobilised in such efforts to render the climate governable: Which presuppositions make data-driven climate governance possible? How are data produced? What are the motives and means for feeding data into governance processes? And who and what do data (dis)empower? Approaching these questions, the paper offers a cross-disciplinary literature review spanning international relations, critical data studies, human geography and socio-legal scholarship. As a first step in developing a larger collaborative research project, the literature review foregrounds the social, cultural and legal dimensions of data use in global climate governance. Our aim is to explore in which ways data-driven governance may solidify existing hierarchies and problematic dynamics of in- and exclusion, and how it risks reinscribing technocratic assumptions about what it means to govern climate crisis.

The SDG Impact Assessment published in 2022 has shown that the political impact of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has so far largely been discursive, while the 17 goals also had some normative and institutional effects. Yet overall, there is only limited transformative force. The goals are incrementally moving political processes forward, with much variation among countries, sectors and across levels of governance. This suggests that scholars and policymakers alike need to adapt their expectations regarding the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs and more efforts have to be taken to further embed the SDGs into practice. The incremental change detected in the SDG Impact Assessment indicates that it takes time until globally agreed policy goals and norms lead to tangible effects on the ground. This paper explores the questions of where and how such incremental change is taking place, and under what conditions these developments generate and accelerate the ongoing sustainability transformation up to 2030 and beyond. The paper builds upon a web-based expert survey directed to the ESG Project community as well as discussions within the SDG Taskforce that took place from 2020 to 2022. We zoom into five areas where some effects of the SDGs are observable and point to both enabling and constraining factors of SDG implementation: (1) High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, (2) national policy integration, (3) sub-national initiatives for goal implementation, (4) partnerships for the SDGs, and (5) education and learning for sustainable development. In a nutshell, this scoping paper aims to refine our conceptual approaches to governance by global goal-setting and provides novel empirical insights on ongoing efforts to achieve the SDGs.

Academic and societal actors alike are seeking to optimize the ways in which scientific research may contribute to sustainable development, for which a diverse range of research uptake strategies have been developed. Yet, while the literature emphasizes that the appropriateness of research uptake strategies depends on the context in which they are applied, determining which strategy to apply given a specific context remains challenging due to the lack of explicit conceptualization of the role of context for research uptake. In this paper, we conceptualize appropriate research uptake strategies to be those that align with the research and societal sustainability contexts in which they are applied and account for dynamics between these two contexts, enabling us to identify five contextual dimensions which we propose shape the appropriateness of research uptake strategies. With the aim of supporting the design of more appropriate research uptake strategies in a wide range of contexts, we then build on this conceptualization to offer an application-oriented typology distinguishing between four broad research uptake approaches: the knowledge transfer approach; the commissioned research approach; the direct engagement approach; and the co-production approach. The typology matches each approach to the dynamic research and societal sustainability contexts in which it is most likely to be appropriate, while accommodating nuanced understandings of how researchers may approach uptake given different contexts and aiming at parsimony. In this way, we take a first step towards conceptualizing the role of context in research uptake decision-making, thereby empowering researchers to design more appropriate research uptake strategies.

Adjustments to legislative and regulatory frameworks that align national policies, plans, and programs with the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) can play a critical role in the achievement of the agenda. Legal instruments provide the foundation for creating, implementing, and enforcing laws and regulations that support the attainment of the SDGs. This paper argues that regulations can facilitate actions to contribute to SDGs by setting clear goals and targets to guide government action and monitoring and protecting the rights of individuals, communities, and the environment.

This paper examines recent legal instruments of three countries; Belgium's Act on the Coordination of Sustainable Development, Canada's Federal Sustainable Development Act, and South Korea's Basic Law on Sustainable Development, to critically evaluate their readiness in promoting and delivering global goals through legal means. The study provides a comprehensive analysis of these instruments, reviewing their roles and legal framework in light of the various policy, institutional, and legal mechanisms relevant to the SDGs used by these countries.

The preliminary findings suggest that innovative and comprehensive legislative measures that directly address governance issues of sustainable development can establish concrete duties for relevant stakeholders, including the government and private sectors, to integrate the SDGs in their actions and planning. Furthermore, these legislative instruments can facilitate, rather than restrict, positive activities and interventions in SDG implementation, and establish accountability mechanisms to ensure that governments, businesses, and other stakeholders are held responsible for their impact on sustainable development.

Overall, this study emphasizes the importance of using a range of legal mechanisms to drive the necessary changes for the successful implementation of the SDGs. By aligning national policies, plans, and programs with the SDGs through comprehensive legal instruments, governments can prioritize the SDGs and ensure that the necessary changes are implemented to achieve them.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the most ambitious attempt to integrate environmental, economic and social dimensions of global policy and promote greater institutional coherence across the international system. As such, governments, international organizations and stakeholders have identified coherence as crucial to address these challenges. However, they are not the first attempt to promote macro coherence internationally in global sustainable development governance. The meanings of, and arrangements to support, coherence have evolved significantly, as have the impacts and consequences of those efforts. This paper will examine the normative, political and institutional context and evolution of these efforts to understand how these meanings and arrangements have changed over time, and with what implications for which norms, values, and policy framings become dominant. Specifically, we examine three cases: 1) The largely failed 1994 WTO "Coherence Mandate" to promote macroeconomic coherence, and its evolution toward attempts to integrate developing countries into the multilateral trade regime; 2) the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development, which brought together environment and development agendas; and 3) the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development centered on the SDGs. The main method is a normative/discourse analysis of the “content” of these initiatives as well as those of relevant international institutions where the meaning of coherence has been debated and contested (e.g., UNGA, ECOSOC, WTO, UNCTAD, UNDP, OECD, World Bank). We will analyze primary hard and soft law documents, calls for coherence, and policy statements, declarations, reports, and initiatives of relevant international institutions. This information may be supplemented by interview data of those involved in these processes. The analysis will establish the normative dimension or “social purposes” of coherence policies and initiatives since the early 1990s. The paper is part of a larger project that aims to explain these repeated attempts to build macro-level coherence in sustainable development over the last 30 years, their consequences for policies and institutional arrangements, and their positive and negative effects on rules, resources, governance practices, and policies among international institutions and transnational actors expected to pursue these mandates.

Analyses of efforts being placed on the localization of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been a rich and fast-growing research agenda. Within Earth System Governance, this has often taken the place of understanding how subnational actors have been implementing the SDGs under the influence of the global goals’ steering effects. Among the array of agendas, research has been conducted on evaluating the multi-level governance architecture, its fragmentation and effectiveness; the variables influencing subnational implementation, especially seeing how power and authority shift patterns of localization; which actors and themes are most likely mobilized and which goals are perceived as a priority; and which effects can be perceived, and to what degree, within the different dimensions in which the global goals are implemented (e.g., discursive, institutional, and normative). However, this body of literature still could be complemented by more study cases from the Global South, especially if we are to interrogate how the SDGs localization is affected by the presence of historical and structural inequalities, and how its indivisible and universal agenda is translated in a local scenario. This paper aims to contribute to this task by analyzing Brazilian subnational actors’ SDGs Voluntary Local Reviews. Brazil presents a relevant study case since its federal government shifted its instance around SDGs after the beginning of the SDG implementation, leaving local governments to act more independently within different contexts and governance architecture. Moreover, civil society and academia have remained actively engaging with the SDGs agenda at the local and national levels. Thus, examining how the SDGs implementation process took place in different local contexts in Brazil may show some light on SDGs steering effects in the Global South, as perceived and publicized by the subnational governments themselves. Via qualitative content analysis and codification, we suggest that subnational actors in Brazil have mobilized the SDGs as a powerful social narrative to implement actions regarding climate change and poverty alleviation, but that these are somewhat limited still since these novel discourse framing mainly aims to put already existing projects under a distinct discursive schema. While this leads to a moderate effect, we conclude that within Brazilian local politics, the discursive framing around SDGs opens a venue that still could be fostered, leading subnational actors towards the aspirational objective of the global goals initiative.

Eight years after the Paris Agreement, non-Annex I countries face some gaps for the continuity of the mitigation mechanisms. One of the most challenging is ensuring sufficient financing for emission absorption projects. Thus, these nations meet with an additional difficulty for setting up the adequate machinery and receiving the necessary technology for fulfilling their emission goals. In this sense, it is worth asking how small developing countries, such as those in Central America, would address these challenges while striving to meet their emission goals. Hence, can the new mechanisms address the unfulfilled promises of the Clean Development Mechanism of providing a reliable source of finance and technology transfer?

This paper will discuss the operation of carbon removal projects in Central America. These projects are as an essential pillar of their contribution to the fight against climate change. It analyses the contribution of climate governance in the advancement and implementation of these projects. It explores the extent to which intergovernmental and transnational institutions have exploited the potential of climate governance to address the obstacles and challenges related to the absorption of greenhouse gas emissions. Also, it reveals serious knowledge disparities among agents: government officials, entrepreneurs and scholars have little to no information about domestic carbon removal projects. Instead, organizations such as the IPCC have sufficient expertise, but offer almost no guidance to domestic agents. This results in poor interest on investing in carbon removal projects and in a steep path to accomplish the emission goals for these nations.

The research will be carried out as an extension of my doctoral research. It will be based on a detailed investigation on carbon removal project in Central America. Interviews with relevant actors have been conducted. The project will focus explicitly on the interaction between local institutions and international support mechanisms.

Meeting the Paris Agreement’s global temperature goal requires countries to both propose ambitious mitigation targets under their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), and to implement the necessary laws, policies, and measures at the domestic level to meet those targets. In this paper, we propose a conceptualization of countries’ climate mitigation policy performance that disentangles these two dimensions – ambition with respect to the global temperature goal, and alignment with national policies and measures –, considering both as complementary and necessary to reach the Paris Agreements’ goals. Combining the ambition and alignment dimensions leads to four country categories: those having both ambitious targets and strong national policies are regarded as real climate leaders, while countries with unambitious NDCs and insufficient policies can be considered the laggards. Two further categories are the careful countries with unambitious targets but strong national policies, and the performative countries with ambitious targets but insufficient policies.

We use existing measures of NDC ambition as well as a newly developed climate harmonization index to identify typical countries in these four categories. Preliminary results suggest that the USA is a laggard country, with an unambitious NDC and insufficient national mitigation policies; Brazil, the EU and Singapore are careful ones, with rather unambitious NDCs but middle to strong mitigation policies; Peru has an average performance in both NDC ambition and national mitigation policies; Bangladesh and Indonesia are among the performative countries with middle to high ambition but weak mitigation policies; and Ethiopia appears among the few real leader countries, with an ambitious NDC and middle to strong mitigation policies. Using qualitative methods on selected case studies, we explore potential explanations for their classification, beyond the traditional interest-based and capacity drivers, including countries’ democratic and institutional quality, domestic political orientation, level of engagement in the polycentric climate governance system, targeting of climate finance, among others. We expect that particularly small and vulnerable countries with low capacity but strong interest in mitigation may profit from a stronger engagement with international and transnational climate governance initiatives and from larger finance flows, resulting in more ambitious NDCs and stronger domestic policy frameworks.

Growing focus on target-setting in climate governance inevitably leads to the development of pathways on how best to reach these targets. For example, in some countries, this has resulted in the establishment of climate-specific domestic institutions, such as climate expert councils. While some research has paid attention to the formation of state-level climate institutional mechanisms, there is a lack of understanding of the link between different climate policy narratives and types of institutions that arise as a result. In other words, do certain climate policy narratives about pathways to decarbonization influence the emergence and composition of institutional arrangements? Previous research argues that states with low political polarization where mitigation is present as a dominant climate narrative are most likely to create the conditions for new purpose-built institutions to strategically achieve mitigation objectives, while in states with narratives that embed mitigation within other pressing domestic goals and with higher political polarization, climate action is more likely to occur at random through sectoral changes. In this study, we draw on these arguments, but expand on the typology of climate narratives and investigate if and how they influence the characteristics of climate-focused institutions. As types of climate policy narratives we consider apolitical and technocratic framing vs a need for transformation of mainstream policy institutions; mitigation and adaptation as comparable with economic growth vs narratives of degrowth and a-growth. Inspired by recent studies that draw attention to the importance of climate institutions, we look at countries that have established separate climate policy institutions (e.g. UK, Germany, Sweden, and South Africa) and assess how domestic climate policy narratives influence institutional arrangements. We argue for a broader typology of decarbonization pathways and explore institutional consequences associated with them. As a part of the puzzle, we also consider how new climate institutions may, in their turn, influence domestic climate policy narratives. When we are better able to understand the link between climate policy narratives and institutions, we will be better equipped to design institutions that are capable of guiding societal transformations to sustainable living.

It is crucial that the energy transition enfolds democratically, in order to increase the legitimacy of the transition and its outcomes. Practitioners and scholars increasingly point to community renewable energy (CRE) initiatives as legitimate agents in governing a democratic energy transition. In an attempt to fill the empirical knowledge gap on the often-assumed democratic legitimacy of CRE initiatives, we conduct an analysis of how and to what extent democratic legitimacy is being pursued and met by community renewable energy initiatives in their governance of energy generation projects.

We developed an analytical framework based on literature on energy democracy and democratic legitimacy, which we applied to governance practices of CRE initiatives in the city of Utrecht, The Netherlands. In a comparative case study containing four different CRE initiatives, varying in their energy source and maturity, data was primarily collected by means of interviews and document analysis. Triangulation of data sources and methods allowed an in-depth assessment of the pursuit and success of CRE initiatives in meeting democratic principles, nuanced by analytical considerations of different project stages.

Results show that CRE initiatives are democratically legitimate to a moderate to extensive degree, with transparency as a core principle. However, significant differences between principles and initiatives exist, so the assumption that CRE initiatives are by definition democratically legitimate is proved incorrect. Trade-offs are being made by decision-makers in CRE initiatives, pressured by resource limitations and based on the perceived importance of certain principles, varying per initiative. Four factors that influenced differences in democratic legitimacy between initiatives included the maturity of the initiative, the pursued energy source, the complexity of the local stakeholder arena and location-specific practicalities.

Future research could further investigate the influence of local stakeholders on the democratic legitimacy of CRE practices, while making use of our stage-specific results. By doing so, it could add a ‘good governance’ layer to strategic niche management in the CRE sector and safeguard democratic legitimacy in the stimulation and facilitation of initiatives’ upscaling. CRE initiators are recommended to discuss a collective perception of democratic legitimacy with participants and stakeholders, and to deploy their partnerships for sharing expertise. Policy makers are recommended to consider the democratic strengths and deficits of CRE initiatives in the support they provide. These considerations are necessary to steer the ongoing energy transition in a democratic and legitimate way.

It is widely acknowledged in the literature and society that expert advice is necessary for policymakers to devise effective, evidence-based solutions. The position of expertise is especially delicate within the global environmental governance sphere, where values, worldviews and epistemological standpoints can accumulate and breed conflict between stakeholders aiming to address sustainability challenges. However, there is limited substantive evidence on the extent to which expert advice really matters in environmental politics and under which conditions expert knowledge actually leads to action. Scholars from Science and Technology Studies and International Relations have focused at length on these questions yet struggle in providing definitive answers. At this scale, academic discussions range from positions assigning a crucial role to expertise to understandings that view science as epiphenomenal. Supported by evidence from the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and its Science-Policy Interface (SPI), this paper approaches these questions by examining the institutional design of advisory processes and power dynamics between science and policy to understand how crucial contextual factors contribute to expertise influencing global environmental governance.

Based on data collected from 2017 to 2022, including participant observation at the 14^th and 15^th Conference of the Parties to the UNCCD and 28 semi-structured interviews with members of the UNCCD SPI and Committee on Science and Technology, our findings identified key aspects of the institutional design that enabled the SPI to successfully inform policymaking on land degradation and desertification. Firstly, the institutional design helped experts to understand policy needs while not compromising the scientific credibility of the reports provided to policymakers. Secondly, it encouraged innovation by including early-career scientists, practitioners from civil society organizations and SPIs for other environmental conventions in their regular meetings and allowing them to participate in or contribute to the preparation of the policy reports. Thirdly, the small size of the expert body was cited as both a way for more voices to be heard and a barrier limiting their capacity. However, the UNCCD SPI overcomes this barrier by hiring external experts to contribute to the preparation of reports. In conclusion, although factors such as institutional design and active expert agency can be enabling factors for expertise to matter, international environmental decision-making and its national-level implementation are ultimately and inevitably subordinated to states’ power and influence. Against this backdrop, international expertise for sustainable development can only take advantage of the rare 'windows of opportunity' that intergovernmental processes concede.

Organizations that bridge the scientific and policy-making communities are often called boundary organizations. The concept has been helpful in explaining their legitimacy, authority, and relevance. Yet, the institutional design of boundary organizations has been neglected to date. States negotiate these organizations’ designs: their rules, procedures, and outputs result from contested, power-laden bargaining. This paper applies the institutional design framework to two prominent boundary organizations, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

The institutional design literature can offer several insights into the function of boundary organizations. The literature starts with aspects of the problem, such as the distribution of costs and benefits, and uncertainty about other states’ preferences and the state of the world. It connects this problem structure to institutional design choices, including members, centralization of authority, scope, and flexibility mechanisms. Many of these variables are relevant to boundary organizations. They vary in the centralization of authority (experts versus states) and the membership of authors and states. There is varied flexibility to pursue issues of scientific and policy concerns and to scope the assessments.

The study of boundary organizations can add to the institutional design literature. These organizations address the nature of the problem and the gap between science and policy. Boundary organizations address both a real-world problem and also a governance problem. Governance problems, namely the gap between science and policy, may have unique effects on institutional design.

This paper’s comparative method has an additional advantage: it can help separate functional and diffusion mechanisms. Using the institutional design framework, the paper can trace which institutional options appear to be functional responses to the challenges of building science-policy connections for climate change and for biodiversity, respectively. But, the IPCC and IPBES are not entirely separate cases. IPBES negotiators drew from the experiences of the IPCC when negotiating the biodiversity science-policy interface. There may be a case for diffusion. The institutional design framework can help identify which design features may be tailored to the needs of a biodiversity science-policy interface, and which functions may be “borrowed” from its counterpart in climate governance. There may also be implications for the ongoing negotiations for a science-policy interface for chemicals, wastes, and pollution.

The IPCC has integrated a set principles of justice to his AR6 working group II report on impacts, vulnerability and adaptation. The recognition of the relevance of principles of justice in AR6 (distributive justice, procedural justice and recognition) is understood as a condition for effective, plausible and fair adaptation processes, as well as a key element of a resilient ecological transformation model. Regardless of the importance of the conceptual innovation presented by the IPCC and of the recognition of justice for the definition of solution spaces to avoid catastrophic risks and impacts, the approach raises important questions about the normative nature of climate justice, the meaning and content of the principles of justice and its relation with the development of institutional capacities to operationalize and evaluate national climate change strategies and policies. This paper analyzes the climate justice approach developed in the AR6 to identify its conceptual limits and for establishing an analytical basis for a more integrated model from a multilevel governance perspective. Among the main problems that emerge from the IPCC climate justice approach, the following will be the central concern for our argument: 1) confusion between types and principles of justice; 2) limited definition regarding the specific normative content of climate justice principles and their reach; 3) decoupling of the principles of justice and the development of institutional capacities and flows of financial resources to developing countries; 4) lack of clarity to identify how local and indigenous knowledge should be integrated into risk management and adaptation strategies and the limits of this process; 5) non reference to global justice obligations; 6) absence of principles of restorative and retributive justice, particularly in relation to adaptation, losses and damages; 7) relevance of previous injustices and victimization; 8) disconnection between the principles of climate justice and the broader socio-ecological demands, expectations and conflicts expressed through the conception of environmental justice and the right to a healthy environment, which can explain the preexistence of must of the risks and vulnerabilities that could be multiplied as a consequence of climate variations and impacts in the Anthopocene.

Gene drives are a proposed biotechnological intervention that could provide unprecedented biological control for addressing key challenges in global sustainable development by providing an effective countermeasure to invasive alien species, agricultural pests or disease vectors. Gene drives also raise complex biosafety challenges and face scrutiny due to an allegedly-outsized involvement of certain philanthropic- and military funders. Against this background, this text is the first to provide a systematic account of the organizational structure that underpins global gene drive research. Applying social network analysis to data on co-authorship and research funding, I show that global gene drive research has limited organizational and geographical diversity and is firmly dominated by elite US-based organizations, with organizations from developing countries either playing marginal roles or being excluded altogether. Additionally, a tentative analysis of financial transfers suggests that an overwhelming share of global research funding passes from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to Imperial College London; and from the US National Institutes of Health to various first- and second-tier US research universities. Overall, the organizational structure implies a considerable legitimacy deficit in global scientific collaboration on a controversial novel biotechnology with significant biosafety risks yet potentially transformative impacts on key challenges of sustainable development.

Researchers interested in steering mechanisms for a sustainability transformation call for new governance models that recognise the role of different actors, including specifically the private sector in leading impact and change. One example exists in form of various sustainability and clean-tech innovation networks and start-up accelerators. These innovation ecosystems are designed to pursue a broader purpose of supporting the creation of businesses that define their existence based on addressing social and environmental sustainability issues beyond returning a profit.

Key questions, however, are whether such networks intentionally target multiple, interconnected sustainability challenges, or whether they instead rely on "silo-based" thinking by focusing only on solutions for specific sustainability issues and concerns? To what extent do these networks and their ventures recognise the interlinkages, synergies, tensions, and tradeoffs between different sustainability issues?

This paper aims to develop understanding and insight into whether and how “purpose-driven innovation ecosystems” are steering new business activities towards addressing complex interconnected sustainability issues. Based on research conducted through 36 semi-structured interviews, of which 12 were with members of clean tech incubators and accelerators, and 24 with CEOs and entrepreneurs of various sustainability start-ups and ventures located in the Metro Vancouver regional district, this research examines the different driving forces and barriers, assumptions, and limitations of such informal governance mechanisms among private sector actors.

Findings suggest respondents acknowledge the strong socio-economic, cultural, and ecological environments as critical factors in shaping people’s interests and motivations for developing new businesses designed to address critical sustainability issues and challenges. While there is a clear emphasis on addressing particularly climate change and other environmental issues in the resource-based sectors of the province, respondents are also aware of the need for tackling social issues and challenges, e.g., by driving equality, diversity and inclusion of women and indigenous communities. Therefore, nexus thinking of socio-ecological concerns is typically either implied or an explicit concern for many start-ups and the innovation ecosystem supporting them.

However, respondents also raised concerns about barriers and challenges affecting the success chances of this wider ecosystem, including a lack of funding certainty, weakening access to skills, staff, finance, and regulatory barriers as well as competition and duplication of efforts. Mindsets and expectations also differed between entrepreneurs and financiers, regarding the timeframes, scale, and returns on investments targeted.

Knowledge of these factors contributes to literature on sustainability transformations, earth system governance, and purpose-driven business models.

Experimentation with Nature-based Solutions (NbS) has emerged as a well-documented avenue of climate action for transformative urban futures with multiple benefits, such as supporting nature, climate, water security, and human health and wellbeing. In this article, we seek to give a view into the different narratives underpinning nascent NbS climate action pathways in the Global South cities of Cape Town and Johannesburg. We explore examples of city-directed experimentation, community-level scientific demonstration, private sector-led NbS initiatives as well as others. We find that while both cities exhibit vibrant NbS-supportive policy mixes, implementation of NbS in pursuit of water resilience lacks sustained momentum and remains difficult to amplify. Each alternative pathway towards water resilience through NbS is underpinned and framed by different narratives and values, each subject to contestation, whilst other imagined pathways such as NbS in informal areas remain difficult to resolve and therefore unseen. With these findings, we consider whether and where opportunities for disruptive and enabling decolonial transformations through diverse pathways of NbS may be found in post-colonial cities.

The Greater Virunga Transboundary Collaboration (GVTC) is an intergovernmental framework in place for the conservation of wildlife and tourism development within the Greater Virunga Landscape (GVL) shared by the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and Uganda. Within this landscape, and situated along international borders, are contiguous Conservation Areas that contain key biodiversity resources, including world’s only two populations of Endangered mountain gorilla, an important endemic subspecies with significant cultural and economic value.

Two emerging viral diseases have appeared over the last three years in the countries sharing the GVL, namely: the Ebola Virus in DRC and Uganda, and COVID 19 in all the three countries. These viral diseases were declared among human populations, while scientific evidence on their potential cross transmission between humans and wildlife species, most notably the primate populations such as the mountain gorilla, the chimpanzee (and other wildlife species that dwell in the GVL) was established. However, the effects of such viral diseases among the wildlife, especially the primate populations, are not yet known and apprehended. In this regards, and relative to its mandate, GVTC facilitated the development and the implementation of Emergency Plans for both diseases, and whose key objective was to, protect wildlife primate species (emphasis on mountain gorillas), conservation personnel, tourists and communities adjacent to the parks from acquiring viral diseases and avoid as much as possible the potential virus cross transmission between human and wildlife populations. Both plans are complementary to the National Emergency Plans established at national level for human health populations in the three countries. They also recognize this critical intersection between these two types of populations and advocate for a holistic approach to preparedness, prevention, and detection, and response related to the plans’ objective.

This paper presents key insights as to how the GVL Transboundary Governance has been a key factor in responding to both emerging viral diseases of Ebola and COVID 19, while demonstrating how it can support the long term resilience of the ecosystem and human society within the GVL. We shall highlight the key lessons drawn from the GVL experience and pertaining to theory and practice for one health system. Finally, we will discuss how the specific attributes of the transboundary collaboration governance can frame the required conditions to solutions for planetary health issues.

​​Extreme weather conditions, with more frequent and intense precipitation, extreme heat and intensity in tropical storms, and increase in sea levels, have detrimental consequences for the poor and marginalized in society, particularly, those in poor resource settings. These climatic events coupled with human activities are disrupting the planet’s ecological systems with concomitant effects at the micro-level. Particularly, the poor and marginalized often suffer from frequent or more intense flooding, drought, heatwaves, wildfires, recurring infectious diseases, with consequences such as poverty, food, water, and housing insecurity, and poor health. The ability to quantify these measures and effects have been critical in understanding the multiple pathways, by which changes in climatic conditions and environmental degradation impact on the sustainable livelihoods. However, few studies, if any, have explored the application of these indices to assess governance programs, policies, and solutions aimed at mitigating the effects of climate change at the household level. Without the ability to assess the veracity of these interventions and programs, it is difficult to determine whether these solutions are effective. It is also difficult to assess the ability of households to adequately anticipate, prepare, and adapt to these vulnerabilities. In this presentation, we will discuss 1) the need to integrate such indices in informing and assessing governance programmatic interventions and policies, 2) the need for more tailored indices, 3) the assessment of top-down approaches to governance structures in comparison to a bottom-up and/or co-creative approaches that are sustainable, 4) the value and downside of nature-based solutions for the poor and marginalized, and 5) possible steps to building resilience, reducing risk, and enhancing sustainable adaptive practices, in the face of cascading crisis. In sum, this presentation aims at changing our mental models and introduces a planetary health perspective that highlights interdependencies between environment, social vulnerability, and human health to inform efficient and innovative governance programs and solutions in addressing the effects of climate change at the microlevel.

Planetary health equity (PHE) is defined as the equitable enjoyment of good health in a stable ecosystem. An important challenge in the pursuit of PHE is in the intersecting relationship between climate change, social inequities, and health inequities. The impacts of a changing climate on health are wide-ranging and involve multiple pathways, which are often mediated by social inequities such that they compound health inequities. The governance challenge created by multiple and intersecting impact pathways between these three outcomes is further exacerbated by the complex upstream governance structures and dynamics that contribute to planetary health inequities through social, political, economic, commercial, cultural, and environmental determinants of health.

PHE represents a ‘wicked problem’ that necessitates inter- and transdisciplinary approaches to knowledge generation. This study therefore aims to bring together and synthesise knowledge of different types from across disciplines and institutional settings, which are focused on understanding complex upstream and downstream impact pathways shaping the problem of PHE. In particular, the review investigates what is found in existing academic and grey literature that answers the question: What are the social and health equity impacts of climate change mitigation policies for socially marginalised and disadvantaged populations in different contexts? This involve both: a) substantive, technical elements of the impact pathway related to intersecting outcomes across climate change, social inequities, and health inequities, and b) upstream structural, procedural, and ideational factors that shape the social and health equity implications of climate change mitigation approaches.

This study is pursued through a rapid realist review, which is designed to be problem-focused and to identify policy-relevant implications and generate knowledge and strategies for ways forward. Reviews that are systematic and adopt a wide scope create an important opportunity to bridge disciplines and institutional settings, bringing together a range of types of knowledge and fostering mutual understanding focused on a shared area of concern. Our review involved a wide search strategy including electronic databases capturing academic literature across a range of disciplines, as well as grey literature from international organisations, government, and non-governmental sources. Knowledge synthesis is also conducted across inter-disciplinary norms, including both quantitative citation network analysis and descriptive statistics methods, as well as qualitative narrative synthesis. Transdisciplinary methods pose a challenge in integrating different bodies of knowledge, therefore mixed approaches create opportunities for meaningful synthesis.

The energy intensive industry is a major contributor to carbon emissions. Emissions in this industry are notoriously hard to abate because of its energy intensity, high temperature requirements and process emissions. One option for combating climate change in this industry is through carbon capture and storage (CCS). CCS research has been driven mainly by technical and economic considerations. However, this narrow focus is not appreciative enough of the systemic nature of climate change challenges and the diverse societal considerations.

This paper provides a review of the literature on CCS with a systems thinking approach, to assess the extent to which it has addressed the societal implications of CCS implementation. The review identifies significant gaps in the current research, particularly with regard to democracy and participation. In many pathways towards Paris-compatible futures, CCS is a crucial component of achieving a net-zero future. Yet, despite the collective significance, the public has a limited role in these processes. The discussion on the public has so far mainly focused on opposition and gaining acceptance, and the research has largely focused on the project-level.

Based on the literature review, the paper argues for a more active role for the public in industrial decarbonization. The paper highlights the need for greater attention to be given to the social dimensions of CCS and the importance of fostering public participation in these processes. This approach will help to ensure that the implementation of CCS is more inclusive, democratic, and sustainable in the long run.

Environmental politics have long been depicted in terms of a tension between what is ecologically necessary and what is politically possible. Climate movements that engage in imagining alternative futures seek to overcome this tension, and ultimately the contemporary ‘crisis of imagination’ in relation to envisioning alternative futures. Yet how they define and negotiate what is necessary and/or possible has long been overlooked. Through the case of the 2022 Swedish Climate Parliament, which brings together 150 proposals for addressing the current climate crisis, we explore how environmental organizations as well as engaged individual citizens define the desirability and plausibility of their and others’ proposals in terms of necessity and possibility. If we consider being able to imagine as a first step toward creating certain futures, analyzing these articulations and processes presents important spaces of hyperprojectivity in which the social production of futures can be observed. We explore various elements that activists draw on in articulating the necessity and possibility of proposals, including the temporality of climate change and climate politics, political and discursive opportunities, and collective political efficacy. We furthermore compare the discursive legitimization of narratives focusing on either possibility or necessity, hypothesizing that each reflect reformist and radical politics, respectively, and that both will come with distinct discursive strategies to define their desirability and plausibility. The paper aims to provide a basis for identifying and analyzing competing clusters of future imagination in the climate movement.

