Institutions in Environmental Management: Constructing mental models in sustainability

Abstract

This book is a synthesis of case studies I have conducted in the United States, Europe and China since the late 1980s on institutional issues of long-term environmental management and sustainable development. My aim is first of all to convince environmental policy analysts and professionals that, as we enter the twenty-first century and face a barrage of environmental problems that are longer in term, larger in scale, more complex and less well understood than before, the cognitive aspects of our collective efforts to understand and solve these problems matter more than ever. More to the point, the mental models that experts and decision makers utilize to understand environmental problems reinforce the existing institutional capacities to tackle the problems. But those same reinforced institutions in turn delimit the range of policy options the experts perceive to be at their disposal. Second, I wish to advise environmental policy analysts and professionals on how to investigate this feedback between individual mental models and their institutional boundary conditions. Third, similarities in the case study findings have persuaded me to outline institutional reform principles that I think would put us in a better position than we are today to face the challenge of sustainability. While the book is a monograph, I have tried to write it using language that is accessible enough to appeal to a multidisciplinary audience of academics and working professionals in government and enterprises. It can also serve as an advanced textbook for a graduate or post-graduate course on environmental institutions, policy or management.