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1.
Zarina Patel 《Geoforum》2006,37(5):682-694
The reshaping of South African cities is being guided by policies aiming to build socially and environmentally just communities. Despite widespread commitment to this goal, there is little consensus on what it means and how it should and could translate into practice. The paper shows that despite the emphasis on environmental justice and building sustainable communities in policy, the institutional context for implementation (including expert driven and deliberative approaches) do not always deliver on this mandate. Consequently, policy outcomes do not reflect those of the communities and households it is meant to serve, raising challenging moral and ethical questions for institutions involved in environmental governance. This paper shows how the institutional context of environmental assessment combined with the role played by the values held by environmental practitioners charged with influencing decision-making result in the perpetuation of environmental injustices. The lack of a clearly defined profession and professional body, reflecting a diversity of values, debating, regulating, defining and defending a set of principles to guide decision-making in cities is identified as a possible reason for the lack of congruence between the values reflected in policy with those held by the communities these interventions are intended to serve. The resulting value added by sustainable cities interventions in the light of this mismatch is therefore questionable, raising challenges regarding international calls for local action as well as an increasing policy focus in South Africa on the local level as the agent of political and spatial transformation of cities. 相似文献
2.
The emergence of an environmental movement in post-apartheid South Africa has involved the reframing of the environment as a ‘brown’ issue, articulating the discourse of social and environmental justice and a rights-based notion of democracy. Environmental movements have pursued a dual strategy of deliberation and activist opposition. Environmental movements have deployed science to pursue the strategic task of democratic opposition and have established networks of environmental knowledge and expertise. Ecological modernization is the dominant approach to environmental governance and adopts a science-based policy approach. In this context the regulation and management of the environment is premised on the need for science, which provides the authoritative basis for a regulatory response. In local environmental movements, there exists a fundamental tension between a cumulative history of lay knowledge about pollution and the lack of official acknowledgement of qualitative narratives. This is accompanied by a lack and suspicion of reliable official data. Environmental movements have thus employed ‘civic science’ strategically to place the issue of air pollution on the political agenda. This paper uses the case of environmental politics in Durban to reflect on the ways in which civic science and lay knowledge, together constituting community hybrid knowledge, are produced and disseminated in order to pressure the state and capital. The three ways in which knowledge is deployed are: to frame environmental problems, in strategies of oppositional advocacy, and in deliberative policy forums. Empirical analysis shows that civic science is produced through knowledge networks, and both lay knowledge and civic science are opportunistically used by environmental movements to engage both inside and outside formal policy making arenas. This deployment of hybrid knowledge by environmental movements represents a broader challenge to the power of science and technology based on increasing evidence of the hazards and risks facing ordinary people in their daily lives. 相似文献
3.
Critiques of the neoliberal governance of agricultural systems have led to a number of political responses which attempt to address the socio-environmental consequences of the dominant regime. In this paper two case study regions (South Australia and England) have been chosen to represent variations in agricultural policy and to highlight subsequent outcomes on the sustainability of agriculture. Interviewed governance stakeholders highlighted issues in regard to the agricultural governance of each area, from social and environmental consequences of minimal policy intervention in South Australia, to issues created by greater economic support in England. As such, the distinct variations in agricultural regimes will continue to demand scholarly attention, in order for the value of diversity within the sector to be more widely understood. The study concludes that it is likely agricultural support will continue to decline in both case study regions. Importantly, however, innovative policy mechanisms that aim to reduce local risks and value local agricultural priorities, without requiring significant financial support, might be the most promising way forward in regard to agricultural system sustainability. 相似文献
4.
Liza Griffin 《Geoforum》2010,41(2):282-292
This paper explores a series of maxims, widely known in policy and academic circles as the ‘principles of good governance’, which state that policymaking in the European Union (EU) should be participatory, conducted as close to citizens as practicable, transparent, accountable, effective and coherent. These maxims were introduced into EU fisheries management as part of a radical reform of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) in 2002. This reform was instituted in response to criticisms of a prevailing management regime alleged to be inefficient, undemocratic, and potentially responsible for an environmental crisis: the exhaustion of key fish stocks. The research for this work has found that there are limits to the actual achievement of good governance in EU fisheries. In practice governance innovations are very often contradictory and rife with tensions. I reason that such problems result not merely from policy implementation failures; they constitute a more endemic feature of the CFP reforms. We can begin to understand these limits to good governance principles by looking to Agamben’s permanent state of exception thesis. Agamben’s theory helps to show how these contradictions and tensions occur under new governance regimes, because the relationship between democratic norms (like good governance) and political power is no longer clear. I argue that this blurring has been exploited by groups seeking influence in these new regimes. They do this through citing a supposed need for emergency measures to mitigate crisis. Although this research broadly supports the state of exception thesis, my analysis leads me to question some aspects of its application in contemporary governance spaces. 相似文献
5.
