ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the research literature on sustainability governance. Sustainability governance falls within the larger umbrella of sustainable transition or transformation. Sustainability governance includes instruments such as strategic plans, integrative policies and institutions, sustainability indicators, as well as broader institutional change and relational change between different actors. Jordan argues that governance has enjoyed a similar history to sustainability: both are explicitly normative and vague concepts that have resonated across scientific disciplines and become popular. Sustainability governance requires integration of disparate policy sectors and actor groups towards normative goals and as such functions at a meta level above policymaking. Various instruments include strategic assessments and multi-criteria analysis, plans, interagency working groups or high-level sustainability offices, regulatory and economic instruments, and sustainability indicators. Staley is more critical, finding in a study of sustainability planning in Santa Monica that the city's sustainability framework is nothing more than an 'aggressive environmental policy agenda' that does 'not necessarily promote sustainable development'.
