Dear Colleagues,



Academics and policymakers draw diverse views on what the future of nature and the natural world should look like. Discussion of what, if anything, should be done to protect and conserve the natural world has become a source of both academic discussion and policy debate. While there is consistent agreement that conservation is desirable, little agreement exists among policymakers about how to do so. In practice, the desire to conserve the natural world has manifested itself through proposed policy solutions that focus on the use of regulatory rules or improved social planning. A wide literature explores these solutions in some detail. In practice, however, these approaches face stiff resistance in policy implementation since they are often viewed as conflicting with goals to increase standards of living and economic development.



Much has been written on how these approaches to sustainability can lead to better outcomes for the natural world, and some scholars have sought to explore how policy might be crafted to avoid the most severe trade-offs between development and improved environmental outcomes. Despite these attempts, the broader sustainable development literature has underexplored the potential of voluntary alternatives and other governance mechanisms to accomplish both development and environmental goals absent large-scale state intervention.



Among those that explored the possibility of alternative approaches, many based their exploration on Elinor Ostrom’s work on the emergence of governance institutions and polycentricity. We hope that this special issue will find additional applications and extensions of that work. Complementing Ostrom’s approach is an emergent thread of literature on free market environmentalism, which explores how market forces might be used to achieve sustainable development. We invite submissions that extend these literatures as well as others that explore alternative approaches to sustainable development and help to better address the potential trade-offs between development and conserving the natural world.



Dr. Ryan M Yonk

Dr. Veeshan Rayamajhee

Guest Editors