B.M. Taylor 《Geoforum》2012,43(3):507-517
Extensive rural regions are facing major socio-economic, political and environmental change from the dual effects of agricultural restructuring and environmental degradation. While central governments often rely on regional level policy responses, local actors, such as rural local governments may resist these ‘top-down’ initiatives. This paper examines the oppositional response of 34 rural local governments to state-led regionalisation for economic development and natural resource management in the extensive and sparely populated Wheatbelt region of Western Australia. The analysis explores how state threats of amalgamation; shifting national policy empathies in rural development; and, local preferences for horizontal rather than vertical forms of cooperation are influential in catalysing a brand of defensive regionalism amongst local government actors. Adopting this defensive posture allowed local actors to both buffer state intervention and improve the effectiveness of their own cooperative planning and management activities for sustainable development. These observations are interpreted through concepts of collective identity formation, providing an analytical perspective that is sensitive to the inter-scalar politics in rural governance. 相似文献
6.
C. M. Rogerson Dr. 《GeoJournal》1996,39(1):97-104
The objective in this paper is to analyse private sector involvement in LED in South Africa. Four key spheres of private sector involvement in LED are identified and discussed: (1) as participator and occasional initiator of local development processes, (2) as major partner in the development activities of public-private sector partnerships, (3) as lead role player in certain direct initiatives for reviving South Africa's inner cities, and (4) as promoter and facilitator of local small business development. It is argued that the concept of local dependence could be usefully applied to interpret private sector involvement in LED in South Africa. 相似文献
7.
Maarten Wolsink 《Geoforum》2006,37(4):473-487
This article describes the turn to new integrative water management strategies in the Netherlands. It illustrates that some of the new and the general objectives and principles are not easily applied in practice. First, the article focuses on the development of integrative management of water and spatial development. A main policy line, the ‘Room for the River’ directive, was originally an ad hoc reaction to unexpected floods, but accompanied by other policy reforms it grew into an application of the river basin approach with an emphasis on its spatial consequences. The resulting Space-Water-Adjustment Management Principle (SWAMP) emphasizes the mutual adjustments in policy that must be made in both water policy and spatial development. Officially, water is proclaimed as an ordering element, yet actual spatial developments still follow lines of economic and social priorities as executed by institutional powers. Three case studies are presented to illustrate the emergence of new principles and governance issues linked to these management approaches. In practice, the paper concludes, spatial planning and land use decisions show a centralization tendency that is not in line with the proclaimed prevalence of local identity, resilience and open decentralized and deliberative governance in the SWAMP-based integrated river basin management. 相似文献
8.
《Geoforum》2016
Environmental conservation is increasingly operated through partnerships among state, private, and civil society actors, yet little is known empirically about how such collectives function and with what livelihood and governance outcomes. The landscape approach to conservation (known also as the ecosystem approach) is one such hybrid governance platform. Implemented worldwide over the past decade by international NGOs, the landscape approach employs the ‘ecosystem principles’ of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). In spite of its prominence as a conservation and development strategy, little political ecology scholarship has considered the landscape approach. This article offers a case study of a conservation landscape in the Congo Basin, the Tri-National de la Sangha (TNS), which connects tropical forests in Cameroon, Republic of Congo, and Central African Republic. Led by NGOs, the TNS has since 2001 relied on partnerships among logging companies, safari hunters, the state, and local communities. Although the landscape approach purports to facilitate re-negotiations of user rights, resource access patterns in the TNS appear to have molded to pre-existing power relations. Rather than incorporating local concerns and capabilities into management, local knowledge is discredited and livelihoods are marginalized. As a result, management occurs through spatially-demarcated zones, contrasting the fluidity of interactions among diverse groups: both human (loggers, hunter-gatherers, safari guides, NGOs) and non-human (trees, elephants). These findings are situated within a burgeoning literature on neoliberal environmental governance, and suggest that ensuring ecologically and socially positive outcomes will require careful and iterative attention to linkages between ecological processes and evolving power dynamics. 相似文献
9.
