To Örebro University

Reflexive institutions are upheld as critical for greening states and societies. However, attempts to increase institutional reflexivity are generally introduced through projects and institutional add-ons, which makes them difficult to maintain, while the established institutions can reproduce unsustainability. This paper explores possibilities for established institutions to become (more) reflexive, assessing two established forms of governance, bureaucracy and networks. It is conceptually argued that institutional structures can enable as well as constrain institutions’ reflexive capacity. The two organizational forms face different combinations of constraints on reflexivity (formal institutions, entrenched interests, and dominant ideas). Two empirical cases are used to illustrate this point: the bureaucratic mining permit process and the network-based organization Fossil-free Sweden. Insights from the two cases suggest, counter to dominant views and organizational trends, that bureaucracy can have a critical function for reflexive institutions. It is argued that bureaucratic structures are essential to balance the constraints on reflexivity and thereby safeguard the inclusion of conflicting perspectives, which are the most valuable seeds for reflexivity. While network-based governance faces less institutional constraints, interest-based and ideational constraints are more entrenched. Exploiting the strengths of each governance form seems critical to effectively and sustainably tackle the environmental challenges that modern society is facing.

This paper explores how contestation unfolds within the interconnected processes of governing, managing, and measuring nature, using Swedish forest policy and Woodland Key Habitats (WKHs) as a case study. It illustrates how contestation rooted in different interests and worldviews manifests as epistemic struggles within the state apparatus. Based on document analysis and expert interviews with policymakers, researchers, and stakeholders, the paper traces the development of WKHs since the 1990s as a method, grounded in an ecosystem approach, for measuring the ecological value of a forest, as well as the subsequent politicization and contestation of the method that has played out over the past decade. Rather than targeting political goals, the contestation is directed at the objectivity, legality, and reasonableness of WKHs. The contestation led to a revision of the classification criteria and eventually the termination of the assessments. This case underscores how the deep entanglement of values and facts is essential both for driving change and for understanding the limited implementation of more progressive ecosystem-oriented policies. Assessing this triadic interrelationship between governing, managing, and measuring nature provides a deeper understanding of how contestation plays out and impacts environmental governance.

The gap between what is known about climate change and the action taken to prevent it has instigated debates around how to reconfigure global environmental assessment organizations to better inform and foster transformative change. One recurring request involves the need for a broader and better inclusion of social scientific knowledge. However, despite such intentions, the inclusion of social scientific research remains limited. How can this be explained? Through a detailed analysis of the IPCC special report on limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees, this article reveals how the institutional conditions of global environmental assessments condition and shape what knowledge is included in these assessments, as well as how this knowledge is represented. It discusses how and why the understanding of social processes and structures remains underdeveloped, despite such knowledge being critical for transformative change. To integrate such knowledge into environmental assessments would require substantial changes to the current epistemic infrastructure used by global environmental assessments. It is therefore time to think beyond global environmental assessments and consider complementary institutional science–policy relations through which social scientific research can assist policy actions to promote deep transformative change.

Reflexivity and its counterpart— anti-reflexivity— are key concepts in environmental sociology. Reflexivity and similar concepts are presented as means for taking constructive steps towards sustainability in face of the often wicked nature (complex, uncertain, dynamic, value-laden, dilemmatic, ambivalent) of socio-ecological problems and risks. Anti-reflexivity is the suppressing or resisting of reflexivity. This entry discusses definitions of reflexivity, anti-reflexivity and related concepts based on key scholarly work in environmental sociology. From this field of research, reflexivity— or its absence/resistance— is discussed with regards to the system or macro level (society at large, state apparatus, the scientific field or general discourses in the public sphere), the process level (governance networks, decision-making processes), or at the level of individual and collective choices of action (consumption/lifestyle choices, social movements).

With the current technology-based transition strategy, prospecting for new mines has increased, and the extractive damage involved in mining is justified as a means of protecting the climate. The mining permit process involves fundamental trade-offs between values and goals (environmental, social, and economic) relating to global security and local livelihoods, as well as conflicting understandings of sustainability. These value conflicts and dilemmas lie at the heart of sustainable transformation. Drawing on pragmatic sociology and the orders of worth established by Boltanski and Thévenot, this paper illustrates that competing standpoints claim legitimacy by referring to different modes of judging what is good, right, and sustainable. The analysis shows that institutionalized ideals about legitimate forms of proof constrain and limit the possible ways of justifying a position, and this shapes the way nature is valued, as well as how contestation is formulated. When critics adopt legitimate forms of justification, they might win the case, but at the same time, strengthen the dominance of specific ways of ascribing value. The paper concludes that active engagement with diverging ways of ascribing worth, and thus different forms of proof, may enable governance that leads to more just and sustainable futures.

The modern financial system has enabled a globalized economy by leveraging investments for production, consumption, and the trade of goods and services. However, this system has also engendered a series of wicked problems and externalities, including but not limited to climate change, environmental pollution, biodiversity loss, and inequalities that significantly challenge the well-being of nature and people. The system is also currently inadequate with regards to financing sustainable development, as recognized by the 2015 Addis Ababa Action Agenda. This Voices asks: what must be done to transform today's financial system for a sustainable future?

Greening public organizations demands the acknowledgment and reconciliation of tensions and conflicts between core values. This is a challenge that public pension funds have come to face as the call for sustainability has reached the finance sector. Building on the value pluralism debate and institutional theory this article provides a theoretical elaboration of strategies for managing value conflict in public organizations, discussing how value conflict management may promote or inhibit institutional change. The empirical analysis explores how sustainability-related value conflicts are managed within Swedish public pension funds. Political goals and ideals of sustainable finance are pushing funds to promote sustainability through their investments, thus, to consider and promote further values than financial return. Previous research has mainly focused on the financial profitability of sustainability concerns. This study shows that economic value calculation remains the dominant approach within funds, downplaying any conflict between environmental and financial goals. However, to maintain institutional legitimacy under increasing external pressure, the funds have implemented complementary strategies, such as organizational separation of value-related tasks, and different principles for prioritizing value-based actions. The funds thereby avoid ethical reasoning which they fear would lead to subjectivity. In conclusion, the implications for organizational change are discussed.

As an epistemic authority providing valid knowledge and measures for handling current environmental problems or preventing new ones from occurring, environmental expertise is a crucial factor in regulation and in the development of environmental discourses. At the same time, scientific expertise is also questioned; its capacity to deliver both trustworthy and relevant knowledge is contested. This situation constitutes the point of departure for this chapter, which critically discusses the meaning and implications of environmental expertise. Starting with an exploration of current trends within, and challenges to, expertise, it discusses why expertise needs to comprise other forms of knowledge than only scientific ones. It presents several theoretical proposals for tackling the situation of contested expertise, all of which stress the need to re-draw the boundaries between experts and non-experts. The chapter investigates how these proposals differ in terms of who, what, why and how to include non-scientific knowledge. By way of conclusion, it raises questions about the role of expertise in the current quest for social transformation.