Earth System GovernancePub Date : 2025-08-01Epub Date: 2025-05-16DOI: 10.1016/j.esg.2025.100258
María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés
{"title":"Beyond Vulnerability: Reimagining the Global South's agency in environmental governance","authors":"María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés","doi":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100258","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100258","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":33685,"journal":{"name":"Earth System Governance","volume":"25 ","pages":"Article 100258"},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144071145","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 : 2025-08-01Epub Date: 2025-07-26DOI: 10.1016/j.esg.2025.100278
María Jose Sanz , Ana Karla Perea Blazquez
{"title":"Analysis of international climate change governance for the agriculture, forest and land use sector: Gaps and recommendations for future improvement","authors":"María Jose Sanz , Ana Karla Perea Blazquez","doi":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100278","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100278","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The crucial role of land-based activities in climate change mitigation and adaptation has gained recognition under the Paris Agreement, including through the commitments outlined in Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). While technical assessments highlight the mitigation potential of the land sector, this potential is constrained by several challenges, particularly competing demands across development, social, environmental and climate objectives. International governance structures for land use often fail to address these multiple objectives, which makes it challenging to ensure sound arbitrages among them. This paper evaluates the current international governance landscape in the Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use (AFOLU) sector, analysing governance functions that address barriers to climate change mitigation globally and assessing the extent to which these functions are met. Our findings indicate that while existing governance frameworks address barriers through guidance, rule-setting, transparency and accountability, support for implementation, and knowledge dissemination, gaps remain, particularly in guidance and signalling, transparency and rules and standards. Other key gaps identified are the insufficiency of the funds mobilised so far, the limitations of global assessments, and the duplicity of efforts and disconnection across different initiatives. Closing these governance gaps is essential to enable effective global governance in the AFOLU sector and unlock its mitigation potential. We propose potential solutions to bridge these gaps.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":33685,"journal":{"name":"Earth System Governance","volume":"25 ","pages":"Article 100278"},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144704848","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 : 2025-08-01Epub Date: 2025-06-17DOI: 10.1016/j.esg.2025.100262
Mark Elder , Susanne Grünewald
{"title":"Insights from Agenda 21 for enhancing the implementation of the SDGs and shaping the Post-2030 sustainable development agenda","authors":"Mark Elder , Susanne Grünewald","doi":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100262","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100262","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper re-examines Agenda 21 for lessons to improve SDG implementation and contribute to discussions on the post-2030 sustainable development agenda. The SDGs' roots in Agenda 21 have been almost forgotten, as analyses of the SDGs' creation and structure highlighted “governance through goals” as a core feature and presented SDGs as the MDGs' successor. This paper, however, demonstrates that the SDGs' contents are substantially based on Agenda 21, especially their broad scope and integrated perspective, not just MDGs. While Agenda 21 was considered unsuccessful, no systematic assessment was conducted, so the lessons for improvement were not clear. Now is a good time to reconsider Agenda 21's experience to better understand the SDGs' strengths and weaknesses and consider possible implications for developing the post-2030 sustainable development agenda. Concretely, this paper surveys and synthesizes the similarities and differences between Agenda 21 and SDGs (including Agenda 2030), and existing non-systematic evaluations of Agenda 21. This paper argues that despite Agenda 21's uneven progress, it had more impact than is generally appreciated, so discussions of post-2030 should take its experience into account. Lessons to inform discussions on achieving the SDGs and developing the post-2030 agenda are presented.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":33685,"journal":{"name":"Earth System Governance","volume":"25 ","pages":"Article 100262"},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144307662","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 : 2025-08-01Epub Date: 2025-05-22DOI: 10.1016/j.esg.2025.100257
Annabelle Workman , Kathryn J. Bowen
