Environmental policy design and implementation: toward a sustainable society

The purpose of this Special Issue is to explore and advance our understanding of (a) the present state and effectiveness of local, national, and regional policies engaging with, and transforming, the climatological, environmental, social, and economic impacts and consequences of development activities; and (b) how environmental policies might be designed and embedded into future development planning to encourage coordination and coherence across sectors and policy domains to deliver sustainable transformations. Whilst we are particularly concerned to highlight research and cases exploring and addressing these issues in the context of SSA, we are also interested in wider Global South perspectives and, if appropriate, examples from Global North geographies.

Key questions to address could include:

What are the key synergies and trade-offs in developing effective environmental policies to enhance or restrain the positive and negative impacts of primary and secondary sector expansions respectively? What opportunities are there for developing integrated urban policies that will enable countries to achieve both green growth and future social–ecological prosperity? What are the principal institutional and governance barriers and challenges in designing, implementing, and evaluating integrative environmental policies to meet multiple SDGs? Are there policy coordination difficulties in meeting the aims of Agenda 2030 and Agenda 2063, and if so, how might these be harmonized? What rapid economic policy reforms and interventions can be implemented to achieve significant progress in green and physical and digital infrastructure? In what ways can policy interventions be designed to increase urban green infrastructure and ecosystem services to improve community livelihoods in informal settlements? How can marginal communities and voices be effectively included in policymaking processes, and to what extent can processes of deliberative democracy and environmental justice encourage dialogues between local actors and national institutions? How can environmental policy be embedded in urban planning to deliver sustainable land use transitions and effective climate risk reduction strategies? How can advances and innovations in STEM and ICT be applied to produce more robust environmental policymaking and strengthen the science–policy interface?

We therefore encourage original contributions that adopt both research and practice perspectives concerning evidence of policy trade-offs, synergies, challenges, and opportunities. In particular, we invite interdisciplinary studies across natural, social, and human sciences that examine social–ecological interactions occurring between land-use change, livelihoods, primary and secondary sector activities, and urban planning. Empirical studies drawing on multiple case studies, reviews, and conceptual submissions that adopt novel epistemological or methodological approaches are welcomed.