Sustainability cannot be achieved without good governance. The Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002 stated that governance and sustainable development are intimately tied together and the future role and architecture of institutions, from local to international levels, will be crucial determinants to whether future policies and programmes for sustainable development will succeed.

But these are changing times. With growing tensions over both globalisation and regionalisation, traditional systems of regulation are being subjected to growing pressure for reform. While states will continue to play a significant, if changed, role in the future, the importance of players from business and civil society is increasing. Sustainable development requires this change. Such an intra- and intergenerational concept cannot be achieved with a top-down approach, but rather needs the participation of all. In fact, the governance of sustainable development requires the exploration of new forms of both social co-operation and confrontation. By doing so, the different levels (global and local), players (state, company and civil society), control structures (hierarchy, market and public-private) and fields of action need to be taken into consideration.

Governance and Sustainability examines the possibilities of integrating the environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainable development within the framework of governance processes and how that might steer societies towards sustainability. It takes a close look at the key actors, their agendas and methods, forms of organisation, problems and limits, as well as real-life examples for governance in different areas of society at the regional, national and international level. It is especially interested in exploring the nature of changes in the context of governance; the role of actors in such processes; and analysing how different forms of societal learning can improve governance processes. It concludes that this is a continuous process, characterised by conflicts and learning processes necessary to heighten both awareness of the complexity of the social and environmental problems faced and the prospects of implementing successful solutions.

Based on a major conference hosted to assess the issue of governance post-Johannesburg, the book includes innovative insights from some of the leading thinkers in both sustainable development and governance from academia, business, multilateral organisations and NGOs. It provides a unique perspective on two of the key societal problems facing the world today.

This book is motivated by the need to examine ‘the analytical connection of concepts of governance and sustainability although they are often characterised by different scientific traditions’ (p10). This is because ‘[g]overnance for sustainability under contemporary conditions is confronted with challenges that exceed the capacity of traditional governance solutions for local or regional commons in which sustainability could be sustained over a long period of time’ (p11). It becomes obvious that the text derives from a different intellectual tradition than that which we English-speakers are familiar and herein lies its probable strength. The text comprises 16 chapters, which have been developed from papers presented at a conference by the same name as the book in Berlin in 2002. Chapters cover globalization, governance, global partnerships, gender, social learning, role of politics, participation, partnerships, role of the nation-state, product policy, voluntary initiatives, good company citizenship (this from Mark Wade of Shell), the UN Global Compact and GRI, and the challenges for civil society. I am not sure that there is much here which is especially novel but the breadth and coverage do offer a way to get up to speed on a range of aspects of the debate(s) and to do so from a usefully non-Anglophobe perspective. The first three chapters (including a neat but short piece from the excellent von Weizsäcker) provide a thorough but far from rabid introduction to the issue in environmental and social sustainability and the present problems we face. The authors are not optimistic. Chapters throughout do take a thorough analysis of policy-centred aspects of the world we live in. This is not a common experience in our literature and it commends itself to us. Whether or not we would entirely agree I was stimulated by, for example, Jänicke’s ‘ten theses’ about the nation-state; Clausen et al.’s deconstruction of the range of experience with voluntary initiatives and van der Lugt’s unsentimental look at the Global Compact and GRI. The book has much to commend it and is well worth library purchase and some time spent in systematic study.
Social and Environmental Accounting Journal Volume 6 Issue 1