ABSTRACT

New Environmental Governance describes the widening over the past five decades of the range of public and private instruments, institutions, and actors available to govern the environment. But implementing New Environmental Governance arrangements has been difficult. This article responds to the call for more context-specific empirical investigations to better understand how New Environmental Governance institutions work in practice, by focusing on one tool in the expanded array of options – non-government voluntary stewardship programs for private land managers. The article applies a conceptual framework to three working examples of voluntary stewardship using a qualitative methodology to tease out key elements of their operations and unpack the relationship amongst three groups of actors – land managers who participate in the programs, organisations that manage the programs, and stakeholders who have an interest in private land stewardship. Important tensions emerge from the research, which revolve around the lack of strategic alignment between land managers’ participation in programs and how stakeholders leverage their influence. These tensions limit the potential of stewardship programs as tools of New Environmental Governance arrangements.

摘要

《新环境治理》描述了过去五年来可用于治理环境的公共和私人工具，机构和参与者的范围的扩大。但是，实施新的环境治理安排一直很困难。本文回应了呼吁进行更多针对特定情况的实证研究，以更好地了解新环境治理机构如何在实践中工作，方法是将重点放在扩展的选项中的一种工具–私人土地管理者的非政府自愿管理计划。本文使用定性方法，将概念框架应用于三个自愿性管理工作示例，以阐明其运营的关键要素，并剖析三类参与者之间的关系-参与计划的土地管理者，管理计划的组织，以及对私人土地管理感兴趣的利益相关者。研究产生了重要的紧张关系，其围绕着土地管理人员参与计划与利益相关者如何利用其影响力之间缺乏战略一致性的问题。这些紧张关系限制了管理计划作为新环境治理安排的工具的潜力。