Climate change is prompting an unprecedented questioning of the fundamental bases upon which society is founded. Businesses claim that technology can save the environment, while politicians champion the role of international environmental agreements to secure global action. Economists suggest that we should pay developing countries not to destroy their forests, while environmentalists question whether we can solve ecological problems with the same thinking that created them. As the process of steering society, governance has a critical role to play in coordinating these disparate voices and securing collective action to achieve a more sustainable future. Environmental Governance is the only book to discuss the first principles of governance, while also providing a critical overview of the wide ranging theories and approaches that underpin policy and practice today. It places governance within its wider political context to explore how the environment is controlled, manipulated, regulated, and contested by a range of actors and institutions. This book shows how network and market governance have shaped current approaches to environmental issues, while also introducing emerging approaches such as transition management and adaptive governance. In so doing, it highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches currently in play, and considers their political implications. This text provides a groundbreaking overview of dominant and emerging approaches of environmental governance, drawing on cutting edge debates and forging critical links between them. Each chapter is complemented by case studies, key debates, questions for discussion and further reading. It is essential reading for students of the environment, politics and sociology, and, indeed, anyone concerned with changing society to secure a more sustainable future.

Le present volume est la reecriture d'un seminaire international organise au Portugal du 18 au 30 septembre 1983; la reunion se voulait avant tout radiographie des tendances actuelles et des nouvelles perspectives en semiologie (filiations historiques, champs d'application, statut des unites conceptuelles, ecarts entre theories et leur objet); les contributions rassemblees dans ce recueil depassent sans nul doute la pure description du "state of art"; elles s'offrent au contraire comme une interrogation retrospective sur les paradigmes; en un mot, elles se font moins 1 'echo de 1 'acquis que du questionnement. Leur premier souci concerne la definition de la discipline : consideree longtemps comme un savoir ventriloque manipule par les linguistes ou les logiciens, la semiotique s'affirme aujourd'hui de plus en plus comme une propedeutigue en dialogue permanent avec toutes les formes du discours scientifique. A ce titre, elle s'incarne en premier lieu dans l'effort d'intelligibilite transformant l'objet re el en objet de connaissance : demarche reductrice, simulatrice (le modele figure le fonctionnement de l'objet a decrire), a la recherche de categories toujours plus puissantes, mais confrontee a la resistance du sens, a cette part non interpretable qui lui echappe sans cesse, et vouee donc a operer sur le mode du pari.

Le present volume est la reecriture d'un seminaire international organise au Portugal du 18 au 30 septembre 1983; la reunion se voulait avant tout radiographie des tendances actuelles et des nouvelles perspectives en semiologie (filiations historiques, champs d'application, statut des unites conceptuelles, ecarts entre theories et leur objet); les contributions rassemblees dans ce recueil depassent sans nul doute la pure description du "state of art"; elles s'offrent au contraire comme une interrogation retrospective sur les paradigmes; en un mot, elles se font moins 1 'echo de 1 'acquis que du questionnement. Leur premier souci concerne la definition de la discipline : consideree longtemps comme un savoir ventriloque manipule par les linguistes ou les logiciens, la semiotique s'affirme aujourd'hui de plus en plus comme une propedeutigue en dialogue permanent avec toutes les formes du discours scientifique. A ce titre, elle s'incarne en premier lieu dans l'effort d'intelligibilite transformant l'objet re el en objet de connaissance : demarche reductrice, simulatrice (le modele figure le fonctionnement de l'objet a decrire), a la recherche de categories toujours plus puissantes, mais confrontee a la resistance du sens, a cette part non interpretable qui lui echappe sans cesse, et vouee donc a operer sur le mode du pari.

Climate change is prompting an unprecedented questioning of the fundamental bases upon which society is founded. Businesses claim that technology can save the environment, while politicians champion the role of international environmental agreements to secure global action. Economists suggest that we should pay developing countries not to destroy their forests, while environmentalists question whether we can solve ecological problems with the same thinking that created them. As the process of steering society, governance has a critical role to play in coordinating these disparate voices and securing collective action to achieve a more sustainable future. Environmental Governance is the only book to discuss the first principles of governance, while also providing a critical overview of the wide ranging theories and approaches that underpin policy and practice today. It places governance within its wider political context to explore how the environment is controlled, manipulated, regulated, and contested by a range of actors and institutions. This book shows how network and market governance have shaped current approaches to environmental issues, while also introducing emerging approaches such as transition management and adaptive governance. In so doing, it highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches currently in play, and considers their political implications. This text provides a groundbreaking overview of dominant and emerging approaches of environmental governance, drawing on cutting edge debates and forging critical links between them. Each chapter is complemented by case studies, key debates, questions for discussion and further reading. It is essential reading for students of the environment, politics and sociology, and, indeed, anyone concerned with changing society to secure a more sustainable future.