Bulletin n. 2-3/2012 | ||
October 2012-February 2013 | ||
Feldman David L. |
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The future of environmental networks - Governance and civil society in a global context | ||
in Futures , Volume 44, Issue 9 , 2012 , 787-796 | ||
Knowledge networks are a recent innovation in global environmental governance. They provide a means for local and regional initiatives aimed at averting, mitigating, or adapting to climate change and other trans-boundary problems to join together in a system that: permits sharing of experiences, diffuses policy innovation across national borders, and spans divergent disciplinary boundaries so as to better communicate science to local decision-makers. We consider the role currently played by networks and the possibility that, over time, their soft power characteristics – a reliance on value change and policy emulation – may eventually place them in a position to globally coordinate local and regional environmental policy innovations. If successful, their efforts might supplant the need for national action to address climate change, even if they do not replace the nation-state system whose environmental management efforts will continue to rely on hard power: the use, primarily, of economic incentives to induce policy change. | ||