International governance of biodiversity : searching for renewal

This study is about improving the governance of biodiversity. The challenges are many: low awareness leads to poor policies and insufficient capacity, and conservation appears unappealing compared to short-term economic exploitation. We searched the Internet for new types of initiatives, and found that many initiatives are based on the greening of decision making through capacity building and an area-specific focus where the approach includes developing new and better forms of finance. The main finding is that these types of renewal should be strengthened by investments in institutional crafting. We define institutional crafting as learning and being able to identify and interpret dominant institutions, understanding resistance to these institutions, and judging their strengths and weaknesses in order to act accordingly, e.g. by using and changing the institutions for biodiversity purposes. We regard this as a craft, which has to be learned and used to improve governance.