GOVERNANCE, CULTURE, AND LAW: THE EXPANDING SCOPE OF ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH

Abstract

Environmental science emerged as a discipline based on physical measurements, such as soil pollutant levels (Ailijiang et al., 2022), ecological restoration (Yue et al., 2026), city surface temperature (Shafizadeh-Moghadam et al., 2025), and microbial density in air samples (Hayleeyesus & Manaye, 2014). However, its objects of study increasingly extend beyond the confines of the laboratory. Questions that were once sufficiently answered with measurement data now require answers through draft laws, Constitutional Court decisions, financial reports of mining companies, and even traditional ritual discourses governing community access to forests. In other words, environmental science can no longer stand alone as a purely natural science (Siegert, 2016). The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework attempts to encapsulate this shift in a single set of targets and indicators that can be used across sectors. However, these indicators do not always translate equally across domains. They are relatively easy to condense into a company’s environmental compliance rating, but much more difficult to translate into legal doctrine, ritual meaning, or market behavior, as each has an internal logic that cannot be fully understood by a single indicator. The assumption that economic, social, and environmental targets can be pursued simultaneously without infecting others has also repeatedly been shown to underestimate the trade-offs between them. For example, land-use changes that drive economic growth continue to erode ecosystem services even as measured well-being increases (Schirpke et al., 2023), while biodiversity loss and the climate crisis are still often considered externalities (Dasgupta & Levin, 2023), not binding limits. Country-wide evidence suggests that this is not accidental but structural, depending on the extent to which a country’s institutions can translate environmental commitments into truly binding practices. What drives this, not to culminate in governance, is not a single institution, but rather a collective capacity to enforce policies, equitably allocate resources, and listen to stakeholder claims. This capacity is rarely an abstract concept, manifesting in very concrete forms such as protected and unprotected conservation zones within plantation concessions (Li et al., 2024), or environmental management oversight regimes that are oriented toward responding to emerging problems rather than being anticipatory or proactive (Prasetyaningsih et al., 2022). Therefore, the task of environmental science is not simply to measure damage more precisely, but rather to explore the power relations, legal architecture, and everyday behavior that determine whether measurements actually result in protection. This 16th issue of the Journal of Environmental Science and Sustainable Development is structured to reflect this shift. The empirical core of the discipline, such as climate and soil moisture trends, oil-contaminated soil, urban heat, forest regeneration, and chemical biofertilizers, remains intact. However, it is juxtaposed with studies on smart city governance, cross-generational consumer psychology, traditional ritual language, heritage market revitalization, and the constitutionality of resource priorities. The articles in this edition cover geographic and sectoral contexts, ranging from long-term climate and soil moisture trends in the Western Himalayas, urban heat mapping and bioremediation of oil-contaminated soil, to smart city governance, green consumer behavior, and the implementation of household composting in Indonesia, India, and Vietnam, as well as the governance of traditional rituals in Flores, heritage market revitalization in Surakarta, sustainable performance in the Indonesian sector, and the validity of various business permits.