Call for Contributions for Special Issue « Integral and Coherent Sustainable Development », Regions & Cohesion 8 (3): Winter 2018

Regions & Cohesion is a SCOPUS-indexed platform for academics and practitioners alike to disseminate empirical research and normative analysis of topics related to human and environmental security, social cohesion, and governance. Interdisciplinary in nature and multilingual in character (English, French, Spanish), the journal promotes the comparative examination of the human and environmental impacts of regional integration across geographic areas, time periods, and policy arenas. In association with the Consortium for Comparative Research on Regional Integration and Social Cohesion’s (RISC) and the GAMMA (Use of Big Data and Machine Learning for the Integrality of Environmental Management of Sustainable Development) Program coordinated by INECOL and CONABIO (Mexico), Regions & Cohesion launches this call for articles on “Integral and Coherent Sustainable Development.” The guest editors of this special issue (Dr. Miguel Equihua and Dr. Octavio Pérez-Maqueo both from INECOL) and the editors in chief of Regions & Cohesion (Dr. Carmen Maganda (INECOL) and Dr. Harlan Koff (University of Luxembourg) propose the following questions as potential bases for contributions :

  • Can “Integral and Coherent Sustainable Development” be achieved or is this a utopia?
  • What are the legal bases for integral and coherent sustainable development? Has there been
    satisfactory transcription of international norms into national/local laws in order to
    operationalize these concepts?
  • What are the predominant obstacles that prevent us from achieving integral and coherent
    sustainable development?
  • What do “integral” and “coherent” mean from different disciplinary perspectives? Can
    definitional clarity be achieved?
  • What is the ethical significance of “integral and coherent” sustainable development?
  • How can the dialogue between natural sciences and social sciences be furthered by
    focusing on “integral” and “coherent” development in the field of sustainability?
  • What relationships can be identified between environmental security and human/social
    security in “integral and coherent” sustainability policies?
  • How well do the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) respond to the needs of integral
    and coherent sustainable development?
  • Would “integral” and “coherent” sustainability necessarily slow rates of development?
  • Does the lack of “integrality” and “coherence” affect social risk and vulnerability? How?
  • Can policy coherence for development (PCD) improve the integrality of sustainable
    development policies?
  • How important is social participation in policy-making to the establishment of “integral and
    coherent” sustainable development strategies?
  • Who are key actors for the promotion of integral and coherent sustainable development?

Regions & Cohesion welcomes empirical and theoretical contributions responding to
aforementioned or related research questions. Interested authors should send their name, current
position, affiliation and a 250-word (maximum) abstract to reco@berghahnjournals.com as soon as
possible. Final contributions of approximately 8000 words are due by 4 May 2018. All articles
must include the following elements: an explicitly stated research question to which the article
responds, a literature review that positions the article amongst existing scholarship, a methodology
section, presentation of empirical/conceptual discussions and a conclusion that highlights the
article’s argumentation.
All articles submitted to Regions & Cohesion are reviewed by the journal’s editorial committee
and double-blind peer-reviewed before they can be acceptated for publication.