Implementing Regional Sustainability Initiatives: Lessons from the United States Department of Defense

摘要

Many sustainable development goals require collaboration among agencies and stakeholders at the regional scale in order to motivate and enable action. The need for regionalscale institutions to facilitate this collaboration has resulted in innovative activities by the United States Department of Defense (DoD). This article reviews the recent experiences of the DoD in the context of existing literature on collaborative natural resource management and finds many common challenges. Even though collaboration at this scale is difficult and there are few hard and fast rules for success, lessons from the DoD can help advance the state of practice. The question remains whether large public organizations like the DoD can institutionalize these newer collaborative approaches and make the necessary long-term commitments that are necessary for success.