Governing for resilience: a new epoch in U.S. environmental policy and politics?

The evolution of U.S. environmental policy has occurred through a series of three overlapping epochs, with each distinguished by differences in problem definition and policy objectives, implementation philosophies, points of intervention, policy tools, data and informational needs, political and institutional contexts, and key events and public actions. In the third environmental epoch, policy efforts have primarily been framed within the context of sustainability and focus on applying comprehensive, bottom-up policy and planning initiatives. Despite its practical approach for addressing cross-cutting environmental issues, the “sustainable communities” paradigm has fallen short of facilitating a transformation in which U.S. society subsists within the Earth system’s ecological limits. As a result of the sustainability epoch’s policy failures, environmental policy practitioners have increasingly applied the concept of resilience to frame policy discussions. This study draws from resilience theory and applies the environmental epoch framework to conceptualize the emergence of a fourth epoch in U.S. environmental politics and policy, governing for resilience. An examination of the features that distinguish an environmental epoch that centers on resilience contributes to theory and provides practical insight for policymakers by identifying opportunities to prepare for ongoing and unprecedented environmental challenges.