Given the eclectic and localized nature of environmental risks, planning for sustainability requires solutions that integrate local knowledge and systems while acknowledging the need for continuous re-evaluation. Social-ecological complexity, increasing climate volatility and uncertainty, and rapid technological innovation underscore the need for flexible and adaptive planning. Thus, rules should not be universally applied but should instead be place-based and adaptive. To demonstrate these key concepts, we present a case study of water planning in Texas, whose rapid growth and extreme weather make it a bellwether example. We review historic use and compare the 2002, 2007, 2012, 2017 and 2022 Texas State Water Plans to examine how planning outcomes evolve across time and space. Though imperfect, water planning in Texas is a concrete example of place-based and adaptive sustainability. Urban regions throughout the state exhibit a diversity of strategies that, through the repeated 5-year cycles, are ever responding to evolving trends and emerging technologies. Regional planning institutions play a crucial role, constituting an important soft infrastructure that links state capacity and processes with local agents. As opposed to “top-down” or “bottom-up”, we frame this governance as “middle-out” and discuss how such a structure might extend beyond the water sector. 

Due to the lack of clear regulation of management accounting at the state level in Russia, the authors conducted a study based on an analysis of information sources, an expert survey on their reliability, and a case method, which resulted in a reporting form compiled for the production process of an agro-industrial enterprise (grain products) as part of inter-organizational company cooperation. The developed management reporting system (composed of eight consecutive stages: standard reports, specialized reports, itemized query reports, notification reports, statistical reports, prognostic reports, modeling results reports, and process optimization reports), on one hand, allows solving a set of tasks to increase the competitiveness of Russian agro-industrial enterprises within the framework of inter-organizational management accounting. On the other hand, the introduction of ESG principles into the management reporting system (calculation of the environmental (E) index, which assesses the company’s impact on the natural ecosystem and covers emissions and efficient use of natural resources in the agricultural production process) increases the level of control and minimizes the risks of an unfair approach of individual partners to environmental issues.