Sangam: A Confluence of Knowledge Streams

Governance for sustainability: Towards a 'thick' analysis of environmental decisionmaking.

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dc.creator Adger, W.M.
dc.creator Brown, K.
dc.creator Fairbrass, Jenny M.
dc.creator Jordan, A.
dc.creator Paavola J.
dc.creator Rosendo, S.
dc.creator Seyfang G.
dc.date 2009-05-26T13:23:09Z
dc.date 2009-05-26T13:23:09Z
dc.date 2003
dc.identifier Adger WN, Brown K, Fairbrass J, Jordan A, Paavola J, Rosendo S, and Seyfang Gill (2003) Governance for sustainability: Towards a 'thick' analysis of environmental decisionmaking. Environment and Planning A. 35(6): 1095-1110.
dc.identifier http://hdl.handle.net/10454/2695
dc.description No
dc.description Environmental decisions made by individuals, civil society and the state involve questions of economic efficiency, environmental effectiveness, equity and political legitimacy. These four criteria are constitutive of economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development, which has become the dominant rhetorical device of environmental governance. We discuss the tendency for different strands of social science to focus on particular subsets of the four criteria and argue that such a practice promotes solutions that do not acknowledge the dynamics of scale and the heterogeneity of institutional and historical contexts. We propose a more interdisciplinary approach to understanding environmental decisions that seeks to identify legitimate and context-sensitive institutional solutions producing equitable, efficient and effective outcomes. We examine two examples that illustrate the indivisible and integrated nature of the four criteria in actual environmental decisions. The first example relates to international efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the second one to local resource management in the UK. We utilise the example to outline a new agenda for future research on environmental governance and decision-making.
dc.language en
dc.relation http://www.envplan.com/abstract.cgi?id=a35289
dc.subject Environmental decisions
dc.subject Economic efficiency
dc.subject Environmental effectiveness
dc.subject Equity
dc.subject Political legitimacy
dc.subject Sustainable development
dc.subject Environmental governance
dc.subject Institutional solutions
dc.title Governance for sustainability: Towards a 'thick' analysis of environmental decisionmaking.
dc.type Article
dc.type No full-text available in the repository


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