Publication type: Research articles

Seeking Justice: International Environmental Governance and Climate Change

This article examines social justice aspects of international environmental governance, analysing adaptation to climate change as an example. The article first discusses how international environmental regimes have been examined, suggesting that understanding them as responses to environmental conflicts better highlights their social justice aspects. The article argues that distributive and procedural justice in the society […]

Protected areas governance and justice: Theory and the European Union’s Habitats Directive

This article investigates protected areas governance and the role of justice in it. The article argues that protected areas governance is needed because resources such as biodiversity and heritage create conflicts over their use and preservation. The resolutions of these conflicts need to be justified for the involved and affected interest groups in order to […]

Valuing nature: Lessons learned and future research directions

This paper critically reviews the literature on environmental valuation of ecosystem services across the range of global biomes. The main objective of this review is to assess the policy relevance of the information encompassed by the wide range of valuation studies that have been undertaken so far. Published and other studies now cover most ecosystems, […]

Governance for sustainability: towards a ‘thick’ analysis of environmental decisionmaking

Environmental decisions made by individuals, civil society, and the state involve questions of economic efficiency, environmental effectiveness, equity, and political legitimacy. These four criteria are constitutive of the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development, which has become the dominant rhetorical device of environmental governance. We discuss the tendency for disciplinary research to focus […]

Economic reasons for conserving wild nature

On the eve of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, it is timely to assess progress over the 10 years since its predecessor in Rio de Janeiro. Loss and degradation of remaining natural habitats has continued largely unabated. However, evidence has been accumulating that such systems generate marked economic benefits, which the available data suggest […]