Wageningen Centre of Sustainability Governance

The Wageningen Centre of Sustainability Governance (WCSG) is an interdisciplinary group of governance scholars committed to contributing knowledge on the design, functioning and implications of sustainability governance arrangements in the Wageningen domain of food, nature and environment.

Sustainability governance refers to the formal as well as informal interactions and institutions that steer sustainability practices in networks of diverse public and private actors. In doing so, the Centre draws on a variety of social science disciplines and contributes particularly to theories and methods in policy sciences, sociology, science and technology studies, and law.

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Organization

  • The WCSG Steering Committee consists of the chairs of the four participating chair groups: Simon Bush (Environmental Policy), Bas Arts (representative of the Forest and Nature Conservation Policy), Katrien Termeer (Public Administration and Policy) and Josephine van Zeben (Law). The chairs discuss WCSG's objectives, strategic choices and activities that contribute to the WCSG's mission. You can read more about each group via the banners below this page.
  • The WCSG General Board consists of the chairs of the four participating chair groups, plus the chairs of three committees: the Eduction committee (Mattijs Smits), the Research committee (Art Dewulf) and the PhD committee (Yannick Buitenhuis). The committees consist of members from the four groups and they discuss opportunities for collaboration and future plans regarding eductation, research and PhD activities.
  • The steering committee convenes about 6 times per year, the general board takes place about 3 times per year.

Research lines

  1. Governing ‘wicked sustainability problems’
  2. Governing sustainability of transnational networks and flows
  3. Governing sustainability practices

    NRC Opinion articles by WCSG

    Participating chair groups in WCSG

    Chairgroup: Environmental Policy

    Environmental Policy

    Political and sociological perspectives for understanding the incorporation of environmental transformations into processes of modernisation and globalisation

    Chairgroup: Forest and Nature Conservation Policy

    Forest and Nature Conservation Policy

    Understanding interactions among people, forests and nature as a set of context-specific practices that shape and are shaped by policies, ideas and knowledge

    Chairgroup: Law and Governance

    Law

    Legal approach for analysing law and regulation in the life science domains, sustainable food supply chains (food, trade, business and environmental law)

    Chairgroup: Public Administration and Policy

    Public Administration and Policy

    Public administration, political and organisational science perspectives for analysing the practices of actors embedded in governance institutions, and how these generate new arrangements to solve 'wicked problems'