Roadmap

I need to begin this with a disclaimer: The amount of social and economic tools that are available for governance are many and diverse and there is no course-material that could capture them all. What we provide here is just a very small selection of some of the most prominent in contemporary governance tools for sustainability.

This module aims to highlight the options available for invoking change.Invoking change requires human agency, i.e. the intent and ability to influence others as well as affecting the natural system. This is captured under the topics of governance and management (and we will look more closely into agency in the next part of the course). The main tools for this are institutions, the general social structure that affect all forms of repetitive and structured interactions between people. One important class of institutions are economic forms, such as markets and taxes/subsidies, which we will look at more closely. While governance often has the feel of top-down influence, stakeholder participation is part of the options for governance. Given minimal rights to organize for local stakeholders, stakeholder participation can also be initiated from the local arena, something referred to as collective action. Of course, even with no assigned rights to invoke change, collective action can challenge these lack of formal rights.