91
to social demand for biodiversity protection and contributes positively to
sage-grouse conservation success.
While energy transitions are generally understood to involve a shift
from fossil fuels to renewable energy supply, it is useful to consider other
challenges. Adaptations that address protection of wildlife, water quality,
air quality, workers, and communities where extraction and processing
occur all represent important challenges to the industry, the economy, and
to social capacity for regulation. Studying the integration of biodiversity
concerns into energy development can inform understanding of prospects
for sustainability, broadly defined. More generally, this work can demonstrate how attention to accountability and legitimacy can support analysis
of environmental governance.
8.2
LEgitimation crisis, rEguLation,
and socioEnvironmEntaL changE: an EvoLutionary
modEL of EnvironmEntaL govErnancE
The framing of this volume places accountability and legitimation processes at the centre of environmental governance (see Kraft and Wolf
2018). Accountability mechanisms provide assurance against unacceptable
behaviour and serve to regulate flows of legitimacy. Legitimacy is understood to be a socially mediated resource that shapes the prospects of
actors, rewards and constrains behaviour, and channels socioeconomic
development (e.g., industrial organisation) and material practices (e.g.,
techniques for producing energy). As contributing authors to this volume,
we are asked to analyse practices of legitimation that serve to disrupt—as
well as conserve—business as usual in order to advance scholarship on
sustainability transitions. At the same time, we are encouraged to identify
opportunities to challenge and to change practices/relations of accountability and flows of legitimacy in order to advance sustainability transitions.
Habermas’ (1975) analysis of the legitimation crisis draws our attention
to systemic dimensions of technical and institutional change within imagined sustainability transitions. For Habermas, the crisis is a state in which
there are no problem-solving pathways available to incumbent decision
makers. The control/regulatory apparatus is perceived as not being capable of repair or renewal. The anticipated outcome is disruptive innovation,
qualitative change; a shift to a different state. ‘To the extent that (ecological) scarcity is a technical problem, this does not necessarily constitute a
8 ACCOUNTABILITY AND THE REGULATION OF LEGITIMACY…
to social demand for biodiversity protection and contributes positively to
sage-grouse conservation success.
While energy transitions are generally understood to involve a shift
from fossil fuels to renewable energy supply, it is useful to consider other
challenges. Adaptations that address protection of wildlife, water quality,
air quality, workers, and communities where extraction and processing
occur all represent important challenges to the industry, the economy, and
to social capacity for regulation. Studying the integration of biodiversity
concerns into energy development can inform understanding of prospects
for sustainability, broadly defined. More generally, this work can demonstrate how attention to accountability and legitimacy can support analysis
of environmental governance.
8.2
LEgitimation crisis, rEguLation,
and socioEnvironmEntaL changE: an EvoLutionary
modEL of EnvironmEntaL govErnancE
The framing of this volume places accountability and legitimation processes at the centre of environmental governance (see Kraft and Wolf
2018). Accountability mechanisms provide assurance against unacceptable
behaviour and serve to regulate flows of legitimacy. Legitimacy is understood to be a socially mediated resource that shapes the prospects of
actors, rewards and constrains behaviour, and channels socioeconomic
development (e.g., industrial organisation) and material practices (e.g.,
techniques for producing energy). As contributing authors to this volume,
we are asked to analyse practices of legitimation that serve to disrupt—as
well as conserve—business as usual in order to advance scholarship on
sustainability transitions. At the same time, we are encouraged to identify
opportunities to challenge and to change practices/relations of accountability and flows of legitimacy in order to advance sustainability transitions.
Habermas’ (1975) analysis of the legitimation crisis draws our attention
to systemic dimensions of technical and institutional change within imagined sustainability transitions. For Habermas, the crisis is a state in which
there are no problem-solving pathways available to incumbent decision
makers. The control/regulatory apparatus is perceived as not being capable of repair or renewal. The anticipated outcome is disruptive innovation,
qualitative change; a shift to a different state. ‘To the extent that (ecological) scarcity is a technical problem, this does not necessarily constitute a
8 ACCOUNTABILITY AND THE REGULATION OF LEGITIMACY…