Arthur P.j. Mol

• PhD
• Professor at Wageningen University & Research

During the past four decades the governance of environmental problems – the definition of issues and their political and practical resolution – has evolved to include a wider range of stakeholders in more extensive open discussions. In the introduction to this issue of Environmental Values on ‘Environment, Policy and Participation’, we outline some...

Private actors are essential partners in the sustainability governance of commodity-supply chains such as palm oil. However, their actual contribution to promoting sustainability is also contested. This article assesses the role of private actors in the governance of the palm oil-supply chain in Thailand by comparing supply-chain actors that are ce...

This paper investigates the factors that influence the adoption of RSPO and Thai-GAP certification by oil palm smallholder farmers in Thailand. A random sample of 77 RSPO certified, 108 non-certified RSPO, 87 Thai-GAP certified, and 67 non-certified Thai-GAP smallholder farmers were interviewed to investigate the factors explaining the RSPO and Tha...

Animal manure used to be the major source of additional nutrients and crucial for maintaining soil fertility and crop yield in traditional farming systems. However, it is increasingly not recycled, wasting vital resources and damaging the environment. By using long-term (1986–2017) data from a rural household survey (>20,000 households) across Chin...

This paper examines how governance arrangements for marine conservation tourism in the new regency of Raja Ampat, Indonesia, have evolved as a result of Indonesia's decentralization policy and what role NGOs have played in this process. The analysis shows that over a period of two decades NGOs have played a major co-governance role by informing and...

Certification of sustainable palm oil as organised through the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil is based on a simplified understanding of the global palm oil value chain – according to which instructions about production practices can be directly translated from the palm oil mill to the primary producer. The reality of palm oil provision is much...

p>Chemical industrial park (CIP) policy is becoming a vital national strategy of circular economy in China and a means to enhance energy and resource efficiency, environmental performance, and economic competitiveness. It also aims to avoid environmental risks of the decentralized chemical plants that have been a subject of public protests as local...

Renewable energy promotion is recognized as an important goal in international climate policies in order to reduce CO2-emissions. Biodiesel can potentially be an important contributor in this respect, especially in Thailand with its large biomass production from oil palm cultivation. Palm oil is the main raw feedstock for biodiesel production. Howe...

In socially responsible investment (SRI), engagement forms one of the core strategies of institutional investors. In investigating the case of Dutch pension funds, this study answers the following questions: what networks shape engagement with investees, and what factors determine the effectiveness of engagement? The methods we used were interviews...

Since the late nineteenth century, the nation-state has played a major role in protecting the natural environment. This resulted in the proliferation of specialized state environmental organizations, institutions and practices. For decades this state centrality in environmental protection was judged favourably. However, since the framing of ‘state...

Subsurface Arsenic Removal (SAR) is a technique used for in-situ removal of naturally occurring arsenic in groundwater. This new technology was deployed recently on an experimental basis in two sites in rural Bangladesh, to address the pressing problem of rural drinking water supplies contaminated by arsenic. This article assesses whether and to wh...

In the Russian Arctic, nature protection is important to preserve valuable ecosystems and indigenous lifestyles against the rapidly expanding oil and gas activities. In this regard, zoning legitimately balances influential stakeholders versus weak ones, and can leverage stakeholders to exercise their rights. This study explores how various stakehol...

Pesticide packages that are discarded on agricultural land can contaminate water bodies and pose a threat to the environment and human health. Little is known about how developing countries deal with this kind of land pollution. While in developed countries, packages are collected by professional organizations, the smallholder context in developing...

In the Russian Arctic, nature protection is important to preserve valuable ecosystems and indigenous lifestyles against the rapidly expanding oil and gas activities. In this regard, zoning legitimately balances influential stakeholders versus weak ones, and can leverage stakeholders to exercise their rights. This study explores how various stakehol...

Co-management has been introduced into Special Use Forests (SUFs) of Vietnam for more than 10 years. However, the extent to which Vietnamese laws and policies support co-management remains unclear. This paper reviews existing policies and laws from the national to commune levels and assesses their facilitation of co-management in SUFs. The review d...

Co-management has been introduced into Special Use Forests (SUFs) of Vietnam for more than 10 years. However, the extent to which Vietnamese laws and policies support co-management remains unclear. This paper reviews existing policies and laws from the national to commune levels and assesses their facilitation of co-management in SUFs. The review d...

The international cut flower industry is strongly criticized because of its environmental impacts and unsafe working conditions. Increasing certification of cut flowers is used to improve the growers’ environmental and social performance. But what is the impact of this private governance instrument on regulating the use of pesticides? This paper as...

Worldwide, the growth of marine tourism is creating opportunities for financing marine protected areas (MPAs), but what these financial arrangements look like and how they can be governed at larger scales, and in equitable and transparent ways, is unclear. This paper examines the governance arrangement of two region-wide successive entrance fee sys...

West and Central Africa ports have historically not paid much attention to environmental issues. In the past decade, however, environmental concerns are beginning to emerge with pockets of innovative responses to environmental risks as the ports undergo institutional and infrastructural reform – most notably, with concessions to multinational termi...

