Governance for Sustainable Development—the Challenge of
Adapting Form to Function, William M. Lafferty, ed., Cheltenham, UK:
Edward Elgar, 2004, pp. xvii, 377.
What distinguishes sustainable development as a governance challenge?
William Lafferty characterizes it as a normative long-term
challenge that has been formulated “outside-in,”
i.e., sustainable development has been developed and decided upon on an
international level, and therefore first needs to be communicated
“at home.” It is a transformative challenge in that
it requires the decoupling of economic and social development from further
damage to natural life-support systems; and as the problems with the use
and protection of natural life-support systems do not fall neatly within
the border of states, there is a need for co-operation on the
regional and global levels. Finally, Lafferty speaks of a task
“confronted by holistic interactions, interdependencies and
unpredictable results” (20).