Conceptual innovations are a central feature of global environmental governance. Confronting degradation and unsustainability, scholars and practitioners turn to new concepts to identify, make sense of, and chart new directions towards meaningful governance solutions. But why do some concepts create lasting changes to governance institutions and governance practices, while others do not? Ideational theories of international relations highlight the importance of normative fit. In this paper we analyze the concept of ecosystem services to show that normative fit is just one dimension of governance fitness, which also includes practical fitness. Ecologists and economists coined the concept of ecosystem services to make biodiversity conservation intelligible to decision-makers versed in economic thinking. It has gained rhetorical traction, but ultimately failed to change how we treat nature because it lacks practical fitness. We interviewed fifty-six individuals working in twelve international organizations that have sought to translate the concept of ecosystem services into practice. Our analysis reveals forces limiting practical fit and constraining institutional uptake at three levels of analysis: structural, organizational, and agent. We present a cautionary tale that pushes scholars to carefully consider practical fit alongside normative fit when suggesting new concepts as organizing frames for how we govern global environmental challenges.

Most studies of regionalism in Southeast Asia pay little attention to environmental concerns as part of the region's empirical dynamic. In contrast, this article examines the ways in which governments have come to “govern” environmental issues at a regional scale under the auspices of ASEAN, against the backdrop of debates about the political topography of Southeast Asian regionalism. The framework adopted here brings together analyses of the public space of formal regional governance arrangements, the inter-subjective space of regional identity building, and the private space of regional social practices. Underpinning this is the question of whether moves to supposedly “flatter” forms of regional governance have been accompanied by for more democratic or participatory forms of regionalism. I conclude that regional environmental structures under ASEAN are more akin to “invited spaces” and have generally failed to offer effective channels of communication for, or democratic representation of, a wider range of stakeholders, including civil society groups and local communities.