Using information and communication technologies (ICTs), e-participation is a tool that promotes the inclusion of the public in participative and deliberative decision-making processes, thus contributing to a transformation of the interaction between government and citizens in environmental governance and sustainable development. In a number of Chi...

Pesticide use is a common practice to control pests and diseases in vegetable cultivation, but often at the expense of the environment and human health. This article studies pesticide-buying and use practices among smallholder vegetable farmers in the Central Rift Valley of Ethiopia, using a practice perspective. Through in-depth interviews and obs...

Greening flood protection (GFP) is increasingly recognized as an adaptive and flexible approach to water management that is well suited to addressing uncertain futures associated with climate change. In the last decade, GFP knowledge and policies have developed rapidly, but implementation has been less successful and has run into numerous barriers....

Although poor air quality has been a fact of life for millions of Chinese citizens for at least two decades, individual actions to alleviate the impact of air pollution are a more recent phenomenon. Anecdotal evidence suggests that individualized responses to environmental risks and threats, which Andrew Szasz (2007) termed “inverted quarantine,” a...

The past decade has seen remarkable progress made in the field of environmental information disclosure in China. While the overall institutional changes and the motivation/willingness of the government to open up information are important conditions, China’s encounter with revolutionary Information and Communication Technological (ICT) advancement...

This article presents a detailed review and analysis of the discussions around the new market mechanism (NMM) and explores its potential in China. It contributes to the current discussion of the NMM in three aspects. First, this article attempts to streamline ideas about the NMM. The term NMM is considered to be an umbrella concept for emission tra...

Arsenic contamination of shallow hand pump tube well drinking water in Bangladesh has created opportunities for radical innovations to emerge. One such innovation is the household Sono filter, designed to remove arsenic from water supplies. Applying a strategic niche management approach, and based on interviews, focus groups and a workshop, this ar...

Transparency has gained in prominence and power since the 1960s, especially in holding economic and political powers accountable. The information and communications technology revolution only strengthened and internationalized this. With increasing power, however, transparency has also become an instrument of these powers. As such, transparency has...

Global energy demand and scarce petroleum resources require communities to adapt to a rapidly changing Arctic environment, but as well to a transforming socio-economic environment instigated by oil and gas development. This is illustrated by liquefied natural gas production by Statoil at Hammerfest, which opened up the Barents Sea for oil and gas d...

Comanagement in Vietnamese Special-Use Forests (SUFs) has been constrained by an administrative mode of state control. Consequently, SUF Management Boards have limited scope to engage local resource users in conservation and management. Concurrently, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have developed capacities as bridging organizations between SU...

The Vietnamese government has introduced co-management in its national system of special-use forests (SUFs) to improve the effectiveness of nature and biodiversity conservation. One of the major challenges is to allow flexibility and local adaptability of co-management coordinated by SUF management boards within the overall still-rigid structure of...

The Vietnamese government has introduced co-management in its national system of special-use forests (SUFs) to improve the effectiveness of nature and biodiversity conservation. One of the major challenges is to allow flexibility and local adaptability of co-management coordinated by SUF management boards within the overall still-rigid structure of...

Vietnam has had varying success over the past decade with its pesticides policy. Some of the most toxic pesticides have been banned from the market. But while many countries have successfully decreased agricultural pesticide use per hectare, this has not (yet) happened in Vietnam. Due to insufficient pesticide management capacity of the Vietnamese...

Comanagement in Vietnamese Special-Use Forests (SUFs) has been constrained by an administrative mode of state control. Consequently, SUF Management Boards have limited scope to engage local resource users in conservation and management. Concurrently, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have developed capacities as bridging organizations between SU...

Agricultural pesticides are important chemicals that are used to mitigate crop damage or loss and improve productivity. However, pesticides may cause negative environmental and human health effects depending on their specific distribution and use. Securing environmental safety and sustainability of pesticide distribution and use is widely seen as a...

Pesticide use is a common practice to control pests and diseases in vegetable cultivation, but often at the expense of the environment and human health. This article studies pesticide-buying and use practices among smallholder vegetable farmers in the Central Rift Valley of Ethiopia, using a practice perspective. Through in-depth interviews and obs...

Triggered by debates on climate change and energy security, renewable energy sources are presently high on the political agenda in many countries. In this regard Russia seems to stand aside worldwide developments. Until recently Russia׳s enormous potential in renewable energy sources remained poorly utilised. However, Russia׳s formal commitment to...

Consuming safe and sustainable food requires trust. Consumer trust in food can be established in different ways, including through personal relationships or various institutional arrangements established by government, private companies and/or civil-society organisations. The recent increase in food-safety incidents and sustainability concerns in C...

There is a blossoming of voluntary certification initiatives for sustainable agro-food products and production processes. With these certification initiatives come traceability in supply chains, to guarantee the sustainability of the products consumed. No systematic analysis exists of traceability systems for sustainability in agro-food supply chai...