In this paper we focus in particular on the role of democracy in activists' imaginaries. Democracy faces a dual crisis in the Anthropocene: Democratic states seem unable to address climate change while resulting climate disruptions threaten the foundations of modern democracies. Climate movements tend to express support for more (radical) democracy, which may be unsurprising given the outsider position they themselves occupy by definition. Yet they are also keenly aware of the obstacle that ‘the will of the people’ poses to the radical changes they wish to see, thus creating an often tacit ambivalence to values of democracy as well. We explore how the dual crisis of democracy is dealt with by contemporary actors. We focus on the way in which futures are imagined, and how this reflects, challenges or reproduces current power relations, presents what are considered (un)desirable and (im)possible futures, and as such, shape the social field of imaginations that produce actual futures.

Our starting point for bridging time and justice is a discourse approach focusing on justice and futures in sustainability transformations. Transformations are socially and politically complex with competing interests representing (disputing) discourses. A topic where this becomes especially clear are the discussion on loss and damages, which has been a key concern at the last COPs. It emphasizes how the climate crisis is related to competing justice conceptions and differing ideas on how future transformations should look like. Futures are not neutral but represent particular desires, values, assumptions and worldviews, including ideas on fair distributions of burdens and benefits (distributive justice), ideas on fair decision-making (procedural justice), accepted knowledge systems (epistemic justice) and the issue of respecting agents' rights and positions (recognition justice). To unpack the reciprocal relationship between justice and time, i.e., presents and futures, we distinguish two angles, which are overlapping and interacting: ‘making of futures’ and ‘using of futures’. First, ‘making of futures’ focuses on understanding the creation of (un)just futures in the context of loss and damages, working from the premise that the actions resulting from present negotiations create different futures. The second angle refers to ‘using of futures’, where futures might be (strategically) anticipated when actors construct and legitimize particular visions/ scenarios on the distribution on loss and damage. We conduct a comparative media analysis between the Netherlands and Germany on how the discussion on Loss and Damages was reported on in the media and commented on by citizens.

This contribution discusses the question how different future imaginaries of green energy and related justice claims spatialize and collide in a particular geographical context – Finnmark in northernmost Norway. Conceptually, it draws on [citation of authors removed]’s framework of the ‘futures of sustainability’ and extends this approach with the notion of ‘sociotechnical imaginaries’, coined by [citation of authors removed]. Building on these elaborations, it discusses how different sociotechnical imaginaries serve to legitimize competing justice claims, and influence spatial imaginaries and space-making processes. Empirically, it draws on semi-structured qualitative interviews gathered in the Finnmark in October 2022, and shows, how the current political ambitions to turn parts of the region into centers for renewable energy and hydrogen production are interlinked and justified with declining demographics, security politics and global visions for ecological modernization. Moreover, it interrogates how these visions collide with a counter-hegemonic spatial imaginary which builds on Indigenous rights and knowledges. In doing so, the contribution aims at revealing how energy transitions in the High North are not only profoundly political in character, but also how they co-produce and are shaped by fundamentally different normative visions of the future.

Major recurring themes in energy transitions revolve around questions of energy justice: how burdens and benefits are distributed, how processes of energy choices are organized and who is recognized as a legitimate voice in these choices (and how). The inclusion of citizens in the decision-making process is suggested to increase social learning and influence of citizens; to harness local and experiential knowledge; and to generate legitimacy of policies or solve conflicts. However, literature also demonstrates that often policy or academic jargon is imposed on participating citizens. In this research, we experimented with deliberations with diverse groups of citizens, that we facilitated with two different artefacts: maps and sketches to explore if this raised new perspectives in justice dilemmas in the energy transitions. The question was of visualized information would contribute to (1) the deliberative quality of the conversation, and if the deliberations (2) led to new insights in elements of justice overlooked in the literature and by policy makers. This paper therefore discusses: What dilemmas are raised during a mapping assignment in a deliberative session with local stakeholders and citizens to create a more just energy transition? The aim of the paper is to apply the concept of energy justice and broaden it, by involving citizens in these considerations of justice. This paper is based on in depth interviews (N=8), a survey (N=1270) and 4 Deliberative sessions (N=64). Through the three tenets in energy justice (i.e., distributive, procedural, recognition, Jenkins et al., 2016) we analyze how citizens use elements of justice to design a just energy transition.

Anthropogenic climate change and associated risks are posing increasingly profound challenges for justice, equity and allocation. Indeed, addressing losses and damages resulting from global heating is now squarely on the agenda of multilateral climate governance. Corresponding discussions of ‘climate justice’ respond to the profound mismatch whereby those who contribute least to the causes of climate change are most vulnerable to its consequences. This paper addresses the interdependencies between anticipated impacts of climate change, defined as climate risks, and global financial structures. Recent empirical research analysed how vulnerability to climate risks affects the conditions for borrowing on global capital markets. Specifically, assessments of climate vulnerability drive up the cost of sovereign debt for climate vulnerable developing countries. Yet, within the given structures of the global economy, the economic prospects of developing countries depend (among other factors) on access to financial markets at reasonable conditions. The plight of climate vulnerable developing countries is thus compounded by a global financial system that braces itself against the costs of climate risks at the cost of those who are already disproportionally burdened by these risks. This contradicts the polluter pays principle, if unintentionally. Multilateral climate governance is increasingly under pressure to respond to such challenges through the mobilization of climate finance, advancing comprehensive risk management and developing climate risk insurance schemes. The decision to establish a distinct ‘Loss and Damage Fund’ by the recent UN climate change conference ‘COP27’ is a strong case in point. Yet, its eventual expedience will be contingent on the negotiation of specific funding arrangements and the level of supply that developed countries are willing to provide. The borrowing of capital, however, is a straightforward expression of developing countries’ demand. Inhibiting their access to capital markets through issue-linkages with climate risks is a further manifestation of inequity as resulting from climate change. Ultimately, it needs to be addressed in the realm of global financial governance rather than through multilateral climate policy. To this end, this paper seeks to advance a policy-relevant understanding of issue linkages between climate policy, risk management and the global financial system. It argues for a better reflection of global financial structures in climate justice discourse and to developing strong institutional interlinkages between global climate and global financial governance as a prerequisite to targeting one of the major blind spots of justice and allocation in earth system governance.

Current policies and initiatives for the transition towards a decarbonized future largely lean on the replacement of fossil fuels by renewable energy sources and the rapid electrification of transport and industry. While these technologies will most likely effectively reduce carbon emissions, they will also lead to a dramatic increase in the demand for particular minerals, such as lithium, cobalt, copper and rare earth elements. The availability and supply of these so-called critical minerals is therefore increasingly acknowledged as a major bottleneck for the energy transition, urging (mainly Western) governments and corporations to find ways to secure access to these resources.

In this paper, I propose that critical minerals should not only be understood as a ‘material bottleneck’ for the energy transition, but also as an issue that implies fundamental questions of justice. Most reserves of critical minerals are located in the Global South, were their extraction is widely associated with tremendous environmental impacts, growing inequalities, social conflicts and ill-development. When mineral demand will grow threefold or even sevenfold, this will push new commodity frontiers and mining projects ever further into the resource-rich regions of the Global South. Here, they concomitantly redraw landscapes and life-worlds in ways that reproduce global and local colonial relations, curtailing a truly just global energy transition.

This presentation aims to explore the impacts and questions of climate justice that arise from the demand for critical minerals through a case-study of the Ecuadorian Amazon. In this region, oil reserves are on decline but copper mining is booming. In this context, I will map the spatial and socio-ecological implications of the mining frontier. Drawing on literature on critical geography and green colonialism, I will analyze the power structures and (racial) injustices that undergird the ways in which mineral extracting unfolds in this region. Lastly, I will explore the ways in which people and collectives across the Ecuadorian Amazon are imagining and putting into practice pathways to both decarbonize and decolonialize our future. With this I aim contribute critical insights to both academic and societal search for a truly just global energy transition.

Historically used as an industrial lubricant, a fixing agent for ceramics, a treatment for bipolar disorder, and a coolant for nuclear fusion, lithium has recently emerged as a “critical metal” whose role in the production of lithium-ion batteries is quickly re-shaping the political economy of extraction and development for a low carbon energy transition. However, concerns have been raised that soaring prices, public subsidies, and growing demand for batteries and electric vehicles are fuelling a model of extraction that is quickly degrading some of the world’s most fragile ecosystems and communities. This paper explores the transnational forces that are driving and governing the contemporary surge in demand for the world’s lightest metal. It makes the case that transnational mechanisms for governing renewable energy are embedded in a multilateral system that has systematically prioritized the energy needs of western capitalist economies over commodity-bearing frontiers. However, unlike oil or uranium, the securitization of lithium has occurred in a context of deep global integration that exposes battery and EV manufacturers to the uncertainties of transnational manufacturing and the reputational risks of selling a product that is associated with degrading lives, livelihoods, and the living world. The paper makes the case that voluntary standards and third party certification schemes have been used as “proxies” for managing the reputational risks of extracting surplus from lithium frontiers. However, by circumventing public systems of authority and accountability, their ability to regulate and mitigate the harmful effects of lithium extraction remains limited, and light.

Recent scholarship underlines the importance of analysing the nature and impact of anticipatory visions and processes in earth system governance (Burch et al 2019). Projections of the future are especially critical in relation to climate change governance. However, as scholars in science and technology studies (e.g., Beck and Mahony 2017) have shown, climate scenarios and pathways circumscribe the future along particular directions while effectively foreclosing others. Anticipations of the future may also work in less explicit, but nonetheless powerful, ways that ‘lock-in’ (Leach et al 2012) specific climate solutions that come to be taken for granted as the obvious way forward. In this paper, we seek to extend these insights to mainstream frameworks for a ‘just transition’.

At first sight, arguments for just transitions in the course of decarbonisation promise to marry traditionally technical perspectives with a concern for inequality and social justice. For example, electric vehicles (EVs) are being imagined not just as a matter of changing one type of car for another, but as a mechanism to promote equity in access to ‘clean mobility’ (Syal 2023). Yet, this scenario of the future renders invisible the politics and socio-environmental impacts of resource extraction – notably, of nickel - on which EVs rely (Dall-Orsoletta et al 2022).

The paper’s central objective is to address this gap by examining how nickel-based decarbonisation practices and discourses for EVs are designed, implemented, and contested and their implications for future mobilities. Drawing on documentary analysis conducted as part of the ANU UNESCO Chair in Science Communication for Public Good, we explore the ways in which imaginations of the future shape the work of key actors across nickel commodity chains and legitimise or challenge EV agendas. We aim to unpack power dynamics and social disparities along these chains in Indonesia which is responsible for the bulk of global nickel extraction. This will deepen our understandings of how particular models of the decarbonised economy and transformative sustainability are being imagined, anticipated, and pursued, and how particular social and environmental (in)justices are accepted and normalised. Our analysis highlights the limitations of framing justice in ‘just transitions’ as “a formalised and preconceived ‘thing’ to be delivered or applied” (Velicu and Kaika, 2017, p. 305). Instead, we argue that such anticipatory visions of just transition must engage with the conflicting dynamics of everyday power, precarity, and the inherently cross-scalar nature of earth system governance.

The Amazon biome is comprised of nine countries and represents a third of the remaining tropical forests, storing around 20% of all carbon in the world's terrestrial vegetation (Baccini et al., 2012). In the Brazilian part of the forest, at least 27% of this carbon is found in Indigenous Lands (ILs) (Walker et al., 2020). These ILs combined host over 173 distinct indigenous ethnic groups, totaling 87 million hectares, equivalent to the territories of France and Germany combined (Crisostomo et al., 2015). These ILs have distinct sociocultural characteristics, and thanks to the organization and actions of indigenous peoples, they have the lowest rates of deforestation and degradation compared to other types of properties in the Amazon (Nolte et al., 2013). From 2000 to 2014, the forest loss in these areas was less than 2%, while the average in the entire Amazon region was 19% (Crisostomo et al., 2015).

With the expansion of "Nature-Based Solutions" and the subsequent escalation of voluntary carbon markets, pressure for the implementation of REDD+ projects in ILs has been growing. Proponents argue that such projects are essential for mitigating the climate crisis. They also argue that REDD+ can finance not only the preservation of carbon in forests but also the autonomous development of indigenous communities, valuing culture, sustainability, and territorial governance (Hacon, 2018, p. 127; p. 169). However, in practice, this promise hides problems and contradictions, including violations of indigenous socio-territorial rights (Kill et al., 2015; Bonilha, 2014).

At this moment there is no hegemonic position on REDD+ among Amazonian indigenous movements. Some groups advocate that safeguards can be established for the mechanism, allowing funding for indigenous territorial governance that guarantees autonomy, development, and territorial protection. An example of this is the "Amazonian Indigenous Redd+ (AIR)" proposal (COICA, 2014). Other organizations have strongly criticized REDD+, pointing out its neoliberal and expropriatory character. They point out that it is a form of "climate colonialism" that will lead to the loss of autonomy and violations of indigenous socio-territorial rights (Declaration of Xapuri, 2017). Centered on the perspective of indigenous organizations and taking the right to autonomy and self-determination as an analytical element, the research seeks to present an overview of the current debate in the Brazilian Amazon.

The impacts of climate change on water bodies, freshwater supply and precipitation patterns are massive and require a comprehensive reappraisal of existing water infrastructures and institutions. Historically, these are heavily influenced by the paradigm of the ‘hydraulic mission’, i.e. the endeavor to control and valorize water and to secure supply and drainage via (large-scale) infrastructure, which co-evolved with a specific way of governing water through technocratic institutions, ‘hydraulic bureaucracies’ and hydrological expert knowledge. In the wake of the challenges that climate change presents to water governance, however, this ‘hydraulic mission’ and its institutions seem to be failing in the sense that they do not seem to be capable of dealing adequately with these new challenges.

To get to grips with this hypothesis, this paper conceptualizes the 'hydraulic mission' through the lens of recent political science literature on the environmental state, which recognizes the management of the environment and socio-ecological interactions as an imperative state function to which a significant set of institutions and practices are dedicated. By bringing political science literature on the environmental state into dialogue with water-specific literature from other social science disciplines, we firstly map the contours of the environmental state in the water sector along the categories of the system of rules regulating it, the apparatus administering it, the ideas and expert knowledge guiding it as well as conflicts and processes negotiating it, showing the rather continuous and seamless evolution from the 'hydraulic mission' of the 1960s to the eco-modernized version of today's environmental state.

Secondly, by investigating water governance issues in three case studies from the heavily climate change-impacted and water-scarce region of Berlin-Brandenburg (a lake system at the border of Berlin and Brandenburg, the river Spree and heavy rainfall in Berlin), we show on a more empirical level that this incarnation of the environmental state resp. the ‘hydraulic mission’ currently fails to effectively address the systemic challenge of climate change, because its conciliatory configurations are not able to pacify the socio-ecological conflicts that come along with it anymore. Recognizing that the state, however, is dependent on doing so in order to maintain its imperative functions of environmental conservation and social order, we close by discussing which ruptures and continuities with the previous path we already see and which ones would be needed to achieve a more adaptive and reflexive water governance able to handle the current systemic challenges.

A growing literature has emphasised how structural factors shape levels of ambition in local climate policy. Specifically, cities that have larger, wealthier, highly-educated and younger populations, are supported by local universities and research institutes and in which civil society organisations and green parties are strong and active, are more likely to be ‘leaders’ in climate mitigation and adaptation. Conversely, smaller towns, with less wealthy and older populations, which are more reliant on heavy industry and with weaker civil society organisations and green parties, are more likely to be ‘laggards’.

Such studies are informative from an academic perspective (because they identify the key factors that contribute towards more ambitious policymaking), and instructive for policymakers (who can pinpoint where additional support and funding schemes may be necessary to ensure that all cities keep pace with the leaders). However, they neglect to take account of agency and the likelihood that individuals in some municipalities can pursue ambitious climate policy despite operating in less favourable local conditions. At the same time, the actions of key individuals in cities where socioeconomic and political conditions are more favourable could hinder the adoption of ambitious policies.

Given these considerations, how can we incorporate both structure and agency into analyses of local climate governance? This paper presents a framework to conceptualise the role of both dimensions in policymaking, and suggests how they could contribute to cities becoming leaders, followers or latecomers in climate policy. We then apply this framework to a qualitative study of eleven cities in Germany. Following [author removed for anonymous review process], we anticipate that the role of agency and the strength of policy entrepreneurs may be particularly profound in smaller organisations and therefore we restricted our case selection to municipalities with between 50,000-100,000 inhabitants. We show how those places with active climate managers were able to push forward ambitious policies despite unfavourable local conditions, and set out the factors that can help them exercise greater agency in policymaking processes.

Traditionally, city government agencies have been charged with protecting their citizens from environmental hazards and extreme climate events (e.g., drought, heat waves, and floods). As climate change threatens to increase the intensity, frequency, and impacts of extreme climate events, the demands on city agencies to fully comprehend the complexities and uncertainties in urban and climate systems are growing in tandem. City decision-makers must take decisive action to adapt and even transform urban systems to become more resilient to climate events. However, individual organizations – such as city government agencies – often lack the comprehensive knowledge of urban systems needed to take unilateral and decisive climate action. As a result, the urban resilience literature argues that resilience decision-making processes are opening-up (i.e., beyond government agencies) to include private, non-profit, and academic actors in governance processes due to the complexity and the high stakes of climate resilience decisions; a more diverse urban governance network is argued to improve the comprehensiveness and quality of knowledge, diversify problem framings, increase collaboration, and generate more robust planning and successful implementation of urban climate solutions. However, there is a lack of empirical studies that have mapped and analyzed urban governance networks for climate resilience, and even fewer that have compared networks across cities. There is also a lack of studies of urban resilience governance networks in the Global South. Our study addresses these research gaps. In this study we ask: (1) what is the structure of urban climate resilience governance networks?, (2) how do various actor attributes lead to the formation – or lack of formation - of network structures?, and (3) what are the implications of these unique network structures on urban resilience processes and outcomes? We surveyed resilience professionals in seven cities in the United States and three in Latin America between 2016 to 2020 to map both their knowledge and collaboration networks for urban climate resilience. We then analyze each city’s governance network to identify points of intervention to improve climate knowledge co-production, and resilience processes and outcomes by catalyzing and promoting desirable network structures. Results of this study will help urban resilience professionals to strategically map and intervene in their local climate governance network to promote urban resilience to extreme climate events.

Globally, urban experimentation has proliferated across many cities to address sustainability problems. Whilst experiments can serve different functions, including to test new technologies, enable learning, or diffuse best practices, there remains questions about how experiments ultimately generate sector-level transformative impacts beyond the individual projects. Limited systematic efforts have been put towards capturing how experimental lessons feed into policy processes. In this paper we ask how can we systematically capture the sector-level impacts of urban experimentation while considering their place-based influences?

Rather than seeing place as a mere territorial ‘container’ for experiments, here we conceive place as a structure that is open and yet bounded, constituted through the interplay of multiple social and material elements. We build on a framework that has been tested in a large N-study of experiments across 100 cities. They emphasise the following place-based conditions: governance & stakeholder networks, policy visions and plans, localised learning processes, financial resources and funding structures, localised informal institutions, natural endowments and resources, and urban materiality. We complement this with an operationalisation of impacts in terms of how experiment generates new discourse, institution, resource, and relationships which may feed into sector-wide policy shifts. Employing a desktop approach, we develop a database that captures these place-based conditions and sectoral impacts across forty cases of water and energy experimentations across two Australian cities.

The database captures the diversity of urban experimentation approaches (in terms of degrees of novelty and types of intervention) while facilitating comparison across the two sectors. We could discern specific governance patterns, presence/absence of policy drivers, funding patterns, learning extents, and variable influences of informal institutions. Material conditions, such as resource problems and availability lands, appear as important determinants behind many experimentations. Evidence of sector-wide impacts can be systematically presented; however, it remains difficult to establish the causal relationships between impact and experimentation. Despite this, we have advanced research by providing a useful operationalisation of the sector-wide impacts. Future development is needed to complement the database with in-depth studies to further unravel these transformative relationships in terms of a multi-causal phenomenon, involving direct/indirect influences of experiment(s) but also other plausible factors. Practically speaking, we hope that this database approach could be further developed as an evidence-based tool that is oriented towards policymakers. In this regard, its design could be updated with more user-friendly features, functionalities, and interface to facilitate a systematic exploration of lessons to support decisions in scaling sustainability experimentation.

To ensure proper climate change adaptation (CCA), low-lying countries should prioritize the biophysical interests of the delta and plan decades ahead to cope with land subsidence, sea-level rise, and extreme weather events. But these long-term considerations often collide with short-term interests (e.g. housing/project development). We call such collisions temporal tensions (TTs), playing out in temporal tension areas (TTAs).

Recently, various approaches have emerged to better address TTs, including the dual (acute and creeping) crisis perspective (public administration); mainstreaming of CCA, and work on foresight and imagination. These approaches help to engage with and transform real-world planning, but efforts risk becoming fragmented. We, therefore, propose to bring these various contributions together into one coherent framework.

As a point of departure, we turn to the Solution Space approach (SoSp), referred to as ‘the space within which opportunities and constraints determine why, how, when, and who adapts to climate risks’. The SoSp takes the biophysical characteristics of areas as its point of departure and from there illustrates the changing bandwidth for CCA measures. While biophysically inspired, the SoSp has incorporated social dimensions, allowing the identification of a variety of factors that shape the solution space: a.o. sea level rise; change in discourse/national mood (climate awareness); take-up of novel technologies (floating homes). The SoSp enables different CCA pathways, but decision-makers should recognize which pathway they are on and what routes they are closing off.

We propose to, first, enrich this approach through a more explicit incorporation of the representation of different futures. We adopt the concept of ‘imaginative logics’, referred to as ‘the set of principles underlying or constituting an imaginative intervention, by means of which an abstract phenomenon is made present to the audience’. Our central premise is that we need a broader and more in-depth understanding of imagination in order to expand the SoSP. More concretely: we hypothesize that imagination is key to developing more possible and plausible future pathways, e.g. by redesigning land development instruments, the financial tool that municipalities and project developers use, or involving actors with a radically different temporal perspective on land use. Second, the SoSp should be better tailored to the needs of different actors in TTAs, responding to the critique of the implicit cockpitisim of the SoSp. In conclusion, we reflect on the next steps in its development as well as an outline of a research agenda.

The negotiation of an international treaty on plastics and litter, including in the marine environment is underway, with the aim of addressing the issue of plastic pollution. However, the focus on plastics presents both opportunities and challenges. On one hand, the treaty has the potential to address a multitude of interrelated issues and become a key lever in addressing the complexity of plastic (pollution) management. On the other hand, the treaty's design could contribute to the fragmentation of earth system governance and result in unintended consequences, such as problem shifting. For example, a ban on plastic items may lead to the use of unregulated and potentially more harmful substances or a significant impact on biodiversity and land use as a consequence of the use of alternative materials. A focus on circular economy approaches of plastics may shift the burden of pollution to secondary effects, such as legacy pollution in secondary plastics after recycling. This study seeks to analyze the negotiation of the plastics treaty to date, identifying its potential and risks, with a focus on the issue of problem shifting. Drawing from existing literature on institutional design and key design elements, the study critically assesses the negotiation process and provides recommendations for moving forward. The ultimate goal is to ensure that the treaty's design addresses the issue of plastic pollution and its interconnected challenges, without creating new sustainability problems.

While global climate politics evolved predominantly through an intergovernmental process that was complemented with a wide range of transnational and subnational governance ‘beyond the state’, plastic politics might be described as a movement in the opposite direction, from the local to the global. This raises fundamental questions about the scalar politics of plastics, and how the direction of travel between local and global plastic initiatives can be understood.

A recent materialist turn in the field of environmental politics has seen a marked attention to everyday life as a site of activism and resistance to unsustainable flows of goods, resources, and energy. Departing from this literature, we reflect on the potential of alternative plastic economies to advance our understanding of global plastic politics. To do so, we synthesize theoretical developments across three interrelated themes of study: sustainable materialism, prefiguration, and scaling of post-growth alternative organizing. Our contributions in this article are primarily theoretical, and we aim to articulate a research agenda for sustainable materialist research on the plastic crisis that traverses the local-global divide.

By alternative plastic economies, we mean diverse and non-growth oriented forms of exchange and circulation of plastic materials. We contend that such examples of ‘living well with plastics’ are overlooked in the now emerging global politics of plastics, epitomized in the currently negotiated United Nations Treaty on Plastic Pollution. This is not surprising in itself, but we further argue that the study of alternative plastic economies opens up unexplored avenues for engaging politically with plastics while revealing certain shortcomings of mainstream plastic governance paradigms such as the circular economy.

The absence of a sense of collective ownership and responsibility for environmental and climate problems can be especially problematic in the field of pollution. Plastics waste pollution, exacerbated by reliance on single-use plastics, is one such example of a problem marked by a lack of community ownership and responsibility for it. Young people are often habituated to using plastics in daily life without considering the negative impacts of single-use plastics for both the environment and the climate, and/or without access to sustainable alternatives.

This study examines impacts caused by plastics waste pollution in local communities and explores how more adaptive legal and policy tools can contribute to ownership and sense of responsibility within populations, supporting the objectives of protecting the environment and minimising the effects of climate change. Having designed intervention tools based on citizen participation, our three case studies in Kenya, Jamaica, and Malawi allow us to evaluate governance tools to support the objective of reducing single-use plastics within schools (Jamaica), youth groups (Kenya) and universities (Malawi).

Building on existing research on plastics ownership and engagement initiatives and case-study results, this paper identifies governance tools that can: (i) build ownership and a sense of responsibility over the problem of plastics waste; (ii) engage citizens; and (iii) drive action to minimise plastics use in local communities and its negative effects in the environment. The results are used to compare legal and policy frameworks and to suggest recommendations and guidelines to optimise governance frameworks in the field of single-use plastics. We suggest that community engagement and adaptive legal and policy instruments can contribute to the reduction of the use of plastics and their adverse impacts on the environment and climate change.

Currently, more than 11 million metric tons of plastic are flowing into the ocean each year from different sources. Plastic waste has been found in all areas of the globe, from the deepest seas to the most remote mountains. It causes harm to wildlife and ecosystems, but also disrupts the livelihood of millions of people, as well as posing major risk to human health and the world economy. It is a challenge to deal with this type of global and complex problem under the sphere of national countries, which calls for a great effort of cooperation among nations globally, especially its entry in the ocean and coastal zones. In March 2022, UN Member States agreed on a mandate to negotiate a legally binding global instrument to end plastic pollution, including the marine environment. This framework will be negotiated throughout a series of meetings across the globe, and is expected to be in place by the end of 2024. The first Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee meeting, INC-1, took place at the end of 2022 in Punta del Este, Uruguay, and an upcoming meeting is expected to happen in May 2023 (INC-2), in France. Thus, drawing on process tracing (i.e. observations, interviews, and literature and documental analysis), we will highlight several critical issues in the emerging institutional design of a future agreement for addressing plastic pollution in the marine ecosystems. Using the architecture and agency lenses, these analyses will include the polarization between countries and coalitions in the negotiating process, the uneven participation of scientific and industry stakeholders, and the challenge of formulating a legal and binding instrument that relies on cooperation across levels. The conclusion will contribute to the next Intergovernmental Conferences, and assess the potential of reaching an effective agreement before the negotiations are scheduled to conclude by 2024.

How agents of change - policy-makers and regulators - define solutions to environmental problems is connected to how such problems are framed. The prevailing narrative around plastics pollution was shaped by increased public awareness of the impacts of releasing plastics into the environment. This was informed by scientific findings on plastic flows and accumulation, especially in oceans, as interpreted in arresting images and footage - notably in Attenborough’s Blue Planet II series. The ‘Attenborough effect’ had a galvanising impact on law and policy and caused ‘durable shifts’ in audience perceptions of the environmental impacts of plastics waste. There is growing scientific recognition that plastics production and its resulting pollution drives the exceeding of the planetary boundary for novel entities.

It is a paradox that plastics are integral to modern society; a world without plastics is unimaginable. Features rendering plastic an environmental problem (durability, stability, persistence) also make it a valuable commodity. Therefore, regulating plastics to preserve their social utility while reducing or eliminating damaging pollution is important.

Translating this ‘wicked’ problem into a coherent narrative which can drive effective governance solutions is the essence of the puzzle this paper addresses. Presenting findings from the project ‘The Wicked Problem of Plastics Waste’ (AHRC/GCRF), case-studies from selected countries in Africa and the Caribbean aimed to identify links between the narratives around plastics, the salience of stakeholders aiming to influence plastics law and policy, and resulting governance instruments. We take a multidisciplinary approach with the synthesis of communications and governance central to the analysis. Our findings on the communications-governance nexus, offer scope to strengthen future plastics governance, and by extension, to restore planetary boundaries.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim to transform interdependent ecological, social, and economic systems. Climate change, for instance, affects the world's poorest populations and exacerbates problems like severe floods and droughts, as well as biodiversity loss. Achieving the Agenda 2030 requires a holistic approach to governance that considers the impact on multiple SDGs. Multi-stakeholder partnerships (MSPs), which bring together public, private, and civil society organizations to achieve shared goals, are often advocated as effective vehicles for addressing multiple SDGs. Consequently, this paper evaluates whether existing MSPs are connecting SDGs with the greatest leverage points, in other words, whether the supply of governance is meeting the demand for connections between the SDGs.

In more detail, the paper first identifies the demand for governing SDG interactions by reviewing literature that models the relationships between the SDGs. Then, it compares the demand to the supply of interaction governance provided by MSPs. The study utilizes a new dataset of nearly 200 MSPs targeting multiple SDGs and distilled from nearly 7,000 entries on the UNDESA Partnership Platform. The MSPs are analyzed through descriptive statistics and network analysis, which demonstrates the formation of clusters around SDGs related to climate, nature, land, health, and energy. However, weak connections to SDGs related to innovation, inequality, and peace and justice are exposed.

The results indicate a mismatch between the supply and demand of interaction governance, particularly between environmental and economic SDGs. The study suggests that MSPs should pay more attention to targeting production and consumption patterns to address this mismatch and enhance their effectiveness. In addition, achieving synergies between SDGs should receive more attention in both research and practice.

Climate change is perhaps the largest threat to sustainable development globally. In addition to the amplifying negative environmental effects such as air pollution and biodiversity loss, it may also exacerbate social inequalities. Consequently, tackling SDG13 on Climate Action more effectively could help to both keep the temperature rise below 1,5 degrees as stipulated in the Paris Agreement and accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. To this end, the nexus literature suggests tackling interlinkages between the environmental, social and economic domains of society by harnessing synergies, managing trade-offs and mitigating conflicts. Multi-stakeholder partnerships (MSPs), recognized through SDG 17 on Partnerships for the Goals, offer a complement to existing international institutional arrangements to address climate change using a nexus approach. Due to their capacity to coordinate stakeholders, and combine resources, MSPs may have the potential to accelerate action. This paper explores the question: to what extent are MSPs effective in implementing SDG13 through a nexus approach? Under the assumption that MSPs’ own goals and targets are fundamental to how they govern interlinkages between issue areas, together acting as a starting point and benchmark for measuring their output, outcome and impact effectiveness, we map (1) which SDGs the MSPs connect, (2) whether interlinkages are addressed, and (3) whether potential governance effects are addressed. The paper studies goals and targets of 74 MSPs from the Transform2030 dataset who indicate that they facilitate SDG13 and at least one social and/or economic SDG. The mapping exercise is carried out through an automated text search in R and qualitative content analysis in Atlas.ti. In turn, the results contribute to initial conclusions about MSPs potential to effectively harness synergies, manage trade-offs, mitigate conflicts. The paper makes an empirical contribution by providing a first account of existing efforts against which the effectiveness of MSPs can be measured at the output, outcome and impact level. The theoretical contribution to the field of global sustainability governance is the enhanced understanding of MSPs effectiveness in the context of a nexus approach.

