Devolution and Localism - March 2021

This briefing note discusses the issue of unconventional hydrocarbon exploration and development (hereafter UHED) as an issue of governance and political scale – concerning the levels of government, decision-making powers and responsibilities surrounding shale gas policy and planning in the UK. The shale gas challenge in the UK, as is common with many other environmental and energy policy challenges, involves the negotiation of different interests across multiple sectors of society in order to achieve policy success. Understanding the different scales of decision-making (see Box 1 for discussion of core terms) is important for effective environmental governance because many different parties and interests must negotiate a politically acceptable form of action, and each represents a different jurisdiction/constituency/ network, and so on. A different type of management at one scale may bring about unforeseen changes at another. An understanding of scale is therefore important when tackling an issue like UHED in order to avoid overly simplistic “onesize- fits-all” recommendations (Ostrom, 2009) that lead to policy failure, social unrest, and distrust in decision-making institutions.

Last modified: Tue, 08 Jun 2021 09:44:19 BST