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This paper explores how two complex concepts, governance and sustainable development, can be linked in order to obtain a better understanding of their interactions. We argue that the many perspectives on sustainable development can be mapped on the continuum between ecological sustainability and quality of life. Likewise, the variety of modes of governance can be captured between hierarchical governance and deliberative governance, depending on the degree of involvement of societal actors. From these two typologies we derive a framework for analysis of governance for sustainable development. We realize that the typology is a significant simplification of the complex debates about sustainable development and governance, but it might help scientists and policy makers to explore relevant dimensions of modes of governance for sustainable development and for setting a framework for empirical analysis. The main conclusion of this paper is that the debate on governance for sustainable development will be clarified if the perspective on sustainable development and the mode of governance for achieving it are made more explicit. Problems that are now exclusively associated with sustainable development might well be problems of governance for sustainable development. Without making explicit what type of governance for sustainable development is pursued, miscommunication between stakeholders and mismatches of the approach with the instruments used could be the result, thus hampering progress in implementing sustainable development. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

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Indicators by themselves tell us little about how well a system is progressing in relation to the goal of sustainability. Especially at the regional level, existing indicator frameworks do not typically permit the inclusion of relevant regionspecific information. Furthermore, they do not provide comprehensive information on overall system sustainability. The real challenge is not to identify indicators-there are hundreds of good lists-but to seek out the best way to put all of them to work. The INSURE project, carried out in four case-study regions in Europe (including the Limburg region of The Netherlands), attempted to develop an adaptive indicator framework for integrated monitoring of sustainable development. During the project, it became increasingly clear that indicators are not only more meaningful when viewed within the context of the whole system, but also that science and policy play different, but complementary, roles. This article discusses the challenges and the lessons learned during the Limburg project.

Sustainability assessment (SA) is an increasingly popular term referring to a broad range of approaches to align decision-making with the principles of sustainability. Nevertheless, in public and private sectors sustainability results are still disappointing, and this paper reflects on this problem and proposes a way forward. We argue that, because sustainability issues are generally wicked problems (i.e. a ‘complex of interconnected factors in a pluralistic context’), effective assessments need to be reflexive about the definition of the issue and about the criteria for sustainable solutions. Based on a distinction of policy problems, we characterize SA as a form of problem structuring, and we distinguish three typical ways of problem structuring, corresponding to three different ways of integrating reflexivity in the assessment. We illustrate these routes in three examples. We discuss the way reflexivity is integrated in each example by discussing the mix of methods, SA process and epistemological balance. Rather than merely calling for more stakeholder participation, our aim is to call for more reflexivity integrated into the SA approach, and we conclude by proposing a process map for reflexive sustainability assessment to support this.

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This research article presents a diagnosis and synthesis of three case studies of universities that have transformed themselves as organisations towards sustainability with signature pathway approaches.