Public-private governance patterns and environmental sustainability

This paper discusses public-private governance patterns which have emerged in global environmental management. These patterns originate from a spontaneous non-governmental basis or have intentionally been created and constructed by international organisations or states. The paper identifies four patterns of environmental governance between international organisations, governments and private actors. Theoretically governance patterns in which private actors play a prominent role, pose a challenge to state sovereignty and remould the traditional state centric pattern of environmental management. However, the article emphasises the fact that these patterns remain no more than constructs of international organisations, non-governmental organisations and governments, whose first priorities are not always environmental conservation. The paper suggests that the oldest public-private type of environmental governance, in which the environmental organisations are in advocacy roles, reform environmental management in a more concrete and sustainable way than the more recently emerging patterns. © Springer 2006.