Next to intergovernmental negotiations and commitments, multi-stakeholder partnerships have been established as crucial governance mechanisms in global earth system governance. In particular multi-stakeholder partnerships are an interesting meeting point of practitioners from different disciplines and sectors, bringing together various forms of expertise – for example from civil society, governments, the private sector or academia. They also operate across different territories, and governance levels, from the global, to the national, and the local level, creating transnational governance spheres. This makes them highly complex, and zooming in on the role of specific types of practitioners worthwhile. Working with a database of transnational multi-stakeholder partnerships for the 2030 Agenda, this paper reaffirms that international institutions are the most common directly involved partner. In addition to this, international institutions also act as conveners for transnational multi-stakeholder partnerships, organizing conferences and summits to leverage them in addition to inter-governmental commitments. International institutions and their bureaucratic staff thus play a crucial role in actively and passively shaping multi-stakeholder partnerships. This role warrants further scrutiny, as this paper finds that no overarching standards on multi-stakeholder partnerships exist amongst international institutions or on a global scale. Instead a governance realm characterized heavily by best practices and loose, individually funded exchange formats has emerged. This includes fora such as the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, which has a central role in global follow-up and review of the 2030 Agenda, and whose reviews are supposed to offer a platform for partnerships. Based on these empirical observations, this paper investigates the best practices and loose exchange formats put forward by international institutions more closely, focusing on their practices and discourses in an inductive manner. How do these governance approaches differ from other governance modes? Whose expertise is heard and what role do power disparities play? And in how far is mimicry and norm diffusion possible in such a loosely tied transnational governance sphere? It finds that in substantive discourses best practices formats surpass other governance modes. At the same time, existing exchange formats favor expertise coming from international institutions, and tend to replicate power disparities. They constitute carefully choreographed instances of different legitimation claims, making mimicry and norm diffusion unlikely. This architecture around multi-stakeholder partnerships for the 2030 Agenda has implications for their accountability and scalability.

Multistakeholder partnerships (MSPs) for the SDGs are promoted as a critical avenue for achieving an inclusive sustainability transformation. In Sub-Saharan Africa, however, inclusive sustainability transformation through MSPs is lagging behind due to limited local stakeholder participation. A lack of sustainability awareness has been identified as a key factor for limited stakeholder participation. While MSPs have been extensively researched as an agency for achieving inclusion in general, few studies have examined awareness of sustainability commitments and policies as an enabler for stakeholder participation. This paper bridges this gap by surveying MSP stakeholders about their awareness of Nigeria’s climate change commitments and policies. We designed and electronically distributed a questionnaire to a diverse sample of stakeholders from various sectors. The survey results show that stakeholders are highly aware of climate change, which is encouraging and will potentially increase stakeholder participation in local climate actions. However, the findings indicate that awareness of climate change commitments and policies among stakeholders is fragmented and may be inadequate to empower and facilitate effective participation in MSPs. This highlights the importance of policymakers developing a deliberate institutional arrangement to leverage the roles of local stakeholders through targeted sustainability advocacy and awareness strategies. In the context of Sub-Saharan Africa, it also points to a need for future research to interrogate the theoretical assumption that stakeholder ’participation’ in partnership arrangements automatically promotes and stimulates inclusion in sustainability transformation.

Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships (MSPs) have gained relevance among the architectures of earth system governance, with the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development endorsing them as ideal governance arrangements in its SDG 17: “Partnerships for the Goals.” Given their popularity as a governance tool with capacity to bridge agency from different sectors, the effectiveness of MSPs has been studied as a function of their structural characteristics, such as their degree of institutionalization, the involved actors, the different functions they perform, their inclusiveness, the geographies where they operate, to name a few.

The 2030 Agenda explicitly recognizes the interconnected nature of the 17 SDGs, and calls for an integral implementation that breaks down the silos responsible for creating the illusion that global issues can be solved in isolation. In this context, one crucial, but until now unexplored aspect beyond MSP effectiveness has been their potential to connect multiple SDGs simultaneously, and thus facilitate the emergence of synergies for sustainability transformations. This paper builds upon the existing literature on MSP effectiveness by exploring how different structural characteristics of the MSPs are related to the SDGs they connect in their work, or SDG connectivity. Different dimensions of SDG connections are explored, such as absolute degree of connectivity (total number of SDGs), sectoral connectivity (connections across different areas of sustainable development), and nexus connectivity (connections of popular nexuses in the literature, e.g. the water-energy-food nexus).

The study utilizes a new dataset of nearly 200 MSPs targeting multiple SDGs (based on nearly 7,000 entries on the UNDESA Partnership Platform). Exploratory factor analysis is used to check for correlations and identify patterns between the MSPs’ structural characteristics and SDG connectivity. The results of this paper will contribute to a better understanding of the MSPs structural design, and the facilitation for SDG synergies by MSPs. Furthermore, the results fill an existing gap in large-n studies of MSP effectiveness and will serve as a stepping stone to further analyze the pathways to create SDG synergies and avoid trade-offs.

Domestic climate policymaking, especially ‘hard’/coercive policy (e.g., regulation, taxes/pricing, phase-outs) risks triggering volatile pushback from mass publics. This is challenging in contemporary democracies given political gridlock, heterogeneous public preferences and values, and reactionary populism. However, our knowledge of what drives volatile pushback – or backlash – to climate policy action in specific settings remains fragmented. Sometimes minor policy actions prove highly controversial but major policy actions do not. Moreover, conceptual approaches to policymaking often underestimate the potential for volatile pushback by focusing on policy design/adoption but not post-adoption politics (e.g. policy process theories), or on mostly gradual and endogenous feedbacks (e.g. policy feedback) which obscures relations with the wider context. In recent years, both climate politics scholars and contentious politics scholars have begun to examine volatile pushback to climate policy, usually in small-N cases. What is now needed is a more systematic basis for studying the emergence of volatile pushbacks to climate policy action comparatively across contexts.

In this paper, we develop a conceptual framework to analyse drivers of volatile pushback to hard/coercive climate policy action by mass publics. The framework spans attributes of both policy action and socio-political context, across three dimensions: interests, values, and embeddedness. Interests are foregrounded by distributional conflicts over climate policy, values are foregrounded by conflicts over meaning, and embeddedness is foregrounded by place-based dependence of people on spatial configurations of infrastructure (or lack of it) in everyday life (e.g., work, access to services). All three dimensions are likely to be important in explaining grievance formation, and thereby volatile pushback. We argue that volatile pushback arises through clashes between policy action and socio-political context in one or more of these dimensions. We illustrate the framework with recent cases of volatile pushback to hard climate policy in several countries (i.e., Australia, Canada, France, UK). Altogether, this suggests a need for systematic configurational analysis across both small-N and large-N scales to study how and under which conditions various drivers interactively produce volatile pushback against certain forms of hard/coercive policy. The approach also helps to bridge debates among climate politics scholars examining contention from different angles (e.g. political economy, culture, geography), which risk becoming fragmented, by examining volatile pushback as a dependent variable of common concern.

Overall, the paper contributes to understanding the nature and dynamics of domestic policy contention at the interface of ‘Architecture and Agency’ and ‘Democracy and Power’ within transformations in governance and society.

Climate policy backlash is of increasing concern to earth systems governance scholars and policy practitioners. Such abrupt, forceful and often transgressive negative policy reactions not only test policy durability, interests and beliefs, but more deeply question the underlying socio-political legitimacy of domestic climate policies [citation removed] . In particular, policy backlash undermines efforts by policy practitioners– such as bureaucrats– who are constrained by trying to bridge volatile societal demands and the need for urgent and science-based climate policies. How do bureaucrats navigate this contention in the pursuit of good public policy? Classic public administration theories suggest that– within institutional bounds and despite various constraints– bureaucrats in advanced industrialised countries often use ‘little p’ political practices to successfully steer policies. But the use and impact of these bureaucratic practices have not been tested in the face of climate policy backlash. More broadly, bureaucratic agency has been under-studied and its potential impact in countering contestation has been under-appreciated.

This paper addresses this gap by building on public administration and policy feedback studies. It first outlines a set of propositions about how the inherently political practices of bureaucrats affect and are affected by climate policy backlash in the immediate and long term. These propositions are tested in application to two national-level cases of contentious climate policy-making: Australia’s Clean Energy Future package (immediate effects 2011-2014 and legacy effects 2014-2023) and Canada’s Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act (immediate effects 2018-2021 and legacy effects 2021-2023). Case data draws on semi-structured interviews with key policymakers (N≈30 per case), supplemented by document analysis. These cases reveal how both the architecture and agency of bureaucracy are essential to understanding the dynamics of climate policy backlash– especially the longer-term policy legacies of backlash events. The relatively stable careers of bureaucrats compared to other policy actors enables them to take a longer view, identifying with clarity the ongoing effects of past contentious events on subsequent policies. Such findings support a call for scholars of backlash (and contentious politics more broadly) to better consider wider timescales of policy effects. In turn, the paper provides a fresh application of bureaucratic politics theory in public administration, demonstrating how bureaucrats undertake ‘little p’ politics despite– and often because of– the extreme situation of policy backlash. Finally, this paper offers insights into how public administration can contribute to the field of environmental governance by re-visiting the importance of bureaucracy in supporting effective, durable and fundamental societal transformations.

Over the last 25 years, climate tipping points (CTPs) have emerged as a research topic of growing concern and interest in the climate. Current anthropogenic warming sits at ~1.1°C above preindustrial levels, and recent research suggests that several tipping points may be triggered within the Paris Agreement temperature range of 1.5 to <2°C, making the subject CTPs a relevant and important topic in climate change communication. This growing relevance has been reflected in more frequent appearances of CTPS in the media to warn of dangerous climate change. This study investigates the current state of knowledge about/familiarity with CTPS among Norwegians and compares the effects of communicating about CTPs on climate risk perceptions compared to standard communication about climate change in general. CTPs differ from traditional climate change information as it introduces large-scale system dynamics where thresholds can be reached, resulting in non-linear changes that are irreversible on human timescales. There has been little investigation on the level of understanding of CTPs and the effect they may have on climate change communication, despite the growing scientific literature and media coverage on the topic. In order to investigate this, we conducted a survey with 851 respondents in Norway, in which the respondents were randomly presented with a scientific text, either about CTPs and non-linear climate change, or containing more general information about climate change. The results show that information about tipping points does not lead to a significant increase in concern about climate change compared to the effects of traditional climate change information and misconceptions of CTPs were analysed in order to build upon this research in future studies. Extended results, limitations of the study, implications for climate change communication and directions for future research will be discussed.

How do non-state actors (NSAs) adapt their discursive strategies across the regime complex on food security? The governance of food security is characterized by increasing normative overlaps between the international regimes on food and agriculture, climate change, biodiversity and even trade. Non-state actors see these overlaps as opportunities to engage in a “battle of ideas over the future of food systems” (IDS & IPES-Food 2022). Using competing discourses such as “agroecology”, “nature-based solution” or “climate-smart agriculture”, they seek to influence normative trajectories and strategically engage in norm contestation.

The literature has only started to document how non-state actors problematize norm collisions in their discourses. For instance, norm collisions may need to be activated by advocacy coalitions intervening at the interface of these regimes. In this paper, I go one step further and argue that NSAs' discursive strategies vary from one regime to another, as actor constellations and the discursive power that actors can wield evolve according to the institutional context.

This paper seeks to document (1) how NSAs position themselves in discourse networks and (2) how they adapt to the increased complexity of global governance. I use discourse network analysis to track the evolution of discursive strategies throughout time and across the regime complex on food security. I specifically target norm collisions between food security and three other issues areas (climate change, biodiversity, and trade) and a diverse range of NSAs (NGOs, agrifood corporations, philanthropic organizations, expert and scientific groups).

This study shows that (1) NSAs strategically exploit institutional overlaps in the governance of food security but their influence is relative to their position in discourse networks and therefore varies depending on the institutional context; (2) normative inconsistencies may appear when some NSAs seek to align their discourses with dominant frames in a particular forum, while they are continuously challenged in other venues; (3) in the regime complex on food security, norm collisions increasingly give rise to vague terms that, while raising the suspicion of a number of NSAs, are difficult to effectively oppose.

This paper is of interest for a broad audience interested in normative trajectories in global (environmental and trade) governance, as well as scholars interested in competing visions of sustainability in food systems.

In recent years, the ambivalent role of material infrastructures, especially energy technologies, in planetary crises has attracted increasing scholarly attention: on the one hand, they are seen as the “production mills of the Anthropocene”, and as means by which social exploitation and environmental load displacement is enabled, sustained and legitimized. On the other hand, they can be important leverage points for socio-ecological transformations towards sustainability and alternative energy futures. Under certain conditions, energy infrastructures can therefore also be understood as promises, as possible starting points for justice, re-democratization and a stronger orientation toward the common good. Originating from this paradoxical, two-faced characterization, this contribution discusses the relevance of infrastructures for debates on energy transitions, not only as a research object but also as a specific conceptual lens that provides deeper insights into their spatialities and justice dimensions. In a first step, it theorizes the fundamental political and normative character of energy infrastructures and their role in transition processes. In a second step, drawing on Science and Technology Studies and Anthropology, it introduces the notion of ‘infrastructuring’ and discusses the benefits of an infrastructural lens for research on energy-related environmental justice issues. Finally, reflections on ‘convivial infrastructures’ are presented, which aim not only to overcome and decolonize control-oriented sociotechnical imaginaries of Western modernity, but also to achieve greater autonomy and environmental justice directly through infrastructures.

Spatial justice is a theoretical framework which is increasingly used, both implicitly and explicitly, to explore issues of equity in the low carbon transition (LCT), particularly in how the benefits and burdens of transition are distributed geographically. We synthesise insights from three pieces of recent research to highlight the value of ‘spatially just transitions’ as a conceptual approach.

We first present insights from a ‘semi-systematic review’ (n=75) on spatial justice, as it relates to issues of equity in regional decarbonisation pathways. This review of the academic literature suggested that there is an ongoing research gap in exploring the fairness implications of the LCT beyond the issue of regional employment impacts. It also found that administrative fragmentation and a lack of coordination of net zero emissions policy risk introducing new, or exacerbating old regional inequalities. We also outline the value of this novel interdisciplinary review approach. The review provides a broad framework for the study of spatially just transitions, as well as a number of policy recommendations, with transferable application to many country contexts.

Secondly, we operationalise the concept of spatial justice in a case study of the UK’s transition to net zero greenhouse gas emissions. The UK is the most regionally unequal of all large developed states. We identify how delivering the LCT could work synergistically with other policy agendas, particularly those concerning regional development, including the recent political commitment to ‘Level Up’ the UK’s regional inequalities. In this vein, we present results from a quantitative analysis of net zero targets set by local government in England (n=311), assessing variation in regional mitigation ambition. We develop composite indicators of ‘ambition’ and ‘capability’ to explore whether regions are taking action proportionate to their capabilities. This analysis provides insight into the equity of burden-sharing of mitigation efforts at the subnational scale.

Finally, we present a series of insights from interview research with stakeholders (n=33) from across the countries and regions of the UK, and across scales of government, on how net zero could be more fairly and effectively coordinated. The UK presents a singular case in terms of subnational governance, given its noted lack of a ‘regional level’ of government. We draw out policy and governance insights specific to the UK context, as well as reflecting more broadly on how transitions to net zero can be rendered spatially just in any jurisdiction.

The policy coherence literature has become increasingly criticized for being apolitical, and for assuming a rather technocratic approach to policy-making, coordination and integration. Indeed, new studies are employing comparative politics concepts – such as those around ideas, interests and institutions (the 3 I’s) - to assess the inherently political nature of policy (in)coherence. Missing from this focus are the political inequalities that may arise between individuals and actors that lead to policy trade-offs to begin with. These, in turn, may present negative consequences, particularly inequality-reinforcing outcomes. This paper’s framework links political inequality – as manifested by inequality of voice, treatment, representation and influence - with policy (in)coherence, and applies it to the energy transition in Germany, also known as the Energiewende. To this end, the paper analyses key interactions between 20 relevant policies through a policy matrix approach, and presents insights collected from 25 interviews with policy-makers, civil society and other experts, on the political nature of policy (in)coherence.

As a first step, the policy matrix explores some of the major synergies and trade-offs in the Energiewende, focusing on policies at the federal level, and, regionally, in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The paper analyses 400 interactions between policies seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase energy availability and affordability, reduce social inequalities and protect biodiversity. Half of these interactions are centered around new policies rolled out as part of the ‘Easter Package’, which was enacted in May 2022 due to rising energy insecurity and to implement Germany’s climate goals. In this regard, the matrix reveals some important discrepancies, for example, between climate policies and renewable energy restrictions (especially on-shore wind) that threaten the entire Energiewende process.

As a second step, the 25 semi-structured interviews explore the political nature of such trade-offs, many of which have been exacerbated by Germany’s new energy situation compounded by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The interviews demonstrate that political inequality is apparent in Energiewende-related policy processes (in coal, wind, and also biodiversity) and at various stages of decision-making. Furthermore, the speed at which the ‘Easter Package’ has been developed and passed into law has left many civil society actors out of consultation processes. Other insights include the temporal and interpretative nature of policy (in)coherence; where one actor might see incoherence at one point in time, another might not. In addition, the interviews reveal that policy incoherence can deepen inequalities, particularly spatial, economic and inter-generational ones.

In many countries the renewable energy transition is getting up to speed because of the urgency of mitigating climate change. Especially in Europe, this transition is accelerated because of the war in Ukraine combined with energy policies at domestic and European level. In the Netherlands the energy crisis overall leads to greater societal and political legitimacy for renewable energy policies, however, underprivileged households become extra vulnerable for changes in energy supply and the energy market. These households often reside in less energy efficient housing, and high energy prices affect them more, while they have problematic access to solutions and lower degrees of participation. People cannot reap the benefits of these transitions, while still having to bear the costs. The focus in this research is revealing (in)justices within (changing) household energy practices in sight of realizing a just energy transition.

In this paper we look more closely at considerations of justice in different dimensions: distributive, procedural, recognition and intergenerational justice. What consequences do certain technical interventions (e.g. district heating networks, renovating/ retrofitting measures) and related policy measures (e.g. adjusted tax systems, subsidies, compensation schemes etc.) have for changing social practices of households and how would this in turn affect conceptions of justice? This is placed in light of a ‘just and effective’ energy transition. Especially relevant is the spatial configuration of infrastructures, appliances, and systems of provision. Although the research is situated at homes, the social practices shaped by material arrangements inside the home stretch into the neighborhood and far beyond. This means taking into account the social-spatial distribution of practices.

While referring to established theories of energy justice, we keep an open mind to encounters and interpretations of energy and justice on the ground. In the Dutch city of Nijmegen and the village of Gemert (North-Brabant), we will take an inside out perspective: starting at a household level and then zooming out – from the bottom-up. The project will use ethnographic and participatory methods to explore the needs and in-house practices of residents (in cooking, laundering, keeping warm and cool) in relation to new technologies, including their design, and investigate the conceptions of justice of residents, policy makers, housing associations and installers.

Non-state and subnational climate action could lead to unintended outcomes, including higher greenhouse gas emissions. The broad spectrum of climate action, ranging from emissions reductions to efforts to help communities adapt to climate change impacts, begs the question of how disparate interventions interact and whether they result in synergies and tradeoffs. This study examines synergies and trade-offs between adaptation and mitigation efforts by International Cooperative Initiatives (ICIs) in the agriculture, forestry, and land use (AFOLU) sector. A combination of quantitative, interpretative, and qualitative techniques is used sequentially to gain a systematic understanding of synergies and trade-offs between adaptation and mitigation efforts by ICIs. We propose an assessment framework that proceeds in five steps. First, we sample a subset of ICIs that seek to take climate action in the AFOLU sector. Second, we disaggregate these initiatives by their activities and cluster these into broader intervention categories. Third, we conduct a review of the literature to determine potential trade-offs and synergies between mitigation and adaptation associated with these intervention categories. Results of the review are systematically captured in a matrix rendering theoretical synergic and conflicting outcomes between adaptation and mitigation by types of intervention. Fourth, we return to our sample of ICIs and relate their activities to potential synergies and trade-offs, producing an overview of possible synergies and trade-offs per initiative. Fifth, we revisit individual ICIs to understand to which extent they take efforts to maximize synergies and avoid trade-offs. This five-step method can help systematically gauge the effectiveness of ICIs as well as strengthen their interventions.

The application of our framework shows how interventions have both synergistic linkages and trade-offs for adaptation and mitigation. For instance, interventions that are primarily focused on mitigation can have synergistic adaptation effects by improving adaptive capacity through better access to electricity and reducing dependence on centralized energy systems, but they can also reduce labor demand and result in the loss of livelihoods. By linking these potential synergies and tradeoff effects to specific activities, ICIs can better integrate approaches towards synergies and avoid conflicts between adaptation and mitigation.

Over the past 50 years, environmental politics has operated based on the premise of a vulnerable planet, an interconnected system to be addressed using technocratic expertise. In this conception, the future consistently features consistently as a warning. Prophecies of doom, of imagined and expected degradation, act as the primary motivator for a politics of environmental transformation. This is not just a rhetorical theme but also an epistemic configuration that structures environmental politics – from the Limits to Growth report to the more recent ‘planetary boundaries’ concept. It has animated both the discourse and the dramaturgical regime of environmental politics. This approach has proved able to put environmental concerns on the political agenda, yet such an image of the future cannot stimulate the aspirational politics necessary for the major cultural shifts necessitated by the environmental crises. In this paper, we argue for more utopian environmental politics, more aspirational and democratic conceptions of the future that will open up (geo)political space for alternative discourses and interests. We contend that the success of environmental politics ultimately depends on capturing cultural and political aspirations and on the dynamics of values as they play out in political expression. Drawing on discourse and dramaturgical analysis, we argue that such utopian environmental politics require a reappreciation of which political stages and what forms of political expression matter and why – and consistent investigation of how values and aspirations change. Via several examples that at first glance appear marginal – but might have significant power to foster cultural aspirations and a reimagination of the stages that matter – we point to emerging avenues for a less technocratic and more utopian, culturally-literate, and democratic form of environmental politics.

It is often assumed that the economic activities of individuals and private corporations are the predominant cause of climate change. This assumed factual circumstance is viewed as a challenge for international climate change law due to an alleged mismatch between the addressees of international obligations (states) and the ‘true’ sources of environmental harm. In response, international practice has relegated the role of state to that of an intermediary of international obligations or a facilitator of polycentric governance. For example, the United Nations Climate Change Regime has increasingly welcomed the contributions of private actors through NAZCA and other initiatives. In many countries, climate change mitigation laws seek to modify the incentive structures of private choices that would otherwise exacerbate climate change. This presentation argues that the assumption of predominant private sector responsibility for climate harms is both empirical wrong and legally misleading. Indeed, it is an often-neglected fact that States are directly responsible for much of the world’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. A variety of State actors, including national fossil fuel companies, State-owned electricity utilities, armed forces, and other State actors in the Global North and South consume vast amounts of fossil fuels for electricity generation, transportation, and heavy industry. By some accounts, a shortlist of these state-owned entities for 59-69% of carbon majors’ emissions. The common assumption is also legally misleading because it diverts attention away from GHG emissions under state control. This, despite the state-centric nature of international climate change law. Acknowledging the state’s direct contribution to climate change and its attendant legal consequences de-problematizes the state-centricity of international climate change law and suggests less trodden avenues for state liability.

Since 2005, a wave of high-profile lawsuits alleging human rights violations in connection with the climate crisis have been filed in domestic and international courts around the world. We aim to understand the formal and informal practices through which lawyers, judges, activists, and journalists have developed, diffused, or translated legal norms in the transnational legal process at the intersections of human rights and climate justice. Drawing on semi-structured interviews, participation-observation, and systematic analysis of media coverage and legal decisions and briefs, we trace how the practices of collaboration, story-telling, learning, and legal dialogue have fostered the spread and influence of rights-based climate litigation. We also analyze the intersecting and cumulative impact of these practices and assess their potential to give rise to the emergence of transnational communities and forms of transnational legal ordering. By offering an in-depth account of the transnational emergence, evolution, and impact of rigths-based climate lawsuits, our paper generates novel insights regarding the nature and potential of litigation as a vehicle for advancing global climate justice.

Earth system law requires better aligning law to the interests of future generations and nature. International litigation on climate change is one important strategy in achieving this aim. An advisory opinion of the ICJ on climate change edges closer with Vanuatu circulating a draft UN General Assembly resolution in late 2022 and with many states signalling support. The draft resolution would request the ICJ to rule on the obligation of states under international law “to ensure the protection of the climate system and other parts of the environment for present and future generations”.

This paper argues that an advisory opinion along the lines proposed by Vanuatu would be an opportunity for the ICJ to clarify international legal obligations in a way that ensures the law is grounded in the best available science and moral principles of justice - both international and intergenerational. This could be done in a way which enhances rather than detracts from the legitimacy of the court. The argument is illustrated by focusing, firstly, on the procedural rules of the court relating to expert scientific witnesses and the possibility of amicus curiae briefs (friends of the court) which are argued to provide a vehicle for scientific experts delineating the climate impacts on both current and future generations and nature in a manner which enhances the legitimacy of the court. A second argument in the paper is that philosophical theories of intergenerational justice should be drawn on by the court in delineating international law obligations owed to present and future generations as these discourses can give precision to the rather vague international law concept of intergenerational equity, and also provide guidance as to how to balance intergenerational justice with international and intra-generational justice.

The argument rests on the proposition that the court, consistent with its statute, must both apply but also further develop international law where the law is unclear. Development of international law should be undertaken by the court consistent with its statute but also in accordance with the requirements of justice, which must include intergenerational justice and should be defined in subsistence terms of meeting core human rights to life, health and subsistence. It is further argued that the court’s effectiveness depends on it meeting the requirements of democratic legitimacy defined by requiring the court to be both impartial and responsive to the people, including future people.

Climate change affects every individual, and climate science is commonly articulated in universalist terms, in the form of highly sophisticated computer modeling. However, the assessment of the credibility of climate science expertise varies dramatically from one jurisdiction to another. Drawing insights from both comparative law and Science and Technology Studies, we explore how judges in different jurisdictions determine the credibility of scientific expertise in climate change litigation. This article examines the presentation and examination of climate change science in leading climate-related cases within economically developed democracies and proposes a typology of two distinct approaches. Judges in European countries—including the Netherlands, France, and Germany—have developed a strategy that weaves the authoritative reports issued by international scientific organizations and national public institutions into legal arguments. We label the European approach the “publicity model.” In comparison, in the United States, courts try to replicate the peer-review process in a legal setting, implying an equation between robustness and objectivity. Therefore, we label the American approach as the “objectivity model.” To handle scientific uncertainty by referring to the consensus of the scientific community, the EU judges commonly rely on the democratic representativeness of the scientific bodies, whereas the US judges stress the importance of avoiding bias and prejudice of the experts.

Climate litigation is on the rise across the world, with courts starting to play a role in shaping global climate governance. This paper focuses on a subset of climate litigation, namely anti-fossil fuel litigation, which is defined here as litigation aimed at restricting fossil fuel production with a view to achieving climate goals. Anti-fossil fuel litigation can contribute to closing the fossil fuel ‘production gap’, and ensure that a fair and effective transition away from fossil fuel production is achieved in line with the Paris Agreement’s temperature goal. Anti-fossil fuel litigation can also be seen as a mechanism through which ‘anti-fossil fuel norms’ – i.e., global moral norms aimed at accelerating the shift away from fossil fuels – can be diffused. Although climate litigation is increasingly understood as a transnational phenomenon, the rapidly expanding literature on the topic still lacks a cross-jurisdictional analysis of common themes and questions arising in the context of fossil fuel-related climate litigation. This paper will address this gap by analysing information on nearly 250 cases of anti-fossil fuel litigation from across the globe. This analysis will inform a novel typology of anti-fossil fuel litigation, which distinguishes between cases involving: misleading or false conduct by fossil fuel companies (e.g. Commonwealth v. ExxonMobil), human rights violation by fossil fuel companies (e.g. the Carbon Majors inquiry in the Philippines) and states (e.g. the Duarte Agostinho case before the European Court of Human Rights), the permitting of individual fossil fuel projects or infrastructure (e.g. Gloucester Resources Limited v. Minister of Planning); claims against fossil fuel companies for insufficient action (e.g. Milieudefensie et al. v. Royal Dutch Shell), and efforts to hold fossil fuel companies liable for climate change damage (e.g. City of New York v. BP). Based on the review of cases, the paper addresses three key legal questions emerging in the context of anti-fossil fuel litigation, namely: (1) to what extent can emissions and climate impacts be attributed to fossil fuel producers; (2) how valid is the market substitution argument, which posits that other fossil fuel producers will step in if some fossil fuels are left in the ground; and (3) does fossil fuel production violate human rights and, to the extent it does, what are states’ and companies obligations in this regard? The paper will offer preliminary answers to these questions, but also point out how litigants and courts vary in their responses to these questions.

There are increasing calls to recognise Earth’s large biophysical systems that provide Earth system resilience and stability as “planetary commons”. The planetary commons include globally shared geographic regions currently recognised under the global commons, but more importantly, also all large biophysical systems that secure critical functions of the Earth system irrespective of national boundaries. Examples are large systems such as the atmosphere and oceans; smaller sub-systems that manifest as tipping elements such as the Amazon Rainforest; and down-scaled systems such as wetlands. As a new paradigm for thinking about planetary resilience, the planetary commons must ideally: safeguard critical Earth system functions that regulate planetary resilience; create responsibilities and stewardship obligations to safeguard planetary resilience; avoid crossing tipping points; and ensure a just world for everyone, now and in future. While declaring the planetary commons is a first critical step, governing these commons raises many complex and unsettled issues. For example, planetary commons governance will challenge the barriers of state sovereignty and self-determination, vested corporate and inter-state interests, structurally embedded global power inequalities, and demarcation complexities. Stakeholder involvement and representation of marginalized interests in designating and governing the planetary commons must be increased in ways that are representative of indigenous and other vulnerable groups. Relatedly, the pursuit of global justice and a broader understanding of multi-species and inter- and intra-generational co-existence for living well must be a top priority. Mutually re-enforcing relationships between law, politics, science, art, and other knowledge domains will also be key in shaping planetary commons governance that is steered by processes of dynamic, mutually supportive knowledge creation. This paper critically reflects on these and other key challenges associated with planetary commons governance and aims to trace the first tentative outlines of a broader planetary commons governance framework.

Futures thinking is progressively moving beyond perspectives of probable or possible futures, based on expert knowledge, toward preferred futures, based on anyone´s imagination. Visioning, a component of futures thinking that looks into these desired futures, uses participatory processes to jointly reflect on alternative futures. The literature points to advantages of participatory visioning, such as generating innovative ideas, crafting a shared language, creating mutual trust, and building empathy for diverse perspectives.

Futures thinking scholars, however, often overlook power imbalances and injustices in participatory visioning. For that reason, Lab2050, a collaborative living lab on envisioning a sustainable Portugal in 2050, pays special attention to the interplay between participation, equity and inclusion. The experimental project carried out by PlanAPP- the Competence Centre for Planning, Policy and Foresight in Portugal´s Public Administration, has meaningful participation and inclusion as its core values.

This paper describes the process of co-designing Lab2050. It aims to critically analyze enabling institutional settings and the politics of participation and provides recommendations for improved participatory visioning. Its methodology is two-fold. First, it reviews the literature on participatory visioning. Second, it qualitatively analyses the results of a methodological workshop organized by Lab2050 with 32 experts on citizenship and participation in Portugal.

