Critical Dimensions for Effective Collaborative Environmental Governance

Dear Colleagues,

Proposed focus, scope and purpose

This Special Issue will focus on dimensions of collaborative environmental governance that are emerging as critical for enabling sustainable solutions to complex social-environmental problems. Recognising that the recent literature finds substantial knowledge gaps with regard to realising the problem-solving potential of collaborative governance, this Special Issue draws on multi-disciplinary frameworks and diverse approaches to explore collaborative environmental governance through three proposed dimensions (note the final dimensions will be determined following a participatory systems mapping workshop as described below):

1. The first dimension focuses on cultural and institutional aspects of collaborative environmental governance. Institutions are well-understood as both a cause of and a solution to environmental problems, and this Special Issue will take a critical perspective regarding how institutions for collaborative environmental governance can facilitate democratic and cross-cultural qualities to build capacities for sustainable solutions.

2. The second dimension relates to issues of justice and equity within collaborative environmental governance, responding to a growing body of mixed empirical evidence on the equity outcomes of cases, and a call for multilateral environmental instruments that pay stronger attention to justice considerations. Justice and equity are widely understood in this context to span North–South, inter-generational, and more-than-human sub-dimensions.

3. The third dimension examines practical outcomes of collaborative environmental governance, embracing methodological innovations such as at the interface of qualitative and quantitative data, and approaches that reveal lessons learned and new insights on the causation, characteristics and design of effective and outcome-focused collaboration.

This Special Issue is timely. Collaborative approaches to governance are recognised as critical for addressing key environmental challenges of this century, including climate change, water, natural resources and natural disasters; at the same time, such approaches have not yet delivered effective transitions to sustainability. Through an exploration of these dimensions, this Special Issue will present new understandings of the goals and dynamics of collaborative environmental governance, informing the development of new approaches that better realise the promise of collaborative governance.

Contributions to the literature

There is a burgeoning literature around collaborative environmental governance. A significant portion of this literature describes empirical examples of success and failures, contributing to our understanding of context and diversity. Additionally, there is a strong body of literature exploring theories, frameworks and approaches to collaborative environmental governance. Circling around these main foci are a growing number of studies which are explicitly exploring the nuances of collaboration in practice: the role and impact of institutions and individuals, reconciling multiple values for just outcomes, governance across multiple scales, effective measurement and monitoring of collaborative environmental governance processes and outcomes, to name a few. This Special Issue aims to bring together these nuanced ideas and insights into a critical discourse that explores the three critical dimensions. With three–four papers within each dimension, this Special Issue provides a space to focus on the emerging ideas and understandings, helping to fill the gaps in our understanding of the problem solving potential of collaborative environmental governance.

This Special Issue will commence with an innovative first paper. Invited authors will participate in a facilitated participatory systems mapping workshop. This workshop will enable the invited experts to collaboratively develop a causal map encoding the factors and relationships that either support or hinder collaborative environmental governance. The causal map will be analysed using state-of-the-art network centrality, structural, and controllability methods—the outcomes of this analysis will be used to identify the key barriers and enablers of collaboration in environmental governance–leading to the determination of the final dimensions for inclusion in the Special Issue. This process will not only help to improve the experience of authors in contributing to the Special Issue, but also ensure the papers are focused on leading contemporary understandings of the complexity and challenges of collaborative environmental governance.

Prof. Dr. Lain Dare
Dr. Leonie J. Pearson
Dr. Juan Carlos Castilla-Rho
Dr. Josephine Mummery
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• collaborative environmental governance
• justice
• sustainable development
• natural resource management
• stakeholder engagement