Decentralization and leakage

Variable relationship:

Local governance is widely believed to have advantages over central governance in the management of environmental commons. However, it is commonly argued that a comparative weakness of local governance (Centralization) is its inability to resolve large-scale environmental problems, most prominently climate change (Sovacool and Brown 2009). Much of this difficulty comes from the inability to fully internalize the negative externalities that local governmental units can inflict on each other across space. As local governance processes work on internalizing their own externalities, they can do so by exacerbating the same problems outside of their jurisdiction, through a process known as leakage (Leakage). Ultimately, this process can be characterized as a scale mismatch problem (Scale Match), where the scale of the environmental resource or issues exceeds the scale of the local jurisdiction that is trying to address it.

Project

SESMAD

Sector(s)

 

Scientific Field

Component Type(s)

Local Government, Group of Local Governments

Status

Public