Based on our results, we propose three distinctive features for more inclusive participatory visioning: 1. More than words: going beyond the use of words and include visions based on drawings, videos, theater, games, etc.; 2. Cherish the edges: instead of consensus-seeking, paying special attention to counter-hegemonic visions and more radical ideas; and 3. The Power of Place: instead of organizing workshops in conventional places conditioning participation toward more formal interventions, using unexpected but meaningful places (e.g. market, farm, factory, etc.).

Only then visioning will be about imagining ´all the people´ and not only those that are used to participating.

The pursuit of sustainability in the face of wicked problems such as the climate change crisis, the sixth mass extinction, and growing social dichotomies, requires a comprehensive and nuanced consideration of the moral and ethical dimensions that inform societal responses. Underlying norms and values are increasingly recognised as integral to promoting transformational change to address sustainability issues. For example, extensive empirical research in environmental psychology and behavioural sciences has demonstrated the pivotal role of values, norms, and morals in shaping pro-environmental behaviour and action for public goods. As such, normative values and ethics form an essential component of the ongoing conversation surrounding sustainability. It has been well established that there are numerous normative frameworks related to sustainability, often referred to as weak, strong and deep sustainability. Between these frameworks exist important differences in terms of normative values and visions for sustainability. Differences in such normative elements among members of groups and teams working towards sustainability transitions have the potential to impede progress on several levels.

At present, there is a need for empirical academic research that provides a deep comprehension of normative visions and values in sustainability actions, as well as how to navigate differences in such visions and values when they arise. Therefore, this paper presents key results from a case study which explored the implicit values related to normative sustainability visions amongst a team actively engaged in sustainability transition within their organisation, a public institution in Switzerland. Data collection methods included document analysis, semi-structured interviews, and a participatory workshop to explore sustainability visions and related values. These methods encourage participant reflexivity on both individual and collective levels through ethical dilemmas and reflexive discussion. This approach encourages participants to reflect on their own values, normative frameworks, and ethical perspectives related to sustainability.

The case study presented in this paper highlights the potential of the Donut Economics framework as a normative framework capable of accommodating visions of both strong and deep sustainability, and the associated value pluralism. Within the context of the group at the centre of the case study, sustainability visions and ethical reasoning revolve around the planetary boundaries and social needs highlighted in the Donut Economics framework. The dialogue that took place in the context of this case study also illustrates the potential for the Donut framework to incorporate alternative visions of the world if some key pitfalls are avoided.

Water governance is widely acknowledged as crucial for addressing water-related issues and ensuring the long-term sustainability and resilience of water systems. With an understanding of the social and ecological complexities, multifunctional characteristics of water, and societal interdependencies, water governance has seen a variety of new governance approaches emerge. Inspired by sustainability, democracy, and the complexities and uncertainties involved in governing water systems, labels such as "integrated water resource management," "adaptive water governance," "collaborative water governance," "river basin and catchment management," and "polycentric governance" have been widely promoted as universal solutions, with their effectiveness often taken for granted. However, it remains unclear which of these governance approaches, or combinations thereof, are effective in preserving or restoring environmentally sustainable water resources and ecosystems. Our study aims to create a comprehensive conceptual framework that supports a diagnostic analysis of water governance to determine which governance configurations and contextual factors are necessary for water sustainability performance in preserving or restoring environmentally sustainable water resources and ecosystems.

The conceptual framework illustrates the interconnections between three core elements - water governance paradigms, problématiques, and water governance characteristics - and how interactions among them contribute to sustainability performance under specific contextual factors. Due to the diagnostic nature of the framework, these elements can be further analyzed at different conceptual levels, depending on the guiding policy or empirical questions. In this conceptual paper, we delve deeper into these elements and explore the interconnections between water governance paradigms, problématiques, and water governance characteristics, how these interconnections affect sustainability performance, and the impact of contextual factors. We do this by reviewing existing theoretical and conceptual scholarly contributions in the field of environmental governance. The review of the scholarly work guides the formulation of a set of hypotheses on the relationships between the different elements of the framework.

As water issues are expected to become an increasingly critical problem on a global level, given the rising complexities and unpredictability, this framework contributes to a better understanding of sustainable water governance systems and the dependency of governance performance on context. This will further aid in the creation of more robust and resilient policies and facilitate the governance reform process. The framework aims to guide comparative analysis of water governance systems, with a focus on improving understanding of how different elements of water governance systems determine their sustainability performance and the extent to which contextual factors influence these relationships.

Water-Energy-Food-Ecosystem (WEFE) nexus thinking developed in response to the increasing challenge of declining natural resources. Nexus thinking aims to manage natural resources in a sustainable manner by leveraging synergies and managing trade-offs between domains based on the assumption that all domains are equal. The addition of the ecosystem to the nexus is new. Some scholars argue that the ecosystem should take central stage in the WEFE nexus. One implication is that nexus thinking becomes a transboundary issue, since ecosystem properties often do not match administrative boundaries. This amplifies the complexity of the existing WEFE nexus governance challenges. However, there is little research on the nexus in a transboundary context.

Transboundary governance is mostly addressed top-down and often fails to connect to local realities and reduces the perceived transparency and legitimacy for local actors. However, bottom-up approaches could tackle these issues in the search for solutions. In this vein,[citation removed to anonymize abstract] developed the WEFE nexus governance approach, which puts the ecosystem at the center of the nexus and is strongly rooted in stakeholder co-creation aiming to support the transformation of current governance systems architectures into WEFE nexus oriented governance systems. The approach consists of four building blocks: problem identification; stakeholder dialogue on WEFE goals and policies; designing new policy instruments; implementation. While the approach looks promising, it has not yet been validated in practice.

This research operationalizes and validates the first building block of the WEFE nexus governance approach through a comparative case study of three transboundary river basins: Lielupe, Nestos/Mesta, and Adige river basin from the EU funded NEXOGENESIS project. The building block consists of a governance and policy coherence assessment, for which the Nexus Governance Assessment Tool (NXGAT) and a policy coherence assessment approach were developed. The NXGAT assesses the degree of nexus governance supportiveness of current governance systems architectures, while simultaneously identifying opportunities and barriers towards nexus governance. The policy coherence assessment assesses to what extent the policies from the WEFE nexus domains acknowledge interdependencies between each other, both on paper and in practice.

Our results highlight three novelties. First, the governance and policy assessment stimulate dialogue among local stakeholders, integrating local transboundary interests into WEFE nexus transboundary governance. Second, the NXGAT is suitable for transboundary governance architectures, in spite of the tool not being designed specifically for transboundary contexts. Third, opportunities and barriers identified with the NXGAT assessment offers lessons learned for other river basins.

Private companies’ climate adaptation strategies have often been driven by an economic risk logic and paid little attention to how such practices may affect climate-vulnerable groups in sites of production. Adaptation often influences the distribution of vital resources, such as water and food. Unless carried out in an inclusionary manner, such interventions can contribute to increase vulnerability and lead to maladaptation. Adaptation scholarship has, therefore, increasingly focused on questions of climate justice and equity.

However, there is little research on interactions between public and private interactions on climate adaptation and on the question of how private adaptation may contribute to mitigate or reinforce existing vulnerabilities among societal actors. Moreover, there has been no discussion to date about the question of how emerging transnational governance instruments, such as human rights and environmental due diligence (HREDD) regulations that aim to hold companies accountable for adverse environmental and human rights impacts throughout global supply chains, could be used for ensuring that private adaptation does not come at the cost of societal resilience.

This paper analyzes the adaptation activities of large soy producers in the Brazilian state of Bahía, with a focus on the consequences for smallholders and traditional communities. Soy producers, subsidized by the Brazilian state, have developed large-scale irrigation schemes to adapt to more frequent droughts, which has led to concentration of water use rights and escalated conflicts over scarce water resources in the region. This adaptation strategy has exacerbated the climate vulnerability of smallholders and traditional communities. This case is illustrative of how processes of climate change and economic globalization are often deeply intertwined in rural areas, leading to situations of ”double exposure”.

Based on empirical material collected during fieldwork in Bahía, including qualitative interviews and written primary sources, we first analyze how public and private actors have governed such risks. We analyze how ongoing conflicts are embedded in a context characterized by disarticulated governmental interventions that on the hand seek to improve climate resilience among vulnerable populations in the state, but on the other hand grant water licenses and subsidize irrigation infrastructure to help large producers to cope with climate change. We then discuss how HREDD regulations could contribute to reduce the negative societal impacts of private companies' responses to climate risks.

Water resources worldwide face numerous challenges linked to the climate crisis, environmental degradation and competing anthropogenic pressures. Water governance plays a significant role in addressing these challenges and ensuring the health and sustainable management of water resources. Paradigms serve as the foundation – or source code – of water governance systems, shaping the rules, norms, values, and goals that determine the workings of these systems. As a deep leverage point, intervening at the level of paradigms has the potential for deep-rooted and systemic transformations towards robust and effective water governance. Against this background, we take stock of what we know about the ‘source code of water governance’ and explore how paradigms are analyzed in the academic literature.

By means of a systematic review of journal articles listed in Scopus, we identified 93 journal articles that explicitly studied water governance paradigms. We coded and analyzed these based on the catalogue of questions on general characteristics of the publication and the treatment of water governance paradigms, addressing, for example, the geographical focus, the nature of paradigms, actor groups involved, paradigm dynamics, governance modes, and effects of paradigms.

Some of our main (preliminary) findings include:

• Most papers offer single (or small-N) case analyses of the implementation of specific paradigms, most often Integrated Water Resources Management, with a greater focus on problems, rather than governance solutions; however, only few consider environmental consequences;
• Papers usually focus on the national (or subnational) level, often in the Global South, and the role of state actors, with few looking into transboundary issues;
• Succession of a paradigm is the most-mentioned dynamic, while dynamics within paradigms, such as adaptation or incremental change, are hardly mentioned.

With this study, we offer, to our knowledge, the first holistic and comparative account of water governance paradigms, their characteristics and dynamics, within the broader water governance literature. In that, the findings of our systematic review allow us to map the scientific discourse and provide a first appraisal of what we know about the ‘source code of water governance’. Through this, we aim to set an agenda for further research by identifying gaps in the existing literature and extrapolating new research directions from the review findings.

China’s water quality has been damaged by the increasing residential and industrial pollutants. In 2002, China’s State of the Environment Report showed that 70 percent of the 741 river sections monitored were unfit for human contact, indicating pollutions levels at or above Grade IV standard (SEPA, 2002). In 2014, the Chinese Central Government publicly declared “war on pollution” and has since announced significant policies in the area of pollution control and remediation to tackle the nation’s water pollution crisis, including the ten-point water pollution plan released in 2015. In 2019, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) promulgated a monthly ranking of the top and bottom 30 cities in terms of the local surface water quality since the first quarter of 2019. Under such background, how does the information disclosure of pollution rank shape local government behaviors? Does the naming and shaming mechanism enhance the local surface water quality? Are there any unintended adverse incentives for local governments under the zero-sum game scenario? Do the cities on the list increase their pollution after the last testing section to set up their neighboring cities?

This paper answers the above questions by applying a fuzzy regression discontinuity (RD) design. Using monthly panel data of 339 cities aggregated from 3641 monitoring sections of surface water and cross-boundary monitoring section pairs in 2021, we found that naming the laggards in pollution control effectively helps improve the surface water quality in the next period. Our study reveals that nodal-based policies in a hierarchical institution can effectively reduce pollution and contribute to sustainable development through the mechanism of rational local competition.

Many of the most pressing issues facing municipalities are connected to sustainability—from confronting a higher frequency of flooding to dealing with increasing energy costs. This is true both in the United States and around the world. To deal with these issues, cities, villages, towns, and other forms of local government are regularly engaging with sustainability in their policy processes. This engagement can be seen in the visions, goals, and objectives described in core planning documents, such as strategic plans, capital improvement plans, and comprehensive plans. But it also extends beyond the agenda-setting of planning processes, as local leaders find room in their budgets and codes for a variety of sustainable practices.

Unfortunately, little systematic data exist on such activity in the United States. The U.S.—especially in the Northeast and Midwest “Rustbelt” states—is a vital study area because it affords us insights into local sustainability in a highly polycentric, often fragmented, and very decentralized setting. National and state-level surveys of municipalities by professional associations, think tanks, and academics have become common over the last two decades, but a lack of panel data means that we are reliant on snapshots about sustainability that can quickly become outdated.

The goal of this article is to begin filling this gap, and we focus first on the state with the most local governments: Illinois. We surveyed over 600 municipal managers and administrators about sustainability (n = 302). We asked about the inclusion of sustainability in municipal plans and in standalone sustainability plans, the level of implementation of a variety of sustainability practices (from internal meetings through to inclusion in the budget), the barriers to implementing these practices, collaborative governance mechanisms, and overall top priorities. Importantly, our respondents represented communities that are heterogeneous in population, population density, median household income, and fiscal indicators.

Municipalities rarely have standalone sustainability plans, but frequently include sustainability in their comprehensive, capital improvement, and strategic plans. An important finding is that respondents regard state and federal governments as having a minimal role in sustainability policymaking. Another is that concerns about resident resistance are rarely mentioned as a barrier to sustainability, which is surprising given that many communities have strongly pro-Republican voting patterns. We also find that smaller and more rural municipalities in our sample are remarkably similar to their larger, more urban counterparts.

This paper investigates the openness of climate city networks to move beyond traditional ways of networking informed by hierarchical city comparisons. Climate networking is the process of exchanging knowledge between cities with the purpose of learning from the experience of other cities and accelerating the uptake of climate actions between cities. Despite the existence of established city networks such as C40 and ICLEI that facilitate networking practices, they have been found to be uneven, with well-resourced cities in the Global North being perceived as leaders and lower-income cities in the Global South as followers.

The increasing use of urban science methods for city comparison has the potential to influence comparative perspectives within these networks, but also runs the risk of perpetuating imbalanced networking practices. Relying solely on quantitative measures and performance-based indicators, or cities’ size and economic status can result in a limited and hierarchical understanding of cities and reinforce the notion that cities in the Global North are the leading actors in climate actions.

To further explore this challenge, this paper examines the perspectives of experts in city networks (ICLEI, C40, UCLG, and UN-Habitat) through focus group discussions to better understand the application of comparative tools and their purpose. It further explores the applicability of a novel and more inclusive comparative approach. based on reported actions for networking between cities in these networks.

The results show although the experts in city networks are open to trying new city comparisons that can expand the existing uneven networking practice, they are still entrenched in the status quo and traditional city comparisons based on size and economic status. This paper highlights the need to expand cities' comparative imagination beyond a few, and to adopt a more inclusive and equitable approach to city comparisons that takes into account the challenges, and capacities of different cities. Overall, this paper calls for a transformation in the existing comparative practices of city networks by illuminating their challenges and underlying assumptions. By doing so, the paper aims to ensure that climate networking among cities is inclusive, equitable, and effective for a diverse range of cities.

This paper addresses the ongoing process of ‘globalizing’ urban climate governance after the Paris Agreement, and its implications. It argues that since 2015, transnational city cooperation has largely consisted in forging a new, shared norm of ‘climate neutrality’ for urban governance. Using scholarly literature on norms in international relations and urban mobility studies, the paper highlights how the ‘climate neutrality’ , or 'net-zero' norm has been progressively bundled together through an assemblage of narratives, scientific expertise, public performances and policy tools circulated transnationally. By doing so, it highlights the multiple agencies of city networks, the UNFCCC and local decision-makers in constituting the norm, defining its meaning and related practices, but also the uncertainties and contestations linked to it. The paper builds on ethnographic observations of COPs, policy document analyses and interviews with urban professionals as data collection methods. Conceptually, it offers to go beyond city networks analyses by shading a new light on Agency in transnational urban climate governance as the capacity to engage in and influence norm making activities at transnational scale.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), constituting the policy framework that all 193 UN member states have pledged to achieve by 2030, are getting ‘localized’ by subnational (regional and local) actors. The set of 248 indicators promises to deliver an overarching overview of the progress on the SDGs, and to provide insights into how to move forward. However, a large variety of indicators are often only reported on national level. Consequently, many subnational governments struggle to identify data sources to meaningfully measure progress towards the goals.

At the same time, a ‘data revolution’ is taking place in which technologies are leading to an exponential increase in the volume and types of data available, creating unprecedented possibilities for informing and transforming society and protecting the environment. For example, the practice of participatory sensing for environment monitoring has rapidly evolved over the last years.

In this research, we want to assess the potential of non-traditional data sources to improve monitoring of the SDG goals on a subnational level. As sound data is the cornerstone of evidence-based policymaking in formulating priorities, allocating budgets, and tracking progress it is crucial to support the proper operationalization of the SDGs at the local level.

The study will employ a qualitative approach. Concretely, 15 in-depth semi-structured expert interviews with data experts will be conducted. Following the framework of [authors’ names removed for anonymous review process] we identify interviewees within 5 main categories of non-traditional data flows (Earth observations, spatial data infrastructure, citizen-generated data, official sensor networks and private & commercial data). Starting from existing traditional data sources, we first map existing data gaps to do local SDG monitoring within the Brussels Capital Region and use them as a guide to query data experts about the opportunities and challenges to use non-traditional data sources for monitoring of SDG goals in a subnational context and to define future potential data flows for SDG monitoring.

The purpose of this study is to provide guidance to city managers, civil servants and policymakers in the adaptation of SDG-indicators to the sub-national level to suggest specific points of action to improve the availability of local data for SDG-measurement within a subnational context.

‘Data is the new oil’ is an increasing refrain. Climate transparency – i.e., making visible the progress of countries’ climate action through the generation of ever more climate-related data and information – is key to multilateral climate governance arrangements. This is related to the widespread assumption that more and better information facilitates more ambitious climate actions. In recent times, radical transparency — the generation of an ever-larger quantities of climate-related data in near real-time using satellites and other remote sensing technologies – is increasingly touted as essential to facilitating global climate action. There are various initiatives now emerging that are dedicated to producing climate-related data using such technologies. These include Climate TRACE, Planet Labs, the World Data Centre for Greenhouse Gases, Carbon Mapper and Destination Earth. We focus here on Climate TRACE as an important and visible new radical transparency initiative. Climate TRACE is a global coalition of nonprofit organizations, technology companies, and academic institutions that uses satellite data combined with advanced AI and machine learning techniques to track not only the total GHG emissions in the atmosphere, but also when and where these emissions are occurring globally. While such data might be potentially empowering or useful, it raises several first-order questions that have not yet been posed or addressed, also because these radical transparency initiatives are relatively new. In our paper, we first analyze the origin and evolution of Climate TRACE, including claims it makes, the gaps it seeks to fill, and whether and how it engaged potential users in identifying gaps and creating awareness about the data it generates globally. We then analyze the type and nature of Climate TRACE’s data available online for two countries: India and Ethiopia. Finally, through empirical analysis in the two countries, we address: (i) What do policy-makers in these two countries know about climate TRACE? (ii) Are they using its data, or do they see it as potentially usable in the future, and why or why not? (iii) What effects, if any, might already be discernible from existence of such radical transparency? These questions are timely because extensive human and financial resources are being invested in initiatives like Climate TRACE, yet their transformative impacts in terms of highlighting where responsibility should rest in taking ambitious climate action (with historically highest emitters, for example), or how it can help to further domestic climate priorities in different national contexts, is little assessed.

In January 2021 the European Commission launched the project "Destination Earth", or in short "DestinE". This project sees to the development of a Digital Twin of planet Earth. This is "a highly accurate digital model of the Earth [used] to monitor and predict the interaction between natural phenomena and human activities". The goal of this Digital Twin is to support the European's Green Deal as well as its Digital Strategy. The European Commission aims to have a " 'full' digital replica of the Earth" by 2030 that can be used for Europe's environmental governance. The knowledge production and decision-support offered by DestinE is data-driven. It rests on the assumption that reality can be accurately represented in a quantifiable form that can be analysed by algorithms. It suggests a 'dataist' view on the world: the belief that huge amounts of data can help us understand and deal with the complex reality of the world. While often window-dressed as 'objective', such data-driven representations are in fact riddled with human choices, values, and reflect a particular perspective on the physical twin (Korenhof et al. 2021). In the case of DestinE, the image of the Earth has its centre of gravity in a naturalistic perspective: reality is understood though the lens of physical sciences and the application of natural laws, further prompted by data science. In a cycle of mutual influence, certain assumptions and values are thus embedded in the design of DestinE, while DestinE as a data-driven technology in turn promotes a certain way of approaching our world, certain values to strive for, as well as directions for interventions and mitigation measures. Blok therefore argues that not human beings, but concrete technologies are the prime drivers involved in 'world-production' (Blok 2021). A concrete technology like DestinE has an ontological impact and contributes to the constitution of the world understood in terms of data and computation. We expect that DestinE will deeply affect decision-making practices in Europe's environmental governance, as well as the authority of these decisions by affecting the institutional context and underpinning legitimating discourse. It is therefore crucial to evaluate the assumptions, values, and scope of actionability embedded in DestinE as it shapes the climate policy discourse. In this article, we offer a first critical perspective on what we see as the potential issues and shortcomings of the expected use of DestinE in Europe's environmental governance that remain underexposed in policy documents.

The use of satellites and Big (Environmental) Data permits an ever-growing range of environmental behaviors and conditions to be rendered visible in real-time, across large areas, to a diverse array of audiences, generating ‘radical transparency’. These radical transparency technologies are increasingly merging with another scalar technology, parametric climate risk insurance. Parametric insurance covers large areas and populations using specific environmental variables such as soil moisture, observed using satellites and historical weather and agronomic data. If changes in the condition on the ground match with the predefined parameters, a payout is triggered. In areas where large populations are uninsured and data about specific environmental conditions is scarce, this type of insurance is increasingly promoted as a tool of anticipatory climate risk governance. In this paper, we investigate how the merging of radical transparency and climate risk insurance technologies changes how climate risk is understood and governed. In this regard, we apply participant observation at dedicated climate risk insurance conferences and content analysis of academic, commercial, and grey literature. We find that the use of radical transparency-enabled insurance schemes can alter existing dynamics of what is made visible, by whom and for whom. Information produced through satellites is often seen as authoritative sources of knowledge because of using pictures and visualizations rather than words, thus assumed as being more objective. However, in order to render information visible and sizeable for interpretation, a whole range of techniques are used to abstract and exclude the complexity of the geopolitical aspects of climate change. Furthermore, insurers can make decisions with regards to pay-out without ever having to go to the ground or dealing directly with the insured. While climate risks are extremely complex and uncertain, parametric climate risk insurance operates with the understanding that all possible realities are known, or at least easily calculated. Thus, the reduction of complexity is also central to the function of parametric insurance. We conclude by reflecting on whether and how radical transparency employed for climate risk governance can further depoliticized approaches to anticipate and address climate risks.

In 2018, the World Bank (Group) published a report titled Groundswell: Preparing for Internal Climate Migration. The central headline of the report is that ‘By 2050 – if no action is taken – there will be more than 143 million internal climate migrants across these three regions: sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Latin America’. In the report they propose that this number can be reduced up to 80% if ‘concerted action’ is taken in the present. The report has been widely picked up in media and academic publications, especially citing the highest possible number of internal climate migration flows of 143 million that the report puts forward. The report has become central to the discursive space of climate change and human mobility as the numerical scenarios and related arguments are further being enacted and circulated by humanitarian organizations such as International Organisation for Migration and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. In the latest assessment report on climate change published by the IPCC, seven chapters enact findings of the 2018 report, including a box presenting the quantitative projections. Prior to this World Bank report and its follow-up reports per region, numerical predications of climate migration have been actively contested in academia. The relations between climate change and human mobility were argued to be too multi-causal, political and uncertain for them to become numerical. Interestingly, however, the future scenarios and estimations of possible climate mobility flows associated with the World Bank reports tend to be accepted and circulated without much critique. This in part is a consequence of the highly ‘robust and transparent’ and scientific impression of the modeling approach used in the report. Building on critical anticipation literature, we argue, however, that the creation and dissemination of climate mobility futures is never a neutral act, and that climate mobility futures remain inherently multi-causal and uncertain. Our analysis, as we will present in this conference, as such aims to demonstrate the political nature of the World Bank report(s). We demonstrate how the imaginaries strategically presented in the reports suggest some sense of certainty and urgency to act on climate mobilities, and how based on these futures, the World Bank effectively enables a space for action to preemptively address a future imaginary of climate mobility through its agenda of development.

As governments, business, investors and civil society increasingly turn to ‘Nature-Based Solutions’ (NBS) as central means to govern the intertwined crises of biodiversity loss and climate change, a particular form of expertise is jostling for attention in this crowded policy arena – Nature Tech. Nature Tech or ‘Smart’ Tech involves tech-enabled tools such as eDNA, algorithms, AI machine learning, and other forms of tech-enabled measurement, observation and prediction, aiming to enable, accelerate or scale-up NBS. While these Nature Tech initiators are making claims that they are the ‘sexy bits’ of nature conservation, coming to ‘rescue’ NBS hurdles, yet, work is needed to interrogate these claims and their politics. Research increasingly points to risks with these Tech developments, such as its simplifying tendency and lack of nuance gained by human judgement and its ability to replace other forms of expertise. Through these spaces of circulating technical artefacts - ‘technological zones’ – some NBS are qualified as being part of the zone, while others are excluded. These emerging technological zones can accelerate and intensify agency in specific (tech-enabled) directions, with undetermined, dynamic and potential radical implications for how governing nature is accomplished in the future. Yet, we lack an understanding how these actors are jostling for attention, how legitimacy is sought, and if authority is granted within these crowded NBS arenas. Using a Foucauldian approach, this paper seeks to explore the ways in which governance is accomplished and the ways in which power is contested and orchestrated. As Nature Tech’s ability to become ‘authorised devices’ relies on whether they are seen as the ‘right’ or ‘appropriate’ way of governing nature, this research aims to reveal how these emerging Tech devices are seeking to attain and sustain legitimacy, even in the face of resistance. Based on research undertaken through engaging with these spaces by observing, listening and interviewing, attending virtually and in-person conferences and webinars, this paper reveals multiple strategies how Nature Tech aims to become the ‘appropriate’ way of governing nature. By steering agency in particular (tech-enabled) directions, it reveals how NBS are being ‘technologised’ within these zones, meaning that those who can be calculated and qualified through technology become regarded as ‘trustworthy’ – with potential radical implications for how NBS governance is accomplished.

Norway’s paradoxical relationship with climate change – as champion of domestic and foreign climate policies but persistent producer and exporter of oil and gas – makes the country a deeply informative case study regarding processes of climate delayism. The paradox is rooted in Norway’s political economy with a heavily state-controlled oil industry generating significant tax revenues and feeding its sovereign wealth fund. Oil profits have created much of Norway’s collective wealth and high living standards to date and promise future financial security. This interdependence between the wellbeing of society and industry has created a close alignment of interests between public and private actors, favoring unabated oil production in the foreseeable future. At the same time, Norway has a green identity and committed itself to the Paris Agreement’s goals, which require economic decarbonization at the global scale over the coming decades. This raises the question how the government-industry coalition justifies its position regarding oil vis-à-vis domestic and international audiences: What are the mid-century visions created by state and industry leaders in Norway, and how do they reconcile commitments to fight climate change and the continued production of oil? I answer these questions with an analysis of the long-term climate imaginaries that have been created by the Norwegian government and a set of key industry actors since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015. I collect and analyze documents produced by these actors, including reports, websites, and speeches, as well as the imagery that accompanies these texts, to identify the discursive strategies of climate delayism deployed in Norway. I argue that while government and industry imaginaries are distinct, they all co-opt climate action discourses that focus on global-scale technology-driven solutions to the problem of greenhouse gas emissions.

Complying with the Paris Agreement on Climate Change implicitly requires leaving fossil fuel underground (LFFU), resulting in stranded FF reserves (untapped) and stranded assets (FF infrastructure, labour, etc. to extract FF). The recent mapping of the so-called “carbon bombs”, prospective or operational extraction projects that would emit each ≥1 gigaton of CO₂ emissions if used completely, makes it even more urgent to address LFFU. This trend raises development trade-offs in the “burnable carbon” distribution among countries, and equity issues regarding the Global South and its necessary energy transition, since most of FF reserves are located there. There are no review papers on the challenges of the energy transition with respect to LFFU and the resulting stranded resources and assets. Furthermore, the scholarship on the Global South is scattered, hence we ask: What lessons can be learnt from reviewing the scholarship on the energy transition in the Global South, focusing on the fossil fuel phase-out and the issue of stranded assets and resources? We systematically review (a) energy transition studies and (b) international development literature, focused on climate change and fossil fuels. Out of a larger set, we identified 96 peer-reviewed papers and 15 reports from grey literature. Our systematic review reveals that: (a) while the literature emphasizes the challenges of promoting and financing renewables in the Global South, it pays less attention to supply-side measures beyond the issue of phasing out FF subsidies; (b) research seldom addresses the dilemmas and hazards of stranded assets (and resources) for the Global South, as opposed to the claim to the Right to Development; (c) the energy transition in the Global South focuses more on energy addition and FF expansion rather than LFFU. Thus, the literature understates: (i) the connections between the energy transition, the issue of stranded resources and assets, and the consequences for the Global South in terms of equity, development, and climate impacts; and (ii) the underlying power dynamics, between and within countries. Future research should take a political economy approach to this challenge, focus more adequately on the viability of energy leapfrogging (substantial change, or transformation) in the Global South, critically assess the additive rather than substitutive character of renewable energy sources in the Global South, and better identify the constraints to an inclusive energy transition, posed by North-South power dynamics, as well as by the narratives and vested interests of FF incumbent actors.

The challenges of ambiguity are increasingly prominent in debates about how governance arrangements respond to complex public policy issues that are driven by a logic of technical rationality that demands quantification and standardization. Decarbonisation – in short, removing fossil fuels from energy and economic systems – is one such issue at the core of mitigation efforts under the UNFCCC Paris Agreement. Ambiguity is understood in the literature as ‘not clearly defined’, as embodying a plurality of meanings or arcs of interpretation, and as a type of uncertainty that emerges from complexity. The literature on governance and the science-policy interface suggests that the role of ambiguity is poorly understood. For some, there is strategic value in ambiguity as an institutional response to the challenges of a world of contradictory ‘certainties’ or uncertainties, allowing for a flexible interpretation of rules and targets to account for diverse interests and capacities. For others, ambiguity raises concerns about conceptual capture by those who impose preferred interpretations of key climate-mitigation terms and practices, or as an excuse for doing little in the absence of accepted standards and precise definitions.

In an ESG context, then, ambiguity can function as a concept, as an analytical device, and as guidance for empirical inquiry. This paper applies this ambiguity framework to an initial desk-study of decarbonisation pathways in Southeast Asia, a region that has significant negative exposure to climate impacts and associated economic consequences, and which continues to be highly dependent on fossil fuels. It draws on ASEAN Member States’ NDCs and climate action plans and key ASEAN climate and energy-relevant plans of action for its primary data. Preliminary findings show that decarbonisation policy in the region is characterised by three interconnected versions of ambiguity. The first is ambiguity of objectives, including those that arise from the framing of mitigation challenges, and definitional and interpretive ambiguities around decarbonisation, net-zero, carbon-neutrality, and loss and damage. The second relates to pathway ambiguities embedded in arguments about appropriate technology for decarbonisation, managing energy renewables and land-based activities, and climate finance as well as more specific ambiguities around data sources, monitoring, verification and reporting, and cost calculations. The final category examines and evaluates ambiguous claims about actual and anticipated outcomes in aggregate national terms and in sectors such as energy, agriculture and land-use, and urban development that are key to decarbonisation in Southeast Asia.

