Research of the Environmental Policy group
The globalization of environmental problems are more than ever shaping our world. Production and consumption practices around the world have driven climate change, biodiversity loss and natural resource depletion. Learn how our research at the Environmental Policy group contributes to tackling these problems.
Why Environmental Policy?
Complex global environmental problems require governance solutions that enable societies—including governments, private sector, civil society and everyday citizens—to effectively respond. Research at the Environmental Policy group (ENP) produces fundamental knowledge on how these societal actors can transform their practices, technologies of environmental reform and forms of social and political organization to enable inclusive and effective forms of environmental governance to address these environmental challenges.
Research themes
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Circularity
Circularity research at ENP contributes to understanding circularity transformations with a focus on how circular social practices emerge and scale up, and with what social and environmental implications.
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Biodiversity
Global efforts to combat biodiversity loss are deeply social and political, reflecting not a uniform approach to nature, but a plurality of approaches to protecting, rebuilding, rewilding, and caring for natures in the 21st Century. Our research examines these diverse approaches and their implications for governing human-nature relations in the Anthropocene.
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Food
Food, an essential part of everyday human life, involves critical sustainability challenges from production through to processing, trade, consumption and waste. Our research ranges from local practices to global value chains, contributing critical sociological and political analysis with the purpose of driving positive change.
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Climate
Climate change is one of the primary challenges of our time. Our research focuses on architectures, networks, and technologies of present and future climate governance, taking a transformative perspective that emphasizes questions of equity and effectiveness.
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Energy
A transition towards a renewable energy system brings new roles for users, communities and providers, creating challenges for inclusive governance. Our research asks what transitions towards renewable energy mean for everyday citizen engagement, for the social organisation of energy infrastructures and for sustainability transitions in water and food systems.
Research concepts
Regimes
We examine connections and contradictions in current environmental regime-making. In doing so, we understand environmental regimes as the formal and informal rules, norms, principles, institutional architectures and networks that emerge and evolve to govern multi-scalar environmental and sustainability challenges. Learn more
Practices
We analyse practices as the basis of social life, which means understanding human action as taking place amidst a dynamic socio-material context through embodied routines and interconnecting practices, that play out at the intersection of structure and agency. Learn more
Technologies
We explore how technologies, as part of socio-material practices and regimes, mediate and influence how we interpret and govern environmental challenges. Learn more
Mobilities
We examine the multiple and uneven relations between environmental mobilities and governance. A mobilities lens helps to understand and capture environmental issues that move, change form, and fluctuate and whose governance is not (yet) institutionalized. Learn more
Projects
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Holi-DOCTOR: Holistic framework for DiagnOstiC and moniTORing of wind turbine blades
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Beyond the reef: assessing ecosystem services arising from coral reef restoration to improve livelihoods in Shimoni, Kenya
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Responsible design and development of Digital Twins
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Climate change-related mobility in the borderlands
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Transition Towards a Sustainable Food System
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JustRES- Towards social and spatial justice in the Regional Energy Strategies of Overijssel
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From Lock Down to Lock In? COVID19 changing social practices and transitioning to resilient, inclusive sustainable lifestyles
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Transformative Potential of Transparency in Climate Governance (TRANSGOV)
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Food Systems for Healthier Diets
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Planning in a liquid world with tropical stakes (PADDLE)