It is of course conceivable that governments may one day wish to adopt a different approach and institutionally empower environmental stakeholders in order to facilitate EPI, but in reality very little empowerment has taken place thus far: central ministries or committees supporting EPI and sustainable development have tended to be short lived (depending on the presence of a favourable government or the absence of competing problems); the procedural power of ministries of the environment has not been strengthened (e.g. through veto powers over sectoral policy development or strong consultative rights in joint decisions). Consequently, the (mostly weak) positive meaning given to EPI has not generally been stabilized in many jurisdictions but instead has fluctuated in response to the vagaries of the issue attention cycle. This is deeply ironic given that Brundtland’s underlying aim was to institutionalize environmental concern by making it more immune to short-term fluctuations in political support.