A rising number of climate cases is brought against governments, administrations, and companies in support of enhanced climate action. With the growing number of climate cases there is also a growing body of research related to the dynamics and effects of climate litigation. This paper aims to contribute to this emerging research agenda by developing, operationalizing and testing a method that permits assessing the societal dynamics of climate litigation and its effects beyond the strictly legal realm, i.e. with regards to other forms of climate-related societal engagement.

To that end, we adopt an interdisciplinary perspective on climate litigation as a social process and examine its potential to act as a driver towards deep decarbonization. Drawing on legal, social, and political sciences, we present two analytical tools, the Social Plausibility Assessment Framework and the Global Opportunity Structure for Climate Action, before testing them at two levels. First, at an overarching level, we analyse general developments in climate litigation and in their societal context. Second, we zoom into two recent landmark decisions, Neubauer et al. v. Germany and Milieudefensie and others v. Shell.

We find that the analytical approach generates valuable insights on the dynamics and effects of climate litigation on both, the overarching and case-specific levels. It permits examining the co-evolution of global governance architectures and emergent forms of climate-related agency, for example through the formation of transnational networks of activism and strategic climate litigation. Our results show that climate litigation is shaped by, and continuously shapes, legal, socio-political, economic, and scientific scripts and repertoires of a Global Opportunity Structure for Climate Action. The research responds to core questions of Stream 1 on Architecture and Agency, such as How are environmental issues influenced by complex global networks across sectors, scales and decision-making arenas? Based on our assessment of the effects of climate litigation, we also gain novel insights into What forms of architecture and agency are most effective in earth system governance across scales.

After decades of debate, there is consensus that humanity must reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to zero and beyond. Achieving this after more than a century of steady growth in such emissions requires a deliberate transformation of key social-ecological systems, particularly energy, transport, and agricultural systems. To realise such a transformation, we must first be able to collectively imagine it. We need to co-create social imaginaries – collective meaning systems for understanding the present and envisioning the future – that can guide the necessary transformation to a zero-carbon future. These zero-carbon imaginaries are a contested cultural space, where multiple meanings and narratives about the future circulate, coincide, and conflict. Such imaginaries play an important part in the governance of energy transitions, alongside material and institutional influences.

This paper examines zero-carbon imaginaries and their role in governing energy transition, using Australia as a case study. The paper provides a cultural sociological analysis of formal institutional imaginaries as expressed in the guiding publications that contribute to the governance of the Australian energy sector. The analysis starts with high-profile international publications, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports and the International Energy Agency’s Net Zero Carbon Plan. It then narrows in on key Australian publications, such as Australian Government policy documents and the Australian Energy Market Operator’s Integrated System Plan. Finally, it considers prominent publications from state and local governments, business, and civil society.

What is apparent from this analysis is that institutional imaginaries largely decentre human agency in favour of technological solutions and focus on pathways without presenting an inspiring vision of the destination – a future zero-carbon world. Zero-carbon imaginaries do become more tangible and people-focused as the geographic focus of the publications narrows. However, even these more tangible zero-carbon imaginaries seem unlikely to inspire human agency and motivate widespread collective action.

The Australian energy sector makes relatively little use of imaginative and creative futures thinking practices, which may at least partly explain the lack of inspiring zero-carbon imaginaries. The final section of the paper considers opportunities to develop zero-carbon imaginaries that can support energy transition, using innovative anticipatory methods and engagement with artists and creative practitioners in emerging genres such as climate fiction, eco-fiction and solarpunk.

This paper presents the results of a four-year inter-disciplinary research project that scrutinizes the mutual constitution between environmental protection, environmental justice and peacebuilding processes after internal armed conflicts, with Uganda and Colombia as case studies.

We first introduce our rationale and the concept of environmental peacebuilding that guided our project. We propose a broad understanding that takes all cycles of the peacebuilding process into account and puts stronger emphasis on long-term social and environmental impacts. The linkages of internal armed conflicts to environmental justice are complex; such conflicts may entail direct environmental destruction and a deterioration of livelihoods, e.g. through population displacement, land grabbing and illegal extraction of natural resources. On the other hand, internal armed conflicts may provide unintended protection for forests, wetlands and other ecosystems.

Based on this conceptualization, we sketch our analytical framework that establishes various dimensions (social, ecological, political, economic) of post-conflict environmental peacebuilding and their interactions. To research these dimensions, we employed a cross-disciplinary variety of methodical approaches, including legal and policy analyses, GIS and spatial analyses. Adding to this, we conducted field research in biodiversity hotspots at risk, with semi-structured and focus group interviews, transect and narrative walks.

An integral part of our research design is the difference in timing between our two selected case studies. In Uganda, the signing of the peace agreement officially ended the conflict in December 2002. As we show, tensions over resources have persisted, implying mineral exploitation, land grabs and conflicts between returnees and community members. Together with high poverty and low education levels, they bear a high potential of relapse into violent conflict.

Colombia, by contrast, is still in the midst of the peace process. Areas formerly used by guerrillas as hiding places are now undergoing rapid transformation. For Sumapaz and Putumayo we can show that the post-peace agreement period has seen an intensification of land conversion, illegal land grabbing and new forms of natural resources exploitation, also including new actors such as large mining companies attempting to enter the area.

In a final step, we ask to what extent certain lessons for environmental justice, positive and negative, can be learnt from Uganda for the Colombian case. We advance a set of cross-cutting recommendations for practitioners, stakeholders and scholars: for how to enhance measures of environmental protection and natural resource management in post-conflict peacebuilding processes; and for how to support and improve the situation of vulnerable communities.

Sustainability transformations are intensely contested and at risk of backlash to ambitious policy action. Political elites and mass publics opposing policy action sometimes push back fiercely, especially in wider contexts animated by populism, resentment, and deeply divided preferences and values. This threatens policy enactment and durability, potentially setting back broader policy agendas, and derailing efforts towards realising transformations in governance and society. This is particularly evident for climate change policy where experiences of backlash have shown that even when ambitious policy is adopted, heated political battles may continue, and policy durability and expansion is not guaranteed. However, literature on sustainability transformations pays insufficient attention to the potential for such conflict, and its implications for understanding how ambitious policy action may be advanced in non-ideal real-world arenas, where conflict is endemic and consensus is elusive or impossible.

In this paper, we develop a framework for conceptualizing policy action in societal transformations as an unfolding sequence of ‘battle-settlement’ events. Distinct from (and complementary to) recent literature emphasising the role of coalitions and policy feedback in achieving durable policy action, we argue that the notion of battle-settlements better captures the open-ended character of ongoing political struggles over deliberate societal transformation and their oftentimes messy and lurching trajectories. By ‘settlements’, we refer to limited and often bitter compromise between rival actors over distributions of power and resources which are forged through mutual struggle. Arguably, a policy feedback view risks jumping too quickly over the politics of reaching settlements and reflecting a narrowed focus on endogenous policy effects which can overlook unexpected consequences and wider contradictory interactions. The notion of battle-settlement events usefully foregrounds historical and contextual contingency, a combination of authoritative enforcement and mutual buy-in, and a fragile balance of provisionality and finality to decisions which may not easily become locked-in. We illustrate the utility of this approach through various empirical experiences of backlash in climate and environmental politics to show how conflict arose and settled, and the implications for broader trajectories of transformation.

This contributes to envisioning and analysing new ways of dealing with inevitable conflict in sustainability transformations, by bringing ideas about political settlements from other fields into conversation with developmentalist thinking on political change and transformation in sustainability (e.g., coalitions and policy feedback). Thereby, it contributes to understanding dynamics of policymaking and resistance within sustainability transformations at the interface of ‘Democracy and Power’ and ‘Architecture and Agency’.

With our paper we would like to contribute to a better understanding of the inherent politics of sustainability transformations. To do so, we reflect on findings of the research project ‘Securing Tenure, Sustainable Peace?’ which explored efforts to localize land tenure registration (LLR) in Burundi and eastern DR Congo. Rather than demonstrating success or failure, we question whether key assumptions about localized land tenure registration hold in practice, notably the idea that it will contribute to sustainable peace. More specifically, we analyse whether localized land tenure 1) results in a clarification of land rights and thus better protection; 2) helps marginalized groups, notably women; and 3) prevents disputes. Our findings demonstrate that these assumptions need to be nuanced. Localized land tenure registration is not just a response to tenure insecurity and conflict, but tends to become part of the socio-political dynamics that nurture these. Frequently, efforts for transforming land tenure effectively undermine the prerequisites for sustainable peace. We consider these findings also relevant for better understanding the politics of sustainability transformations more widely. In particular, we draw attention to the tendency of de-politicization of land tenure interventions, which in our case involves 1) the discursive power of technical optimisation, which reduces policy makers’ engagement with fair outcomes and renders invisible the political choices these require; 2) the underestimation of elite capture and institutional competition accompanying land registration programmes; 3) overlooking of the level of risk involved in land registration programmes and unforeseen outcomes of transformation.

The frequency of extreme weather events has increased over the last decades in different regions across Europe. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), just in recent years, extreme weather events have displaced hundreds of thousands of people. For example, heavy rainfall across western Europe in mid-July 2021 led to at least 84,000 displacements. In the same year, wildfires triggered around 155,000 displacements in Southern Europe. On top of that, the number of reported cases of relocation or planned retreat of settlements due to exposure to risks such as floods and Sea Level Rise is increasing (e.g. East Anglia and Norfolk counties on the eastern coast of England or the municipality of Almada in Portugal). Despite this, news media and politicians seem more interested in discussing climate change-induced mass migrations towards Europe rather than recognising people’s internal mobility responses to environmental change. Furthermore, there is a geographical bias in the scientific literature as well, as research on climate change, environment and human mobility is underrepresented in European cases and mainly focuses on the Global South. This paper reviews where the discussion on the effects of environmental change on human mobility in the European context stands. To do so, we review the relevant scientific literature and a selection of European and National strategies on climate change adaptation and Disaster Risk Reduction to understand whether and how human mobility is contemplated in these frameworks. The present study is an initial attempt to fill the geographical gaps in the literature on environmental change and human mobility. At the same time, it questions the assumption that European countries can consider themselves immune to environmental change-related human mobility.

The role of policy interventions in accelerating low-carbon transitions has been widely acknowledged in innovation and transition studies. Within a policy mix, the relationship between policies and the interactions among key actors behind them have significant implications for policy outcome and effectiveness. However, network effects among different policies in a policy mix and their evolution remain underexplored in the existing literature on policy mix. To what extent the design of new policies depends on preexisting policies, and what shapes the links between policies? The answers to these questions would help researchers understand how policies are designed and feedback in a given regulatory context. We address these questions using a novel dataset of 342 national climate policies in China between 2016 to 2022. By combining social network analysis and process tracing, our study assesses the links between policies within and across key sectors developed by different ministry-level governing entities in the post-Paris Era. More specifically, our study shows the durability and change in China’s climate policy by investigating: 1) focal policies linking various sectors to ensure consistency in broad policy goals and objectives; (2) key governing entities driving the focal policies and the mechanisms through which they influence policies in different sectors and issue areas; (3) path dependency phenomena in key sectors where policies become sticky and strengthened over time. Our findings identify the temporal consistencies and inconsistencies in China’s climate policy as well as the focal actors influencing policy design. By unpacking China’s national policy mix on climate change, the paper not only makes theoretical contributions to the climate policy literature through a network approach to investigate policy interconnectedness and feedback and also presents important empirical evidence on path dependent policy processes in the world’s largest carbon emitter.

The global landscape of development cooperation has been evolving with the increasing involvement of Southern countries in the transfer and exchange of resources, technology, and knowledge. Middle-income countries that actively invest in South-South cooperation (SSC), such as India and Indonesia, play‌ a pivotal role in accelerating the achievement of global and national sustainable development goals (SDGs). The new approach of development cooperation includes donor countries willing to engage in SSC schemes through triangular partnerships. However, scholars have yet to fully consider how middle-income countries respond to the SDGs, particularly SDG 17 (Partnerships for the goals), in their foreign development policies and practice. It is important to consider whether their responses (or lack thereof) support or hinder SSC in delivering inclusive development partnerships alongside their pragmatic objectives, such as gaining resources, the influence of development models, and status and legitimacy as development partners. Equally, there has been insufficient attention given to the extent to which donor countries use the SDGs to shape triangular cooperation.

This study focuses on India and Indonesia, examining their SSC and triangular cooperation’s social infrastructure, especially the political and institutional processes. It assesses various types of steering and the roles of actors in operationalising SSC. Document analysis on Indian and Indonesian SSC and Triangular Cooperation policies, institutional setup, and strategies of their donor countries is conducted, and qualitative studies from SSC and triangular cooperation-driven projects on infrastructure development supplement the analysis.

The findings demonstrate how types of steering and roles vary according to the context-specific nature of national foreign diplomacy, domestic economies, politics and development approaches, institutions and governance, and the specific project needs. While proponents of SSC and triangular cooperation, including the larger SSC partners and donors, use the SDGs selectively, they have not entirely leveraged the SDGs as an attractive narrative framing tool. The social infrastructure around SSC has yet to catch up with inclusive development partnerships, where the complexities of deepening SSC mean that proponents of SSC may find it challenging to ensure ownership of development priorities of smaller SSC partners and exercise multi-stakeholder partnerships. Overall, this study contributes to understanding the key factors shaping SSC and triangular cooperation and the realities of the political discourse surrounding SDGs in emerging nations’ development cooperation policies. By examining the social infrastructure of SSC and triangular cooperation, the study provides insights into the challenges and opportunities in achieving inclusive development and ownership of priorities by smaller partners.

Since the 2007 Bali Climate Conference, a proliferation of climate mitigation strategies and targets has occurred in the Global South. While very vulnerable states such as island nations and developed countries had early on demanded ambitious climate actions by all parties, particularly emerging economies resisted this perspective by arguing that they face trade-offs with their economic development and are not responsible for climate change. However, India and Indonesia adopted national climate action plans in 2008 and 2011, communicated mitigation targets in 2009, and submitted Intended Nationally Determined Contributions prior to the Paris Climate Conference in 2015, alongside other emerging economies such as Brazil or China. What can explain this rise and advancement of climate policies in emerging economies?

Despite multiple influences, such as international pressure or lesson drawing from peers, I argue that one factor has recently remained underexplored: Strategic mimicry regarding the norm of climate mitigation contributions from developing countries. Strategic mimicry is characterized by the mimicking of an engagement with an international norm for strategic reasons. Actors instrumentally use arguments and actions to persuade others of the validity of their own engagement with that international norm. It is activated in order to shine internationally and to receive international legitimacy so that these actors can advance other preexisting strategic goals beyond that international norm (e.g. in other policy fields), which they pursue based on preexisting dominant domestic norms.

In this paper, I argue that we can best understand the emergence and advancement of climate policies in these countries from such an International Relations’ norm perspective, which takes the foreign policy goals of these countries into account. Both countries have strived to advance their foreign policy goals, such as international recognition as a nuclear power and as a member in the United Nations Security Council in India’s case, through mimicking an engagement with climate mitigation. Based on interviews in India and Indonesia and extensive analysis of primary and secondary document, I explain the emergence and evolution of their climate policies from 2007 until 2015. This research, therefore, contributes to the conference theme of architecture and agency by “address[ing] institutional frameworks and actors implicated in earth system governance and how they resist or respond to change and evolve over time”.

“Net zero” refers to a state in which the greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere are balanced by their removal out of the atmosphere. Since 2020, the term has quickly shifted from a mere scientific concept to a mainstream organizing principle for climate change mitigation plans of states and other actors across the globe. To date, net zero targets cover 91% of the global GDP and 80% of the global population. Such wide coverage is not possible without pledges made by large emerging economies, which are new engines of the global economy as well as major carbon emitters. Despite the rise of a burgeoning literature on net zero governance, the question of how the concept of net zero has been adopted and has gained traction in the Global South remains largely understudied. What are varying processes through which “net zero" has emerged and diffused as a guiding principle for climate mitigation in emerging economies? We address this question through a comparative study of China and India – the world’s two largest emerging economies. In both countries, net zero targets have been made not only by national governments but also a range of subnational and private actors. Drawing upon the theory on varieties of climate governance, we argue that new transnational normative contexts, market environments, and pre-existing domestic governance jointly shape the uptake of the net zero concept in emerging economies. Our empirical study uses policy documents and key informant interviews with practitioners to first map out the processes through which net zero targets have been increasingly used in the two countries, and then identify the forces driving the relevant net zero movement. Our close examination of the policy processes in the two countries reveal divergent patterns. In India, despite the importance of a national pledge announced at COP-26, there has been a bottom-up process for subnational jurisdictions and businesses to leverage market and political opportunities through net zero commitments. In contrast, the net zero movement in China has been largely orchestrated by the central government with subnational and non-state actors following the directions set by the top leaders. The paper presents novel insights into climate governance in non-Western contexts and further advances the literature on comparative climate politics.

An emerging body of literature is exploring goal setting as a global governance strategy. “Governing through goals” (the title of a book in the ESG book series with MIT Press) can be an alternative to traditional “governing through rules” which is challenged by countries’ resistance to prescribed courses of action. Indeed, the approach of the Paris Agreement is to let countries determine their own contributions to globally agreed goals. Next to the temperature goals the Paris Agreement also established the “Global Goal on Adaptation” (GGA), a qualitative and aspirational goal. Unlike greenhouse gas emissions which can be measure in physical quantitities irrespective of context, climate change adaptation is more difficut to standardize and measure. At the most recent UN climate change conference in Egypt in November 2022 it was decided to develop a framework for the GGA. Doing so raises numerous governance questions including: to what extent can a context-specific subject matter like climate adaptation be governed globally? How can the inherent trade-offs between specificity and detailed guidance on the one hand and flexibility to countries’ circumstances and national sovereignty on the other be addressed? How exactly could a framework under a global goal “govern”? What potential and limitations do global indicators have?

This research is based on participant observation in the UN climate change negotiations including participation in the UNFCCC workshops that inform the development of the framework. It offers unique insights into a real-time case of creating a new governance modality under the Paris Agreement including how the development is utilized by different actors to advance their respective interests. The research also draws on literature and experiences on goal setting under other global governance processes including the 2030 Agenda and the Sendai Framework. It makes an empirical contribution to literature on governing through goals that is of high relevance to earth system governance scholarship.

Institutional reforms are crucial to meeting growing sustainability challenges. However, the scholarship recognizes that institutions are often sticky due to path dependencies. Nevertheless, previous scholarship has highlighted architecture and agency as important concepts in understanding how change can take shape. For instance, the literature on transformations of international organizations suggests that institutional reforms are likely when it is demanded by powerful member states, when there are external shocks, or when the international organization faces legitimacy challenges, such as when there is a growing recognized gap between rhetoric and actions. An international institution that faces growing calls for reform is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The calls for reform come from a range of actors and involve both legitimacy concerns and consideration for a change in the purpose of the UNFCCC as it enters an implementation stage. Nevertheless, previous calls for reform have largely failed (reference removed to annonymise review process). This paper therefore examines the prospects for UNFCCC reform through an interview study with a range of stakeholders familiar with the UNFCCC. The semi-structured interviews with (former) UNFCCC officials, climate diplomats, business and civil society representatives and academics show that there is a recognized need to reform the UNFCCC; however, few believe in the prospects of meaningful reforms. Besides the well-recognized difficulties of decision-making by consensus, the paper highlights the issue of trust – or the lack thereof – amongst member states as a stumbling block to reform. It also shows how prospects for reforms depend on the types of reforms considered, ranging on a spectrum of how politically controversial they are. The paper concludes by discussing its findings and its implications for understanding architecture and agency in climate governance and by identifying ways forward toward fostering institutional reforms through adaptation and learning.

The climate regime has been criticized for ineffectiveness because of the multiple, overlapping and even competing institutions and agreements, leading to the fragmentation of global climate governance. However, climate governance post-Paris has also been heralded for its experimental, polycentric and bottom-up logic. Research has predominantly focused on the effectiveness of non-state climate action within polycentric governance, while less attention has been paid to challenges of democratic legitimacy, accountability and inclusion. In response, the aim of the paper is to take stock of the legitimacy and accountability of the non-state climate action orchestrated by the Marrakech Partnership for Climate Action (MPGCA) and the Global Climate Action Portal of 27,000 commitments, including companies, investors, cities and regions. The multi-actor, multilevel, multi-scale, multisector and cross-jurisdictional climate action under the umbrella of MPGCA can be conceptualized as polycentric climate action. First, the paper discusses legitimacy and accountability challenges facing polycentric climate action, namely skewed participation, weak accountability, and low transparency, which can be explained by its non-hierarchical, networked, and non-electoral nature. Second, it maps three types of accountability mechanisms – public, peer and market – in the MPGCA workplan, Yearbook of Climate Action, annual reports by the High-Level Champions, alongside submission by non-state and state actors. While accountability mechanisms have been strengthened in the second phase, monitoring, review and verification (MRV) are still weak, amplified by problems of low transparency and imbalanced participation of stakeholders. Finally, the paper proposes how to improve legitimacy and accountability in polycentric climate governance.

The system of institutions governing climate change is often described as complex, fragmented, or polycentric – referring to the intricacy and dispersed authority of international and transnational institutions across the public-private divide engaging in climate mitigation. Institutional fragmentation has been connected to questions and challenges concerning effectiveness, legitimacy and justice in climate governance, and been studied in detail in terms of norms and actors. This paper adds a new perspective and empirics to institutional fragmentation, namely a discursive dimension. Studies on discourses in global climate governance are limited, despite plausibility that the way climate change is described, explained and imagined has an effect on its solutions. The paper analyzes discursive structures in global climate governance and how they changed over time using Discourse Network Analysis (DNA). The starting point is a dataset of more than eighty international and transnational climate institutions with the intentionality to steer policy and behavior towards a common goal to mitigate climate change. By processing and analyzing a structured set of texts of these institutions, DNA demonstrates how climate institutions are connected at a discursive level and reveals key properties of the discursive debate underlying climate governance. Thereby the paper focuses on the shift of the global dialogue from the “two-degrees target” in the Paris Agreement (2015) to the “net-zero agenda” at the latest United Nations Climate Conference in Glasgow (2021). The paper also reflects on the extent to which the discursive structure of global climate governance can be characterized in terms of fragmentation, complexity or polycentricity by relating these findings to the specifics of the three concepts. The contributions of this paper are consequently threefold: first, it provides new empirical insights into the discourses underlying global climate governance. Second, it contributes a distinct perspective to the interrelated concepts of fragmentation, complexity and polycentricity. Third, it strengthens the position of discourses and the innovative method of DNA traditionally applied in linguistics, communication and media studies, in political science and international relations studies on global governance.

Experts play a significant role in shaping global and local norms on how states should respond to the climate crisis. However, current scholarship on the relationship between states and expertise has not fully addressed recent transformations in the field, specifically the emergence and increasingly influential role of what we term ‘green transition expertise’. In this paper, we argue that if earth system scholars want to further deepen their grasp of the politics of the green transition analytically and normatively, they need to embrace a ‘post-IPCC’ research agenda that turns increasingly towards state actions predicated on new forms of expertise as a prime mover in addressing climate change. We advance this claim based on a literature review of the relationship between expertise and the state in climate mitigation research. Overall, we find that while existing research has provided highly nuanced studies of state-expertise relations, it has tended to cast the issue of expertise as one of climate science consensus construction and the issue of state action as determined largely by failed (or limited) intergovernmental collaboration. To advance the study of state-expertise relations in the green transition, we outline a post-IPCC research agenda centered on the study of what we, drawing on Bourdieu, term ‘green state nobility’.

This agenda sets out to understand how experts shape state action on the green transition and how the state actively assembles green transformation expertise, including the actors recognized by states as appropriate members of the emerging green state nobility. This includes analysis of how state action is conditioned by informal networks, partnerships, and inter-expert competition about what should constitute expertise within the state and which forms of expertise matter. To capture the green state nobility, we combine literature on the green state with insights from the Sociology of Expertise. This research agenda proposes a three-pronged approach to studying green transition expertise in the state: (1) focusing on expert actors to understand who is recognized as a legitimate green transition expert over time and their location, (2) examining expert content to understand the nature of green transition expert work, including what gets left out, and (3) considering expert context to examine the institutional, cultural, and political factors that shape the relationship between green transition expertise and state behavior. Overall, a post-IPCC knowledge politics agenda seeks to address the agency of experts in influencing how the green state is currently carrying out its sustainability transition activities.

The Ukraine War has not only underlined the critical role of space-based communication infrastructures in securing connectivity, but also demonstrated the potential influence of private actors. It has at the same time raised discussions on the possibilities of reducing inter-state dependence in the context of critical infrastructures. To secure and improve connectivity, satellite communication constellations such as Starlink and Kuiper are taking the skies, especially in Lower Earth Orbit. This provokes an acceleration of the transition of outer space from a multilaterally governed common space to an increasingly commercialized sector with rising participation of non-state actors. While the new space economy is rapidly evolving and undergoing dynamic changes, the political scientist debate about the governance of earth orbits and the roles of involved actors is in its infancy.

The paper addresses the question of how the role of non-state actors in earth orbits governance architecture as well as potentially changing power dynamics can be captured and conceptualized. The author argues that in order to improve understanding of earth orbits governance structures, the logical first step is to deepen knowledge about the space actors themselves. Assessing the qualities and interactions of and between these actors can inform about inherent structures and dynamics of the overall governance architecture. Aligning with proponents of network analytical approaches, the author argues that relations between involved actors need to be considered as central analytical category in studies aiming to understand how patterns of cooperation and conflict in global governance evolve. Taking a network analytical approach, the paper sets the methodological grounds to comprehensively assess the role of non-state actors in the governance system of earth orbits.

By investigating earth orbits governance through the lenses of polycentricity, the author not only aims to contribute to improve understanding of earth orbits governance, but also to the debate whether this governance architecture is polycentric, and if yes, to what extent. Drawing on recent literature on polycentricity in global governance, the author identifies a power gap in polycentricity research which needs to be addressed when researching non-state actors in earth orbits governance from a polycentric governance perspective.

The ongoing loss in nature and biodiversity due to human activity, exacerbated by climate change, is one of the most pressing sustainability challenges today. Governments and companies have committed themselves to contributing to global biodiversity targets, as defined by the Kunming Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs; particularly SDG14 Life Below Water and SGD15 Life on Land).

For actual biodiversity recovery, targets do not suffice. It is crucial that national governments as well as private companies integrate or ‘mainstream’ these targets in sectoral policies and plans and implement concrete measures. Such policy integration in, for instance, the food and transport sectors, is considered a promising governance approach, because it can directly address the driving forces of biodiversity loss. In fact, this is also what the GBF aims for. complements targets on more classical biodiversity governance such as the management of protected areas and endangered species with requirements for sector policies governing resource and land use, as well as underlying drivers including food systems, consumption, energy or finance flows.

In this paper, we are synthesising results of a special issue in the Earth System Governance journal that aims to further our understanding of how and to what extent the adoption of biodiversity targets in public and private sectoral policies ‘works’ in terms of implementation and results. By discussing and complimenting these findings in light of the scientific debate, we provide in-depth insights into the critical enablers, barriers and challenges that facilitate or impede a stronger integration. The focus is on national policies and private initiatives beyond the individual company level (except for when this has sector-wide implications).

The questions that we address are the following:

1. In what ways have global biodiversity targets been integrated in public and private sectoral policies and plans, from policy formulation to implementation?
2. What factors explain the degree and results of integration and implementation of biodiversity targets in terms of their (potential) contribution to biodiversity recovery, and what explains the emergence or absence of these factors?

Nature-based solutions (NBS) are proposed as a comprehensive approach to addressing a wide range of social, economic, and ecological problems in cities, featuring in international policy and in national and sub-national discourses. Not only is nature billed as a solution to some of the most vexing environmental challenges, they are presented as an opportunity to amerliorate all manner of governance crises, with the ambition to provide socially just, democratic, and locally tailored solutions that are “co-produced” and “co-designed” with stakeholders. NBS also offer a new way to frame urban greening efforts; one that is economically efficient and politically palatable. This presentation provides results from Urban GreenUP, a 6-year transdisciplinary demonstration project, to plan, implement, and monitor the impact of NBS in three European cities and in a network of 'follower cities' in South America, Asia, and Europe. After an overview of the social, economic, and biophysical impacts of the interventions and an introduction to the data dashboard providing these results, the presentation compares these modest results to the promises in policy and the grey and academic literature. These are used to draw out key areas where more attention needs to be paid if the promise of NBS as a concept is to be realised, particularly in urban areas. These include the extent to which NBS offer a 'transformative' alternative to addressing sustainability crises in urban areas, whether they offer more democratic and inclusive solutions to such crises, and whether the global ambitions and standards of NBS are achievable in cities. This analysis reveals a mismatch between the ways NBS are framed as potential solutions to both material and existential sustainability challenges, and the reality of how NBS are implemented in practice. The ways in which NBS are seen as technical solutions with measurable physical impacts, rather than as a new way to plan and develop cities, is found to stultify progress in using NBS to address society’s greatest challenges. Ultimately, this analysis of monitoring and action research data finds that the transformative potential of NBS requires that cities be treated not just as living laboratories where new ideas can be tested, but that these new ideas need to be more than engineering advancements or novel demonstration projects. A more ambitious scope for NBS implementation would push the boundaries of how decisions are made, require a re-consideration of patterns of development, and significantly increase the scale of greening interventions.

Cities are an increasingly important place for experiments connecting climate action with challenges around food, energy, biodiversity and social justice. The European Commission promotes nature-based solutions (NBS) as innovative strategy for urban sustainable transformations, balancing environmental and socio-economic outcomes of climate and biodiversity actions. However, NBS have been criticised for reproducing power-imbalances and producing negative justice impacts, including gentrification and exclusion of marginalized groups.

Previous studies show that quality and structure of NBS governance processes are crucial for just transformation processes. To enhance distributional, procedural and recognition justice, hybrid or multi-level governance processes have been suggested, aiming to balance top-down decision making with bottom-up perspectives, to foster cross-scale interactions between places and practices, recognize plural socio-cultural values of nature and use different modes of knowledge co-production to achieve outcome-oriented and process goal.

Based on case studies in three major European cities, we explore whether and how hybrid governance approaches, such as mosaic governance, may contribute to sustainable and just cities through fostering long-term collaborations between local governments, local communities, and grassroots initiatives in the co-development and co-management of NBS. Based on previous studies into urban governance, empowerment of local communities, and environmental justice, we investigate six possible pathways for mosaic governance to increase the environmental justice impacts of NBS in cities: greening the neighbourhood, diversifying values and practices, empowering people, bridging across communities, linking to institutions, and scaling inclusive discourses and practices. Despite the diversity of environmental justice outcomes across our empirical cases, analysis suggests that mosaic governance particularly contributes to recognition justice through diversifying NBS practices in alignment with community values and aspirations. Moreover, especially in marginalised communities, collaborations between civil society and local governments holds much potential to advance social justice by enabling empowering, bridging, and linking pathways across diverse communities and NBS. However, contributions to distributional and procedural justice are limited, also because the wider context of NBS policies, planning and management is hardly impacted by civil society actions. To advance our understanding of justice impacts of NBS and urban transformations, we suggest to look beyond distributional, procedural and recognition justice, and develop a wider framing of justice in the development and implementation of NBS, sensitive to social, cultural, economic and political inequities as well as to possible pathways to enhance not only environmental but also social justice.

