Governing the triple planetary crisis: Innovating institutions and policies for climate, biodiversity, and pollution action

The field of environmental governance is being reshaped by the convergence of three interlinked threats: climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, collectively described as the triple planetary crisis. These global challenges share systemic drivers and interdependencies, requiring cohesive governance responses that transcend traditional policy silos. Recent international efforts such as the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the Agreement on Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ), and progress toward a global plastics treaty mark significant steps toward coordinated governance. However, despite these advances, major gaps remain in policy coherence and implementation across scales. Scholars and practitioners highlight persistent fragmentation between environmental domains, uneven capacity among countries, and insufficient mechanisms to integrate science, justice, and equity into governance. The need for a holistic understanding of how institutional configurations and policy instruments can drive real-world change is more pressing than ever.

This Research Topic aims to advance knowledge on how governance arrangements, institutional innovations, and policy approaches can support effective and equitable responses to the triple planetary crisis. It seeks to identify key barriers to implementation, investigate emergent governance innovations, and explore ways to foster synergies across climate, biodiversity, and pollution agendas. Central to this endeavour is understanding how global commitments can be converted into tangible outcomes at national, regional, and local levels. The Research Topic also aims to examine questions of institutional design, stakeholder participation, accountability, capacity-building, and environmental justice. By aligning theoretical insights with empirical evidence, it aspires to illuminate transformative pathways that enhance both policy coherence and governance effectiveness.

The Research Topic encompasses studies that explore global-to-local dimensions of environmental governance, as well as the institutional, political, and societal factors shaping implementation. To gather further insights within these boundaries, we welcome articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:
- Comparative analyses of governance frameworks addressing climate, biodiversity, and pollution
- Mechanisms for translating international commitments into national or subnational action
- Institutional innovations promoting policy coherence and cross-sectoral integration
- The role of non-state actors, Indigenous peoples, and local communities in governance design and implementation
- The influence of finance, capacity-building, and technology transfer on effective governance
- Approaches for embedding accountability, transparency, and environmental justice in policy processes
- Empirical and theoretical explorations of transformative governance for systemic environmental change

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Registered Report
• Review
• Study Protocol
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: environmental governance, policy coherence, institutional innovation, triple planetary crisis, transformative action, environmental justice

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.