“Sustainability” is a domain of theory and practice in which people seek “win–win” opportunities for business and society, short- and long-term prosperity, humans and the natural environment. Lurking within the concept are some challenging paradoxes surrounding these parts and wholes of social systems that lead to tragedies of the commons. These paradoxes become salient when natural and organizational resources become scarce, when diverse societal stakeholders give voice to their interests and perspectives, and when efforts at organizational change bring these latent concerns to light. As people navigate these paradoxes of sustainability, they can manage them defensively, or actively engage paradox toward two positive outcomes. One is trade-off-breaking innovation that achieves win–win solutions. The other is flourishing of people who realize their contradictory sets of cares and motivations. Achieving the goals of the sustainability paradigm may therefore require “champions of ambivalence” who foster paradoxical thinking and action in organizations.

No abstract

This chapter focuses on forms of and challenges for risk communication within regional environmental governance, based on an analysis of fi ve environmental risks in the Baltic Sea -marine oil transportation, chemicals, overfi shing, eutrophication and alien species. We address questions about how risks are framed and communicated and also analyse the role of communication in the governance process. Our main focus is on risk communication with the public (e.g. existing institutional arrangements and procedures of risk communication), but we also relate this analysis to discussions on communication with a broad range of actors and issues of stakeholder participation and communication. In the study we have identifi ed some examples of relatively well-working risk communication with parts of the organised public in the Baltic Sea region (BSR), such as in fi sheries or eutrophication, but also a number of different barriers and obstacles. Our key result from this study is that BSR consists of many national institutions for risk communication, but that there are hardly any centralised institutions for risk communication activities relating to environmental governance in the region. Another key conclusion is that public risk communication in this array of cross-national environmental risks is restricted mainly to (one-way) information. Against this backdrop and from our 206 empirical and theoretical knowledge of risk communication and the role of the public, we fi nally suggest some ways for improvement.

No abstract

This article focuses on the use of the ecosystem approach to management (EAM) in the Baltic Sea Region (BSR). Based on selected criteria for EAM, the article traces and compares the impact of EAM on HELCOM's Baltic Sea Action Plan (BSAP), the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD), the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) and the EU Maritime Spatial Planning Directive (MSPD). Starting from the assumption that institutional interplay determines the impact of the EAM on marine policies, the article examines how different forms of interplay (interplay through cognition, commitment and compliance) affect the spread of EAM and its implementation in the BSR. The study finds strong interplay between HELCOM's BSAP and the EU's MSFD. Although HELCOM is still an important player in marine governance in the BSR, since it includes Russia, taking over responsibilities for the implementation of EU legislation has repercussions and affects its independence. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment