Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
sustaining, spreading process, and by non-westphalian forms of sovereignty as the
innovative key.
The first level of process charts in detail the pathways of challenge, response,
and innovation by identifying in each case who does what to whom, to what effect,
and why. this charting starts with the problem of the physical health challenges that
could catalyse a public governance response from various players and that could
lead to innovation on their part. Such physical health challenges, with their ultimate
origins in human, animal, and plant biology or material chemistry, can be brought
by state, non-state, and non-human actors or a mixture of the above. they can be
intentional, targeted, and guided or unintentional, random, and uncontrolled. they
can emerge and remain in the developed north or developing South, or move from
South to north or north to South. they can arise and spread, through physical and
psychological processes, in a slow, incremental, largely invisible fashion, or in a
sudden, severe, concentrated, visible, shocking, panic-inducing one.
the second component—public governance response—involves a similar
tracing. Such responses can come from some or all of concerned and caring
individuals, health professionals, private sector, civil society actors, nation-states,
and international institutions. they can respond consciously to the physical health
problem or unknowingly in ways that affect the challenge for better or worse. they
can respond at the source, at the borders the threatening challenge crosses, or at the
destinations to which it flows.
the third component of innovation follows a similar cadence. It conceives of
innovation broadly as changes over time that are novel or a rediscovery of past
concepts or practices, rather than a return to what has been regularly relied on before.
It asks who innovates, with the spectrum ranging from individuals to international
institutions themselves. It traces how deliberately they innovate, from accidental
discoveries through trial and error to purposeful big project science. And it identifies
where they innovate, with the possibilities ranging from the physical source to the
destination to which the disease has spread.
the second level of system responsiveness causally connects the three components
of challenge, response, and innovation. It does so by identifying the relationships
among them according to the three criteria of responsiveness, appropriateness, and
effectiveness. Responsiveness refers to the speed with which the first appearance of
a physical health challenge affecting a large population evokes a response and then
innovation as a result. Here the spectrum extends widely from non-existent or slow,
through immediate responses and resulting innovations in the middle, to proactive,
preventive action at the other end of the scale. For convenience the framework is
arranged with the physical challenge as the independent variable, public governance
response as the intervening variable, and governance innovation as the dependent
variable. but through feedback loops and autonomously, innovation can start new
processes of public governance that prevent physical challenges before they start.
The criterion of appropriateness refers to the fit between the physical problem,
governance response, and resulting innovation in its diagnosis, resource mobilisation,
targeting, instrumentalities, and centre of responsibility. the criterion of effectiveness
