Earth System GovernancePub Date : 2026-03-01Epub Date: 2026-01-20DOI: 10.1016/j.esg.2026.100314
Peter Dauvergne
{"title":"Corporate earth system accountability: Governance strategies to reduce microplastic pollution from consumer products","authors":"Peter Dauvergne","doi":"10.1016/j.esg.2026.100314","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.esg.2026.100314","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Microplastics released as consumers use products are a significant, yet largely unregulated, source of global pollution. Enhancing corporate earth system accountability for this contamination is essential for protecting planetary health. This Perspective develops this argument and identifies governance strategies through a case study of one consumer product: tires. By mass, the chemical-laden particles emitted as tires wear and tear on roads – which scientists typically classify as microplastics – are among the largest sources of global microplastic pollution. Regulations to govern tire abrasion are emerging in California and the European Union, and, as expert interviews reveal, discussions are occurring to develop global standards. Still, regulatory controls remain fragmented and weak, and pollution is escalating. Urging consumers to take responsibility has not helped. Governments need to set stringent international standards, ensure corporate transparency, mandate strong precautionary approaches, extend producer responsibility, and avoid voluntary corporate self-governance as a primary mechanism of accountability.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":33685,"journal":{"name":"Earth System Governance","volume":"27 ","pages":"Article 100314"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146037103","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How to enhance continuity of strategic sustainable development work in municipalities and regions – findings from Sweden and Finland","authors":"Lisa Wälitalo , Edith Callaghan , Karl-Henrik Robèrt , Göran Broman","doi":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100307","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100307","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Despite numerous initiatives, methodologies and approaches, municipalities and regions continue to face challenges in sustaining long-term efforts toward sustainability. While continuously learning from mistakes and success factors, comprehensive recommendations for how to take a long-term approach for the work, specifically developed for leadership in local and regional contexts, are largely lacking. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to identify a comprehensive set of essential factors that could support long-term sustainability efforts. The study is mainly related to the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development, but the findings are likely relevant also in relation to other comprehensive sustainability methodologies and approaches. Re-analysis of longitudinal data from action research in Sweden and Finland is supplemented by new qualitative data collection, the study identifies eight conditions for continuity. Being introduced to these conditions upfront may save valuable time and could be utilized as a checklist to be revisited regularly and to strive toward.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":33685,"journal":{"name":"Earth System Governance","volume":"27 ","pages":"Article 100307"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145791079","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Did the first global Stocktake successfully assess progress towards the Paris goals ‘in light of equity’?","authors":"Sonja Klinsky , Ceecee Holz , Snigdha Nautiyal , Jyotesna Maurya , Aastha Nath , Tom Athanasiou","doi":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100310","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100310","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The Global Stocktake (GST) is designed to be at the heart of the Paris Agreement's ratcheting mechanism towards achieving the Paris goals. It has a mandate to be conducted ‘in the light of equity’ despite being a collective assessment which does not currently facilitate structured comparison of Parties' contributions. Based on a three-part normative framework, this study assesses the extent to which the first GST concluded in 2023 was successfully conducted ‘in the light of equity’ and what can be learned for its future iterations. By triangulating data from participant observation, a survey, and document analysis it finds that despite significant procedural innovations, the GST does not appear to have integrated equity in a substantial manner across all dimensions. Several possible recommendations emerge, including clarifying the mandate to include individual assessment, and making procedural shifts to increase the chances that these assessments make more significant contributions to equity over time.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":33685,"journal":{"name":"Earth System Governance","volume":"27 ","pages":"Article 100310"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145926351","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Earth System GovernancePub Date : 2026-03-01Epub Date: 2025-12-09DOI: 10.1016/j.esg.2025.100306
Matilda Petersson, Lisa Dellmuth
