On Environmental Governance: Sustainability, Efficiency and Equity, by Oran R. Young, published by Paradigm, 2013, 210pp., $22.95, paperback.

• Author: Kerryn Brent,Jeffrey McGee
• Published date: 01 November 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/reel.12097
• Date: 01 November 2014

Book Reviews

On Environmental

Governance:

Sustainability, Eff‌iciency

and Equity,byOran R.

Young, published by

Paradigm, 2013, 210pp.,

$22.95, paperback.

Through the issue of climate change,

science has been sounding alarm

bells that humanity’s relationship

with the global natural environment

is changing. Due to rapid population

growth, accelerating consumption

levels and increased demand for

natural resources, humanity has

become a dominant force of envi-

ronmental change.1Scientists

refer to this new era as the

‘Anthropocene’, meaning that

human activity is now a primary

agent of change in the Earth’s major

natural systems, including the

climate system.2The greatest chal-

lenge humanity faces in the

Anthropocene is developing fair and

effective strategies to sustain the

systems of the Earth that are vital for

human development. In light of

increased greenhouse gas emissions

following the shift in architecture of

global climate governance at the

2009 Conference of the Parties to

the UNFCCC at Copenhagen there is

an urgent need for lawyers to better

understand environmental gover-

nance, in particular how human and

natural systems interact and might

be managed to attain sustainable,

efficient and equitable outcomes.

Over the past four decades, Oran

Young has become arguably the

leading international scholar in the

field of environmental governance.

The breadth of Young’s work spans

the development of general theories

on the formation, effectiveness and

design of environmental gover-

nance systems.3His work suggests

that carefully designed rights, rules

and decision-making procedures

can shape the behaviour of actors

(including States) towards interna-

tional cooperation to avoid collec-

tive failures, such as overuse of

natural resources and pollution

sinks. Young is also one of the

founders of the Earth System Gov-

ernance network – an international

interdisciplinary network of schol-

ars (including lawyers) that special-

izes in the analysis of various forms

of environmental governance. Few

scholars have contributed more in

terms of building theory, empirical

work and a scholarly community to

address the key question of how

human societies might exist more in

harmony with the natural environ-

ment. As another key figure in the

environmental governance commu-

nity recently commented, Young’s

work ‘has challenged scholars . . . to

engage in critical research that

helps us resolve – rather than

merely understand – the pressing

environmental problems we face’.4

The academic fields of environmen-

tal governance and environmental

law share much in common. Both

strive to better manage human

interaction with the natural envi-

ronment in a time of unprecedented

economic and technological devel-

opment. At an international level,

both fields contend with divisions

between the global North and the

global South over responsibility for

environmental problems and how

the burdens of an effective response

to pressing concerns, such as

climate change, should be equitably

shared. However, despite these

commonalities, there has not been

widespread engagement between

the fields of environmental gover-

nance and environmental law. This

has been largely due to the different

methodologies adopted. Lawyers

traditionally focus on explicating

and analyzing rules found in formal

legal sources and have little experi-

ence in developing and testing theo-

ries on the causes of environmental

problems or the effectiveness of

institutions formed in response to

them. For this reason, Young’s work

on the formation, effectiveness and

design of institutions for environ-

mental governance may not be

prominent in the minds of many

environmental and climate change

lawyers.

On Environmental Governance

offers those lawyers an accessible

but comprehensive entry point to

Young’s work. He wrote this book in

response to a request from his

1See W. Steffen, P.J. Crutzen and J.R.

McNeill, ‘The Anthropocene: Are Humans

Now Overwhelming the Great Forces of

Nature’, 36:8 Ambio (2007), 614.

2J. Rockström et al., ‘A Safe Operating

Space for Humanity’, 461:24 Nature (2009),

472, at 472.

3See, e.g., O.R. Young, Compliance and

Public Authorities: A Theory with Interna-

tional Applications (Johns Hopkins University

Press, 1979); O.R. Young, International

Cooperation: Building Regimes for Natural

Resources and the Environment (Cornell

University Press, 1989); O.R. Young, ‘The

Politics of International Regime Formation:

Managing Natural Resources and the Envi-

ronment’, 43:3 International Organization

(1989), 349; O.R. Young, ‘The Problem of

Scale in Human/Environment Relationships’,

6:4 Journal of Theoretical Politics (1994),

429; O.R. Young, The Institutional Dimen-

sions of Environmental Change: Fit, Interplay

and Scale (MIT Press, 2002).

4R.B. Mitchell, ‘Oran Young and Interna-

tional Institutions’, 13:1 International Envi-

ronmental Agreements: Politics, Law and

Economics (2013), 1, at 10.

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Review of European Community & International Environmental Law

RECIEL 23 (3) 2014. ISSN 2050-0386 DOI: 10.1111/reel.12097

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