Governance of earth systems comprises dealing with disasters. Previous research has shown the importance to discuss justice (i.e. fairness) in the management of disasters and disaster risks. In the context of resilience-building and sustainable development, several dimensions of justice must be taken into consideration. The here presented framework called risk justice includes procedural, distributive, and corrective justice under four sustainable dimensions that overlap: social justice (the fairness between different groups of people) ecological justice (the fairness between humans and non-humans as well as between different non-human entities), spatial justice (the fairness between entities present in different geographical areas), and temporal justice (the fairness between entities living at different moments in time). Indeed, sustainable development has to happen for everyone, including both human and natural systems, and the actions taken on one territory at a specific moment in time should not hinder sustainability in the future and in other territories. Hence the importance to consider justice for social and ecological issues, within different spatial-temporal scales. The risk justice concept is an innovative framework that can be used by decision-makers and risk managers as a proactive tool to discuss the issues raised by potential future strategies, and by evaluators and researchers as a retrospective tool to judge the fairness of current and past risk management strategies that are already implemented. After the conceptual elaboration, this paper applies the risk justice framework in a document analysis to pinpoint how justice is (or not) considered in international disaster risk management guidelines, naming the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 and the European Floods Directive. These two documents are barely quoting justice (nor synonyms), yet several elements are related to it, without naming it. These elements highlight aspects of social and spatial justice, mostly related to the distribution of the management impacts (distributive justice), as well as to how the decisions are taken (procedural justice). Elements of corrective and ecological justice are less present, but they appear indirectly in the European Floods Directive. Temporal issues are mentioned in the Sendai Framework. What the guidelines insist on (or not) gives indications on the aspects of sustainable development that the international community explicitly focuses on. Yet, all sustainability-related dimensions of justice are essential to consider for society to become more sustainable, even though tradeoffs are unavoidable. Accordingly, the risk justice framework can facilitate transparent discussions on justice to promote disaster risk governance’s contribution to sustainable development.

Green and Natural Infrastructure (NI) offer Nature-based Solutions (NbS) to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss in urban areas by actively managing ecosystems and their services. Decision makers are now challenged to connect infrastructure, ecosystems, sustainability and the implications of climate change. Therefore, swift transitions are needed in professional education and practices that build capacity and introduce new capabilities in NI to combine management of municipal built and natural assets, and related ecosystems. However, determining the most effective learning interventions is complicated by the diffuse and emerging nature of NI in practice, professional norms excluding NI in problem definitions and solutions, and the interconnectedness and extensive collaboration required by ecosystem management. Following the focus on ecosystems in NI, we apply the ecosystem concept to frame both practice and learning, building on the literature surrounding learning ecosystems. In framing a learning ecosystem that addresses NI planning, design, development and maintenance, we consider what elements make up NI learning opportunities and professional practice. This paper describes a guiding framework to enable NI practices, addressing the multi-disciplinary educational system by A) identifying the existing NI practice and learning ecosystem, B) discussing how this system reflects consideration of NbS through NI and C) suggesting transdisciplinary knowledge exchange, including with Indigenous worldviews. The NI learning ecosystem (NILE) was first defined through a survey and a virtual Challenge Dialogue workshop to explore and respond to a proposed set of NI norms, identify core competencies, and explore user needs related to NI training. Because NI is an emerging practice with few aligned credentials, research sought to understand what organisations and roles influence such practices to identify additional capacities and capabilities most central to NI in practice. Actors were identified in three Canadian Prairie provinces and their network illustrated using KUMU software. Validation interviews including NI practitioners and educators informed the NILE framework. We found that aligned professions such as engineering and planning had no specific NI credentials or designation; and that government departments and professional consultancies are significant actors, although municipalities are central to implementing NI. The NILE frame offers some structure to guide efforts to support NI practices through learning opportunities in higher education institutions, professional continuing education and workplaces. Because NI is not well understood by communities and professions alike, applying and mobilizing the NILE can inform the social processes needed for a stronger social license respecting shared Indigenous and Western connections to the land.

Becoming climate neutral and tackling the adverse impacts of climate change requires profound societal transformations. In recent years, there has been growing recognition in research and policy that a so-called ‘just transition’ – striving for an equitable distribution of costs and benefits and ensuring that vulnerable groups do not face additional burdens – is needed to make this transformation a success. The concept has thus become part of international agreements and policy frameworks such as the Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Agreement, and the “Solidarity and Just Transitions Silesia Declaration” of the COP24 meeting in 2018. The European Commission has declared the motto “to leave no one behind” central to the European Green Deal, and devised the Just Transition Mechanism to provide financial support to particularly vulnerable European regions.

Despite the political commitment, achieving a ‘just transition’ in the European Union will be complex and many questions remain. The concept is still unfamiliar to many, especially since existing decarbonization efforts have focused on implementing ‘clean and efficient’ technologies, and less on the more complex distributional and social aspects of sustainability transformations. Conceptions of what a ‘just transition’ entails also vary. Historically, the concept has evolved in a narrow sense as protecting and compensating workers in regions highly dependent on fossil fuel extraction. Aspects of fairness in future renewable energy systems, or sectors beyond the energy systems have not been considered. This narrow framing has been implemented in the European Just Transition Mechanism, but does not align well with the European Green Deal’s overarching goal of “leaving no one behind” and the broader ambition to shape a transformation to climate neutrality that is socially just.

From the perspective of policy-makers, there is a particular need for assessment frameworks to evaluate aspects of justice as part of the transformation to climate neutrality, and monitor them over time. This paper presents a critical review of existing proposals to assess and monitor the European ‘just transition’, considering proposals brought forth by the EU institutions and third sector organizations. It is part of a larger project to develop an assessment framework for the European ‘just transition’. The framework will integrate existing academic work in environmental, climate, energy, and transport justice and align with existing EU indicators systems.

The Nordic approach to security and preparedness emphasises decentralisation and cross-sectoral cooperation. In Finland, the approach is known as comprehensive security: briefly, society’s vital functions are secured through collaboration between the authorities, organizations, and citizens. Comprehensive security has been operationalised, for example, through regional preparedness and security networks that bring together municipal actors, rescue services, security and defence authorities, social and health services, NGOs, and companies. The network itself has no leading partner nor formal decision-making power, and its operation is based on mutual agreement and the responsibilities of each participant organisation.

In this qualitative study, we interview 15 members from six regional preparedness networks from eastern and central Finland. We focus on how they prepare for storm-related power outages, which are a relevant hazard scenario in all regions of the country. Our objective is to study how these polycentric networks operate in practice, and how and if cross-sectoral regional cooperation has altered regional preparedness for and responses to storm-related disruptions.

In particular, we focus on whether the attributes of adaptive governance are visible in these networks. Adaptive governance (AG), a concept most commonly used in environmental and resource governance related fields, represents a shift from a traditional predict-and-control governance system to a more polycentric, flexible approach, which takes complexity and uncertainty into account. Frequently named attributes of AG are multi-actor networks, multilevel and multiscale governance, mutual learning, collaboration, and reflexivity.

Although AG has been amply discussed in literature, practical examples of its implementation have been scarce. Therefore, we ask: could regional preparedness networks be considered a tangible method to implement adaptive governance, in addition to comprehensive security? For instance, AG emphasises the inclusion of a diverse set of stakeholders: hence, we examine how the regional preparedness networks are formed, and which actors and organisations are included. Furthermore, we study how polycentric collaboration works in practice, when many member organisations have formal mandates and responsibilities. We also explore how the networks are linked to other levels of governance, and whether scale mismatches hinder their functioning – are there discrepancies between local hazard impacts, municipal responsibilities, regional networks, and state-level policies? Moreover, we investigate whether there are examples of these networks supporting peer learning or reassessing current practices. Finally, we discuss whether such networks could have potential to govern sustainable transformations.

Sustainable governance of water resources essentially involves institutions that enable deliberation and participation for managing the interdependencies generated by conflicting goals and strategies. Supporting institutional environment are required not only for managing the interdependencies, but also to adapt to changing climate and its impacts. In Malawi, the interdependencies are more pronounced due to high dependence on biomass energy, which limits the water available for food production as well as drinking and domestic use. This is further aggravated by the increasing spatial and temporal variability in rainfall and water availability. The objective of the paper is to identify the factors affecting the ability of a water resources governance system to manage the interdependencies among the strategies for achieving the goals of water, energy and food (WEF) securities under the conditions of changing climate.

Using the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework and the concept of Network of Action Situations, we analyse the conflicts and coordination among actors at different levels in designing and implementing strategies to achieve the WEF securities in Malawi, focusing on the case of Domasi River Basin. Qualitative data from 54 interviews with key informants and 4 focus group discussions with water users were analysed to identify key challenges to coordination within and across levels and sectors.

Gaps in implementing key legislations on governance of water and biomass resources along with the predominant dependence on biomass for energy and livelihood, are leading to unsustainable charcoal production driving deforestation in the catchment areas. This is further leading to siltation and reduction in the availability of water for drinking and food production. Lack of representation of key sectors and agencies at the basin and district levels is affecting coordination and conflict resolution. Furthermore, political economic factors are leading to prioritisation of populist short-term policies for agricultural development, crowding out of private investments and irrational allocation of limited state capacity. Efforts to foster collaborative governance for resolving the WEF conflicts and achieving synergies need to focus beyond the national level by strengthening capacities of actors at lower levels for effective and coherent implementation of different sectoral strategies.

Coastal social-ecological systems are typically subject to a wide range of anthropogenic pressures, as these systems combine high human population densities with high biological productivity at the land-sea interface. Competing resource claims by multiple stakeholders create tensions, which are not easily resolved due to the inertia of coastal policy systems. Self-reinforcing mechanisms make policy systems rigid and resistant to change – these systems become ‘locked-in’. While the concept of lock-in has been widely used in climate mitigation research to explain barriers to decarbonisation, climate adaptation lock-ins have only recently gained attention. While adaptation is becoming increasingly important, progress is less than desired. Just as in decarbonization, lock-ins may provide an explanatory mechanism. In this explorative study, we use a ‘lock-in’ perspective to analyze adaptation in coastal governance systems, particularly in case study locations where we have conducted empirical research. These include coastal systems in the Global South (Kenya, Pakistan) and in the Global North (the Netherlands, Belgium). In our explorative analysis we focus on the mechanisms by which lock-ins influence the multi-dimensional vulnerabilities of local communities. In order to examine possibilities to navigate polycentric coastal governance systems, we propose to apply [citation removed to annonymize abstract]'s (2021) framework, , by focusing on knowledge, relationships, strategies and decisions and their implementation. By applying a lock-in lens to complex, strained polycentric governance systems and by highlighting the vulnerability and the agency of local communities, we aim to propose an interdisciplinary research approach in order to compare and learn from coastal systems, thereby allowing communities to develop fair and effective adaptation strategies .

Water and energy are vital resources for human well-being, poverty reduction and sustainable development. The demand for the provision of both water and energy is increasing rapidly, and the trend is likely to continue in the future worldwide. Managing water and energy resources as an interconnected system, and eliminating the traditional silo-based planning, improves sustainable development through research-based evidence. The basis of the WE nexus approach to resource management lies in identifying the vulnerabilities and justifying the interactions at the multiple interfaces of resource systems, while holistically assessing the impact of interventions from the institutional, environmental, financial, and socio-cultural perspectives. Understanding the vulnerabilities and interlinkages of these two critical resources at the local level is necessary to identify and implement mutually beneficial strategies for their management and use. An intensive research design has been chosen for the study since the researcher wants to get in-depth, detailed and comprehensive data analysis result to generation of information on household water-energy nexus vulnerabilities with the use of a mixed approach (qualitative and quantitative). A purposive sampling procedure was used to select participants that are more relevant and could provide rich information about the vulnerabilities in water and energy at the household level. The collected data was analysed using ATLAS.ti and Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS). Comparative analyses of qualitative data in relation to quantitative variables have been extended and refined to include a broader range of within-case and cross-case analyses. After that, data has been grouped into themes for a clear understanding and explanation of various themes from the field. Subsequently, the themes were linked to the objectives to fulfill the aim of the study. Some of the villages in Matatiele Local municipality are still lagging behind with municipality service delivery, and there is a lack of affordable clean energy sources for some households. Residents are resorting to wood, paraffin, gas and candles as energy sources for lighting, cooking, and heating, and traditional leaders are not involved in water and energy policy decision-making. There are water and energy nexus vulnerabilities due to water inequalities and injustices in the distribution of water and electricity, and injustices with regard to policy and decision-making processes.

Owing to the significance of grassroots education and mobilization towards sustainable water action and general SDG 6, innovative and hybridized approaches have become an inevitable necessity in reaching the local communities, and underserved demographics in Africa. There is a strong nexus between water and multiple developmental indexes (economic, health, trade, etc.), therefore, solutions should be modeled based on the peculiarities of each region. Africa has a huge history of traditional governance across all sectors, and this includes the water resource management system. Despite remarkable potency, the role of traditional institutions has significantly faded with the advent of democratic governance and the over-reliance on social-scientific and diplomatic approaches in addressing global problems. Before the introduction of modern water technologies, many African communities-built dams and water storage systems to meet their water needs. These successes were accomplished because the traditional institutions being very close to the people were able to adopt the appropriate mobilization strategies that turned into productivity. This confirms that the sustainability of local water response and intergenerational solutions to water provision can only be accomplished if local mobilization is prioritized, and the principal actors at this level are the traditional institutions. Democratic governance is not at war with the traditional system, and the evolution of democracy should not relegate the functions of the latter, but rather harness the potentials that it offers in achieving sustainability in water provision across African states. We have identified some of the important areas where traditional institutions could play significant roles in water resource management, and we have elaborated these under six major strategic value areas, backed with relevant conclusions and recommendations. The Recommendations from this study could bring a paradigm in African water management and governance, as well as stakeholders' strategy of engagement.

Our contribution through this study complements existing research findings on related topics and also opens the pathway for diverse explorations of the traditional institutions in solving local problems. For example, [citation removed to annonymize abstract] examined the extent to which traditional governance systems have been acknowledged and incorporated into new water management institutions and approaches in South Africa and concluded that failure to acknowledge and incorporate aspects of these traditional governance systems may undermine the ability of government to achieve the objectives of the National Water Act (NWA). We have consolidated this by also modelling a system that could address the Water toxicity-River-Worship cultural clash in Osun State, Nigeria.

Adaptation of urban areas to the impacts of climate change is becoming increasingly important, whereby also the growing need for innovative and fast approaches to effectively bridge the gap between practice and science becomes apparent­.

With regard to expected more frequent and more intense heavy rainfall events, flood analyses based on rainfall-runoff models are used more often in order to determine hot spots in urban areas. To perform these analyses, there exist various hydrological models using different methodological approaches and boundary conditions.

In order to support municipalities to adapt to urban floods caused by heavy rain events, case studies have been carried out in close exchange with stakeholders as part of a model comparison. For this, the use of two different hydrological models in two German cities has been evaluated and compared based on the same simulated event. The freely available model "River Analysis System" (HEC-RAS), was used to simulate the heavy rainfall runoff behavior in the city of Geesthacht. The software platform "Tygron Engine" by the TAUW GmbH was applied for central areas in the city of Rostock. In addition, a comparison of "HEC-RAS" with the "Tygron Engine" was made for the case study in Rostock.

The objectives of this simulation comparison analysis are, for example, the identification of possible alternatives to deal with a specific challenge in practice, to develop an evaluation basis regarding the quality of the model results, and the identification of barriers and limitations of different models. Based upon these findings, scientifically sound and practically appropriate advice for different city-specific use-cases will be provided.

Within the paper, the different approaches, the main results and lessons learned from these user-orientated, and transdisciplinary case studies will be presented. Furthermore, both the relevant legal framework conditions at the European and national level as well as further need for research will be discussed.

Overall, the experiences from the case studies show that also the use of simplified digital models of a city without the need for big-data and monitoring information can be good planning tools to assess plausible results regarding possible impacts of climate change on a small scale. Based on this, adaptation measures can be planned, justified, and implemented in the context of urban planning and development.

Cities face several water challenges which ask for more pro-active management approaches. One option that cities have is to start networking and build learning alliances with other cities. Forming meaningful alliances however asks for clear and easily accessible city-matching methodologies which are based on a standardised assessment approach and the presence of structured and large databases. The City Blueprint Approach is an example of such a methodology. Aim of this paper is to demonstrate the potential of this approach as a substantive methodology for enhancing learning on urban water management. This is done by illustrating the use of the approach in four cities, which were studied in the [citation removed to annonymize abstract] project and by comparing the results found with good practises present in the City Blueprint database. These good practises however cannot simply be copy-pasted from one city to another. We therefore outline in what way more in-depth city-to-city (C2C) learning results can be achieved and be tailored to best-fit particular urban areas. The paper concludes with some suggestions for enhancing the potential for C2C learning in urban water management networks.

While certification of voluntary sustainability standards remains an important strategy to promote sustainability of agri-food value chains, various alternative and complementary governance approaches have emerged in recent years. These include increasingly common inclusive business schemes, such as company-owned responsible sourcing programmes, or purchasing practices aiming to eliminate unnecessary intermediaries, often referred to as ‘direct trade’. Finally, also producer cooperatives and other organizations (co-)owned by producers have developed sophisticated governance strategies, as well as social enterprises whose purpose and business model centres around promoting producers’ well-being or another societal goal.

This growing institutional diversity creates an empirical and theoretical challenge of mapping the range of governance actors and strategies, including the goals, theories of change, and precise instruments they deploy to achieve those goals. Existing typologies of value chain governance remain at a broad level, without disentangling the institutional details regarding, e.g., ownership, voice, and the distribution of benefits, risks, and costs. Moreover, expanding the scope of governance actors from mainly buyers and certifiers to producer organizations reflects an important shift that may not only reveal innovative ‘bottom-up’ strategies including producer-led value chain upgrading and coordination between like-minded actors, but also a more diverse range of goals, instruments and theories of change that go above and beyond dominant strategies of sustainability or supply chain governance.

This paper addresses this challenge by developing a typology of value chain governance actors and strategies based on the results of an extensive survey (n = 120) of organizations in Peru and Switzerland that are involved in the production, processing, trading, selling, and certification of coffee and cacao and derived products. It discusses how actors’ ownership and organizational mission may affect the choice of governance strategies, and which strategies in contrast are used by a wide range of actors.

Production and trade of agricultural commodities such as coffee, cocoa, palm oil or soy are key drivers of deforestation and poverty traps. Therefore, companies, cooperatives and other private-sector actors experiment with diverse governance strategies. The most pertinent governance strategies include certification schemes, inclusive business and solidarity economy. Many of such strategies are underpinned by a theory of change, i.e. a causal model explaining how and why certain activities trigger certain outcomes and impacts for sustainable development, and which causal pathways to impact they expect. Different theories of change posit hypotheses that are partly compatible and partly incompatible with each other, even though multiple governance strategies interact with each other in shaping commodity supply chains and landscapes. However, the precise complementarities and antagonisms of multiple theories of change behind private sustainability governance strategies of agricultural commodities remain elusive.

Therefore, this contribution aims to increase our precision about theories of change that explain how, why and under which conditions private sustainability governance can overcome deforestation and poverty traps. Analytically, we adopt a theory of change methodology. Empirically, we draw on a survey of theories of change with n=85 companies and cooperatives along all stages of cocoa and coffee supply chains, which adopt certification, inclusive business and solidarity economy strategies in the cocoa and coffee sectors in Peru and Switzerland.

Our results show that, first, the private governance strategies differ significantly in terms of key actors, activities and involved stakeholders as well as their underlying rationales and entry points in supply chains. Second, despite this diversity there are archetypical causal mechanisms that explain how and why particular strategies generate particular outcomes. Third, using causal influence diagrams, we identify conditions that influence effectiveness of particular strategies, and we identify reinforcing and counteracting dynamics in theories of change of different governance strategies. Finally, we contrast the empirically identified theories of change used by actors in cocoa and coffee sectors with selected prominent theories of sustainability governance scholarship.

In 2021, Switzerland produced 369,116 tonnes of meat and 3.8 million tonnes of milk. The production of these industrial quantities of meat and milk relies heavily on the use of concentrated feed (e.g., soy), most of it imported (e.g., from Brazil).

The chains through which Switzerland is supplied with soy for animal husbandry are not well understood, due to a lack of transparency. This makes it difficult to assess the sustainability of Swiss meat and milk production, on the one hand, and the effectiveness of international and domestic measures aimed at making Swiss meat and milk production more sustainable, on the other. Both the positive impacts (e.g., incomes for actors along the supply chains) and the negative impacts (e.g., deforestation) of Swiss soy imports remain unclear.

This paper has two objectives. The first is to bring clarity to Swiss soy-feed supply chains using available databases and literature. We identify key actors, processes, and contexts (e.g., regional/global food systems) and map their multi-level interactions. Our analysis reveals where knowledge gaps exist and where greater transparency is needed.

The second objective is to envision and test international and domestic processes through which the identified transparency needs could be realized (e.g., changes in public opinion, regulatory changes, changes in trade policy). We approach this challenge through modelling. We also envision and test alternative pathways for improving the sustainability of Swiss meat and milk production (e.g., dietary changes). By analyzing alternatives, we thereby assess the impacts of transparency vis-à-vis other strategies. We also consider how transparency-based strategies could interact with other strategies (e.g., revealing negative sustainability impacts could promote dietary changes) and how unintended consequences (e.g., unjust impacts on marginalized actors along the supply chains) could arise and be mitigated or avoided.

Our study highlights the impacts and limitations of transparency and suggests new strategies through which a relatively small player, such as Switzerland, could promote sustainability in supply chains that are embedded in regional and global food systems.

Cross-sector partnerships are often conceptualized as part of a ‘deliberative turn’: attempts to democratize decision-making to enhance legitimacy and foster effective solutions. The understanding of deliberative democracy has primarily been developed with reference to the political sphere. However, over the past decades the concept has been applied to collaborative efforts to connect and coordinate investment and innovation processes in the private sphere, in an attempt to solve collective problems and enable transformative change. Deliberation in these processes has been studied to some degree, most notably through work on transnational environmental governance. In this paper, however, we focus on deliberative processes in local-level inclusive agribusiness partnerships in Africa. These partnerships are increasingly promoted as a tool to support sector transformation, through inclusion of marginalized actors as suppliers, processors, distributors, and/or consumers, and in doing so address environmental, food security, and equity goals. Deliberation is understood to be a central element of this transformation. Yet, the setting of these partnerships is not obviously conducive to deliberation, as they are characterized by power differences and set in unfavorable cultural and political contexts. Therefore, our study aims to explore the conditions influencing the character and quality of deliberative processes in inclusive agribusiness partnerships in Africa.

From the literature, we identify four elements that influence the quality of deliberation: (1) Deliberative context, and especially the dominant norms of political and economic coordination and decision-making; (2) Incentives for deliberation, or the perceived degree of issue salience and consequentiality; (3) Properties of the deliberating actors; participants’ relative resources, capacity and power to deliberate, ideological distinctions and trust barriers; and (4) Properties of the deliberative forum; the design, arrangements and resources that shape the nature of deliberation. These categories form the basis of our analysis of deliberation within twelve agri-business partnerships. Our case studies are selected to provide different configurations of factors relevant to deliberation, e.g. domestic deliberative norms, informed by a country’s degree of democracy and press freedom, and its score on the Varieties of Democracy index. This resulted in selecting a variety of partnerships from Ethiopia, Kenya, Burkina Faso, and Ghana. Based on our analysis, we produce a framework of conditions influencing deliberative capacity in the context of agri-business partnerships. Our findings suggest that despite the conditions for deliberation being largely unfavorable in the researched partnerships, partnership facilitators and participants employed a range of mechanisms to at least partially mitigate these issues, with varying outcomes.

Earth System Science indicates the existence of planetary boundaries. Crossing these limits means leaving the safe-operating space for humanity provided for by the relatively climate-stable epoch of the Holocene. In the Anthropocene, humanity - and in particular its richer parts - have become a factor destabilizing the earth system. What is relatively clear is that economic growth as we know it would lead to destabilization with devasting consequences particularly in the Global South. What is far less obvious is whether green growth within planetary boundaries is possible or whether a more radical degrowth agenda needs to be pursued. In particular, as both proponents of degrowth and green growth each claim that only by adopting their policy prescriptions is it possible to overcome poverty and inequality. A legal discourse on this matter is almost absent. Yet, the paper argues that law is not oblivious to these questions. To do so, the paper builds upon critical literature on international environmental law to highlight the many “complicities” between law, inequality, and economic growth. Whereas this stream of literature tends to condemn “human rights as a hubristic and harmful organizing category”, the paper promotes a more differentiated reading. Human rights may “not [be] enough” but they are one tool among others to address structural inequality. Despite persisting scientific uncertainties, a progressive reading of human rights and the precautionary principle require States to respect and protect planetary boundaries. In that sense, human rights may not require States to immediately shift from (green) growth to degrowth but in the long run some sort of stabilization will be required. In sum, by providing a minimum floor of social protection and upward ecological limits, human rights actually have the potential to transform Kate Raworth’s “doughnut economics” into “doughnut jurisprudence”.

Environmental human rights defenders (EHRD) fight for political, cultural, social, economic and environmental rights alike, while often facing intimidation and violence for their work and activism. This paper summarises first results from a new inter-disciplinary project where we investigate to what extent EHRD serve as important agents of change – at the crossroads of cultural and biodiversity conservation as well as climate change mitigation and adaptation.

We first develop an overarching conceptual understanding of EHRD that can be applied to different social and regional contexts. We then establish a theoretical framework to identify major socio-environmental discourses that underlie the motivations and goals of EHRD – and that inform their understandings of what is (not) cultural heritage and of what the cultural, ecological and social crises are they seek to address, as well as the priorities they may set thereby.

We apply this conceptual and theoretical framework to post-conflict Colombia, where EHRD assume a prominent yet precarious role as change agents. Although EHRD are legally protected, Colombia has become the most dangerous country worldwide for EHRD with more than 400 killings recorded since 2016. We select three regional study areas: the department of Putumayo in southern Colombia, the Amazon departments of Vaupes and Amazonas, and the Sumapaz region located in the central part of the country. In addition to the EHRD themselves, we include the groups and communities they belong to or represent, including their own gender, cultural and ethnic identities - and we scrutinize the degree of legitimacy the EHRD have as leaders within and beyond these groups.

Our analysis of EHRD, their groups and the dynamics between them is guided by the following research questions:

1. Which major motivations, goals and underlying discourses inform EHRD and their understandings of the cultural, biocultural and climate change crises they seek to address?
2. Which practices and strategies do EHRD employ to pursue their goals?
3. Which successes and obstacles – including implications for their vulnerability –have EHRD faced in Colombia since the signing of the peace agreement in 2016?
4. Which lessons can be learned with a view to supporting and protecting EHRD in Colombia across scales?

Across these steps, we use an interdisciplinary mixed-methods approach drawing on political science, human geography, sustainability science and law. Our expected findings seek to contribute to better understanding and supporting different groups of EHRD, through informing international and Colombian policy makers, civil society organizations and academics.

The importance of litigation for advancing justice and equitable allocation of resources, rights, and access is evident in the increasing number of climate change and just transitions litigation shaping transformations in earth system governance. During the COVID-19 pandemic, courts were also instrumental in securing access to essential services for populations in vulnerable situations. Similarly, within the context of water and sanitation governance, courts and quasi-judicial institutions have played an indispensable role in shaping the rules of allocation and distributing the costs and benefits of access. Understanding the modes of litigation on the human rights to water and sanitation is vital to delineating the impacts of courts (decisions) on allocation and access, conceptualizing water and sanitation justice, and identifying legal opportunities for human rights to water and sanitation litigation in various contexts. Remarkably, countries and communities in the Global South have experienced multiple disputes and legal actions over water and sanitation justice. Hence, there is significant human rights to water and sanitation jurisprudence from the Global South which can advance global understanding of justice, access, allocation, and rights in water and sanitation governance. The knowledge of water and sanitation justice is also critical for assessing the implications of emerging water governance paradigms such as water futures trading. Against this backdrop, this paper addresses the question: What new demands for justice and allocation materialize from analyzing human rights to water and sanitation litigation in the Global South? The paper proposes a theoretical framework for understanding the modes of human rights to water and sanitation litigation and the pathways for justice and equitable access and allocation. The theoretical framework is valuable for understanding: (1) the role of the courts in water and sanitation governance; (2) drivers which influence the key actors shaping the trajectory of water and sanitation litigation; and (3) legal opportunities and the prospects of water and sanitation justice.

The activities of multinational corporations have in many cases been linked to adverse human rights and environmental impacts in distant sites of production. Until recently, there have been few effective mechanisms at the national or international level to hold companies legally accountable for the adverse impacts caused by subsidiaries and suppliers. In recent years, governments in Europe have increasingly begun to adopt new laws building on a Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence (HREDD) approach. HREDD laws obligate companies to assess and address negative impacts caused by subsidiaries and suppliers, thereby promising to contribute to corporate accountability across national borders. Whereas previous research has analyzed the contested policymaking processes and the legal design of new regulations, the effectiveness of HREDD laws also depends on the uptake of such laws by different actors in producing sites.

This paper discusses the role of civil society actors in pressuring companies to comply with their legal obligations and to improve their due diligence systems. Empirically, we focus on the cattle and soy supply chains from Brazil to Europe. These commodities have contributed to massive deforestation and human rights violations in Brazil. Civil society organizations in both Brazil and Western countries have been active in campaigns to generate awareness of such impacts.

Based on empirical material collected during a three-months fieldwork in Brazil, we provide for an in-depth analysis of how civil society actors in Brazil perceive and have started to make use of European HREDD regulations to enhance corporate accountability. We show that Brazilian civil society organizations have increasingly collected data for linking impacts on the ground to specific multinational companies and have enhanced coalitions with European organizations to create awareness of HREDD regulations as well as to disseminate evidence of the negative impacts of business activities. Whereas it is too early to evaluate the results of these actions, we expect that the pressure from these emerging transnational civil society networks will contribute to improve companies’ due diligence systems and enhance corporate accountability. Based on our findings, we discuss how the capacity of transnational civil society networks can be strengthened and contribute to ongoing scholarly debates about the effectiveness of new regulations for enhancing the sustainability of global supply chains.

Global institutions sometimes endure relatively unchanged despite considerable changes in their external environment. Other institutions are built to change. Dynamism is an institutional design feature that allows these treaties to adapt to new circumstances. For some treaties, substantive amendments to the treaty can be made by a decision by the Conference of the Parties (COPs) without any need for lengthy procedures such as re-ratification. This paper uses the Mitchell database to show that this amendment procedure is present in 19% of all multilateral environmental agreements. While understudied, amendment procedures are characteristic of “living treaties” that can respond to new developments in the environmental issue that they address.

This paper investigates this potential by focusing on three living treaties, the Basel, Rotterdam, and Stockholm Conventions, which address different aspects of chemicals and waste. The Basel and Rotterdam Conventions manage transboundary movements of certain hazardous wastes and chemicals, respectively. The Stockholm Convention eliminates or restricts the production and use of persistent organic pollutants, among other related issues. The COPs of these treaties meet in tandem, negotiating and taking decisions concurrently. Yet, the politics of these living treaties vary. The Basel Convention has used its dynamism to address new waste streams, including ships, electronic waste, and plastics. The Rotterdam Convention struggles to list chemicals for prior informed consent, while the Stockholm Convention routinely lists new chemicals, including those widely used.

