Environmental Engineering Reference
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institutions of the United nations and the G8 and the many actors now involved in
their governance systems (cooper, Kirton, and Schrecker 2007). that framework
flowed from the literature in the rapidly emerging field of global health governance
(Kirton 2009, forthcoming). the framework had three core components: physical
challenges to health, governance responses to these challenges, and the innovation
called forth and needed in the face of new challenges when the old responses
failed.
that general framework of challenge-response-innovation conceived of
intergovernmental institutions, national governments, civil society organisations,
private firms, and individual citizens as complacent reactors, constrained learners,
and reluctant innovators. only seldom were they prescient, creative, proactive,
strategic actors who regularly and accurately anticipated future trends and adapted
to or prevented the threats to health that physical challenges brought. to be sure,
there were some supply-driven successes, such as the eradication of smallpox. but
mostly the principal actors' innovations were reactions to severe crises and shocks.
their next response to such crises typically entailed trying to do more of the same, on
the basis of their existing missions, mandates, organisational routines, professional
repertoires, and resources, based upon the dominant understanding of cause-and-
effect relationships to solve the new problem. the initial instinct was to replicate
past successes in new cases. The first defence in the face of failure was to plead for
more money and other resources to solve the current challenge. Yet in response to
the failure of these old actors and approaches to meet those challenges, there arose
competition from the many new actors and new approaches that had entered the
global health game. From this challenge and failure of the old responses and new
competition came innovation in the dominant institutions and ideas that govern
global health.
Driving successive stages of this challenge-response-innovation dynamic is the
process of globalisation, as it has intensified from the mid-19th century until now.
Most broadly, globalisation has increased the scale, speed, scope, simultaneity, and
domestic intrusiveness of disease and the other forces that directly or indirectly
harm human health. this has placed the demand for global health governance on
centre stage in many countries as the 21st century unfolds. Globalisation has also
intensified the economic, ecological and social interconnectedness, interdependence,
complexity, and uncertainty that add force to contemporary global health challenges.
Yet the scientific and information revolutions fuelled by globalisation have also
brought new insights and resources through which many more actors can respond to
the challenge in innovative and effective ways.
the challenge-response-innovation framework developed and tested in this topic
builds on this basic conception. It proceeds on three levels. The first traces the process
and pathways of action in each of the three components of challenge, response, and
innovation. the second causally connects these three components by identifying
the responsiveness, appropriateness, and effectiveness with which challenges evoke
response and innovation. the third charts the overall transformation brought about
by new non-state controlled vulnerabilities, by governance innovativeness as a self-