{"title":"Horizontal venue-shopping and non-governmental organizations’ influence on regional fisheries management organizations","authors":"Matilda Petersson, Lisa Dellmuth","doi":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100306","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100306","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The influence of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on international organizations is a perennial question in global governance research. We examine whether and why horizontal venue-shopping strengthens NGO influence on international organizations in the area of biodiversity protection. We argue that horizontal venue-shopping facilitates NGO influence, building on previous studies on institutional complexity and NGO influence in global governance. The argument is examined through process tracing based on extensive fieldwork material in the context of the governance of sharks in the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas during 1994–2021. We find NGO preference attainment in a majority of the studied policy processes, and indicative evidence of increased NGO influence over time. The results suggest that horizontal venue-shopping strengthened the influence of NGOs in several of the examined processes. These findings have broader implications for research on NGO influence in an increasingly complex global governance landscape.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":33685,"journal":{"name":"Earth System Governance","volume":"27 ","pages":"Article 100306"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145738289","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Earth System GovernancePub Date : 2026-03-01Epub Date: 2025-12-05DOI: 10.1016/j.esg.2025.100304
Nicolas Laurence
{"title":"Special drawing rights and ecological vulnerability: Monetary hierarchy and the translation of values","authors":"Nicolas Laurence","doi":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100304","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100304","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) have regained prominence as international institutions search for ways to respond to recurring financial crises, rising inequalities, and accelerating climate change. As the only international reserve asset not tied to a national currency, SDRs have been debated as potential instruments for redistributive and ecological purposes, particularly since the unprecedented 650 billion USD allocation of 2021. Yet the terms of these debates reveal the persistent dominance of macro-financial logics over alternative framings. This article develops an analysis of how institutional discourses on SDR reform reflect and reproduce the tension between international monetary hierarchy and ecological vulnerability. It shows that ecological concerns are not absent from official debates but systematically translated into the language of liquidity, debt sustainability, and creditworthiness. Such translation renders ecological values legible while erasing their normative specificity, thereby constraining their transformative potential. By linking international political economy with social ecological economics, the article foregrounds the processes of inclusion, translation, and marginalisation through which plural values are managed in global monetary governance. SDRs thus serve less as instruments of ecological transition than as a diagnostic site for understanding the limits of integrating ecological criteria into a system still structured by financial stability and monetary hierarchy.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":33685,"journal":{"name":"Earth System Governance","volume":"27 ","pages":"Article 100304"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145693259","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Earth System GovernancePub Date : 2026-03-01Epub Date: 2026-02-02DOI: 10.1016/j.esg.2026.100315
Rahwa Kidane , Susanne Konrad , Max van Deursen , Aarti Gupta
{"title":"Explaining Ethiopia’s engagement in multilateral climate transparency arrangements: Why engage and with what implications for domestic climate action?","authors":"Rahwa Kidane , Susanne Konrad , Max van Deursen , Aarti Gupta","doi":"10.1016/j.esg.2026.100315","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.esg.2026.100315","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), countries report on their climate actions through engaging in ever more elaborate transparency arrangements. There has been little analysis to date of whether and how developing countries, including Least Developed Countries, engage in these arrangements and how such engagement relates to domestic decision-making. In this article, we examine factors that hinder versus enable engagement in UNFCCC transparency arrangements in Ethiopia, drawing on interviews, document analysis and a stakeholder workshop. Our analysis highlights various factors that foster engagement, such as the desire to demonstrate climate leadership and the prospect of accessing finance, while technical and institutional constraints hinder engagement. Furthermore, although Ethiopia's engagement in UNFCCC transparency arrangements is growing, a direct link to domestic climate decision-making is not found. We conclude that engagement in UNFCCC transparency arrangements may normalize a mitigation-focused, market-oriented and monitoring-reliant approach to climate action in Ethiopia.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":33685,"journal":{"name":"Earth System Governance","volume":"27 ","pages":"Article 100315"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146188157","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Earth System GovernancePub Date : 2025-12-01Epub Date: 2025-09-19DOI: 10.1016/j.esg.2025.100291
Valbona Muzaka