This paper examines the nature of environmental action in and around the home. Given the rise of local sustainable development and the emphasis placed on individual actions for sustainability, the paper examines the role of citizens in adopting sustainable lifestyles, incorporating a range of behavioural responses from energy saving and water conservation, to waste recycling and green consumption. Focussing on the debate in geography concerning the engagement of the public in environmental action, the paper argues that despite the assertions of those who advocate a deliberative approach to engagement (see [Owens, S., 2000. Engaging the public: information and deliberation in environmental policy. Environment and Planning A 32, 1141–1148]), an approach based on a social–psychological understanding of behaviour can have significant benefits. Such an approach is being developed by geographers in a range of settings and in this paper these developments are situated within the context of existing research that has identified environmental ‘activists’ in terms of their values, attitudes and demographic composition. The paper aims to examine environmental behaviour in relation to two key issues: (1) the way in which environmental action is framed in everyday practices (such as consumption behaviour) and (2) how these practices are reflected amongst different segments of the population to form lifestyle groups. The paper provides new insights for examining sustainable lifestyles that further our appreciation of how actions to help the environment are lived in everyday practices and framed by different lifestyle groups. Accordingly, the paper offers both academics and policy makers new insights into the potential use of focussing on lifestyle groups as a means for changing behaviour. 相似文献
10.
《Geoforum》2017
In Vietnam, initial programs to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) have proliferated through international finance and new governance regimes for climate change mitigation. National capacity and legal frameworks have been adjusted to make the country eligible for REDD+ financing. In some local areas, activities have been implemented to ‘produce’ carbon credits intended for the international voluntary carbon market. Through a case study of a pilot REDD+ project in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, we examine how REDD+ has intersected with property rights institutions and agrarian change to influence changing property relations and commodity markets. Our findings show that REDD+ implemented through state and local institutions has articulated with the local political economy to coproduce conditions that embody local norms, needs, and desires. Specifically, local actors negotiate state-sanctioned tenurial instruments used for REDD+ governance, not for the purposes of carbon sequestration but instead in order to reassert their rights to land and forest for the cultivation of boom crops—the antithesis of REDD+ objectives. In the fine balancing act of adjusting local forestland holdings, REDD+ implementation has effectively facilitated increased opportunities for upland villagers to strategically claim land titles from local political authorities in the form of communal land certificates for forests called ‘Red Books’. In securing communal Red Books, villagers redefine or co-constitute the purpose of REDD+ to secure land for cash crop and commercial timber production. As with other forms of environmental governance, REDD+ is thus co-constituted locally in line with state and local institutions and histories and present day realities. 相似文献
11.
《Geoforum》2014
The high-growth, resource- and pollution-intensive industrialization model that China has pursued has caused severe environmental pollution and deterioration, particularly in a number of clusters in the coastal regions of East and Southeast China, where the Reform and Opening-up policies first started. The lack of uptake of environmental norms/values, deficit of regulatory enforcement of environmental policies, and insufficient institutional capacity have been compounding factors. As environmental standards were raised by China’s central government, the enforcement of environmental regulation has been compromised more in inland China than in coastal regions, due to China’s “decentralized governance structure” and regional disparity in terms of both economic development and environmental pollution. This paper therefore argues that rising environmental regulations, as well as firm characteristics, regional hub effect and political environment, have all been particularly important in forcing China’s pollution-intensive enterprises to restructure their production, through innovation, upgrading, geographical relocation, outsourcing and plant closure, especially in China’s coastal regions. It contributes to recent studies by developing a heuristic analytical framework that aims to be sensitive to the impacts of environmental regulation, political environment and regional hub effect over firm restructuring, but which does so by stressing these impacts are simultaneously inflected by the nature and attributes of firms. The empirical analysis suggests a roughly inverted “U”-shaped relationship between firm relocation tendency and firm size (or firm capability), resulting from complex interactions between political environment, regional hub effect and environmental regulation. 相似文献
12.
《Geoforum》2017
“Political-industrial ecology” has been proposed as an emerging subfield of nature-society geography. In mapping out the landscape of this subfield, this paper develops a typology of three approaches to connecting politics and industrial ecology: (1) Integrative research that incorporates social, political, policy, institutional, and/or spatial considerations into industrial ecology analyses (“politics in industrial ecology”); (2) Complementary research that couples findings or frameworks from industrial ecology with social and political research (“politics and industrial ecology”); and (3) Critical research that examine how values, norms, groups, political relations, or institutions shape the production, interpretation, and usage of industrial ecology knowledge (“politics of industrial ecology”). This broad framing of political-industrial ecology invites contributions from many social sciences, including political ecology, political geography, political economy, sociology, public policy, management, environmental history, and science and technology studies. 相似文献
13.
