Governance change and governance learning in EU environmental policy

This paper suggests that shifting modes of EU environmental governance – and particularly new procedural requirements for public and stakeholder participation – necessitate more systematic and coordinated learning on the part of policymakers and officials about designing and running participatory planning processes. This is important given the persistence of implementation deficits in EU environmental policy, and limited progress on environmental quality indicators in many key areas, despite the hopes placed in new modes and instruments. In fact, the effectiveness and legitimacy of new governing modes is by no means clear, and there is an urgent need for improved understanding of what ‘works’, under what conditions, in participatory and collaborative environmental governance. Arguably, recent governance shifts actually open up a range of opportunities for learning, and to some degree even deliberately make provisions for learning. In order to improve the legitimacy and effectiveness of environmental governance, there is therefore a need for both research and policy practice that is geared towards gathering evidence and learning from the diversity of experiences currently playing out across the EU. We examine here several implications of recent innovations in EU water governance – primarily through the enactment of the Water Framework Directive (2000) and the Floods Directive (2007) and their respective procedural requirements for cyclical participatory planning. Setting these developments in the context of wider shifts in European environmental governance over the past two decades, we discuss scope for policy-induced ‘governance learning’, wherein policymakers draw on evidence and experience to learn about how to design and execute effective participatory planning and decision-making. In developing the notion of governance learning we aim to extend work on policy learning by focusing specifically on the procedural dimensions of governance, as opposed to the substantive content of policies and instruments. Drawing on evidence from Water Framework Directive implementation across several member states (Jager et al. submitted), and multi-level Floods Directive implementation within Germany (Newig et al. 2014; 2016), we make a case for more coordinated and systematic approaches to gathering evidence and learning from ongoing environmental policy implementation in the EU. This, we argue, might usefully be pursued in a variety of ways, drawing on experiences in neighbouring jurisdictions and policy fields, and represents an important opportunity for both governance researchers and administrators/practitioners to advance understanding of, and capability in, adaptive and effective environmental governance. References: Jager, N.W., Challies, E., Kochskämper, E., Newig, J., Benson, D., et al. (submitted). Transforming European Water Governance? EU Water Framework Directive implementation in 13 member states. Submitted to Water (2016). Newig, J., Challies, E., Jager, N.W., & Kochskämper, E. (2014). What Role for Public Participation in Implementing the EU Floods Directive? A comparison with the Water Framework Directive, early evidence from Germany, and a research agenda. Environmental Policy and Governance, 24, 275-288. Newig, J., Kochskämper, E., Challies, E., & Jager, N.W. (2016). Exploring governance learning: How policymakers draw on evidence, experience and intuition in designing participatory flood risk planning. Environmental Science & Policy, 55, 353-360.