ABSTRACT
What can the analysis of environmental governance contribute to efforts to solve current problems like climate change, the loss of biological diversity, or the emergence of tensions between international environmental regimes and the trade regime? Can practitioners working to address these issues on the ground generate insights that enhance our understanding of environmental governance more generally? All too often there is a disconnect between the worlds of analysis and praxis with regard to environmental governance. Analysts seeking to explain or predict the formation and performance of environmental governance systems approach these concerns in general terms and have little or no contact with members of the policy community. As a result they are unable to produce insights regarding current issues that are helpful to practitioners. For their part practitioners seeking to create and administer regimes to address concrete problems have little or no contact with the world of those seeking to add to our knowledge of environmental regimes; they are too preoccupied with the details of specific issues to stand back and think about the relevance of the propositions that the analysts produce.