Urs Geiser 《Geoforum》2012,43(4):707-715
In recent years, the Swat valley in North-West Pakistan has witnessed various waves of ‘politics’. Different groups have attempted to change socio-economic conditions, each according to their clear visions of a better future. After a period of top-down attempts at modernisation by the state, development projects inspired by deliberative democracy have attempted to increase political space for ‘local people’, but failed. Swat has also witnessed agonistic politics, with the emergence of a fundamentalist social movement that constructed a radical discourse of otherisation, entering into an antagonism with the state that created war and havoc. Thus, Swat offers a challenging learning ground to reflect on practices for producing change, as well as on theoretical currents in academia. I argue that deliberative and radical theorising provide insights into the political life of Swat, but fall short analytically (missing social complexities), procedurally (favouring specific techniques of social negotiation), and normatively (due to preconceived understandings of a ‘better future’). I substantiate my argument by showing that both positions take euro-centric conceptualisation of ‘citizens’, a (modern) ‘state’, and ‘citizen/state relations’ as universals – basic conditions that are not met in the post-colonial setting of Swat. I therefore argue that our curiosity should be redirected from ontologised explanation to an analysis of actual practices of societal negotiation and the norms within which these are embedded. Such insights will make it possible for us to appreciate the enormous challenges people in Swat face in their struggle to negotiate aspirations among disparate voices and to imagine some common understanding of a ‘better future’ – challenges that go beyond what deliberative or agonistic theorising can offer. 相似文献
14.
The paper applies some of the principles of pragmatism to the environmental health crisis of arsenic pollution in the groundwater of Bangladesh. This hazard affects between 28 and 57 million people and it has been called “the largest mass poisoning of a population in history”. Such hyperbole aside, the authors consider the dysfunctional nature of central and local government in Bangladesh, which at all levels can be said to have failed water consumers. This leads to a discussion of the nature of governance generally, particularly with regard to two principles derived from the pragmatism of John Dewey: first, an orientation to political action through local, community-based experimentation; and, second, a conviction that participatory democracy draws its strength from the beliefs and attitudes distributed in social networks. The paper then assesses a number of interventions, for instance the World Bank’s large-scale Bangladesh Arsenic Mitigation Water Supply Project which has faced administrative problems since its inception in 1997 and was very slow to find its feet. NGOs with a stake in arsenic mitigation are also highlighted, particularly for their role in the so-called franchise state. It is argued that a number of conditions of inertia and resistance explain the sluggish response to the arsenic hazard. Indeterminacy about the science and technology of arsenic is one factor, and another is the distribution of power at the local level. The paper argues that future policies and projects would do well to consider deliberative democracy in guises appropriate to rural Bangladesh. This must include better information availability and opportunities for participation at the village level, for instance in civic science. The overall conclusion is that pragmatic principles are helpful in promoting community-focused mitigation measures but that accountability is essential if policies are to avoid problems of local power, patronage and clientelism. 相似文献
15.
Pragmatic localism uncovered: The search for locally contingent solutions to national reform agendas
This paper analyses the complexity and attempted pragmatism of current practices surrounding the management of current local government policy reform in England. In particular, it focuses on the tensions and contradictions between a national policy dynamic which seeks to encourage locally contingent solutions to be developed for localised problems, and the centralising tendencies of the national state which result in ‘blueprints’ and ‘models’ being developed for local policy delivery and a requirement to meet centrally derived targets. These assumptions are explored through the experiences of local government attempts to introduce innovative and experimental praxis in line with the complex cultural and political changes of ‘modernisation’ agendas advanced by the UK government. This is being rolled out by an overarching project of ‘new localism’ - an attempt to devolve power and resources from the central state to front line local managers, sub-local structures and partnerships and to deliver ‘what works’. It is argued that new attempts at subsidiarity should be more flexible to local conditions rather than directed by national policy and that greater discretion and freedom should be given to local managers to achieve this task. Using the concept of ‘pragmatic localism’ and grounded examples from a recent initiative - Local Area Agreements - it is highlighted that there are signs that local state management of national policy could be becoming increasingly adaptable, enabling managers to deal with the fluid nature of ongoing public policy reform, although this is far from a completed project with many factors still constraining this change process. 相似文献
16.
