Next-Generation Environmental Regulation: Law, Regulation, and Governance

This article analyzes more than four decades of environmental law, regulation, and governance in various Anglo-Saxon and global jurisdictions. It shows how, after the heydays of law and command and control and the swing to economic instruments, voluntarism, and light-handed initiatives, new phases evolved—their most important manifestations being pluralistic regulation, new technologies, compliance, and new governance. It shows how each of the frameworks examined proposes its own solutions and has something valuable to offer, as well as its own limitations. The article concludes by discussing a fundamental challenge confronting the field, namely, how to orchestrate the many possible approaches and relationships available on the legal, regulatory, and governance spectrum.

[1]  R. Lazarus.  Super Wicked Problems and Climate Change: Restraining the Present to Liberate the Future , 2008 .

[2]  Warwick J. McKibbin,et al.  Journal of Economic Perspectives—Volume 16, Number 2—Spring 2002—Pages 107–129 The Role of Economics in Climate Change Policy , 2022 .

[3]  Liliana B. Andonova.  Public-Private Partnerships for the Earth: Politics and Patterns of Hybrid Authority in the Multilateral System , 2010, Global Environmental Politics.

[4]  Jem Bendell,et al.  Civil regulation: A new form of democratic governance for the global economy? , 2000 .

[5]  J. Zeitlin,et al.  Assembling an experimentalist regime: Transnational governance interactions in the forest sector , 2014 .

[6]  Michael Howlett,et al.  From the ‘old’ to the ‘new’ policy design: design thinking beyond markets and collaborative governance , 2014 .

[7]  Reinhard Steurer,et al.  Disentangling governance: a synoptic view of regulation by government, business and civil society , 2013 .

[8]  A. Campbell,et al.  Corporate strategy: The quest for parenting advantage , 1995 .

[9]  J. Rhodes,et al.  Protected Areas and Local Communities: an Inevitable Partnership toward Successful Conservation Strategies? , 2012 .

[10]  N. Gunningham,et al.  Natural Resources, New Governance and Legal Regulation: When Does Collaboration Work? , 2011 .

[11]  E. Ostrom.  Beyond Markets and States: Polycentric Governance of Complex Economic Systems , 2010, American Economic Review.

[12]  Suzanne von der Porten,et al.  Collaborative approaches to governance for water and Indigenous peoples: A case study from British Columbia, Canada , 2013 .

[13]  Charles F. Sabel,et al.  After Backyard Environmentalism , 2000 .

[14]  Matt Ratto,et al.  Institutions for Civic Technoscience: How Critical Making is Transforming Environmental Research , 2014, Inf. Soc..

[15]  Robert B. Gibson.  Voluntary Initiatives, The New Politics of Corporate Greening , 1999 .

[16]  C. Perrings,et al.  Biodiversity conservation : problems and policies , 1994 .

[17]  Andrew Jordan,et al.  Still the century of ‘new’ environmental policy instruments? Exploring patterns of innovation and continuity , 2013 .

[18]  V. Galaz.  Global Environmental Governance, Technology and Politics , 2014 .

[19]  N. Gunningham.  Confronting the Challenge of Energy Governance , 2012, Transnational Environmental Law.

[20]  E. Gómez‐Baggethun,et al.  In markets we trust? Setting the boundaries of Market-Based Instruments in ecosystem services governance , 2015 .

[21]  D. O'Rourke,et al.  Reinventing Environmental Regulation from the Grassroots Up: Explaining and Expanding the Success of the Toxics Release Inventory , 2000, Environmental management.

[22]  S. Hart.  Beyond Greening: Strategies for a Sustainable World. , 1997 .

[23]  Cary Coglianese,et al.  The Politics of Regulation: From New Institutionalism to New Governance , 2011 .

[24]  Simon J T Pollard,et al.  Better by design: business preferences for environmental regulatory reform. , 2015, The Science of the total environment.

[25]  S. Pollard,et al.  Selecting Policy Instruments for Better Environmental Regulation: a Critique and Future Research Agenda: The Better Selection of Environmental Policy Instruments , 2012 .

[26]  D. Farber,et al.  Thirty-Fourth Annual Administrative Law Issue Modular Environmental Regulation , 2005 .

