Often concepts of sustainability have been criticised for being theoretically ill-founded and lacking practical impact. This paper provides a new theoretical foundation of sustainable development, which is based on a coherent set of three normative and functional categories: systems integrity,...

Summary of papersAs the above notes on the small group discussion highlight, a number of significant challenges face researchers, practitioners and policy makers in defining sustainable management and in designing a set of institutional arrangements which can work together to achieve...

Participation has become a mantra in environmental governance. However, there are signs that the participatory agenda has started to lose its momentum and justification because of disappointments about actual achievements. Rather than focusing on improving participatory processes or articulating...

Risk research over the last three decades has been focused on the development of methods of and procedures for risk analysis and risk management. As a consequence of this research, risk management agencies have been trying to make risk assessments a routine operation for evaluating different...

This paper develops a sequential model of precautionary risk regulation that contributes substantively and procedurally to the European Commission's position on precaution. At first, four concepts of precautionary policy are distinguished which are taken into account in the conceptualisation of...

Reviewing the existing studies of public perception and drawing analogies from other risk technologies, this paper explores the public positions on research and implementation of geoengineering as a means to combat climate change. Existing studies on geoengineering perceptions show low levels of...

The notion “risk governance” refers to an integrated concept on how to deal with public risks in general, and so-called complex, ambiguous and uncertain risks in particular. These ideas have been informed by interdisciplinary research drawing from sociological and psychological research on...