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Strong (green) institutions in weak states: Environmental governance and human (in)security in the Global South

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  • Johnson, McKenzie F.

Abstract

Over the last two decades, the international community has focused on building green institutional capacity in the Global South to foster human security across societies marked by rapid environmental change. Numerous nation-states have consequently institutionalized global models that have helped build administrative, fiscal, and regulatory capacity, as well as promote social and environmental protections. The emergence of strong (green) institutions, however, has not translated into the kind of social or environmental change expected; informal extractive activity (e.g., “illegal” mining), violent natural resource conflict, and environmental degradation remain enduring challenges. To understand why green governance reform has been unable to contribute to broader forms of human security, I analyze the process of institutional reform in the Global South, drawing specifically on minerals governance in Ghana and Sierra Leone. Building from multi-method fieldwork conducted between 2014 and 2016, I contend that a persistent focus on institutional design has obscured the ways in which green institution building reconfigures cross-scalar power relations that mediate governance-security linkages. In particular, the reform process has channeled power to transnational networks, which constitute what I call the green regulatory state, that produce and reproduce insecurity by reorienting social relations around global standards of natural resource conduct that 1) limit options for domestic political engagement and 2) exacerbate institutional pluralism and conflict. This argument challenges scholarship that perceives insecurity as a function of weak governance capacity by repositioning it as a direct consequence of the growth of green governance. This article contributes to an emerging body of work that questions the growing enthusiasm for green governance as a mechanism to mitigate conflict and improve social and environmental justice. It simultaneously posits that achieving sustainability and security within the context of the Anthropocene requires a more intensive focus on constructing inclusive – rather than strong – governance institutions.

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  • Johnson, McKenzie F., 2019. "Strong (green) institutions in weak states: Environmental governance and human (in)security in the Global South," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 433-445.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:122:y:2019:i:c:p:433-445
    DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.06.010
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    2. Rodriguez, Luz A. & Velez, María Alejandra & Pfaff, Alexander, 2021. "Leaders’ distributional & efficiency effects in collective responses to policy: Lab-in-field experiments with small-scale gold miners in Colombia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    3. Marcantonio, Richard A., 2022. "Toxic diplomacy through environmental management: A necessary next step for environmental peacebuilding," World Development Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 28(C).
    4. Johnson, McKenzie F. & Rodríguez, Luz A. & Quijano Hoyos, Manuela, 2021. "Intrastate environmental peacebuilding: A review of the literature," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    5. Xinya Yang & Liuna Geng, 2022. "An Integrated Analysis of Social, Economic, and Environmental Indicators’ Effects on Public Health and Health Inequality Globally: From the Perspective of Vulnerability," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 162(3), pages 1261-1279, August.
    6. Andrew Adewale Alola & Glory Chiyoru Dike & Uju Violet Alola, 2022. "The Role of Legal System and Socioeconomic Aspects in the Environmental Quality Drive of the Global South," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 163(2), pages 953-972, September.
    7. Ide, Tobias, 2020. "The dark side of environmental peacebuilding," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).

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