Conceptual framework for increasing legitimacy and trust of sustainability governance

Abstract

While the quantity of sustainability governance initiatives and systems has increased dramatically, crises persist over whether specific governance systems can be trusted as legitimate regulators of the sustainability of economic activities. This paper focuses on conceptual tools to improve our understanding of these crises as well as the facilitating factors and barriers for sustainability governance to play a role in transitioning to profoundly more sustainable societies than those that currently exist. Bioenergy is used throughout the paper as an example to aid contextually in understanding the theoretical and abstract arguments. We first define eight premises upon which our argumentation is developed. We then define sustainability, sustainability transition, legitimacy, and trust as a premise for obtaining effectiveness in communication and minimising risks associated with misunderstanding key terms. We proceed to examine the literature on “good governance” in order to reflect upon what defines "good sustainability governance" and what makes governance systems successful in achieving their goals. We propose input, output, and throughput legitimacy as three principles constituting “good” sustainability governance and propose associated open-ended criteria as a basis for developing operational standards for assessing the quality of a sustainability governance system or complex. As sustainability governance systems must develop to remain relevant, we also suggest an adaptive governance model, where continuous re-evaluation of the sustainability governance system design supports the system in remaining “good” in conditions that are complex and dynamic. Finally, we pull from the literature in a broad range of sciences to propose a conceptual “governance research framework” that aims to facilitate an integrated understanding of how the design of sustainability governance systems influences the legitimacy and trust granted to them by relevant actors. The framework is intended to enhance the adaptive features of sustainability governance systems so as to allow the identification of the causes of existing and emerging sustainability governance crises and finding solutions to them. Knowledge generated from its use may form a basis for providing policy recommendations on how to practically solve complex legitimacy and trust crises related to sustainability governance.

Governing sustainability of bioenergy, biomaterial and bioproduct supply chains from forest and agricultural landscapes

“…This motivated another workshop in Savannah, Georgia, USA, in 2013 [21], which provided a platform for discussions on methodology and assumptions for calculation of greenhouse gas emission savings from forest bioenergy. This debate is still energetically ongoing today [5] and continues to give rise to new studies on greenhouse gas emission savings, also in this article collection.…”

“…The IEA Bioenergy research collaboration on forest resource mobilisation through intensive logging residue and whole-tree harvesting started in the early 1970s, with associated investigations of how it affects site fertility and other ecological values. Several countries needed such knowledge when interest in the use of domestic forest biomass for energy increased after the oil embargo in 1973 [1,5]. The collaboration on the topic continued in a dynamic research and knowledge exchange environment created by workshops and projects under various IEA Bioenergy Tasks with national research in participating member states as a basis.…”

“…A booming international trade with bioenergy products since the 2000s [2] has led to creation of transnational sustainability regulation, often as a combination of national legal requirements and non-state certification to show compliance [3,4]. The adopted and applied systems have been under public scrutiny from the beginning, but governance 1 is likely still one of the most useful tools available for finding agreement among stakeholders, or voters, on sustainability goals and criteria and indicators for measuring progress towards these goals [5].…”

“…A high level of legitimacy is a precondition for building trust that the system leads to acceptable and beneficial outcomes. The question sits in the nexus of science, policy and governance, and public acceptance [5][6][7] (Fig. 1).…”

“…1). There is evidence that people are more likely to perceive a governance system as legitimate when rigorous science underpins its design, when the science is seen as credible, and when the system's exertion of power is seen to be fair and appropriate [5]. The model provided in Fig.…”