Environmental Policy Design and Implementation: Toward a Sustainable Society

ABSTRACT

[...]these benefits remain unevenly distributed between and within countries, often leading to natural resource exploitation, habitat loss, and even species extinction, while poorer or marginalized communities across the rural-urban continuum are regularly alienated from decision making processes. [...]these developments frequently occur against the backdrop of weak governance, institutional bureaucratic backlogs, operational silos, and lack of transparency and accountability. The continuing COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in an estimated 3.2% contraction of the global economy in 2020 and according to the World Health Organization has so far claimed over 5.78 million lives, has further spotlighted the stark geopolitical disparities and unequal power relations that frame interactions within and between countries and their populations [25]. Geographies of development matter;populations are heterogeneous differing along wealth, ethnic and religious lines, and face different types and magnitudes of social-ecological challenges. [...]communities, countries and regions are not all starting from the same position, nor do they have the same technical, physical, financial, human, and natural capital endowments or capacities. There also remains limited empirical evidence of the efficacy of community-based natural resource management and multistakeholder platforms, gendered considerations of international climate financing initiatives, governing green infrastructure in peri-urban systems, and appropriate policy responses to human security implications of resource constraints under climate change.