Sustainability

Question 1

George Perkins Marsh

Answer 1

1864 - Man and Nature. Stressed the need for conservation (seen as influential in motivating the creation of Yellowstone National Park)

Question 2

Lucien Febvre

Answer 2

• Annales Historian. Geographical Introduction to History, 1925. Creates role for environment to possess a role in shaping historical outcome without veering into determinism.
• Seen as influential over Braudel, and his Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World, 1949.

Question 3

Carl von Carlowitz

Answer 3

• Slyvia Oeconomica - 1712 - first use of nachhaltigkeit, in promoting ‘continurlich, bestandige und nachhaltende’ production.
• Highly influenced by Colbert’s Ordinnance and Evelyn’s Sylva.
• Nature is “milde” (mild) and “gütig” (kind), mater natura – mother nature. Speaks of the “life-giving force of the sun”, the “wonder of vegetation” and the “admirably nourishing spirit of life within the soil”.

Question 4

Wilhelm Gottfried Moser

Answer 4

• ‘Eine nachhaltige Wirtschaft’ - a sustainable economy - is ‘reasonable, just and wise as it is certain that man must not live only for himself, but also for others and for posterity’.
• Cameralist and forester.

Question 5

Georg Hartig

Answer 5

• 1975 - ‘Sustainability is the way of cultivation of a forest, in which only as much wood is removed, so that the forest is never cut down entirely and can regenerate itself again.’
• 1812 - ‘Every wise forest directorate must therefore have the wooded areas … assayed, without losing time, and give them the highest priority possible, while seeking to make use of them in such a way that succeeding generations will be able to glean at least as much benefit as those now alive’

Question 6

Gro Harlem Brundtland

Answer 6

• Chairwoman of the UN commission, Our Common Future, published 1987. Famous definition: “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”
• ‘Economic management can therefore only be considered as sustainable if it works long term and can be operated continuously.’

Question 7

Cybernectics

Answer 7

• Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to control theory and Systems Theory. Both in its origins and in its evolution in the second-half of the 20th century, cybernetics is equally applicable to physical and social (that is, language-based) systems. Cybernetics is preeminent when the system under scrutiny is involved in a closed signal loop where action by the system in an environment causes some change in the environment and that change is manifest to the system via information/feedback that causes changes in the way the system then behaves. All of this take place in the service of a goal or goals This ’circular causal’ relationship is necessary and sufficient for a cybernetic perspective.

Question 8

Permaculture

Answer 8

• Coined in 1978 by ecologist Bill Mollison. Contraction of ’permanent agriculture’. Permaculture -> designing ecological human habitats and food production systems. It is a land use and community building movement which strives for the harmonious integration of human dwellings, microclimate, annual and perennial plants, animals, soils and water into stable, productive communities. The focus is on the relationships created among the elements by the way we place them in the landscape. This synergy is further enhanced by mimicking patterns found in nature.

Question 9

Rachel Carson

Answer 9

Rachel Louise Carson (May 27, 1907 - April 14, 1964) was an American marine biologist and nature writer whose writings are credited with advancing the global environmental movement. In the late 1950s, Carson turned her attention to conservation and the environmental problems caused by synthetic pesticides. The result was Silent Spring (1962), which brought environmental concerns to an unprecedented portion of the American public. Silent Spring spurred a reversal in national pesticide policy-leading to a nationwide ban on DDT and other pesticides.

Question 10

Club of Rome

Answer 10

• The Club of Rome is a global think tank that deals with a variety of international political issues. It was founded in April 1968 and raised considerable public attention 1972 with its report Limits to Growth. This book predicted that economic growth could not continue indefinitely because of the limited availability of natural resources, particularly oil.
• First formed in 1968 - informal gathering of world’s leading industrialists and politicians initiated by Italian Peccei.

