sustainability Article Addressing Uncertainty of Environmental Governance in Environmentally Sensitive Areas in Developing Countries: A Precise-Strike and Spatial-Targeting Adaptive Governance Framework Xiaohui Ding 1,* , Chen Zhou 2 , Weizhou Zhong 3 and Pingping Tang 4 1 Northwest Institute of Historical Environmental and Socio-Economic Development, Shaanxi Normal University, No. 620, West Chang’an Avenue, Xi’an 710119, China 2 School of Economics and Statistics, Guangzhou University, No. 230, Huanxi Road, Guangzhou 510006, China 3 School of Finance and Economics, Xi’an Jiaotong University, 74, Yantaxi Road, Xi’an 710063, China 4 Southern Shaanxi Center for Green Development and Ecological Compensation Research, Shaanxi University of Technology, Hanzhong 723001, China * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +86-029-85318752 Received: 29 June 2019; Accepted: 16 August 2019; Published: 20 August 2019 Abstract: Endowed with distinctive natural ecosystems and abundant biodiversity, regional environmental governance in developing countries, especially the environmentally sensitive areas (ESAs), is facing the daunting task to ultimately divert their regional development mode towards sustainable fashion through governance transition. However, given their less-developed status in particular expressed by under-developed economies, unsound political regimes, low governance capacity, such task seemingly insurmountable. In order to approach the incompatibility between economic development and maintenance of the ecosystem services value, and understand the complex and interlocked nature of the regional institution system of ESAs in developing countries, an ecosystem services value-based adaptive governance model was introduced to identify the deficiencies and failures of existing regional environmental governance and establish innovative arenas and transition agendas for innovating and reframing regional institutions and modifying role of regional actor groups and governance mode in the process of decision making on environmental issues.