Environmental Governance Flashcards
EG
governance -> no longer enacted through the state -> no single authority
environmental governance -> different mechanisms which are seen to guid, control and manage environmental protection across a variety of scale (Wurzel et al., 2013; Young, 2016)
environmental governance experienced the shift from government to nonstate actors in the 1990s
across formal and informal scales (Bridge and Perreault, 2009)
cultural norms and society play a role in enforcing governance
ties into Foucault’s ideas of biopower
Transnational networks -> form between different nonstate actors -> leads to collaborative work without hierarchialisations (Betsill and Bulkeley, 2006)
e.g. Ireland Citizens Assembly -> 2016 -> citizens the power to discuss and give their opinions -> led to the production of the 2019 June Climate Action Plan as 80% voted to improve mitigation strategies -> effective governance (Devaney et al., 2020).
French Law -> term in which public consideration needs to be gained before a law it passed (Callon et al., 2009)
intersectionality of power, politics and governance
becomes further politicised under neoliberalisation as privatisation takes away the goods and locks it in a commodification relationship
Natural Resource Governance -> South Gobi, Mongolia - mining and water usage under debate
actors involved: mining company Rio Tonto, banks, Mongolian gov, NGOs and herder families
EIA conducted by the gov was poor -> exploitation -> investors into the region enforce the mining companies to meet better standards
Neoliberalisation and governance -> decentralisation and privatisation = allowing nonstate bodies to make decisions about the environment (scaling out and down) (Corson, 2010)
began in the 1970s by Thatcher and Reagan (Corson, 2010)
neoliberalisation of the env
selling nature to save it (McAfree, 1999)
there are different forms of governance within this -> mobile and fluid e.g. private-public, centralised, decentralised (Driessen et al., 2012)
neoliberalisation and democratisation -> increased the number of layers and scales within governance
environmental governance in practice
hybrid forms of management e.g. National Landcare Program in Australia: environmental governance by giving local people access to the land instead of state implementation -> deal with issues like soil degradation and reduce species loss -> ineffective as the transition to sustainability is expected while farmers still maintain targets (Lockie and Higgins, 2007).
environmental concerns -> transboundary nature e.g. rivers
emergence of water governance -> acknowledge that watersheds are transboundary = reassessing them across Canada for more effective governance -> produced since water is natural, ontology’s view water differently -> GIS used to help reshape these boundaries (Cohen, 2012) -> e.g. in Quebec has led to state actors, local communities and other organisations working together to produce effective watershed policy (Cohen, 2012)
climate change as an environmental problem ->
needs to be addressed through governance as it is a global issue -> not limited to individual states (Lemos and Agrawal, 2006) -> neoliberalisation in some ways has therefore been productive = governance to become more collaborative and increase the no. of actors (Lemos and Agrawal, 2006)
governance -> more sources to aid decisionmaking
SmartEarth -> satellites around the globe
Bees with AI backpacks sending realtime data
Green Transition -> would require political shift and reorganisation of global governance -> social scientists and scientists would be required (experts in environmental governance)
= effective strategies for implementation (Aspinall, 2010).
Relevance of the nation-state? -> still relevant as democratic countries are not the norm = authoritarian regimes lack a civil society = state is therefore still in the decision-making process. Also, governments often outline an environmental manifesto to get elected.
clear trend = consumers are becoming more involved within environmental governance (Liverman, 2004) e.g. fair trade and sustainability (Bridge and Perreault, 2009).
defining institutions
rule-making body = behaviour/rules which influence wider behaviours (Cairney, 2011)
Commons = shared resources -> harder to govern
solutions presented as 1/ privatisation 2/ state ownership 3/ suggestions that they can be governed without intervention through self-organising
Environmental governance and scale (1)
spatial representations within economics and politics that form in addressing these issues e.g. construction of environments via the point-based immigration system and policing of the female body as an environment -> Malaysia forces Indonesian domestic workers to undergo routine pregnancy tests to prevent childbirth and permanent settlement (Engle, 2004).
Environmental governance and scale (2)
Environmental scales are not = to the spatial territorial political unit -> complicates the process of scale (Ansell and Torfing, 2015).
self-governance
mechanisms which target human behaviour e.g. recycling and waste
criticisms of decentralisation
state still holds lots of power or elites still be the core decision makers
the local trap = is the idea that small-scale does not mean more representation (Brown and Purcell, 2005)
need to consider who is benefitting -> referred to as the illusion of democratisation (Reed and Bruyneel, 2010) -> lots of regions remain post-colonial despite decentralisation
Anthropocene Festival
environment concerns can be presented without the concept being heavily politicised and embedded within discourse (Ritts and Bakker, 2019)
Rise of authoritarianism
adds further complexity to environmental governance -> who makes the decisions and where accountability is held.
Ecogovernmenality -> applies Foucault’s concepts of biopolitics and biopower
highlights how through some mechanisms and management are implored to further achieve the aim of governments to implicitly control citizens (Bridge and Perreault, 2009)
neoliberalisation of the state - control still retained but implicitly
e.g. Conservation strategies in Ontario -> local government ensured that the strategy brought benefits to the local landowners (Logan and Wekerle, 2008) -> also often the case with water management as a false sense od downscaling is produced yet the state still firmly has power e.g. US-Canadian border (Harrington et al., 2008) -> affirms that the state still has a lot of control and influence (Bulkeley and Mol, 2003) e.g. US government allows indigenous communities to contribute to water governance = must pass their policies via the US federal government, state = source of authority (Driver et al., 2019).
neoliberalisation of the state criticisms (1)
argued that this has emerged to distract away from the fact that lots of policy is not focused on retaining democracy = more market-based frameworks which perpetuate inequality but appear to be democratic (Swyngedouw, 2005) -> NGO offices are shutting e.g. Amnesty International in India = no benefits of democratisation = no actors available to contribute
neoliberalisation of the state criticisms (2)
worsened by factors like barriers between science and policy -> needs to be a transparency for effective environmental policy (Bäckstrand, 2003).
commodification of nature
bioprospecting, debt-reduction, eco-forestry -> in practice privatisation of water in the UK = restricted access to something which should be considered to be a resource (Bridge and Perreault, 2009)
