Transformative Environmental Governance
Year: 2016
Type: review
Abstract: Transformative governance is an approach to environmental governance that has the capacity to respond to, manage, and trigger regime shifts in coupled social-ecological systems (SESs) at multiple scales. The goal of transformative governance is to actively shift degraded SESs to alternative, more desirable, or more functional regimes by altering the structures and processes that define the system. Transformative governance is rooted in ecological theories to explain cross-scale dynamics in complex systems, as well as social theories of change, innovation, and technological transformation. Similar to adaptive governance, transformative governance involves a broad set of governance components, but requires additional capacity to foster new social-ecological regimes including increased risk tolerance, significant systemic investment, and restructured economies and power relations. Transformative governance has the potential to actively respond to regime shifts triggered by climate change, and thus future research should focus on identifying system drivers and leading indicators associated with social-ecological thresholds.
Institutions: University of Montana, Environmental Protection Agency, Emory University, University of New Mexico, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, University of Louisville, University of Idaho, University of Utah, Vanderbilt University, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, United States Geological Survey
Language: English
Subfield: Global and Planetary Change
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Climate action
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2193206597