Policy Change: Crisis of Environmental Policy and Global Governance

Abstract

Environmental policy and governance are in a critical state, not only because of policy failure, weak government, and deficits of implementing environmental policy programmes, explanations found in empirical policy research. Environmental governance needs to deal with interconnected and complex problems in politics, in the economy, in science, and in the social practices of natural resource use. An analysis of the crisis of environmental governance with interdisciplinary knowledge shows why global agency is limited and why further changes than policy reforms are required in the transition to sustainability. Different forms of critique of environmental governance are reviewed: discussions about the crisis, limits of environmental governance and the significance of scientific knowledge for governance.