Removing the Thorn From New Governance's Side: Examining the Emergence of Collaboration in Practice and the Roles for Law, Nested Institutions, and Trust

• Date: 01 July 2010

40 ELR 10656 ENVIRONMENTAL LAW REPORTER 7-2010

Removing the

Thorn From New

Governance’s Side:

Examining the

Emergence of

Collaboration in

Practice and the

Roles for Law,

Nested Institutions,

and Trust

by Cameron Holley

Dr. Cameron Holley is Postdoctoral Research Associate,

Climate & Environmental Governance Network, Regulatory

Institutions Network, Australian National University.



New environmental governance (NEG) is emerging

around the globe and aims to overcome the limitations

of the interventionist state and its market alternative.

A signicant, yet divisive, aspect of NEG that remains

largely overlooked by researchers is collaboration and the

conditions that support its successful formation. is

Article examines select case studies oering a range of

controversial and underresearched mechanisms that may

be used to foster successful collaboration and recommends

four “groups” of conditions that are found to increase the

likelihood of successful collaboration.

One doesn’t need to have read Al Gore’s “Our Choice”1

or absorbed James Cameron’s “metaphor for earth”

in “Avatar”2 to k now that rapid environmental

change is prevalent across t he globe. e climate crisis, loss

of biodiversity, degraded land, diuse a ir pollution, serious

degradation to coast and oceans, and deteriorating water and

soil quality are among the most serious threats to nature,

human health, and economic well-being.3

At both a domestic and international level there has been

an important shift in the way citizens and governments

are trying to cope with these environmental and natural

resource problems.4 e traditional command-style legal

regulatory model, despite achieving signi cant gains in halt-despite achieving signicant gains in halt-

ing and slowing environmental degradation caused by large

industries,5 has failed to provide completely adequate answers

to many of these issues.6 Indeed, its uniform rules, heavy reli-Indeed, its uniform rules, heavy reli-

ance on scientic/technocratic knowledge, and hierarchical,

centralized, and interventionist nature have been extensively

1. A G, O C: A P  S  C C (2009).

2. Georey Lawrence,      

Governance, in R  R S  D: N

D   S  G D 145-74 (Frederick

H. Buttel & Philip David McMichael eds., 2005); 

Earth in Avatar, ABC N (Aust.), Dec. 11, 2009, http://www.abc.net.au/

news/stories/2009/12/11/2768981.htm.

3.  D H  ., G T: P, E,

 C 376-413 (1999); Ban Ki-Moon, Foreword, in U N

E P, G E O: E-

  D xvi (2007); U N E P-

, supra, at 4.

4.  M G  G E C:

P F S, S,   L (Gerd Winter ed.,

2006) (examining, inter alia, horizontal transfer of national policies, regional

integration, and improved coordination between international environmental

organizations); R I E G:

F I L  I R (W. Bradnee Cham-

bers & Jessica F. Green eds., 2005) (discussing examples of institutions that

have e volved to meet th e changing realities of the world in the 21st cen-

tury and envi sioning what changes are needed for a more eect ive inter-

national envi ronmental governance s ystem); Bradley C. Karkkainen, Reply,

            

  , 89 M . L. R. 471, 473 (2004); Orly

Lobel,       

Contemporary Legal ought, 89 M. L. R. 342, 343 (20 04) (discussing

the shif t from th e traditional New Deal regulatory e ra to a “Renew De al”

governance paradig m).

5. Daniel H. Cole & Peter Z. Grossman, When Is Command-and-Control

 

, 5 W. L. R. 887, 888, 893

(1991); Robert F. Durant et al., -

 , 35 A.

 S’ 643, 644-45 (2004).

6.   N G  ., S R: D

E P 5-7, 343-348 (1998) [hereinafter S

R] (discussing the “command-and-control” approach).







in this Article was supported by an Australian Research Council

Discovery Grant and an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant in

partnership with the Environment Protection Authority, Victoria.

Copyright © 2010 Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, DC. reprinted with permission from ELR®, http://www.eli.org, 1-800-433-5120.

7-2010 NEWS & ANALYSIS 40 ELR 10657

criticized as excessively adversarial, expensive, unwieldy, and

insensitive to loca l contexts.7 Responding to these limits,

policymakers and regulatory agencies have pursued a range

of alternatives to hierarchy.8 One of the most plausible and

increasingly prevalent a lternatives to emerge embraces a

more collaborative, multiparty and multilevel approach to

environmental and natural resource governance.9

In the United States, such trends are clearly evident in

the collaborative endeavors of multiple agencies a nd sta ke-

holders addressing the demands on water resources in the

Chesape ake Bay10 and the San Francisco Bay Delta,11 a nd

in habitat conservation planning by l andowner s, various

tiers and a gencies of g overnment, c onservationist s, inde-

pendent scientists, and other i nterested citizens.12 Broad ly

similar endeavors ca n a lso be found intern ationally,13

including in the European Union where there has been

increasing multiparty col laboration and participation via

environme ntal assessme nt and framework direct ives, the

Open Method of C oordination, and forms of voluntar y

agreements with indust ries.14

7.  Robert H. Cutting & Lawrence B. Cahoon, 

, 22 P E. L. R. 55,

55-56, 83 (2005) (raising general criticisms of regulation, including its cost, its

information-starved nature, a lack of enforcement, and minimal abatement);

Bradley C. Karkkainen,    

Governance, in L  N G   EU   U.S. 293

(Grainne de Búrca & Joanne Scott eds., 2006) [hereinafter L  N

G]; Richard B. Stewart,     

Regulation?, 29 C. U. L. R. 21, 61 (2001); Annecoos Wiersema, A Train

   

, 38 E. L. 1239, 1241 (2008).

8. Some placed their faith in the market and market-based instruments. 

generally Neil Gunningham et al.,    ,

in S R, supra note 6, at 37, 69-83 (discussing examples of

market-based approaches and their strengths and weaknesses); Jody Freeman

& Daniel A. Farber, Modular Environmental Regulation, 54 D L.J. 795,

814-19 (2005) (discussing the debate over the preferred tools of environmental

regulation as involving traditional “command-and-control” regulation

versus market mechanisms); Robert N. Stavins & Bradley W. Whitehead,

Market-Based Environmental Policy, in T E: T N

G  E P 105 (Marian R. Chertow & Daniel

C. Esty eds., 1997) (describing the use of market forces, instead of bureaucracy,

as a tool for creating environmental policy). For other reforms in regulation,

see N G  D S, L  L: N-

G E R (2002) (providing an analysis of

a range of regulatory reforms implemented by agencies and policymakers).

9. Karkkainen, supra note 4, at 473.

10. Wiersema, supra note 7.

11. Freeman & Farber, supra note 8.

12. Bradley C. Karkkainen, ,

in D D: I I  E

P G 208, 211-12 (Archon Fung & Erik Olin Wright

eds., 2003) [hereinafter D D]; Alejandro E. Camacho,

   55

UCLA L. R.  (2007).

13.  Wayne McCallum et al., Community Environmental Management

        20 S’ & N.

R 323 (2007); Pekka Virtanen,  

 16 S’ &

N. R 179 (2003).

14. Katharina Holzinger et al., 

 12 E. L.J. 403, 408-09, 413 (2006) (examin-

ese are just some of the novel and exciting experiments

that constitute the “new governance” in the context of

environmental protection, and that evidence a major rethink

by policymakers and scholars on how we can and should

cope with the pressing environmental problems of our time.15

Scholarsh ip on “new governanc e” is recognized as being

broad in scope, but is now considered “a major eld within

socio-lega l studies world-wide”16 and “an increasi ngly

popular form of jurisprudence.”17 is scholarship encom-

passes many di erent schools of thought,18 and often

ing transition in governance ideas in the EU, as well as the eects of these

reform ideas on actual patterns of governance, including fostering voluntary

agreements with industry and forms of private self-regulation); Joanne Scott &

Jane Holder, 

in L  N G, supra note 7, at 211 (examining environ-

mental assessment and the Water Framework directive suggesting that in the

EU there is a unique approach to federalism emerging that can be called ex-

perimentalist); Joanne Scott & David Trubek, Mind the Gap, 8 E. L.J. 1

(2002) (discussing the emergence of a series of new approaches to governance

in the EU and, inter alia, identifying some of the conceptual issues these phe-

nomena present for legal and political theory); David M. Trubek & Louise

G. Trubek,      

, 13 C. J. E. L. 539, 550-57 (2006) [hereinafter

Trubek & Trubek, Complementarity] (discussing the EU’s Water Framework

directive as an example of a mixed system of new governance and traditional

legal approaches that creates a new type of law); David M. Trubek & Louise

G. Trubek, 

  11 E. L.J. 343, 344 (2005) (examining

the Open Method of Coordination and the debates surrounding it regarding

the relative value of hard and soft law in EU social policy).

15. For further on the term new governance, see generally Grainne de Búrca

& Joanne Scott,     ,

in L  N G, supra note 7, at 1, 2-3; Neil Walker, 

, in L  N G, supra

note 7, at 15, 21-24 (discussing dierent specications of what is “new” in

new governance); Karkkainen, supra note 4, at 471 n.2, 472-73 (providing

a useful background and history on the term). For other discussions of the

term, see Lester M. Salamon,      

  T T  G: A G  

N G 1 (Lester M. Salamon ed., 2001). For an overview of

broadly similar reforms based around networks and collaborations, see J

S  G J, R  E: T P

 P 11-12 (2003) (discussing the term governance and environmental

governance); Scott Burris et al.,   

, 41 A L. R. 1, 2 (2008) (exploring “for

a broader legal audience what researchers and theorists in a wide range of

elds have made of the ferment in governance”); Brian W. Head, Assessing

, 10 P. M. R. 733 (2008) (suggesting

that network collaborations can vary in important ways).

16. David Trubek & Louise Trubek, 

   

1 (EU Centre of Excellence, Univ. of Wis.-Madison, 2007).

17. Lisa T. Alexander,  

   16 G. J.  P L. 

P’ 117, 118-19, 124-29 (2009) (characterizing new governance theory

as a “paradigm shift in contemporary legal scholarship about the appropriate

role of traditional administrative regulation, adjudication, and public impact-

litigation in public problem-solving”). For some recent discussions of new

governance scholarship, see generally Amy J. Cohen,  

, 33 L & S. I 503 (2008);

Douglas NeJaime, , 70 O S. L.J. 323, 330-37

(2009); Wiersema, supra note 7, at 1241.

18. Some of the key underpinnings of new governance include: pragmatism (see

generally J D, E  E L 303-29 (1916));

participation scholarship (see J M, B A

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