What influences environmental governance? A significant part of the challenge of environmental governance is that it takes place in the context of a rapidly changing world. Those changes reach far beyond the accelerating decline of ecosystems to include economic, political, and technological trends that are redefining our relationships with ecosystems, often for the worse. Globalization, growing trade, and international investment magnify our actions beyond national borders. New fishing, farming, and extraction technologies enable rapid exploitation of natural resources and drive landscape-scale change. Yet, the spread of democracy and the emergence of a robust civil society in most nations have increased public expectations and the demand for "good governance." These trends give us new options for improving environmental governance as well.

No one familiar with today’s environmental trends could conclude that Planet Earth is well-managed. That truth alone hints at the troubled and often ineffective state of environmental governance at scales from local, to national, to global. Since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, the capacity of Earth’s ecosystems to sustain human well-being has deteriorated in nearly every category measured. This is in spite of painstakingly negotiated global environmental treaties and the considerable progress that has been made in understanding how ecosystems function. More often than not, human institutions still fail to make environmental decisions that work for both people and ecosystems.