Are national biodiversity strategies and action plans appropriate for building responsibilities for mainstreaming biodiversity across policy sectors? The case of Finland

Simo Sarkki, Jari Niemelä, Rob Tinch, Jukka-Pekka Jäppinen, Matti Nummelin, Heikki Toivonen and Marina Von Weissenberg

Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 2016, vol. 59, issue 8, 1377-1396

Abstract: The Convention on Biological Diversity's national biodiversity strategies and action plans (NBSAPs) are major mechanisms for mainstreaming biodiversity into national policies. This article examines whether and how the NBSAPs contribute to mainstreaming biodiversity across policy sectors in Finland in order to halt biodiversity loss. We have developed an innovative analytical framework where the concept of responsibility addresses how motivations for mainstreaming can be built, and the concept of social learning outcomes addresses the extent of institutional changes for biodiversity. The Finnish NBSAP processes have been able to build diverse forms of responsibility (liability, accountability, responsiveness and care) in different policy sectors by providing new knowledge, careful process design and developing institutional linkages. Despite pro-biodiversity outcomes in the targeted policy sectors, the responsibilities do not diffuse from the environmental administration to other policy sectors to a sufficient extent. Closing this ‘responsibility gap’ is a key challenge for building effective environmental policies.

Date: 2016
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09640568.2015.1076384 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jenpmg:v:59:y:2016:i:8:p:1377-1396

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CJEP20

DOI: 10.1080/09640568.2015.1076384

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Environmental Planning and Management is currently edited by Dr Neil Powe, Dr Ken Willis and George Bill Page

More articles in Journal of Environmental Planning and Management from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().