Environmental Governance and Policy Implementation

Abstract

The biannual NESS Research Conferences have become a valued tradition. From a relatively humble beginning in the early 1990's, these conferences have grown to become truly international events. The Nordic region shares democratic and social values and at the same time has, to a large extent, the same environmental challenges.In 2007, it is twenty years since the Brundtland-commission came with the report "Our common future". They launched the most common definition of sustainable development and, as a consequence, gave the global perspective in environmental policy its absolute breakthrough.Twenty years later, this perspective has become even more relevant. Nature consists of common-pool resources, and environmental problems are border crossing. The 8 th NESS conference in Oslo, Norway June 18-20.looked into how the international community, nations and local communities meet common challenges on the environmental area. Furthermore, we discussed how the internationalisation of environmental politics creates challenges, constraints and opportunities on the local, national and global level.These themes provided a good starting point for interesting discussions and new acquaintances. The conference gathered approximately 80 researchers from the Nordic countries, the Netherlands and Germany.