Inclusive Governance or Incrementalism? The Choice of a Sustainable Development Governance Model for Flanders

In this chapter, we describe and analyze the sustainable development governance model of the subnational government of Flanders.1 In Belgium, the federal government was the first to take up the responsibility for the ‘new’ policy issue of sustainable development following the Rio Summit in 1992. political consciousness of the need for a stronger sustainable development policy has been growing slowly since then. In 2007, sustainable development was explicitly included in the Constitution. One of the reasons for the growing interest is the fact that Belgium, as a small and geographically and politically centrally located country, is following the international political scene closely and sustainable development was gaining importance on the European and international level.