Welcome to the homepage of the EU-funded project “Governance for Sustainability (G-FORS)”.

G-FORS is an FP6 funded project under Priority 7 - Citizens and Governance in a knowledge-based society. The duration of the project is from February 2006 until May 2009. It brings together 12 partners from 10 European countries.

The Specific Targeted Project (STREP) proposes to investigate the contention that unless we effectively incorporate a range of forms of knowledge there is a danger that policies developed to promote sustainability will be partial and ineffective. We do not assume that one form of governance is appropriate to all situations. Indeed, it is a central contention of this STREP that it is essential to ensure both the development of appropriate forms of governance and the integration of appropriate forms of knowledge into these governance arrangements in order to develop a holistic approach to sustainability and one that is widely recognised as legitimate. Hence the STREP’s hypothesis is that a flexible, holistic and systematic analysis of, and approach, to sustainability can only be developed if we simultaneously develop and integrate the different forms knowledge and types of governance needed to address sustainability in its complexity. For this purpose, the project will draw from various approaches to governance, in particular examining hierarchy, networks, markets and civil society, and the way they use and develop different forms of knowledge in order to address sustainability. Furthermore, while the project aims to examine the potential for synergy between the various levels of governance it contends that sub-national levels and actors are a crucial component of multi-level governance for sustainable development in a globalised world. Sub-national actors, including regions, sub-regions, city regions and neighbourhoods represent the spatial locations where national and supra-national regulations, including global challenges, meet local concerns, as well as general pressures on the environment.