Question 11

Barry Commoner

Answer 11

Barry Commoner (born May 28, 1917) is an American biologist, college professor, and eco-socialist. His 1971 book, The Closing Circle, suggested a left-wing, eco-socialist response to the limits to growth (see Club of Rome) thesis, postulating that capitalist technologies were chiefly responsible for environmental degradation, as opposed to population pressures.

Question 12

Bjørn Lomborg

Answer 12

Danish author, academic, and environmentalist. He became internationally-known for his best-selling and controversial book The Skeptical Environmentalist, a controversial book whose main thesis is that many of the most-publicised claims and predictions of environmentalists are exaggerated.

Question 13

James Lovelock

Answer 13

Known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis, in which he postulates that the Earth functions as a kind of superorganism.

Question 14

Carolyn Merchant

Answer 14

Carolyn Merchant (born 1936 in Rochester, New York) is an American ecofeminist philosopher and historian of science most famous for her theory on the ’Death of Nature’, whereby she identifies the Enlightenment as the period when science began to atomise, objectify and dissect nature, foretelling its eventual conception as inert. Her works were important in the development of environmental history and the history of science.

Question 15

Arne Naess

Answer 15

Arne Dekke Eide Næss (born January 27, 1912) is widely regarded as the foremost Norwegian philosopher of the 20th century, is the founder of deep ecology and the first to introduce the term Ecosophy. Næss cited Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring as being a key influence in his vision of deep ecology.

Question 16

William Petty

Answer 16

Sir William Petty (May 27, 1623 - December 16, 1687) was an English economist, scientist and philosopher. He imagined a future in which “the city of London is seven times bigger than now, and that the inhabitants of it are 4,690,000 people, and that in all the other cities, ports, towns, and villages, there are but 2,710,000 more”. He expected this some time round 1800, extrapolating existing trends. Long before Malthus, he noticed the potential of human population to increase. But he also saw no reason why such a society should not be prosperous.

Question 17

Gifford Pinchot

Answer 17

Gifford Pinchot (August 11, 1865 - October 4, 1946) was the first Chief of the United States Forest Service (1905-1910) and the Governor of Pennsylvania (1923-1927, 1931-1935). He was a Republican and Progressive. Pinchot is known for reforming the management and development of forests in the United States and for advocating the conservation of the nation’s reserves by planned use and renewal. He called it “the art of producing from the forest whatever it can yield for the service of man”. Pinchot coined the term conservation ethic as applied to natural resources.

Question 18

Maurice Strong

Answer 18

Maurice F. Strong (born April 29, 1929, in Oak Lake, Manitoba) is one of the world’s leading proponents of the United Nations’ involvement in world affairs. Supporters portray him as one of the world’s leading environmentalists. Secretary General of both the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, which launched the world environment movement, and the 1992 Earth Summit and first Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Strong has played a critical role in globalizing the environmental movement.

Question 19

Henry Thoreau

Answer 19

Henry David Thoreau (born David Henry Thoreau; July 12, 1817 - May 6, 1862) was an American author, naturalist, transcendentalist, tax resister, development critic, sage writer and philosopher. He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state. Thoreau’s books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions were his writings on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern day environmentalism.

Question 20

William Vogt

Answer 20

William Vogt (1902-1968) was an ecologist and ornithologist, with a strong interest in population control. He was the author of best-seller Road to Survival (1948).

Question 21

William Vogt

Answer 21

• Head of IIED, 1973
• Advisor to JFK, LBJ, in contact with first-generation African presidents, British PMs, Brandt (FRG)
• Contributor to Stockholm conference.
• “Climate change is becoming the greatest threat to our continued life on this one and only earth.”
• Books: Spaceship Earth, 1966 - ‘We depend upon a little envelope of soil and a rather larger envelope of atmosphere for life itself. And both can be contaminated and destroyed.’; Only One Earth, 1972 - written at request of Maurice Strong, political agenda to include poverty in narrative to veer of criticism to Stockholm; Human Settlements: Crisis and Opportunity, 1976; Banking on the Biosphere, 1978 - incl. Discussion on sustainable development (two years prior WCS and Brundtland); Progress for a Small Planet, 1979 - about sustainable development and a new industrial order.
• Behind the Earthscan publication project by the IIED in 1976. By 1980, running a successful newspaper service.