This paper argues that three trends associated with dynamic amendment procedures that, in turn, influence their effectiveness. First, political entrepreneurs can try to push or test how far the amendment procedures can be moved. This can lead to breakthrough decisions or lead some to question the legitimacy of the amendment procedures. Second, amendment procedures can expand the treaty’s scope and, in turn, its economic effects. This can entice some economic sectors to seek to block or undermine decisions. Third, living treaties can more easily claim jurisdiction in regime complexes. As a result, some actors could use these treaties as more convenient options to advance new issues. Alternatively, this could be a disincentive for implementation, as multiple rules could work against one another. Together, these three trends shape how living treaties respond to pressing and equally dynamic environmental issues.

Synergistic governance arrangements are often proposed as promising solutions to effectively navigate the normative and institutional fragmentation of the growing network of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs). Yet, it is unclear whether such governance arrangements can offer effective tools to address problem-shifting, i.e., the negative spillover effects that flow from the design or implementation of one environmental regime to others. Synergistic arrangements between MEAs can involve different degrees of harmonization, ranging from mere sectoral coordination to integration of MEAs. An unprecedented integrated governance experiment that sits at the highest end of this spectrum corresponds to the normative and administrative integration of three MEAs on chemicals and waste. Also known as the BRS conventions, these are the 1989 Basel Convention on Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, the 1998 Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade, and the 2001 Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. In the past nearly two decades, the BRS conventions have gradually institutionalized their coordination efforts through synergies decisions, a merged secretariat, and conferences of the parties that are held in joint and parallel sessions (also known as ‘TripleCOPs’). This experiment is unique in its institutional features, which aim to, among others, enhance efficiency in decision-making, strengthen implementation, and increase policy coherence. What remains to be determined is whether the BRS model had any effect on the problem shifts that have existed among these regimes prior to the integration process. These shifts result from the institutional and normative gaps, overlaps, and duplications created by the fragmented regulatory framework of chemicals and waste management, and include degradations to the planetary environment, socioeconomic discrepancies, as well as bureaucratical inefficiencies. In this paper, we conduct an empirical analysis to explore the conditions under which the BRS model has emerged, whether it has been able to achieve its objectives, and whether these objectives have minimized negative spillovers. We combine text analysis (e.g., of TripleCOP decisions) with semi-structured interviews with government officials, the BRS secretariat, and relevant NGOs to identify and compare the independent variables determining the problem-shifting prevention capabilities of the TripleCOPs and the BRS secretariat. Based on our findings, we reflect on potential paths for improvement, as well as on the transferability (or lack thereof) of this governance model to other international environmental issues.

The challenge of global environmental governance lies largely in implementing effective solutions to environmental problems as articulated in multilateral environmental agreements. These agreements are narrowly focusing on their own problems and the implementation of measures can create new problems which may impact different people, places, and time, a phenomenon we refer to as problem-shifting. The nature of problem-shifting originating from multilateral environmental agreements has not been examined in a systematic manner. In this study, we make a first step by focusing on the Minamata Convention, which is tasked with the management of anthropogenic mercury emissions. To allow for a comprehensive assessment of the occurrence of problem-shifting the measures taken by countries to implement the Convention, we used national reports to extract nearly 1500 implementation measures, which we categorized into over 100 distinct types, based on the source of mercury, and type of measure implemented. These types are then thoroughly examined against environmental literature to determine the nature of new problems that these measure types create. For instance, the identified measure regarding the prohibition of using dental amalgam displaces the problem due to the increased occurrence of restorative actions needed. Our analysis has identified a number of measures that cause problem-shifting, generating problems in issue streams related to temporal shifts in mercury management, and product management. This assessment on problem-shifts largely outlines various types of problem-shifts occurring, the drivers and burden-holders of the shifts, and potential magnitudes of shifts. We also identify the risk of problem-shifting into the social domain. These results undermine the need for preventative and responsive measures to be established within multilateral environmental agreements, to avoid and mitigate the occurrence of such shifts. The methodology provided in this research may also be applied to the assessment of other agreements.

Recent research on the manifold barriers to evidence use in policy and practice has shown the difficulty of acting on the widespread call for increased evidence use to better address sustainability challenges. Considering these barriers, our inter- and transdisciplinary paper asks what principles and best practices could enhance evidence use for sustainability using the illustrative case of agricultural pesticides. It expands recent scholarly contributions on principles for legitimate science-policy-society interfaces for food systems and comparable sustainability challenges.

We develop a normative model with principles and best practices for the five stages of evidence use: evidence production, evidence uptake, the influence of evidence on decisions, sustainability effects of evidence-informed decisions, and feedbacks into new evidence production. Our starting point are the ideals of deliberative democracy and biosphere stewardship in socio-ecological systems. Deliberative democracy refers to policymaking based on reasoned argumentation. Biosphere stewardship advocates responsible management practices that support biosphere-based sustainable development by reflexively drawing on diverse kinds of knowledge and evidence. Based on these guiding concepts, we synthesize a set of core principles of good evidence use from the existing literature on evidence-based and -informed policymaking and practice.

We then apply the core principles of good evidence use to the case of agricultural pesticides. Reducing the environmental and human health risks of pesticide use is a complex sustainability challenge at the food-health-environment nexus. We operationalize the synthesized core principles to derive a set of best practices of evidence use in pesticide policy and practice. We empirically illustrate these best practices using examples from interdisciplinary research and from the experiences of practitioners engaged in the transformation of pesticide governance and use in Switzerland. We argue that such best practices can serve as bright spots to inform future change towards more evidence-informed decision-making for sustainability.

We conclude by providing recommendations on how the identified best practices can be strengthened in the case of pesticides and in relation to other sustainability challenges. Our conclusions speak to scholarship on evidence use and its governance, science-society interfaces, deliberative environmental decision-making, and biosphere stewardship. They can also guide actions of policymakers and practitioners for increasing evidence use in the governance of pesticides, food systems, and other sustainability challenges.

The role and influence of international scientific advisory committees to environmental treaties is understudied. International relations scholars mostly focused on stand-alone global scientific committees which are the Intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental science-policy platform on biodiversity and ecological systems (IPBES). This paper provides a new typology of the science-policy relationship in environmental treaties, by investigating how treaty makers and scientific committee members design the knowledge production process to support treaty decision-making. Mobilizing literature from the field of science and technology studies (STS), it focuses on two design dimensions of the scientific committees: the diversity of the membership and the interactive or linear process of knowledge production. These dimensions characterize the presence of boundary work between science and policy. These dimensions permit comparing 20 cases of scientific committees’ organizational structures from a new perspective coming from the STS field. Based on a document analysis of the committee’s terms of reference and procedures and a survey of scientific committee members about their operations, this paper finds that these two dimensions vary widely among different treaties. In line with STS literature conclusions, this variation may lead to varying uptake levels of scientific knowledge in different international environmental organizations. The typology is a new data-driven tool that will allow cross-case comparisons and which can be used both as the dependent or independent variable in future studies.

The last twenty years has seen a resurgence in academic and applied interest in governing urban food systems. This interest is the result of the intersecting of a number of issues, including dissatisfaction with the food system and its economic, ecological and social distantiation/alienation; the rise of complex systems thinking; increased political power of local governments and particularly cities; and the emergence of novel co-governance approaches. By and large, emergent urban food governance has been informed by the increasing appreciation of urbanization and its impact on food security and food systems. This process has been coupled in some contexts by a wave of decentralization of powers from national to local government which has shifted attention of global development agencies and donors to urban realities, devolved austerity measures and/or contributed to the rise of cities as key powers in transforming the food systems. Historic urban food governance processes have shaped how food is produced, transformed, distributed, consumed and disposed around the globe. At the moment, the intersection between the food system and the urban is resulting in different forms of malnutrition. Indeed, the majority of overweight and obese adults and one in three stunted children live in urban areas. Furthermore, largely cities and towns are responsible for different forms of resource depletion and climate change. It is urgent to transform urban food systems.

The vision is to create urban food systems that are good for people, places and planet, and where future generations will be able to feed themselves with good food.

The transformation of urban food systems will look differently for each city, these pathways need to be developed by citizens and consider the following principles to support more equitable and effective urban food governance:

1. 1. Time matters Adopting both historical and future-focused perspectives supports planning for uncertain and evolving urban food.
2. 2. Place matters : Implementing a place-based approach to urban food governance optimises the relevance of proposed actions.
3. 3. Relations matter: Scales, spaces, and agencies of urban food governance are co-constituted through structural and fluid interactions.
4. 4. Diversity matters: Dynamic and diverse critical theories, frames, and practices can help deal with complexity and co-produce new political possibilities
5. 5. Power matters: Engaging with normative processes and values and making a commitment to fairness requires navigating uneven patterns and relations of power.

Breaking the linear produce, consume, dispose chain is frequently seen by both scholars and practitioners as a crucial step in the transition toward more sustainable food systems. Therefore, circularity is an increasingly popular concept when thinking about the future of food systems, resulting in numerous policy developments for more circular food systems. As the outcomes of food systems are very context dependent, there are different visions on how to organize this transition. Hence, there is a wide variety of (combinations of) tools and mechanisms through which governmental authorities attempt to steer actors in the food system to make it more circular. However, there is limited systematic knowledge on the full spectrum of circular policy instruments, as well as how these contribute to more circular food systems.

In order to improve our understanding on these different policy pathways envisioned by scholars and policymakers, we conduct a systematic literature review of academic publications on how policy instruments can contribute to more circular urban food systems. The literature review follows the protocol for Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA), and coding of policy instruments is done using the software Atlas.ti. Following this review, we first provide an overview of the academic field, by looking at the number of publications, the distribution across academic fields, and geographies. Second, we synthesize which types of circular food policy instruments are proposed in the literature or implemented in practice; what their policy goals are; which aspects of food systems are prioritized; and how circularity in relation to these different instruments is appraised or evaluated.

The findings outline our current understanding about the different policy pathways toward a more circular food system by providing lessons and insights about how different circular food policy instruments work across levels and regions, and how they are embedded or related to other policies. Moreover, we conclude by discussing the wider trends that emerge from the current developments in circular food system policies. Thereby offering a systematic overview for both practitioners and scholars working toward a more circular food system.

The complexity of agro-food systems which characterised by globalisation processes, large geographical scales, opaque value chains, flows of resources, power and values in contexts of highly inequitable power relations which displace decision making far from communities and nation states where food systems originate and externalise negative socio-environmental impacts, with global calls to action on food security/environmental public goods suggests that deep, systemic changes are necessary with alternative transformation pathways which push back on globalised narratives of scarcity and crisis and which involve more autonomous and regenerative trajectories. Thus concepts embrace production to consumption, finance and investment, governance arrangements and power relations. However, understanding and consensus on how to achieve agro-food system transformations is lacking. Given this concept, the new [project name removed to anonymize] aims to generate evidence and tools to advance understanding on how to achieve transformative change in agro-food system to enhance biodiversity and equity outcomes and strengthen stakeholder transformative change capacity. [project name] targets telecoupled agrofood systems which drive land use change and create negative biodiversity and equity impacts, including in biodiversity-rich production locations in the Global South. In this paper we propose using socio-ecological / socio-technical systems as a lens to understand agrofood systems using telecoupling and relational theory, This critical interrogation will be conducted from different perspectives (disciplines, global north and south, indigenous....). As with critiques of globalisation theory, we will reflect on the ontology of societal and environmental change that underpins transformative change and which alternatives exist. Relationality theory calls for co-production of situated knowledge and recognizing different world views and relational values – but there are tensions (how to engage in an equitable, transdisciplinary way, without imposing categories; how to produce situated knowledges drawing on/generating plural forms of knowledge – while recognizing the nesting of living socio-natural systems, hegemonies (over ideas, land uses, purpose of economic exchange etc) and the role of distance / connection to place. This conceptualisation aims to pave the way for empirical work on leverage points for sustainable transformative change pathways, expanding the boundaries of current thinking about future agrofood systems, especially those with far-reaching values and economic rules shifts.

Modelled mitigation pathways based on Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) rely on the rapid deployment of land-based mitigation measures to meet temperature goals of 1.5 and 2 degree Celsius. These modeling results have been a significant driving force behind the global climate policy, promoting the rapid implementation of land-based mitigation measures as a cost-effective solution that benefits not only climate change but also supports healthy diets and other sustainable development objectives. However, what is poorly understood in the policy uptake of these modelled outputs is the unequal distributional burden borne by the Global South to achieve the global climate targets. In this paper, we analyse the projected outcomes related to food security for different world regions from IAMs in the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report's scenario database. We choose 1.5 and 2 degree scenarios that report results for a 10-region classification since this enables us to examine the differences between developing and developed regions with better precision. Applying this criteria we examine around 350 scenarios across 5 models. We find that the modelled mitigation pathways perpetuate an unequal world where food prices rise more for developing regions than for developed ones. Moreover, the per capita food demand especially demand from livestock products in developing regions remains well below developed countries even at the end of the 21st century. To achieve temperature targets, the scenarios appropriate large amounts of land in developing regions for afforestation and bioenergy crops, thereby increasing competition for land and negatively impacting food prices. These mechanisms contribute to a world where millions of people are at risk of hunger, even in 2050 and 2100, with some modelling studies suggesting implementing food aid programs for alleviating the situation. This IAM-generated imagination of an inequitable world raises serious questions about their policy relevance and uptake. Alternative imaginations which consider the distributional effects of land-based mitigation measures on different regions are essential to ensure that climate goals are achieved while prioritizing global equity and sustainability.

Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) increasingly include public participation provisions in their environmental chapters. While these provisions are typically vague and poorly enforceable, one procedure is more elaborate: the submission on enforcement matters (SEM) process. The latter was originally created by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and later diffused to other US PTAs concluded with Latin American partners. SEMs are written documents filed by civil society members asserting that one of the PTA’s parties is failing to enforce its environmental laws. They are compiled and assessed by a secretariat and can lead to the production of a factual record if the secretariat considers it warranted. Factual records consist of an investigative report including interviews with government officials and analysis from independent experts.

As the final step of the SEM process, the production of a factual record can be analytically investigated as the “success” of a submission. In this sense, the vast majority of SEMs are not successful. This paper investigates why this is the case and what conditions make SEMs more likely to succeed. It relies on a new dataset compiling the 158 SEMs submitted between 1995 and 2022 under the framework of PTAs concluded by the United States. Using qualitative comparative analysis, I test the effect of three conditions for success: the government concerned with the SEM; the type of submitter (an NGO, a citizen, or a coalition); and the nature of the environmental issue (related to human health or not).

Factual records are not binding on the parties and the SEM process is not exempt from limitations. Nevertheless, the process is not costless either, as it requires in-depth investigation from the secretariat and responses from the parties. Further, the SEM process is one of the most advanced civil society participation mechanisms in environmental governance, including in environmental treaties. 54 SEMs have been submitted in the last 10 years, suggesting that environmental NGOs and citizens still find a use to the procedure three decades after the conclusion of NAFTA. Therefore, finding the conditions under which SEMs are most likely to result in a factual record provides lessons on how to improve civil society participation in environmental governance. This is critical to ensure that state environmental commitments are implemented, which could partly appease the backlash PTAs have been facing in recent years. In sum, this paper contributes to the literatures on participatory environmental governance, government accountability, and trade-environment politics.

Climate change is undoubtedly one of the most crucial challenges for the survival of humankind. In response to the increase in climate effects, many countries have designed a myriad of policies to achieve net zero emissions. Several policies that nominally have climate change mitigating objectives also have substantial trade impacts, be they implicit or explicit. These trade-related climate policies are proliferating and their impacts on global trade are growing rapidly. For example, promoting environmentally sound products and standards can impact the production and commercialisation of goods in several sectors of the global economy, including agriculture, mining, and manufacturing. In addition, emerging economic strategies concerned with rising international competition, national security issues, and green industrial development are becoming more integrated into climate policies. Despite the growing relevance of climate policies for international trade, the global landscape of trade-related climate policies has not been systematically studied and compiled into a single database. Although existing databases provide information on climate or trade policies, they do not capture the elements that make climate policies crucial trade instruments. To address this gap, we introduce the Trade-Related Climate Policy (TRCP) Database. The TRCP database includes policies from all G20 countries since 1990, compiling information on policies’ regulatory elements and trade impact. Our database provides evidence for researchers and policymakers to understand the implications of climate policy for trade and promote policies in the least trade-restrictive way possible.

Recent academic and policy discussions on the Circular Economy (CE) gained traction in sustainability and social sciences literature not only in the context of highly industrialised countries but also in the Global South. They attempt to bring an alternative model to replace the current linear production-consumption model through more extended material use and staying within planetary boundaries.

Natural sciences and engineering scholars have mainly articulated the concept of CE. By contrast, social science has criticised techno-optimistic conceptualisations and the lack of empirical and contextual knowledge from the Global South. Critical scholars called attention to the circular economy’s privileging of neo-colonial and neo-liberal approaches to development. The focus on Global North demonstrates an emphasis on well-being, decoupling benefits, and high-technology solutions and predominantly focus on circulating high-value materials in the Global North. By contrast, the focus on Global South by scholars and practitioners in the Global North points to promoting ‘green growth’ through waste management jobs, focusing on certain types of material circulation practices, such as installing recycling plants for hazardous and low-value materials and neglecting the social implications for the informal sector in the Global South.

Such divergence in conceptualisations and academic discourses on the Circular Economy concept and especially on its social and justice implications instrumentalises the Circular Economy as an International Development tool in the context of the Global South. It frames it as a sustainability model with the benefits of addressing climate change and transforming lifestyles and social-economic-environmental relations in the Global North. However, these divergent conceptualizations potentially re-produce and replicate pre-existing inequalities in development and create silos on equity and justice considerations of the Circular Economy concept.

This paper conducts a critical narrative review of selected academic and policy literature published from 2010 through 2022. It investigates fundamental conceptualisations and discourses around the Circular Economy while attempting to find out how and to what extent such conceptualizations differ in the context of the Global North and Global South. The paper contributes to the developing critical scholarship on the Circular Economy from the angle of socio-ecological impact.

The environmental impact of trade agreements has been a controversial political issue since the early 1990s. Trade participants were prompted at an early stage to conduct environmental impact assessments (EIAs) of trade agreements. For example, in 1993 the OECD Council of Ministers recommended that “governments should examine or review trade and environmental policies and agreements that have potentially significant implications for other policy areas”. In 2017, UNEP and IISD developed recommendations for conducting environmental impact assessments of trade agreements in terms of timing, geographic and topical scope, and types of assessors. Surprisingly, there is no systematic assessment of how trade participants implement EIAs for trade agreements and the extent to which current practices for EIAs for trade agreements comply with these recommendations. Our study examines the design of environmental impact assessments of trade agreements. Who performs environmental impact assessments and how are they implemented for which trade agreements? To what extent do trade participants include environmental risks in trade agreements? By collecting and reviewing environmental impact assessments of more than 100 trade agreements notified to the WTO since 1995, we categorize this information according to the four criteria recommended by UNEP IISD, which provide a baseline for assessing the quality and effectiveness of EIAs.

We illustrate the significance of this new dataset by analyzing the EU's regulatory approach to the environmental impact assessment of trade agreements from a comparative perspective with other trade actors performing similar trade transaction assessments (i.e., the United States, Canada, China, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, South Korea, and Japan). Our preliminary results indicate that the EU is leading the international field, with 35 (85%) EIAs in 41 EU trade agreements, engaging independent consultants for EIAs of trade agreements, and conducting EIAs for both parties involved. However, current environmental impact assessments of trade agreements fall far short of UNEP recommendations, especially in terms of impact on third parties, ex-post analysis assessments, and standard indicators of environmental impact. The dataset we created in the design of trade agreement EIAs provides longitudinal and comparative insights into how and to what extent environmental risks are incorporated into unilateral, bilateral, and regional trade policies. We focus here on the European Union, but the dataset will also contribute to broader academic and policy debates on the institutional design of trade agreements, coordination of trade and environmental policies, environmental impact assessment, and risk regulation.

In late-modern societies more and more people value time over money. Both, time wealth and material wealth are closely related to individual consumption patterns and its environmental footprints. Currently, scientific knowledge on time wealth and its environmental implications is marginal and transformation policies hardly consider time wealth explicitly. However, as time wealth is increasingly valued it could turn out as an emerging key lever for sustainability transformation of consumption.

In a recently finished inter- and transdisciplinary research project[1] we shed light on time wealth from different disciplinary angles (psychology, social sciences, industrial ecology) and synthesized the knowledge in a prospective simulation model. Time wealth was conceptualized and measured on a psychometric scale encompassing the five dimensions speed of life, plannability, synchronization, time sovereignty and free time.

An empirical survey among people at working age in Germany was conducted to measure individual time wealth, time use patterns and adoption of time-efficient practices and to assess associated consumption patterns (before, during and after the COVID-19 lockdown). We observe the adoption of time-efficient practices across different consumption areas such as food and mobility depending on the level of time wealth. For example, people using the fastest means of transport frequently also tend to eat more often cold than warm meals. Age and time wealth correlate best with consumption patterns.

The simulations show that only the combination of time wealth level and age class sufficiently explains the greenhouse gas emissions of consumption of population groups, which makes generations with different time wealth levels meaningful target groups for sustainable consumption policy. Moreover, many positive and negative environmental impacts of different time uses cancel each other out. The major cause is rooted in the property of time: time cannot be saved, but is always filled with activities. Consequently, there is a full rebound effect of time in relation to time-efficient practices albeit different time uses go along with different carbon footprints.

With our paper presentation, we aim for two objectives. First, we want to present major research findings and discuss the usefulness of a time-wealth perspective for the promotion of sustainable consumption with the international sustainability community. Second, we want to reflect upon a number of issues we encountered when working in this highly interdisciplinary context, such as fragmented research communities and institutional preconditions for time-wealth-based sustainability policies.

[1] reference removed to annoymize review process

Responding to the declared climate emergency demands systemic and transformative change in policy and governance systems, and decisive adaptation action to be taken now. Yet, a long-standing ‘adaptation gap’ continues to prevail. This is often symptomatic of hidden path dependencies and self-reinforcing ‘lock-in’ dynamics that work to preserve current regimes and make them highly resistant to change. Uncovering these hidden dynamics is a vital first step, but what this information holds for targeting interventions and designing ‘unlocking’ strategies remains unknown. Taking this next step, this paper examines how an understanding of lock-in dynamics can be used to leverage transformative change and accelerate adaptation action.

Based on empirical research conducted within the [citation removed to anonymize abstract], we draw examples from three countries (UK, the Netherlands and Germany) and across different problem domains (such as coastal adaptation, water scarcity and biodiversity), to illustrate different types of lock-in mechanisms and dynamics in action. From this, we identify certain types of ‘unlocking’ strategies that could be employed to dissolve lock-ins and formulate a typology based on the mode of leverage required (e.g. actor, rule or resource-based) and the point of intervention within complex systems. Observations are made about the extent to which these strategies may be shared or unique to certain types of lock-ins, reflecting on examples of innovative approaches currently taking place in these countries. Attention is also given to critical questions about the potential for reconfiguring lock-in dynamics to ‘lock-out’ maladaptive pathways and prevent detrimental lock-ins for occurring in the future.

With rising environmental pressures on water resources and infrastructure due to climate change, governments are urgently working to build resilience. Within the United States the effort to transform governance of water resources and infrastructure to prepare for intensifying climate effects- including rising sea levels- is especially urgent. While technological innovation can support climate response, technology alone may be insufficient for building resilience. Rather, building resilience requires substantive change in multiple dimensions such as technology and infrastructure, institutional processes, culture, and values, ultimately necessitating a transformative governance approach. Emerging scholarship on transformative governance and resilience suggests building collaborative and inclusive relationships with stakeholders, ensuring reliable funding for resilience programs, establishing legislative support for policies, and the emergence of strong leadership with a vision to move policies forward are important processes for transformation. While process identification helps, little is known about how particular processes work together or how to sequence or bundle processes to achieve transformation in practice. Our study relies on 31 interviews with state wastewater management officials in four New England States- Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. We analyze these interviews using the method of process tracing to code 11 critical processes of transformative governance in key resilience programs within each state. We find that there appears to be important patterns in sequencing of transformation processes and that the co-occurrence of some processes lead to better resilience outcomes than others. The findings from this study present a pathway of priority areas for policy makers to consider when implementing programs to ensure sustained and transformative governance when planning for a climate resilient future.

Only seven years remain to achieve the Agenda 2030 and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). From the start, there have been calls for the transformation of societies so that the ambitious goals can be achieved. Since several of the SDGs seem out of reach, we turn to one of the promised “key factors” for transformation: multi-stakeholder partnerships (MSPs). MSPs are understood as voluntary collaborative agreements between public actors (incl. international organisations, and states or sub-state public authorities) and non-state actors (incl. non-governmental organisations, companies, and foundations) as a specific form of governance architecture with shared objectives. Earlier assessments have provided mixed results whether MSPs can deliver on the promise.

We ask, if, when and how MSPs can bring about structural and long-lasting effects, what we call transformational effects. To answer this, we distinguish between partnership effects, external effects and transformational effect and investigate what and how mechanisms link these different effects to each other. Our research contributes to the growing literature seeking to understand how and under what circumstances MSPs can contribute to sustainable development.

By exploring successful partnerships, i.e. MSPs with the potential for transformational effect or that have achieved such transformation, led by a diverse set of actors, providing different functions across all pillars of sustainability, we identify factors and mechanisms and combinations thereof (called pathways) that enabled substantial contributions to sustainable development. Cases are chosen based on their (potential for or achievement of) transformational effects, a wide geographical distribution (covering Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and global), and who the lead actor of the MSP is (IO, public or non-state actor). Diversity of cases is also reflected in the selection MSPs focusing on different forms of sustainability (social, economic, environmental).

Drawing from literatures on MSPs (and policy success?), potential factors may include aspects such as institutional design and committed resources of the partnering actors; while mechanisms refer to processes and synergies that are achieved throughout the partnership, enabling not only the fulfilment of goals of individual partnerships but also external effects or even transformational effects.

We thereby not only contribute to advance the research field, but provide avenues through which MSPs can enhance their transformative power in order to achieve the sustainability needed. Thereby, we want to support the MSPs to deliver on the supposed promise to bring transformational change.

Most theories of planetary justice are formulated by scholars from the North. However, there is a notable absence of Southern academics, especially from Africa, in the debates. My paper would like to examine the issue of the foundations of planetary justice from a postcolonial African perspective, i.e. that of the Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe. In his book Brutalisme (2020), Mbembe writes: "What had initially appeared to me as a specific feature of what I had called the postcolony began to lose its singularity as my work was reappropriated in various contexts. I realised that this was a frame whose scale was much larger than the African continent." (Mbembe 2020: 15)

Although Mbembe's argument is formulated in 2020, it is earlier, around the 2010s, with the publication of texts such as Necropolitics(2006) and Critique of Black Reason (2016), that a reflection on planetary rights and justice is formulated. He argues in these essays that the absence of rights and justice, whether political, economic or environmental, are not the exclusive traits of African states. "Africa, Mbembe writes, was, in truth, only a laboratory for global changes. Since then, it is to reflect on this planetary turn of the African predicament and its counterpart, the African future of the world, that I, along with others, have set out." (Mbembe 2020: 15)

My paper will focus on two questions: a) What is planetary justice according to Mbembe? b) How does this concept differs from those elaborated among Western scholars, of which Biermann, F., Kalfagianni, A et al. wrote an excellent synthesis in issue 38 of the Earth System Governance paper? (Biermann, F., Dirth, E., Kalfagianni, A., 2020) Furthermore, I will discuss the contribution of potcolonial theories to Mbembe's foundations and principles of planetary justice. Based on a close analysis of Mbembe's works Necropolitique (2016), Brutalime (2020) and The Earthly Community (2022), I will conclude by examining the pertinence and limits of Mbembe's potcolonial approach to the concept of planetary justice in contemporary debates on planetary governance.

This work aims to contribute to the discussions on energy justice in the Global South by addressing the electrical energy systems in the Amazon from the perspective of decolonial energy justice. The disputes in the Amazon related to energy projects compose a scenario of historical energy injustices and persisting colonial power relations. While presenting high rates of rural energy poverty, the Brazilian Amazon energy system is considered the country's hydro-energy frontier, with large hydropower plants in operation and many others planned for construction. Large energy projects in Brazil date to the geopolitical vision of the military dictatorship in the 1970s. Back then, the Amazon was understood as terra nullius and was subjected to national development projects aiming for a supposed regional occupation and integration. In this context, the expansion of energy production in the Amazon took place mainly through hydroelectric power plants, which introduced the region into the national division of labor. This movement led to substantial social and environmental injustices, including genocides and the displacement of traditional people and indigenous groups, which persist nowadays.

Traditional discussions on energy justice, which originated in the Global North, are concerned with the social distribution of benefits and expenses of the energy systems and related decision-making processes. A decolonial perspective on energy justice sheds light on the social relations of energy, pointing out that energy systems are one of the pillars of current modernity and capitalism. As much as the concept of energy is imagined and implemented by the occidental epistemology and development narrative, the traditional definition of energy justice reproduces such hegemonic power relations. A decolonial energy justice framework recognizes the interaction between energy injustices and colonial power, especially in the Global South, and aims to encompass diverse conceptions of justice, culture, and identity.

The goal of the present study is to explore the decolonial energy justice considerations investigating the development of energy systems in the Brazilian Amazon, especially regarding the context ensuing on the Belo Monte hydropower plant. The decolonial energy justice analysis accounts for the persistence of the Colonial Matrix of Power in the structure of energy systems and for the social relationships that energy systems produce, maintain, and destabilize. Decolonizing energy justice expands the significance of energy justice discussions and its contribution to just transformations, highlighting colonial power relations and enabling the emergence of diverse emancipatory energy projects.

One of the main criticisms of the recent wave of climate protests of Extinction Rebellion, Fridays for Future and others has been that they are inadequately addressing the knowledge structures that underly extractive capitalism and what Farhana Sultana has called “climate coloniality”. In response to this criticism, various groups are advancing the notion of cognitive justice, which aims to centre ways of knowing and being that have been marginalised by Western modernity and colonialism, especially indigenous, spiritual and ancestral knowledges and practices. This paper investigates these newly emergent trends by analysing the case study of a transnationally operating climate justice group, the Extinction Rebellion Being the Change Affinity Network (BCAN).

Based on two years of ethnographic research and 60 qualitative interviews with movement actors in 12 different countries, I will investigate how advancing cognitive justice and planet repairs draws on various forms of knowing, including religious, indigenous and ancestral epistemologies, and how these are mobilised as an alternative to what is seen as a predominantly science and technology centred perspective on the climate crisis. The paper will show how these advocates for a pluriversal world order not only put forward certain political demands but try to enact a paradigm change in which different epistemologies and ontologies, particularly those marginalised by Christian missionaries, Western science and political secularism, are at the centre of the change they are trying to achieve—in climate politics and the communities they are connected to across the globe. The paper thereby contributes to the debate on the relation between ecology, science and religion by investigating how decolonial, spiritual and indigenous languages and rituals embody a new form of ecological politics. Finally, the paper establishes a new analytical framework to conceptualise the blurred boundaries between traditional, indigenous, and ancestral knowledges.