The environmental nation state is not a formal category but a substantive one. The current set of national environmental state institutions originated in the late 1960s/1970s but has since changed in character. Many scholars note that since the new millennium, the environmental nation state in OECD countries is losing power and authority and is thu...

Contamination of shallow tube well drinking water by naturally occurring arsenic is a severe societal and human health challenge in Bangladesh. Multiple technological interventions seeking to ameliorate the problem face hurdles in securing social acceptance, i.e. the willingness of users to receive and use a technology. While most papers focus on e...

Cruise tourism is an important and expanding global industry. The growth of this sector,coupled with the continuous development of larger cruise ships, creates demands for new marine infrastructure. The development of these marine infrastructures takes place at the intersection of global cruise tourism, dredging and financial networks, and local so...

Given its past as a so-called information-poor and authoritarian country, China has recently made remarkable progress in information disclosure and environmental transparency. Since enacting the Open Government Information Regulations and the Environmental Information Disclosure Measures in 2008, China has advanced the actual amount of environmenta...

A current debate on environmental sociology involves how the subdiscipline should conceptualise and investigate the environment and whether it should be prescriptive and deliver policy recommendations. Taking this debate as a point of departure this article discusses the current and future role of sociology in a globalised world. It discusses how e...

As a sensitive area in international trade, animal welfare measures have encountered resistance in negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO). Consequently, alternative avenues have been pursued to reach international trade policy convergence. To further understand the contemporary trade politics of animal welfare, an empirical investigatio...

Following implementation in a range of other resource sectors, a number of credit-like systems have been proposed for fisheries. But confusion exists over what constitutes these nascent ‘fisheries credit’ systems and how they operate. Based on a review of credit systems in other sectors, this study fills this gap by defining how credit systems func...

In the absence of adequate extension services, retailers have become the major information source for farmers’ pesticide use in rural China. Pesticide application for smallholders is rather complex, and mistakes can lead to significant crop losses. Farmers, therefore, seek sources of information regarding pesticide use. This paper first explores ho...

Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: To promote pesticide governance that protects the environment and human health, Ethiopia has developed a legal framework for pesticide registration and control. However, in Ethiopia, pesticides are still registered, traded and used inappropriately. This research a...

In flood protection, the dominant paradigm of ‘building hard structures’ is being challenged by approaches that integrate ecosystem dynamics and are ‘nature-based’. Knowledge development and policy ambitions on greening flood protection (GFP) are rapidly growing, but a deficit remains in actual full-scale implementation. Knowledge is a key barrier...

In this chapter, Arthur Mol elaborates on informational governance in the environmental domain. He assesses the achievements of transparency to date in enhancing democratic quality and promoting environmental effectiveness. As he shows, markets and states jostle to capture transparency arrangements for their own diverse ends, which are not necessar...

A critical assessment of whether transparency is a broadly transformative force in global environmental governance or plays a more limited role. Transparency—openness, secured through greater availability of information—is increasingly seen as part of the solution to a complex array of economic, political, and ethical problems in an interconnected...

Biofuels have been criticized in academic and activist circles not only for their environmental consequences but also for their social impacts on food availability and on small-scale family farming. Meanwhile (global) initiatives and policies have been developed to stimulate “sustainable biofuels”. Brazil – a frontrunner in production and use of bi...

Under the national strategy of ‘building a new socialist countryside’, concentrated rural housing is increasing in some rural regions in China. In this research we use three case studies to analyze decision making on concentrated rural housing and the potential for future low carbon rural housing. The empirical results show that concentrated rural...

Analyzing determinants that influence polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxin and polychlorinated dibenzofuran (PCDD/F) emissions is helpful for decision-makers to find effective and efficient ways to mitigate PCDD/F emissions. The PCDD/F emissions and the contributions of the scale effect, structure effect and technology effect to emissions from eight ma...

Biodiesel from jatropha has been considered as a promising alternative to fossil fuels for some time. Consequently, China started promoting jatropha as one of the options to meet its ever-increasing energy consumption, and the Chinese biodiesel industry also gained interest. However, the excitement of the biofuel industry in jatropha faded after it...

In this paper, we examine the processes of initiation, construction and transformation of the organic cocoa network from Ghana. We address in particular how the state responded to and engaged with civil-society actors in the organic cocoa network and to what extent state involvement reshaped state–business–civil society relations? While most of the...

The complexities and uncertainties inherent to climate change place ecosystems and governance systems under pressure, in particular at the local level, where the causes and consequences of climate change play out. To address this complexity, local authorities have to be flexible, with an emphasis on learning and experimentation to lower greenhouse...

Globally, there is an increasing pressure on coastal and marine ecosystems. The development of marine infrastructure is causing additional ecological impacts on these systems. To reduce ecological impacts innovative approaches of marine infrastructure development are being developed. These approaches, such as Building with Nature, aim to integrate...

Compared to liquid biofuels biogas has hardly drawn any attention from social sciences researchers lately. Although the share of biogas and liquid biofuels in the energy portfolio of many countries are comparable, biogas systems are strongly place-based and are non-controversial in terms of sustainability. But is that a fundamental distinction betw...