Environmental Governance

Question 1

What shift characterised the late 1990s?

Answer 1

Shift from government to governance

(In a broad sense - the general process, or ‘art’, of governing organisations and societies”)

(In a restrictive sense - “reconfiguration of the organizational and institutional arrangements through which society-environment relations are governed” (Himley 2008 p. 434).
Specifically, denotes a “shift from ‘command and control’ regulation by the state, towards horizontal, networked, and collaborative modes of environmental governance”
(Benson et al., 2013))

Question 2

Describe the context of governance.

Answer 2

Mistrust in expertise
More complex and uncertain problems
= opening up knowledge production and expertise

Transboundary problems e.g. pollution.
Contestation of state-led environmental governance, from both the left (fortress conservation) and the right (efficiency).
Crisis of electoral, representative democracy (potential lack of faith that citizens’ vote can have a difference)
= looking beyond states, governments and their usual infrastructures.

Question 3

Explain the implication of Chernobyl on governance?

Answer 3

Impacted the trust in nuclear energy in France.

National communication failure about the extent of the spread of radioactive cloud from the incident.

Question 4

Why is there a need to re-think governance?

Answer 4

Need for a type of governance that encompasses transboundary problems entangled in different responsibilities (e.g. state/businesses/consumers).

Question 5

How is the spatiality of decision-making being reconfigured?

Answer 5

The creation of networks that slash across nation and sub-national boundaries, instead of working around pre-existing boundaries.

Question 6

What is scale jumping?

Answer 6

The empowerment of local through a body that enables them to contribute to the global.

There has been a move from cascading between political scales to networking and scale jumping.

Question 7

How might we rethink the actors and modalities of knowledge production and decision-making?

Answer 7

1. Community-based resource management
2. Market-based governance
3. Associative politics

Question 8

Describe community-based resource management.

Answer 8

Centralised management
- Centralised decision-making based on ‘rational’, ‘objective’ science, typically using graphs and stats.
- Forced onto local groups who used to have their own ways of managing resources.
(has colonial traits)
vs.

Community management

• Setting-up of local community groups
• Recognition of the relevance of local, non-scientific forms of knowledge
• Impacts on social relations in communities

Question 9

Describe market-based governance.

Answer 9

• Deregulation
• Incitative, voluntary measures
• Certification
• Re-regulating through, and locating the power to decide in, the market

Question 10

Describe associative politics.

Answer 10

Local groups concerned about an environmental issue are not just consulted in the management process but allowed to object and take part in the way the knowledge around the issue is produced.

From representative government to ‘associative politics’ where ‘in the very process of their emergence’, new publics gain ‘the power to object and to intervene in the matters which they discover concern them’ (Stengers 2005, p. 161)

e.g. UNFCCC Talanoa dialogue 2018