{"title":"Exploring ‘planetary health’ in the context of Earth System Governance: Editorial","authors":"Annabelle Workman , Kathryn J. Bowen","doi":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100257","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100257","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":33685,"journal":{"name":"Earth System Governance","volume":"25 ","pages":"Article 100257"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144890510","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":"Finding the cracks: How do frontline officials maneuver state institutions to advance Indigenous rights to land and environment?","authors":"Rasmus Kløcker Larsen , Mikkel Funder , Cortney Golkar-Dakin , Maria-Therese Gustafsson , Carol Hunsberger , Martin Marani , Almut Schilling-Vacaflor","doi":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100270","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100270","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper challenges the monolithic portrayal of the state as inherently ‘bad’ when it comes to implementation of Indigenous rights. Offering a comparative analysis of case studies from four continents we demonstrate examples of frontline state officials proactively advancing Indigenous rights to land and environment. Combining distinct literatures on institutional theory, we develop an analytical framework that sheds light on bureaucratic agency within state-Indigenous relations. The findings show how government organizations maintain a broadly colonial agenda, but that officials on the inside sometimes manage to advance decolonizing or otherwise supportive actions. We propose the concept of <em>institutional braiding</em> to describe this agency exerted by state officials in collaboration with Indigenous representatives when navigating co-existing normative orders. By examining the fraught institutional constraints faced by frontline actors, we contribute to debates on Indigenous-state relations and the prospects of reaching common ground in the contact zone between divergent ontologies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":33685,"journal":{"name":"Earth System Governance","volume":"25 ","pages":"Article 100270"},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144313280","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 : 2025-08-01Epub Date: 2025-07-23DOI: 10.1016/j.esg.2025.100277
Lisa Hiwasaki
{"title":"Leave no one behind: Prioritising equality and equity towards integration of global sustainability governance","authors":"Lisa Hiwasaki","doi":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100277","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100277","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Processes within global sustainability governance are fragmented despite calls for greater synergies. Although “leave no one behind” is a universal value of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, evidence of concrete efforts to decrease inequalities, especially between countries in the Global South and North, are limited. In order to understand the impacts of fragmented global sustainability governance on inequality reduction and equitable development, I conducted text analysis of the 2030 Agenda's Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Agreement on climate change, and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, and reviewed literature on the convergences and gaps among them. I found that first, although the three global agreements acknowledge the need to realise equality and equity, the use of these terms are sparing in the texts, and when they do appear, they are defined inconsistently and operationalized imprecisely across these global processes. Second, while numerous linkages exist among the three agreements, sustainability challenges that directly relate to equality and equity outcomes are the ones with the least convergences identified, and have the least number of activities implemented, research done, and data collected. Such fragmented and inconsistent implementation and monitoring of progress towards sustainable development are detrimental to equitable development, and negatively affect marginalised groups—especially in the Global South—for whom impacts of disasters, climate change, and maldevelopment are felt most acutely. At more than halfway in the implementation of these global processes, it is important now more than ever to strengthen efforts towards their integration by prioritising equality and equity.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":33685,"journal":{"name":"Earth System Governance","volume":"25 ","pages":"Article 100277"},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144685967","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 : 2025-08-01Epub Date: 2025-07-23DOI: 10.1016/j.esg.2025.100279
Karina Shyrokykh, Lisa Dellmuth
{"title":"Climate change framings and linkages across international organizations","authors":"Karina Shyrokykh, Lisa Dellmuth","doi":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100279","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100279","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>As climate change is becoming an ever more pressing global policy challenge, the linkages of climate change to other issue areas are diversifying. This article seeks to explain why some climate linkages are more likely to spread across international organizations (IOs) than others. Drawing on organizational and framing theories, we argue that the framing of climate linkages affects how such linkages disseminate across IOs. Distinguishing between three framings of climate change––technical, emotional and emergency––we develop and test novel hypotheses about the effects of framing climate linkages on their spread on social media. We use an original dataset on the dissemination of climate linkages on the social media platform Twitter (currently X) among eight IOs with a global mandate during the period 2008–2019. The results suggest that both the characteristics and the framing of climate linkages influence their spread across the studied IOs, as we find, in the context of the climate-development and climate-disaster risks linkages, that technical and emotional framings affect how linkages spread across several United Nations agencies. In all, we show the importance of the interplay between climate change linkages and the framings of these linkages for their spread across IOs.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":33685,"journal":{"name":"Earth System Governance","volume":"25 ","pages":"Article 100279"},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144685968","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 : 2025-08-01Epub Date: 2025-07-10DOI: 10.1016/j.esg.2025.100276