[27]  C. Holling,et al.  Command and Control and the Pathology of Natural Resource Management , 1996 .

[28]  C. Holley.  Linking Law and New Governance: Examining Gaps, Hybrids, and Integration in Water Policy , 2016 .

[29]  K. Harrison.  6. Voluntarism and Environmental Governance , 2001 .

[30]  Tim Rayner,et al.  Emergence of polycentric climate governance and its future prospects , 2015 .

[31]  J. Heijden.  Regulatory Failures, Split-Incentives, Conflicting Interests and a Vicious Circle of Blame: The New Environmental Governance to the Rescue? , 2015 .

[32]  N. Gunningham.  Environment Law, Regulation and Governance: Shifting Architectures , 2009 .

[33]  P. Pattberg,et al.  Theorising Global Environmental Governance: Key Findings and Future Questions , 2015 .

[34]  L. Gunderson,et al.  Emergence, institutionalization and renewal: Rhythms of adaptive governance in complex social-ecological systems. , 2016, Journal of environmental management.

[35]  N. Gunningham.  The New Collaborative Environmental Governance: The Localization of Regulation , 2009 .

[36]  K. N. Gess.  Permanent Sovereignty Over Natural Resources , 1964, International and Comparative Law Quarterly.

[37]  F. Biermann.  The Anthropocene: A governance perspective , 2014 .

[38]  M. Vandenbergh.  Private Environmental Governance , 2013 .

[39]  M. McHenry.  Technical and governance considerations for advanced metering infrastructure/smart meters: Technology, security, uncertainty, costs, benefits, and risks , 2013 .

[40]  C. Sunstein.  Informational regulation and informational standing: Akins and beyond , 1999 .

[41]  J. Rayner.  The Past and Future of Governance Studies: From Governance to Meta-governance? , 2015 .

[42]  D. Levi‐Faur.  The Global Diffusion of Regulatory Capitalism , 2005 .

[43]  Vincenzo Piuri,et al.  Privacy and Security in Environmental Monitoring Systems: Issues and Solutions , 2012 .

[44]  Jeroen van der Heijden.  Is New Governance the Silver Bullet? Insights from the Australian Buildings Sector , 2013 .

[45]  B. Chaffin,et al.  A Decade of Adaptive Governance Scholarship: Synthesis and Future Directions , 2014 .

[46]  M. Delmas,et al.  Triangulating Environmental Performance: What Do Corporate Social Responsibility Ratings Really Capture? , 2013 .

[47]  W. Vermeulen,et al.  Towards a Conceptual Framework for The Study of Shifts in Modes of Environmental Governance – Experiences From The Netherlands , 2012 .

[48]  D. Vogel,et al.  Trading Places: The Role of the United States and the European Union in International Environmental Politics , 2010 .

[49]  Frank Biermann,et al.  Partnerships, Governance and Sustainable Development , 2007 .

[50]  J. Pointing,et al.  Smart regulation, shifting architectures and changes in governance , 2013 .

[51]  A. Prakash,et al.  Covenants with weak swords: ISO 14001 and facilities' environmental performance , 2005 .

[52]  R. Craig,et al.  Designing Administrative Law for Adaptive Management , 2014 .

[53]  B. Karkkainen.  Post-Sovereign Environmental Governance , 2004, Global Environmental Politics.

[54]  R. Maguire.  Designing REDD+ to Be Just: Considerations for a Legally Binding Instrument , 2013, Asian Journal of International Law.

[55]  R. Purdy.  Attitudes of UK and Australian farmers towards monitoring activity with satellite technologies: Lessons to be learnt , 2011 .

[56]  B. Karkkainen.  "New Governance" in legal thought and in the world: Some splitting as antidote to overzealous lumping , 2004 .

[57]  Chris Tollefson,et al.  SYMPOSIUM OVERVIEW: CONCEPTUALIZING NEW GOVERNANCE ARRANGEMENTS , 2012 .

[58]  N. Gunningham,et al.  Policy Instrument Choice and Diffuse Source Pollution , 2005 .

[59]  Stephen R. Gill.  Critical perspectives on the crisis of global governance : reimagining the future , 2015 .

[60]  N. Kimani.  A Collaborative Approach to Environmental Governance in East Africa , 2010 .