LIST OF PANELS

Environmental concerns are becoming increasingly central to policymaking. They require remarkable coordination among different scientific fields, government agencies and scales of government, and government and non-government actors concerning environmental issues. The proposed online panel aims to improve understanding of environmental policy styles in Global South and from a South-North perspective, particularly in addressing collective action problems such as those with environmental challenges and sustainable development.

It may be argued that a “growth-mediated development” has led to improved human well-being with trends such as an increase in life expectancy, a reduction in the undernourished population, and an improvement in the number of people having access to basic health services and education (Sen, 2002)[1]. This, however, brings up the question of whether and how high economic growth can be reconciled to preserve natural resources for the upcoming generations. Recent times have seen several concerns about the future sustainability of economic growth, social upheavals, and environmental degradation patterns. Frameworks such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) bring to light two major challenges that highlight a normative dilemma in the trade-off between the need for high average annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth rates of 6-8% to reduce poverty and the speed of erosion of natural capital since economic growth is based on the use of natural resources. Because of the tension between economic and environmental priorities, development imperatives must integrate environmental issues with social and economic policies. In this regard, exploring environmental ‘policy style’ dynamics (Howlett & Tosun, 2021)[2] in the setting of developing countries across the institutional dimension (national policy styles, sectoral policy styles, and administrative and governance styles) and the process dimension (individual phases or stages of the policy cycle, including agenda setting, policy formulation, decision-making, implementation, and evaluation) would glean insights on how environmental issues are addressed and mainstreamed into the governance and policy-making framework.

The online panel elicits empirical research and theoretical frameworks on environmental governance to characterize styles of governance in different settings of the Global South and from a South-North perspective. The main questions supporting this aim are:

·What practices, infrastructure, and organizations shape environmental policy styles and governance in different locales? 

·What historical, social, and cultural factors shape the development and environmental policy styles?

·How have global concerns about environmental equity and disparities shaped environmental policy styles in the Global South? 

[1] Sen A K. (2002). Globalization, inequality and global protest, Development, 45(2): 11-16.

[2] Howlett, M., & Tosun, J. (Eds.). (2021). The Routledge handbook of policy styles. Routledge.

This panel only accepts online presentations.

This online panel invites papers that build on and extend many overlapping kinds of literature, promising a new understanding of environmental policy styles and governance in developing countries and a theoretical framework for understanding governance and policy styles. 

The online panel invites contributions delving into contemporary environmental challenges and sustainable development topics, focusing on various aspects of environmental governance, outcomes, and policy tools framed within a sectoral and multi-level intervention framework.  Contributions to policy, rules, and norms that govern stakeholders’ behavior and the roles of central and local government concerning environmental issues that promote and support sound science and policy advice for environmental decision-making are welcome. We invite high quality research work exploring how environmental policy styles is operationalised across a range of government levels and activities in the setting of developing countries with varying levels of capacities for dealing with environmental challenges. Contributions addressing who makes decisions, how decisions are made and carried out, the scientific information needed for decision-making, and how the public and major stakeholders can participate in the decision-making to regulate environmental challenges and sustainable development are invited. In addition, mainstreaming environmental sustainability in national development processes, more stakeholder and private sector participation in governance matters, and extensive regional cooperation allows for the sharing and scaling up. Adaptation of ‘best practices and transboundary issues associated with environmental challenges and sustainability and the way forward supporting policy exchange and priority-setting for key environmental is elicited.