Paulan Korenhof , Brett Metcalfe , Adam Henschke
{"title":"Cyber-governance of the natural world the implications of digital twins in environmental governance","authors":"Paulan Korenhof , Brett Metcalfe , Adam Henschke","doi":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100276","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100276","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Digital Twins (DTs) are data-driven real-time and multi-faceted representations of real-life physical systems or phenomena. Currently, DTs are developed for use in environmental governance, ranging from DTs of single crops to the planet Earth. By offering up-to-date dynamic simulations, DTs are anticipated to support decision-making in addressing key challenges like ecological degradation and climate change. However, DTs are not neutral tools: they are shaped by human assumptions and values, and bring about changes and power shifts in decision-making processes.</div><div>In this article, we take in a bird's eye view to identify the different levels and manners in which DTs can reconfigure environmental governance. Building on Korenhof et al. (2021), we conceptualise DTs as cybernetic systems. We trace how these systems affect governance on the levels of information, communication, and control. We conclude that, when used in environmental governance, it is vital to take action to ensure the democratic legitimacy of DTs.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":33685,"journal":{"name":"Earth System Governance","volume":"25 ","pages":"Article 100276"},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144588040","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 : 2025-08-01Epub Date: 2025-05-24DOI: 10.1016/j.esg.2025.100261
Vincent de Gooyert , Senni Määttä , Sandrino Smeets , Heleen de Coninck
{"title":"Investing in trust is crucial for a well-functioning European carbon market","authors":"Vincent de Gooyert , Senni Määttä , Sandrino Smeets , Heleen de Coninck","doi":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100261","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100261","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Emission reductions needed to reach the Paris Agreement goals rely heavily on carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS). However, CCS implementation is lagging due to complex interactions of societal and technological factors. Attempts to enhance CCS implementation focus primarily on lowering technological and economic barriers, assuming that societal support will develop if public awareness is increased. This, however, overlooks the interdependence between CCS public support, policy action and industrial implementation. Productive interaction between these factors requires mutual trust between stakeholders. Scaling up the technology will thus require appreciating the mutual dependencies and nurturing trust. Genuine investments in public trust go beyond ‘educating the public’, supporting deliberative initiatives instead and allowing for real influence of relevant stakeholders. Our recommendations include designing inclusive engagement processes, safeguarding public participation rights, involving independent scientific expertise, supporting deliberative initiatives like citizen assemblies, and fostering transparency through community-led platforms to build trust in CCS implementation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":33685,"journal":{"name":"Earth System Governance","volume":"25 ","pages":"Article 100261"},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144125129","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 : 2025-08-01Epub Date: 2025-05-28DOI: 10.1016/j.esg.2025.100254
Jamie Michaels , Jean-Frédéric Morin
{"title":"Assets and Ashes: Wildfire management and the politics of climate change","authors":"Jamie Michaels , Jean-Frédéric Morin","doi":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100254","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100254","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This Perspective examines the interplay between natural and political systems. Drawing on first-hand experience and recent studies, it employs various graphic novel techniques to illustrate feedback loops that connect the expansion of extractive industries into the urban-wildland interface, the incidence of human-induced wildfires, the use of prohibition policies in wildfire management to protect specific assets, the accumulation of combustible materials, the emission of greenhouse gases from wildfires, and the acceleration of climate change. However, it challenges the notion of endless self-reinforcing vicious cycles by demonstrating how shifts in asset valuation can catalyze a new politics of climate change. Forestry might become a potential vanguard example of an industry shifting its self-perceptions and political alignments in the face of more climate change induced wildfires. This transdisciplinary artistic Perspective builds on and speaks to research in the fields of forest management, climate politics, wildfire sociology, and human ecology.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":33685,"journal":{"name":"Earth System Governance","volume":"25 ","pages":"Article 100254"},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144146703","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}