{"title":"Of time, whales, and other assets","authors":"Valbona Muzaka","doi":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100291","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100291","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This Perspective offers some reflections on how multiple times are entangled in the current moment of living on a planet pushed beyond its limits and the way in which the present instability provides the basis not for radical action but for continued speculation and value creation. Promising to turn living whales into assets, the whale bond – an idea towards which various some private actors have quietly been working for some years – is one of the many strange products of the current speculative delirium. Bringing together insights from maritime environmental science, political economy, and literature, this Perspective reflects on the different times embodied in whales as commodity/asset as a device to highlight the fallacy of putting our hopes for escaping the current predicament on the subjugation of the living – and ‘ecosystem services’ more generally – into asset forms.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":33685,"journal":{"name":"Earth System Governance","volume":"26 ","pages":"Article 100291"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145095579","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Earth System GovernancePub Date : 2025-12-01Epub Date: 2025-11-15DOI: 10.1016/j.esg.2025.100301
Dhanasree Jayaram, Cristina Yumie Aoki Inoue, Louis J. Kotzé, Ana Flávia Barros-Platiau, Verônica Korber Gonçalves, Annisa Triyanti, Timothy A. Balag'kutu
{"title":"Locating the ‘Global South’ in earth system governance: Editorial","authors":"Dhanasree Jayaram, Cristina Yumie Aoki Inoue, Louis J. Kotzé, Ana Flávia Barros-Platiau, Verônica Korber Gonçalves, Annisa Triyanti, Timothy A. Balag'kutu","doi":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100301","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100301","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":33685,"journal":{"name":"Earth System Governance","volume":"26 ","pages":"Article 100301"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145736573","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Earth System GovernancePub Date : 2025-12-01Epub Date: 2025-11-25DOI: 10.1016/j.esg.2025.100302
Anouk Fransen , Harriet Bulkeley , Jeffrey E Blackwatters
{"title":"Conceptualizing transformative change for global environmental governance","authors":"Anouk Fransen , Harriet Bulkeley , Jeffrey E Blackwatters","doi":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100302","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100302","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The notion of transformative change has attracted increasing attention from research and policy communities as societies struggle with the nature and adequacy of responses to the intertwined crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and social justice. Yet while many agree that transformative change is needed, it remains an essentially contested concept. We review how the notion of transformative change has come to be understood in global environmental governance, finding that the focus has been on speed and scope of change with less explicit attention being paid to what is actually being transformed, how and for whom. As a result, certain kinds of change – those which are fast and systemic in scope – are privileged. We argue that this is to miss the very potential of transformative change and offer an approach that holds space for a plural understanding of transformation that allows for different matters of justice to be considered.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":33685,"journal":{"name":"Earth System Governance","volume":"26 ","pages":"Article 100302"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145614735","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Long-term programs, short-term effects? How development partners struggle to institutionalize renewable energy solutions in Indonesia","authors":"Jens Marquardt , Fajar Wardani Wijayanti , Reza Fathurrahman","doi":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100282","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100282","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article shows how long-term development programs struggle to institutionalize renewable energy solutions in the Global South. Our contribution is twofold: (1) Conceptually, we propose and apply a framework to investigate under what conditions and with what effects development partners institutionalize their renewable energy interventions. For the conditions, we build on institutionalization literature and particularly on the Earth System Governance research lens on architecture and agency. For the outcome, we distinguish between rhetorical, policy-related, organizational and practical changes. (2) Empirically, we mobilize this framework to analyze three long-term renewable energy programs initiated by development partners in Indonesia through a qualitative approach. Although these programs trigger rhetorical and partly policy-oriented changes, they struggle to foster new organizational structures or mainstream new political practices. We conclude that scholars must engage more seriously with agency and architecture as critical conditions for externally driven efforts to promote renewable energy solutions in the Global South.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":33685,"journal":{"name":"Earth System Governance","volume":"26 ","pages":"Article 100282"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144988818","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}