Research
The Program's research seeks to enhance our understanding of the role of governance in world affairs, with a particular focus on the rules and institutions that manage the complex interdependencies within our societies and economies, and between these human systems and natural systems.
Through research, teaching and other activities, the Program addresses such questions as:
- What are the fundamental challenges of sustainable development facing human societies, economies and the environment?
- What is the role of institutions in causing and confronting these challenges?
- Why are some institutional arrangements more successful than others in addressing these challenges?
- What are the best strategies for (re)designing institutions to improve the way they met the challenges of sustainable development?
The program supports research on the nature and role of governance, on its application to specific issue areas such as climate, oceans and fresh water, and through the activities of PhD candidates at the Bren School.
Governance Research
The Program focuses on governance as a "social function" involving efforts to guide or channel human behavior. Governance encompasses rights and rules, laws and norms, principles and other mechanisms for changing human behavior. Governance allows us to resolve or alleviate social conflicts and reap the gains made possible by coordinating the actions of individuals and groups in society. It is what allows us as societies to order our relationships, manage our interdependences and choose our future.
Our work rests on the premise that governance must be strengthened to address problems of sustainability. We often understand the technical solutions. Where we need to improve is in the creation of institutions that actually change behavior to avoid social problems or realize joint gains. Understanding governance is thus crucial in our efforts to guide society towards a secure, sustainable and prosperous future.
- Alternative governance systems We often focus on the activities of governments. But other mechanisms play key roles in supplying governance in many settings. This theme seeks to differentiate among the major types of governance systems available, identify conditions conducive to their success, and contribute to the design of successful systems in different substantive settings.
- Compliance, enforcement, and the rule of law All governance systems require some level of compliance to fulfill their goals. This effort focuses on the sources of compliant behavior and on how to design institutions to increase compliance.
- Institutional resilience and vulnerability What makes some institutions more resilient or vulnerable than others? How do institutions adapt to multiple, interactive stressors. Resilience and vulnerability are priority concerns of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environment Change, a partner of the Program.
- Institutional linkages Many studies focus on discrete or self-contained regimes. But it is clear that governance systems interact across issue areas and levels of social organization. A particularly important type of interplay for sustainable development centers on interactions between trade regimes (e.g. the WTO) and environmental regimes (e.g. the regimes for climate change and biodiversity, and their national implementing legislation).
Research on Sustainability Issues
Governance for sustainable development includes efforts to devise institutions to avoid the depletion of living resources, to prevent overuse of free factors of production like the atmosphere as a repository for wastes, and to prevent free-rider problems from hampering the supply of public goods like clean air. Approached in this way, governance is a crosscutting concern relevant to all substantive issue areas - climate, water, oceans, biodiversity, poverty - and to all levels of social organization, local to global.
- Ocean governance There is widespread agreement on the need to reform ocean governance. But there is no consensus on the preferred alternatives. This line of analysis focuses on options involving ecosystem-based management and spatial marine planning, with an emphasis on ocean zoning.
- Water governance Existing regimes for allocation and use of freshwater are not only antiquated; they also reflect profound differences in perspectives on the value of water (e.g. is water better thought of as a commodity or as a human right?). Carried out in collaboration with the Bren School's Water Policy Program, research on alternative governance systems for freshwater addresses topics that are matters of priority both for California and for the rest of the world.
- Climate governance Focusing on the requirements of the post-Kyoto period (that is, the period after 2012), research in this area addresses both the North/South dimensions of climate change and the interplay among international, regional, national, subnational, and local initiatives aimed at curbing emissions of greenhouse gases. The design of effective policy instruments (e.g. cap-and-trade arrangements designed to work in specific situations) is a particular interest in this setting.
PhD Research Topics
The Science Policy Interface in Environmental Science and Management
This research conducted by Priya Verma focuses on the influence of scientific knowledge within complex social systems where discoveries do not happen in a closed lab, but rather within the context of human populations, environmental locations, and adverse political agendas. The interaction between science and policy is generally perceived as blurring the boundaries between the two and resulting in the politicization of science. However, efforts to maintain the "objectivity" of science away form the influence of political decision making may not only be impossible but undesirable. The questions addressed by this research are: what are the avenues through which new scientific information reaches policy makers? Why do policy makers often ignore relevant scientific information? And what roles do 'epistemic communities,' 'boundary organizations' and 'knowledge brokers' play in negotiating the boundary between science and policy?
Evaluating relationships among discourses, institutions, and the distribution of benefits of water use and allocation
Unsustainable rates of urban and municipal water use often result in compromised environmental flows to surrounding ecosystems. New approaches to water management, and subsequent institutional changes in water managent regimes, are increasingly necessary to ensure the health and functions of these aquatic ecosystems. This research by Sara Hughes identifies the origins and history of the discourse of environmental water accounts, its successes and failures in influencing the form and function of institutions, and the subsequent geographic distribution of water use, investment and infrastructure. The focus areas for the research are South Australia and California, two well developed states experiencing both water stress in their aquatic ecosystems, and the political and economic influence of environmental water accounts in their water management institutions.