Green finance governance has become one of the major pillars of the current global climate governance. Transnational climate governance institutions increasingly initiate green finance policy instruments, such as climate-related financial risk disclosures, and build new allies to mobilize money that could accelerate a global net-zero transition. These new types of climate finance governance steer transnational financial flows and determine for whom the money is allocated. Despite rapidly growing climate finance, developing countries remain lacking in funds and investments to cope with climate challenges. Moreover, some climate financial tools reproduce the disparity between the Global North and the Global South (e.g., small-scale farmers’ purchase of crop insurance due to severe droughts in Africa). This normative aspect of green finance governance has been marginalized in policy and academic debates but needs to be centered for just transition. This paper explores emerging issues of global inequality and justice in global climate finance governance through the lens of climate colonialism. Climate coloniality has been shaped by extractive capitalism, and it (re)produces unequal exchanges between the Global North and the Global South in multidimensional aspects, including ecological and epistemological inequalities. In that sense, the existing climate finance governance architecture seems to be a venue of climate colonialism based on the dominant influence of financial experts and elite groups. How and when do global climate finance instruments trigger multi-layered global inequalities? What types of asymmetrical power relations are behind the inequalities? Who has the agency to set governance rules and agendas for whom? As the first step to understand the sociopolitical dynamics in global climate finance governance, this research conducts a discourse mapping based on a systematic review of academic literature across disciplines and policy documents published by selected global green finance governance initiatives (from 2000 to present). This mapping exercise aims to find major policy and academic discourses on equity and justice issues in the global climate finance governance realm. It shows what knowledge network does or does not shed light on the global disparities. Based on the findings, I suggest some research agendas to support equitable climate finance policies and argue that inter- and transdisciplinary approaches are necessary to develop the research direction.

This decolonial collaborative study (as an interdisciplinary research team of Indigenous Elders, knowledge-keepers, and Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars) responds to decolonizing climate change and drinking water goverance with Northern Indigenous communities in Canada. We explore how the recent climate crisis (and interpretation) is challenging Indigenous drinking water sources; and what is at stake in processes such as consultation, impact assessment, regulatory hearings, approvals (including negotiation of benefits), and monitoring. And, what reformed processes can build Indigenous community
capacity and supports robust decisions? We focus on Indigenist community-led decolonial approach to climate justice and the connectivity between climate change and water governance and sustainability related to the interactions and inter-dependencies with health security, Indigenous environmental and cultural value protection. Indigenous knowledge-ways have much to offer in support of resiliency of climate change and water infrastructure in Indigenous communities, an intercultural reconceptualization of research methodologies, environmental sustainability, and educational programs which support Indigenous communities.

Focusing on decolonial community perspectives on climate change impact management and drinking water protection, our collaborative offers insight into Indigenous culture and
community responsibilities of Indigenous climate justice to inform protecting drinking water performance review policy development. Our Indigenist designing, coordinating and hosting a traditional interdisciplinary story sharing on the relationship between climate justice and drinking water protection.

Developing effective and trustful engagement dialogues to build self-determination among Indigenous Elders, Knowledge-keepers, and scholars. Our collaborative study findings may have many meaningful implications for climate justice policy documents local, provincially, and nationally and assist in the articulation and practice of drinking water source protection as culturally and community informed.

States have endorsed an exercise to designate ecologically or biologically significant marine areas under the Convention on Biological Diversity. They identify marine areas in need of protection through regional workshops and shared criteria for future marine protected areas. The identification process of ecologically or biologically significant marine areas provides a unique case for studying interrelations between science and Indigenous and local knowledge, along with the role of knowledge in multilateral environmental policy-making. We combine the ‘boundary work’ concept with insights from critical geography and practice approaches to elucidate boundary practices. These highlight actors’ efforts to demarcate ecologically or biologically significant marine areas; limit what could be considered Indigenous and local knowledge; negotiate the boundaries of marine areas needing protection, and the boundaries between science and Indigenous and local knowledge. We problematize conventional ocean protection views and knowledge selection patterns that solidified ecologically or biologically significant marine areas. We draw on ethnography during the 14th and 15th Conferences of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, four Workshops to identify ecologically or biologically significant marine areas, and interviews to reconstruct boundary practices and analyse how boundaries between knowledge types were negotiated on-site. Our analysis shows that political and territorial interests are deeply embedded in the process of identification of ecologically or biologically significant marine areas, challenging the integration of science and Indigenous and local knowledge. This highlights the need to conceive the ocean as a fluid space where territorialism hinders marine biodiversity protection.

Worsening water quality around the world impacts human and ecological health; restoring and preserving water quality for current and future generations requires collaborative governance approaches that balance sometimes conflicting or competing values and diverse knowledges to form evidence-based, implementable solutions to address water quality challenges. A critical step in this process is the sourcing, synthesis and application of data and knowledge from a variety of sources, including inter-alia scientific research, traditional ecological knowledge, and community-based or state led monitoring programs as well as navigating different data and information management systems. While prior research recognizes the importance of knowledge in good water quality governance, there is yet insufficient understanding of how the context in which this knowledge is developed influences its sourcing, synthesis, and application in water quality governance. In this paper, we conduct a systematic review to look at “what” and “whose” knowledge and “how” that knowledge came to be produced and applied in water quality governance in the United States. The objective is to shed light on the polycentric nature of knowledge production, the mechanisms of its utilization, and the actors, institutions and networks involved in marshalling knowledge for water quality governance. By illuminating the dynamic interaction between these elements, we hope to better understand how different types of knowledges and knowledge systems are used or not to shape water quality governance in the United States.

While regionalism is highly relevant in many policy fields today, regional idiosyncrasies have been poorly understood in the literature on multilateral climate governance. This article explores regional ideas of climate governance by comparing the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the Council of Baltic Sea States (CBSS). As international climate governance has institutionalized a normative compromise of liberal environmentalism since the 1990s, the article further assesses ideational challenges to this compromise. It examines how these ideas have evolved over time and explains variation between the organizations through the advent of new knowledge. Relying on qualitative content analysis of published documents as well as interviews with officials, the article finds that both CARICOM and CBSS have supported and reproduced liberal environmentalism in the past. More recently, CARICOM has started to connect climate change with notions of survival and justice, implicitly challenging liberal environmentalism, while CBSS firmly remains within established discourses of sustainable development and green growth. The article then argues that the advent of new knowledge from both scientific as well as anecdotal sources can explain the evolution of ideas in regional organizations. Problem definitions of climate change may evolve within regional organizations when officials gain new insights into scientific data from climate research, and are able to combine or confirm them with anecdotal experience from their day-to-day work.

Reflexivity, as a general governance capability, has long been suggested as a valuable element of environmental governance, both due to the inertia in the systems that need to be changed and the complex nature of environmental problems that are also often characterized by complexity, often surrounded by uncertainty, and have implications for core dimensions of modern societies. Ecological reflexivity is a more specific elaboration of reflexivity in governance and has been conceptualized, in brief, as the capacity of an entity to recognize its impacts on social–ecological systems, rethink its core values and practices in light of this and respond as elaborated further below. In this paper, we seek to operationalize how actors/stakeholders in diverse institutional contexts (private–public–civil society) can acquire some degree of ecological reflexivity as an element of engaging in change processes. Based on a review of conceptual and empirical literatures on requirements for and experiences with deliberation and reflection in relation to environmental challenges, we explore diverse approaches to help individuals and groups in various contexts engage in inclusive deliberation on their own role and responsibility. As a concrete anchor point for such deliberation of responsibility, we use the concept of safe and just operating spaces for climate change, biodiversity, and people. Learning how to systematically and inclusively reflect on their own potential role in the required change and deliberate on action is, we propose, an essential capacity for becoming agents of (transformative) change.

In the 21st century, ocean governance has been characterized by increasing transformations driven by technological advances, pressure from industrial sectors to expand the exploitation of marine resources and the need for sustainable use. Thus there is a growing concern with the regulation of human activities in areas perceived as gaps in global ocean governance architecture, which is translated into multilateral negotiation initiatives. In this respect, two issues are relevant and currently being negotiated, conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ) and deep-sea mining. The aim of this paper is to understand these negotiation processes through an investigation of access and participation of delegations, contributing to the study of agency and representation asymmetries within ocean governance. Based on international negotiation and bureaucracy studies, it is proposed an analytical framework of delegations profile in multilateral negotiations, which assesses quantity, diversity and institutional links of delegates, as well as an examination of constraints in access and participation in these formal settings of bargaining. Our hypothesis is that lack of transparency, barriers to access and inequality in representation lead to power asymmetries and negotiation capacity disparities, thus raising questions of equity in ocean governance. Regarding our object of investigation, we analyze lists of participants, official documents and reports of the Intergovernmental Conference on BBNJ, beginning in 2018 and currently in its fifth session, and the 27th Session of the International Seabed Authority. Subsequently, data from the multilateral meetings are interpreted and compared in the context of negotiation processes. Initial results show that both conferences presented constraints to access to negotiations, especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the latter sessions, participation of civil society has been limited, incurring a lack of transparency. Furthermore, there is inequality in participation, not only due to a lack of recurrent presence of developing states in negotiations but also due to variations in the composition of delegations. At the BBNJ Conference, there are asymmetries of representation in favor of those few actors who have great marine resource exploration capacities. In negotiations, larger and more diverse delegations use their resources, while delegations with greater limitations acknowledge structural adversities and seek alternatives. It is concluded that progress in global ocean governance is constrained by power disparities among agents, reproduced in multilateral settings through inequality in participation, raising concerns about the scope and the effectiveness of potential international agreements, as well as questions of equity.

The model of the “democracy cube” has led researchers internationally to assess the intensity of participatory governance in the dimensions of (1) power delegation, (2) participant interaction and (3) representation. This research contributes to the debate on assessing participatory governance in two ways: First, we discuss the dimensions of the democracy cube as to its empirical applicability, with a special view to whether and how each dimension constitutes a quantitative scale in the sense of “more” or “less” intensive participation, also drawing on recent literature that explicitly tests the model. Second, we perform a quantitative “test” of the model by drawing on a meta-analysis of 305 cases of (more or less) participatory governance from 22 countries in three continents To this end, each dimension was operationalised into one or more different items that were coded by three independent raters for each case. Also, more specific data on the participatory processes at hand, their contexts and outcomes were coded.

Perhaps most strikingly, we find the three-dimensional space as defined by the cube to be hugely unevenly populated. In particular, the dimensions of power delegation and participant interaction are highly correlated such that few cases exist which are high in power delegation but low in participant interaction and vice versa. When comparing average values of power delegation and participant interaction for different participatory formats (such as hearings, public meetings, roundtables or public referenda), those two corners of the cube remain virtually unpoluated. This raises questions about the independence of the two dimensions. The dimension of representation – who sits at the table – is most difficult to operationalize in a quantitative “less and more” fashion. Therefore, we defined a number of different items such as the number of participants, the share of participating professionals, and the mode of participant selection (targeted versus open). While some of these also shows a certain correlation with the dimension power delgation, the space is more evenly populated here. We conclude by discussing the usefulness of the democracy cube model for assessing participatory governance and propose suggestions for improvement.

The roles and responsibilities of citizens in flood risk governance and in climate adaptation more generally are receiving increasing attention. Citizens’ involvement is deemed crucial to make societies flood-resilient. Besides that, more general policy discourses centring on ‘community resilience’, ‘the Big Society’ (UK) and ‘the Energetic Society’ (Netherlands) attach an important role to citizens. An emerging body of flood risk governance literature examines how institutions relate to citizens through processes of facilitation and co-production. Also risk awareness, action perspectives and motivations of individual citizens are more and more studied, mostly from social-psychological and behavioural economics perspectives. I argue that these perspectives need to be combined, integrated and enriched to arrive at better insights into citizens’ roles and responsibilities. For this, I propose to use the social practices approach as developed in general social theory and further specified in environmental sociology. This approach takes the actual practices in which citizens engage as its main unit of analysis. Flood-relevant social practices include gardening (opportunities for inclusion of rainwater catchment technologies); refurbishing one’s house (opportunities for dry or wet proofing, instalment of green roofs); building, buying and selling of a house (opportunities for prevention of urban development in flood-prone areas), amongst others. These practices are more holistically defined than the more narrowly defined policy domains of institutional actors. Applying the perspective provides opportunities for governance since it broadens ideas about the array of actors that can potentially play a role in flood governance and highlights a wider set of mechanisms through which citizens’ flood-relevant knowledge, skills, attitudes and resources can be enhanced. Initial empirical examples from the Netherlands show the analytical and practical added value of this approach. There are emerging examples, for instance in the Dutch municipality of Dordrecht, where governmental actors made the effort to connect closely to the rationalities and concerns of citizens and discovered that the ‘license to operate’ that institutional actors had in the eyes of citizens was broader than expected. For instance, from the citizens’ viewpoint, it would make perfect sense that the same institutional actor addresses mitigation and adaptation action taking. In conclusion, the social practices approach has the potential to connect and integrate individual-centred and institution-centred approaches and to complement them with new perspectives that help identify a broader array of governance options. Hence, the approach addresses an essential missing link in current research and practice on citizens’ roles in flood risk governance.

Citizen participation has become a vital element both in research and technological development and innovation contexts and in decision-making and planning. It thus is a vital element of the governance of sustainability transformations addressing questions of democracy and legitimacy as well as reflexivity and transdisciplinarity. However, participatory processes are generally complex and dynamic and undergo various phases of opening up and closing down due to mutually co-constituting phases of appraisal and commitment. In this paper, we therefore address the question of when and why participation processes are opened up and when and why they are being narrowed down. Based on the development of a conceptual framework, in this paper we seek (i) to analyse a relevant case study with regard to the participation process and its processes of opening-up and closing-down in the course of time; and (ii) to identify reasons for those opening-up and closing-down processes.

To study these research questions, we analyse the participation processes conducted as part of a development process of a new city quarter with about 900 new apartments in a municipality in Northwest Germany. It involved citizens from the community, the municipality itself as well as scientists from the local university in different phases of the planning and transformation of a former military air base into a multi-purpose residential, commercial and recreational city quarter. In this case of a new neighborhood, technological innovations towards a carbon-neutral smart city are tightly linked to social innovations and spatial questions such as community development, sustainable development, equality, and quality of life. The participatory process was launched in 2015 and developed in several phases until the present day. Data has been drawn from participatory observation in workshop events, six expert interviews, and document analysis of meeting minutes, evaluation data, and official planning documents. Results show that normative, substantive and instrumental imperatives support opening-up processes. The closing down could be observed in the narrowing of thematic, spatial, participatory, and methodological scopes. Reasons for closing down comprise financial conditions and external legal conditions as well as conflicting interests, corona restrictions, and stakeholder fatigue. However, narrowing the scope of participants proved critical for the legitimacy and the acceptance of the process by citizens and other stakeholders, it therefore merits critical attention in almost all participatory processes.

Universities are called upon as agents of change to contribute to transformative change addressing sustainability challenges. This role concerns their immediate contributions to greenhouse gasses, but also how education and research activities are organized. For instance, the latter addresses the role of universities in public debates and stimulates researchers to engage with the broader public. It can moreover entail the way research is organized, with whose input and collaboration. Transdisciplinary collaborations, e.g., processes of mutual learning between science and society, often aim to address specific sustainability challenges and can take many different shapes and forms. Academics for instance organize workshops, roundtables, transition arenas, dialogues and other meetings and projects aimed at co-creating knowledge for sustainable futures. Moreover, scholars are increasingly collaborating with artists and designers within these meetings and projects. However, the contribution of such initiatives towards solving grand sustainability challenges is diffuse and difficult to evaluate.

In this paper, we will explore the potential contribution of multi-stakeholder dialogues as a form of transdisciplinary collaboration that is aimed at contributing to transformative change. Specifically, we look at the role of artists and designers in enhancing the quality of the dialogues using art installations and arts-based methods. We will first conceptualize the transformative potential of dialogues and the role of artists within that and secondly investigate a case-study of an ongoing transdisciplinary research network in the Netherlands [Network removed for anonymous review process].

First, we will briefly explain the nature, characteristics and possible outcomes of transdisciplinary collaborations and conceptualize transformative change. Second, we will focus specifically on the method of multi-stakeholder dialogues, as these interactions hold explicit benefits over other types of interaction. For instance, dialogues challenge participants to listen, and make explicit the values underlying their opinions, allowing for socially constructive conflicts. The way these dialogues are held, and especially within what spaces and how knowledge is shared is pivotal to unlock the sketched benefits. A positive contribution is attributed to use of arts, arts-based methods and the sharing of knowledge and data through visualizations, but little is known about how art can be optimally used to support transdisciplinary collaborations, or multi-stakeholder dialogues. Therefore, we will thirdly investigate how the role and contribution of art has been conceptualized in literature thus far, drawing lessons for the upcoming Sustainable Industry Dialogue. Lastly, we will explain the background and work of [Network removed], specifically focusing on the Sustainable Industry Dialogue.

DDIs are digital tools and mechanisms aimed at promoting inclusive citizen participation in political processes. Digital participatory budgeting, where citizens are taking part in decisions about the allocation of public funds, is one prominent example of DDIs. However, empirical evidence regarding the relationship between political trust and DDIs remains ambiguous. Citizens who are generally distrustful towards representative democracy are also likely to distrust institutionalized participatory mechanisms based on complex digital systems. Consequently, it has been argued by some observers that DDIs need to be designed and applied in such a way that they are able to generate trust from both citizens and decision makers alike.

But what are some of the pitfalls for the design and implementation of responsible and trustworthy DDIs? Are such participatory tools simply based on the uncritical ‘fetishization’ of novelty and techno-solutionism? To address these pertinent questions, this paper reviews the findings of the transdisciplinary research project ‘Deepening Digital Democracy’ (3D). The ongoing 3D project conducts research on DDIs in the north of the Netherlands, in collaboration with the Municipality of Groningen, a successful implementer of DDIs. Initial findings from an interactive workshop with Municipal experts on digital services illustrate that DDIs can be useful mechanisms to enhance knowledge exchange and trust among citizens and decision makers. Yet, the study also highlights several limitations for the use of DDIs, such as their limited scalability, existing digital divides, political apathy and time requirements, as well as entrenched polarizations and power relations in urban governance systems.

Local innovations and experimentation are highlighted for policies and practices that lead to urban transformations through spatial and temporal expansion and diffusion. However, scholars criticize that rationales for and narratives on urban innovation and experimentation frequently maintain the political and economic status quo and reproduce socially unjust urban realities. Moreover, a major research gap remains on the actual implementation of local action that strives for transformation. Empirical findings are particularly missing when it comes to comparative research on systemic urban resilience that goes beyond climate adaptation. The 100 Resilient Cities (100RC), now the Resilient Cities Network, represented a transnational municipal network that financially supported the development and implementation of local resilience action in participating cities under a broad resilience definition. Partaking cities had to identify potential external shocks and systemic stresses, i.e. present underlying problems for vulnerabilities, across a spectrum that included ecological, economic, societal and built environment spheres. Based on these perceived shocks and stresses, cities had to craft related policy actions in a resilience strategy to establish adaptation pathways for the future.

Against this background, this paper asks: Have urban resilience innovations been implemented and scaled to support socially just transformations? The study examines (1) to what extent and (2) in which thematic areas 100RC cities incorporated innovations and experimentation, (3) whether temporal and spatial scaling was foreseen, (4) which rationales and narratives surround the planned practices (e.g., techno-centric, socially just, challenging/ maintaining the status quo) and (5) whether and how they were implemented and potentially expanded temporally and spatially, including foreseen and actual participating actors.

To explore the research question, in total 1200 actions were systematically coded in 30 of the 74 resilience strategies in cities from the Global South and Global North. The first results show that experimentation and particularly the continuation of (social) innovations only make up a small part of planned actions in the Global South and North alike (120 and 65 actions in total respectively). For this study, I will analyze these actions according to the first four research categories presented above through qualitative and discourse analysis. Subsequently, I trace their implementation through a survey on and interviews of implementing actors mentioned in the actions. Based on this analysis, I compare the results to explore emerging patterns in implementation and the role given to social justice in urban innovation and experimentation across cities in the Global South and Global North.

As part of reaching a sustainable society, our collective mobility behavior needs an urgent transition to sustainability. Such large scale change requires challenging and disrupting beliefs, routines and institutions, i.e. what is considered normal by most. This process necessarily has to be initiated and facilitated by certain actors who have been categorized in the sustainability transition and transformation literature in a variety of ways: niche agents, entrepreneurs, activists, intermediaries or generally forerunners and change agents. However, to understand and enable this change better, the interaction dynamics between these change agents and regime agents requires further research.

In our study, we take the novel perspective of viewing these agents as a kind of outsiders: Individuals, that are fundamentally deviating from the norm paired with their attempt to change society. Specifically, we are interested in what we call epistemic outsiders, i.e. agents whose beliefs differ from a reference system substantially. These epistemic outsiders have a particular transformative agency, lying in convincing other agents of their different viewpoints, practices and strategies to initiate disruptive change in social systems. Convincing regime agents in crucial roles to effectively disrupt core structures within regimes’ sub-systems are essential for unlocking system stability and enabling change.

With this theoretical framework in mind, we will look at insider-outsider dynamics in different German cities on the topic of transport modes. We aim to identify key properties and relations for fostering change towards sustainability in the local mobility domain. We use an interdisciplinary approach of transition studies and psychology in an observational study. First, we will identify important stakeholders in each city (i.e. different types of outsiders as described above and regime agents, which we view as epistemic insiders) and examine how they relate to each other with a stakeholder mapping. We then use repertory grid interviews and cognitive-affective mapping as well as additional semi-structured interviews to look at the belief systems of stakeholders and their perspective on interactions, conflict and corresponding spatial relations between different agents. This approach combines qualitative and quantitative methods to provide detailed insights on the insider-outsider dynamics in the local mobility domain in the cities.

Insights about how interactions between usually conflicting groups can become more fruitful in the sustainability transformations context are indispensable and so far underrepresented in research. A better understanding of the underlying dynamics between insiders and outsiders does inform governance approaches and policy interventions to foster sustainability transitions.

In this paper we report on a comparative investigation into the governance of the decarbonization of transportation systems of major metropolitan regions in the US and Canada. It draws on over thirty key informant interviews in Montreal, Toronto and Los Angeles over 2020-2021. Results point to differences in terms of governance organizations as well as institutions that might be attributed to different federal institutional frameworks. First, unique multilevel governance organizations in the US exist for institutionalizing the regulation of transport-related pollution, namely federally mandated Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPO). These have been harnessed by the Californian state government to advance climate objectives at the metropolitan regional level. Such organizations have no analog in Canadian federalism, where the transportation planning process is more politicized and provinces have traditionally played a stronger role. Second, we find considerable differences in institutions for land-use planning. In the US federal system, land-use planning is vested in local governments and outside the jurisdiction of MPOs. This has made coordination for transport decarbonization at the regional level challenging. In contrast, under Canadian federalism, land-use planning is a matter of provincial authority, given that local governments are treated as “creatures of the provinces”. Our results suggest that a combination of US and Canadian institutional elements might be more effective. Finally, we discuss findings in light of theories of transnational and multilevel climate governance.

Cities around the world have emerged as critical actors to adapt to and mitigate climate change. However, research on the factors that drive city climate action have focused on the global North and these factors have not been systematically studied at a global scale. Understanding this global picture is important because cities face different contexts, challenges, and opportunities related to climate change. Cities that attend to the range of factors that influence their success can achieve targeted and effective climate action. This global systematic review investigates the factors that influence whether cities adopt, continue, increase, or abandon climate policies and actions. We identify differences in the factors studied, their strength of influence, geographical focus, methods, and focus on climate mitigation, adaptation, and resilience. We find that factors related to government capacity are studied the most, while environmental factors and factors related to the built environment are understudied. Fiscal capacity, city climate network membership, and motivations of politicians and governments have the strongest influence. In the global south, few studies have considered environmental factors, city structure, or the built environment, while government structure has received more attention. Few studies that focus on the global South use large-N quantitative methods, with an absence of quantitative analyses in some regions. Environmental factors such as extreme events and proximity to coasts influence adaptation more than mitigation. This global analysis reveals strengths, research gaps, and emerging trends that can improve how cities govern climate change and make city climate policies more targeted, effective, and ambitious.

Governance is a bottleneck in the quest for the transformation to sustainability; hence, many scholars claim that (democratic) political institutions need to change in the context of the Anthropocene and long-term challenges. One aspect is whether and how governments adapt political decision-making to consider profound global and long-term challenges like the climate and sustainability crises. Against this background, I focus on the role of specialized political bodies for sustainability, which I call “sustainability institutions”.

In the proposed paper, I introduce a cross-sectional data set offering an overview of roughly 200 diverse sustainability institutions that countries across the world had implemented by 2020 at the national level in order to promote sustainability in the executive and legislative spheres. The data set comprises sustainability institutions in the sense of public, cross-sectoral and permanent bodies, aiming to promote sustainability in terms of socio-ecological well-being with an orientation towards the future and embedded into global frameworks.

The data set covers variables on basic information about national sustainability institutions including their name, country, and world region, the year of their implementation etc. Further, it includes variables on both their structural dimension such as their links to the executive and the legislative bodies, and their substantial dimension in terms of their covered sustainability areas, future-orientation and reference to UN sustainability agendas.

The data set serves various purposes: First, the data set is an original contribution to the research and policy fields of sustainable development because it combines data on different types of sustainability institutions that were so far scattered over different databases or those with limited regional foci. Second, the data set facilitates comparisons regarding countries’ institutionalisation of sustainability according to key features. Third, the dataset serves as a basis for further research on the empirical phenomenon of sustainability institutions, e.g., as point of departure for in-depth case studies, or as a building block for large-n analyses like potential relationships with other variables such as progress on sustainable development, levels of democracy, or the like.

In the paper, I introduce the data set in terms of methodology and present findings from a descriptive comparative analysis regarding the main features and peculiarities of national sustainability institutions around the globe. The paper mainly contributes to the ESG research streams of Architecture and Agency as well as Democracy and Power.

Australia has long been termed a ‘climate laggard’ in international climate negotiations and policy making. Nevertheless, Australia has one of the best records for reporting within the climate regime. It has long been assumed that with better reporting will come better state behaviour. Thus, it could be expected that given Australia’s extremely strong track record of reporting under the transparency requirements of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and subsequent climate agreements, that there would be a convergence with strong climate policy. This, however, has not borne out. Therefore, this research asks, what, if any, are the impacts of reporting and review on Australian climate policy.

This paper first provides an historical account of climate policy in Australia and it major turning points and actors. This is followed by a tracing of Australian climate reporting and review. This is achieved through document analysis and interviews to better understand who prepares the reports, how they are prepared and used, and how reviews of Australian reports are received and responded to. This tracing provides a detailed picture of Australian climate reporting and review processes, which to date, have not been documented. This also allows for an analysis of the convergence, or lack thereof, between climate policy making and reporting and review.

This research contributes to a wider body of transparency work which is attempting to understand the substantive effects of transparency requirements and whether such requirements truly result in positive change or simply act to distract from it.

The Paris Agreement established a new international framework to accelerate the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in which countries agreed to maintain the global average temperature rise to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. As each member state of the Agreement defines its own nationally determined contributions (NDCs), a key condition for achieving the Paris goal is domestic climate actions of large emitters. Hence, national climate policy (i.e., sectoral or overarching policies aimed at lasting emission reductions), plays a central role in governing climate change under the Paris Agreement and is now a focus of the literature on climate governance. As the world’s largest emitter of GHGs, China plays an essential role in meeting global climate goals, and it requires a variety of public policy interventions to steer its direction. However, to date, the characteristics of China’s national climate policy mixes remains underexamined, and this knowledge gap prevents researchers from objectively and systematically assessing the progress and ambition of China’s efforts toward its climate commitment. In this study, we investigate China’s climate policy mixes through a two-level, bottom-up approach that examines the “Macro-level (policy mix balance)” and the “Meso-level (policy intensity)” characteristics. Particularly, policy mix balance is measured by evaluating the dispersion of policy instruments across different instrument types by applying the International Energy Agency’s categorisation of policy instruments along nine different types. On the other hand, policy intensity, i.e., the strength of policies toward specific goals, is measured by a revised version of [citation removed to annonymize abstract]’s (2015) Index of Policy Activity (IPA), which is an aggregation of six indicators: objective, scope, integration, budget, implementation and monitoring. More specifically, we compile a novel dataset of 342 national climate policies published from 2016 to 2022 by the Chinese central government, assess each policy with this two-level analytical framework, and then aggregate systematically at the policy mix level. Our contribution unfolds into two parts: first, we unpack the policy mixes that China has adopted and identify their key design features and temporal dynamics, e.g., the instrument balance and intensity among different sectors and the preference for adopting some specific type of instrument. Second, based on the aggregate results, we further examine the strength and weaknesses of China’s national government’s efforts to implement climate policies to influence long-term policy change and fulfill its NDCs.

Solving climate change mitigation in relation to power production systems to achieve Paris Commitments of maintaining waring well below 2 degrees Celsius is daunting. Involving people in strategizing and imagining a decarbonized future shows promise. This article reports on two day Citizen Juries held in four communities from 2021-2022 in Saskatchewan, Canada. Historically a fossil fuel, oil and gas region, Saskatchewan is an appropriate case study for transitioning to clean and renewable power production.

Two day deliberate focus group discussions in the communities were preceded and followed by surveys to measure preferences for power production sources, priorities in relation to strategy, and social learning. Qualitative analysis of discussions and strategies and recommendations for climate mitigation were anlayzed for case study comparisons and differences.

The four communities exhibited place based attachments and priorities dependent on both surrounding industry and power production sources. Coal, oil and gas communities continued to support fossil fuel generation together with carbon capture and sequestration to a greater extent than other communities. While there is high support for renewables, a wind power generation community made interesting comments and expressed concerns over expansion of this source of power production, but did evidence social learning. This community ranked natural gas pre citizen jury as the preferred source of power production, but revised this after learning about its Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHGs). The four communities expressed divergent perceptions surrounding Small Modular Reactors (SMRs); all communities favour renewables (wind, solar, hydro-electricity).

While cost of power production sources and impact on Gross Domestic Product was a significant concern at the beginning of the citizen jury, it decreased substantially by the end of the citizen jury. Participants stated, “cost shouldn’t hinder the goal’ of addressing climate change. Full life cycle costs of all power production sources need to be considered. Jurors made concrete recommendations for government surrounding leadership, education and citizen participation.

The structure of policy arrangements for the governance of climate change mitigation is defined as complex. Existing literature suggests that adopting a system perspective on such structures allows to unfold the complexity and it does so by employing the concept of policy mixes. This argument originates from the observation that governments have adopted an ever-increasing number of policy instruments which co-exist and evolve together over time as policy mixes for the mitigation of the climate crisis. Yet, to date, we have limited knowledge on if (and how) policies within the same policy mix interact with each other in addressing the climate crisis.

This paper focuses on this knowledge gap by employing a network lens to the study of policy interactions within mixes for climate change mitigation. It researches the case of the electricity sector in the United Kingdom (UK) and its national level policy mix from 1956 (year of adoption of the Clean Air Act, considered a milestone in the UK environmental legislation) to 2022. This paper initially delineates this historical mix and populates it with policies, which is innovative for two reasons. First, I take a historical perspective, while most studies on policy mixes consider one point in time or a shorter time span. Second, drawing on archival research, I include both explicitly labelled climate policies and policies impacting the process of climate change mitigation in the electricity sector without the climate policy label, e.g., financial acts.

Next, I build a network where nodes are policies included in the mix and edges are the bilateral interactions between policies. This paper considers “shared target” as a mode through which policies interact with each other. It refers to the bilateral interactions between policies sharing ends and/or aims, as stated in policy texts. Halting the generation of fossil fueled electricity and uptaking ready-to-deploy renewable energy technologies are urgent steps to pursue to mitigate the climate crisis. Thus, fuels and technologies are the targets under analysis for this paper. Once fuel and/or technology targets are identified for each policy, potential target-interactions are detected and classified as either synergistic or conflictive for climate mitigation. The analysis maps policies in a network and ultimately shows if policies have historically interacted with each other in synergy or in conflict for mitigation of the climate crisis. In conclusion, this study analyses policy interactions to better understand the architecture of policy arrangements addressing the climate crisis.