Mind the gap: Coping with delay in environmental governance

Abstract

Gaps between public policy goals and the state of the environment are often significant. However, while goal failures in environmental governance are studied in a number of disciplines, the knowledge on the various causes behind delayed goal achievement is still incomplete. In this article we propose a new framework for analysis of delay mechanisms in science and policy, with the intention to provide a complementary lens for describing, analysing and counteracting delay in environmental governance. The framework is based on case-study findings from recent research focusing on goal-failures in policies for climate change, hazardous chemicals, biodiversity loss and eutrophication. It is also related to previous research on science and policy processes and their interactions. We exemplify the framework with two delay mechanisms that we consider particularly important to highlight—denial of science and decision thresholds. We call for further research in the field, for development of the framework, and not least for increased attention to delay mechanisms in environmental policy review and development on national as well as international levels.

Corporate Environmental Governance Performance Evaluation and Index System Construction under the Mobile Communication System

“…e various definitions of governance in academia refer to the use of state power by the government or nongovernmental organizations to regulate and guide various activities of citizens, maintain public order, and maximize public interests. Environmental governance is a comprehensive analysis of air, water, soil, and other environmental conditions, combining environmental quality assessment, standardization, design prevention and monitoring, and manual control to protect the environment from pollution, and then get the results of environmental policy reforms [16]. As shown in Figure 3, the left picture shows the cumulative number of days of severe pollution and heavy pollution in cities across the country, and the right picture shows the concentration comparison of six pollutants.…”

Sharing Space with Monkeys and Human Tolerance Are Critical Supplements to Primate Conservation, but Not Substitutes for Protected Nature Reserves: A Long-Term View from Sri Lanka, with a Reply to Rudran [2021]

“…In line with other contemporary conservation concerns [Crusz, 1973;Senanayake et al, 1977], Dittus [1977a] also highlighted the plight of the subspecies M. s. opisthomelas in the progressively fragmented montane habitats [Wikramanayake and Gunathilleke, 2002;Wijesundara, 2012]. It was only 43 years later that this taxon was updated to Critically Endangered in the IUCN Red List [Dittus and Gamage, 2020], a sign of the long time gap between scientific identification of an environmental issue and the first official steps to at least acknowledge it, not to speak of resolving it [Karlsson and Gilek, 2020].…”

Sweden’s Climate Act – its origin and emergence

“…A number of such potential barriers to action were recently presented in a theoretical framework analysing delay in environmental governance (Karlsson & Gilek, 2020). This framework identified an array of potential mechanisms and barriers in the science and policy spheres that impede the achievement of goals.…”

“…Despite operating in a fairly polarized political context (Aylott & Bolin, 2015;Ryan & Reijlan, 2018), the Committee agreed unanimously, across political blocs, to propose the CCA (Miljömålsberedningen, 2016a). By exploring and explaining how the Committee worked and handled the referred delay mechanisms (Karlsson & Gilek, 2020), the aim of the study is to draw lessons of value for climate policymaking, including for development of CCAs.…”