Tadaki, Marc2025-02-182024-08-302024-082514-8486E1Y3C (isidoc)https://hdl.handle.net/10182/18124The paper explores the role of measurement in securing sustainable and just environmental governance. Examining New Zealand's ambitious initiative to monitor and improve its freshwaters, I identify four ‘limits’ to realising the promise of measurement: scarce resources, ontological ambiguity, epistemological narrowing, and decision-making logics. Expounding these limits helps to identify the costs of, and alternatives to, current visions of science-driven environmental governance reform. By reckoning with these limits rather than ignoring them, a new modus operandi for environmental science can be composed that is both more practically ambitious and less vulnerable to failure.pp.1647-1671en© The Author(s) 2024politics of knowledgeenvironmental managementfreshwater policyscience and technology studiesJournal Article10.1177/251484862412480122514-8494ANZSRC::440805 Environmental politicsANZSRC::4401 AnthropologyANZSRC::4406 Human geographyANZSRC::4407 Policy and administrationhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/Attribution-NonCommercial