With recent changes in the ways that state agencies are implementing their environmental policies, the line between public and private is becoming increasingly blurred. This includes shifts from state-led implementation of environmental policies to conservation plans that are implemented and managed by multi-sectoral networks of governments, the private sector and environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs). This paper examines land trusts as private conservation initiatives that become part of neoliberal governance arrangements and partnerships that challenge our conceptions of environmental preservation and democratic participation. The paper starts with an examination of the concept of neoliberalized environmental governance. Next, it addresses the shifting social constructions of property and land in the context of protecting large scale ecosystems. Through a case study of the extension of new environmental governance arrangements on the Oak Ridges Moraine in Ontario, we examine the relationships that have formed between different levels of the state and environmental non-governmental organizations. Finally, we analyze the expansion of land trusts and private conservation initiatives that are predicated on private land ownership and the commodification of nature, the emerging discourses and practices of private conservation, and how these are implicated in the privatization and neoliberalization of nature. 相似文献
17.
Deforestation since the 1980s has led to substantial loss of ecological services in China. As a responsive strategy, China launched the most ambitious reforestation efforts in the developing world. However, like many other environmental policies, forestry policy has not been effectively implemented, mainly due to the fragmentation nature in China’s environmental governance institution. This paper highlights the impact of central–local conflicts on forestry policy implementation. With insufficient motivation, local governments tend to minimize their efforts in planning, monitoring, and supporting reforestation activities, which poses great challenges on the sustainability of the reforestation benefits. With extensive field experiences, this paper also raises three innovative strategies to solve the financial dilemma that leads to the effort minimization phenomenon, with both the advantages and disadvantages for each strategy critically discussed. It finally recommends ways by which the central government could improve design of reforestation policies, or other large-scale ecological programs, which involve local governments as a key liaison. 相似文献
18.
《Geoforum》2015
As Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) continues to gain attention as a policy tool for securing efficient and effective environmental governance, a rising tide of criticism warns of the potentially detrimental social–ecological consequences of nature commodification and ‘green neoliberalism’. These concerns are also expressed at international policy fora, where the market rhetoric has met with political resistance from countries belonging to the ‘Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America’ (ALBA). But despite this ideological opposition, some ALBA countries are increasingly integrating PES into their environmental policies. In this article we consider the reasons underlying this apparent contradiction and relate it to the notion of ‘epistemic circulation’. On the basis of a study on the evolution of PES-thinking in Nicaragua (an ALBA member) and a reassessment of the supposed ‘success’ of an influential pilot project, we shed light on the forces driving the adoption of particular PES modes and contextualise practical difficulties to endorsing more critical approaches to the tool. Instead of either ideologically rejecting PES as a neoliberal evil or embracing it uncritically as the new panacea, we argue that it is precisely through the socio-political processes surrounding environmental governance debates that the application of PES is shaped. In practice, it may either contribute to an imposed and dispossessing form of capitalism, or tend towards a more negotiated and socio-culturally embedded version of it. Only through its reconceptualisation based on political–cultural primacy rather than market-fetishism can PES achieve its true potential within a broader strategy towards improved environmental governance. 相似文献
19.
The relationship between environmental contamination, human exposure and the risk to health is a complex and fascinating area of research. This paper reviews a number of earlier studies, which focussed on contamination by Pb and sought to address this complexity. It places them within an historical context of different stages of the evolution of the field of risk analysis as applied to environmental research. A risk framework permits these scientific studies to be discussed in relation to the complex social and political environment within which the risks associated with Pb-rich particulate matter were managed (and policy was developed). This paper undertakes this analysis through a risk governance framework, which allows the relationship between the various functions required for management of the risks to be evaluated. It shows ways that values (including stakeholder concerns and risk perceptions) need to be included along with the science that underpins risk analysis in order to make sustainable judgements. It is such judgements that lie at the heart of risk management decision making. 相似文献
20.
《Geoforum》2014
This article explores the constraints and contingencies of contemporary urban governance, with reference to the partial privatization (1999) and partial remunicipalization (2012) of the Berlin Water Company (BWB). It outlines the processes through which this major shift in Berlin politics occurred, showing how the mainstream consensus on privatization was disrupted and alternatives to apparent neoliberal conformity emerged. Dynamics apparent in the BWB case – commercialization, privatization, re-regulation, public contestation and remunicipalization – are indicative of the challenges and opportunities of making policy in and beyond the global norms of neoliberalism. It is argued that this case is important because it reveals something about what we might call the “politics of possibility” within the paradigm of neoliberal urban governance: the continuing potential for change within the constraints of an urban governance configured to the logics and needs of markets. Given this, the paper concludes that local contingencies in urban governance problematize sweeping notions of a post-political condition. However observable post-political strategies and outcomes in Berlin and elsewhere are, researchers should not assume that they are inevitably dominant or universal. 相似文献