Wageningen Centre of Sustainability Governance
The Wageningen Centre of Sustainability Governance (WCSG) is an interdisciplinary group of governance scholars committed to contributing knowledge on the design, functioning and implications of sustainability governance arrangements in the Wageningen domain of food, nature and environment.
Sustainability governance refers to the formal as well as informal interactions and institutions that steer sustainability practices in networks of diverse public and private actors. In doing so, the Centre draws on a variety of social science disciplines and contributes particularly to theories and methods in policy sciences, sociology, science and technology studies, and law.
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Organization
- The WCSG Steering Committee consists of the chairs of the four participating chair groups: Simon Bush (Environmental Policy), Bas Arts (representative of the Forest and Nature Conservation Policy), Katrien Termeer (Public Administration and Policy) and Josephine van Zeben (Law). The chairs discuss WCSG's objectives, strategic choices and activities that contribute to the WCSG's mission. You can read more about each group via the banners below this page.
- The WCSG General Board consists of the chairs of the four participating chair groups, plus the chairs of three committees: the Eduction committee (Mattijs Smits), the Research committee (Art Dewulf) and the PhD committee (Yannick Buitenhuis). The committees consist of members from the four groups and they discuss opportunities for collaboration and future plans regarding eductation, research and PhD activities.
- The steering committee convenes about 6 times per year, the general board takes place about 3 times per year.
Research lines
- Governing ‘wicked sustainability problems’
- Governing sustainability of transnational networks and flows
- Governing sustainability practices
Incubator projects
WCSG has allocated budget for 3 incubator projects (2019-2020) to stimulate and support new and promising research collaborations among staff of the four chair groups.
Also see our completed (2018-2019) WCSG incubator projects:
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Incubator project: Consumer-facing information tools for food system practices
- The ability to alter current consumption practices is considered key for the success of a food system transition. -
Incubator project: Governance of practices and practices of governance
- The aim of the incubator is to further develop the relations between the notions of ‘governance practices and practices of governance’ and to identify possible areas of collaboration on this topic between the different chair groups. -
Incubator project: Co-production and digital platforms for sustainability governance
- This incubator aims to make an elaborate inventory and to reflect on methodological approaches to co-production of ICT-enabled environmental information systems and their implications across various domains of the Wageningen Centre of Sustainability Governance. -
Incubator project: Accountability and knowledge
- This incubator project is intended to boost collaborative research across the four chair groups of the WCSG on learning-based accountability mechanisms in global sustainability governance, and the role of (contested) knowledge herein. -
Incubator project: Conceptualising responsible business in sustainability governance
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Incubator project: Indigenous knowledge, politics and accountability in global biodiversity governance
- Knowledge can empower non-state actors to hold policy-makers accountable for their (lack of) implementation of global biodiversity goals, including through naming-and-shaming and policy-learning enablement.
NRC Opinion articles by WCSG
Participating chair groups in WCSG
Political and sociological perspectives for understanding the incorporation of environmental transformations into processes of modernisation and globalisation
Forest and Nature Conservation Policy
Understanding interactions among people, forests and nature as a set of context-specific practices that shape and are shaped by policies, ideas and knowledge
Legal approach for analysing law and regulation in the life science domains, sustainable food supply chains (food, trade, business and environmental law)
Public Administration and Policy
Public administration, political and organisational science perspectives for analysing the practices of actors embedded in governance institutions, and how these generate new arrangements to solve 'wicked problems'