Governance for sustainability

Like the previous one, this final chapter is concerned with institutions of governance. The State is a central institution of environmental governance. Relating the principle of sustainability to the concept of territorial sovereignty has led us to include trusteeship into the State’s functions. In a similar vein we can relate the principle of sustainability to other institutions participating in global environmental governance. They include international organizations (IGOs), non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society with the idea of citizenship at its core. Together with states they all participate in environmental governance. The term ‘environmental governance’ is used loosely here to include the various institutions and structures of authority engaged in the protection of the natural environment. However, when we assess the actual performance of environmental governance and ask how successful it has been, the term itself becomes political. ‘There is little dispute that better governance is required’, says Lorraine Elliott, but ‘a precise definition of what this means or what it requires is elusive’.1 In the following, we will contrast environmental governance with governance for sustainability arguing that both represent very different concepts. Governance for sustainability is value-based acknowledging the fundamental importance of the preservation of Earth’s ecological integrity. The purpose of this chapter is to describe how the principle of sustainability can inform the system of environmental governance, how existing institutions may be able to respond. Following a definition of ‘governance for sustainability’, we will outline the new governance framework proposed by the Earth Charter, then examine several levels of governance, i.e. the global level, the regional/transnational level and the level of civil society (acting locally, nationally and globally). The aim is to show some dramatic changes in the way multi-level

1 Elliott, L. (2004), The Global Politics of the Environment, 2nd edn. (New York, Palgrave Macmillan), 94. See generally Kotzé, L. (2012), International Environmental Governance: Law and Regulation for the 21st Century (Cheltenham, Edward Elgar); Biermann, F. and Pattberg, P. (eds) (2012), Global Environmental Governance Reconsidered (Cambridge, MIT Press); Gupta, A. and Mason, M. (2014), Transparency in Global Environmental Governance: Critical Perspectives (Cambridge, MIT Press).