Question 22

Quote the World Conservation Strategy, 1980

Answer 22

Conservation must . . . be combined with measures to meet short term economic needs. The vicious circle by which poverty causes ecological degradation which in turn leads to more poverty can be broken only by development. But if it is not to be self-defeating, it must be sustainable—and conservation helps to make it so”

Question 23

What did the US National Academy of Sciences produce in 1990?

Answer 23

One Earth One Future (1990) - ‘In this light, the earth system is seen as a set of interacting subsystems characterized by processes that vary on spatial scales from millimeters to the circumference of the earth, and on time scales from seconds to billions of years.

Question 24

What did Ronald Reagan do?

Answer 24

Rebutted Global 2000’s findings, and overturned Carter’s executive order banning toxic waste exports. Reagan wholesale revised environmental policy during the 1970s to reduce the scope of governmental intervention and rely more on the private sector.

Question 25

Who is John Sununu and how did he react to Rio?

Answer 25

Chief of staff in 1991. Previously engineer, comfortable with scientifically dismissing global warming. Believed those advocated CO2 cuts were anti-growth and anti-development. Saw Rio as a kind of forum for international blackmail.

Question 26

Indira Gandhi

Answer 26

1972 Stockholm - Declared poverty to be the ‘greatest polluter’ of the developing nations.

Question 27

Walt Rostow

Answer 27

1983 - “trees do not grow to the sky. It is wholly possible, even certain, that, with the passage of time, man’s perceptions of affluence will change - or the change will be forced upon him.

Question 28

Jim MacNeill

Answer 28

‘Just before the ‘92 Earth Summit, I wrote that a new way to define ‘infinity’ was the ever-expanding number of self-serving definitions of sustainable development.’

Question 29

What did Galbraith query in 1958?

Answer 29

1958 - Questions whether ever-growing production is the best measure for economic success.

Question 30

How did Ezra Mishan critique economic growth in the 1970s?

Answer 30

Called to attention the economic and social costs of economic growth, which he conceptualised as infringement of ‘amenity rights’ to needs like silence, water, air.

Question 31

What did Schumacher put forward?

Answer 31

Small is Beautiful - theoretical grounds for a need to overcome growth and provided building-blocks for a steady-state economy.

Question 32

What were the main publications up to 1962? (5)

Answer 32

• 1948 - Road to Survival (Vogt) -
• 1948 - Our Plundered Planet (Osborn) - drew attention to the enormous rise in world population and predicted upcoming mass famines.
• 1952 - Resources for Freedom (Paley Commission) - resources cannot be provided domestically in the future.
• 1954 - The Nation Looks at its Resources (Jarrett) - Findings from 1953 meeting. Confirmed concern felt by those attending the conference about the mounting pressure on our resources from the growing population and expanding econ.
• 1962 - Silent Spring (Carson) - Popular book which sparked environmentalism. Anti-DDT and pesticides.

Question 33

What were the main publications between 1968 and 1989? (4)

Answer 33

• 1968 - The Tragedy of the Commons (Hardin) - the theory that common goods will be consumed as fast as possible - no incentive to moderate consumption; The Population Bomb (Ehrlich) - Neo-Malthusian.
• 1972 - The Limits to Growth (Club of Rome) - Cybernetic report with a neo-Malthusian outlook that humans were about to enter a period of decline in several resources.
• 1978 - World Development Report (World Bank)
• 1980 - World Conservation Strategy - International Union for the Conservation of Nature - Considered a foundational text (Gudmundsson). While the WCS did not fully integrate development and environmental considerations (Clapp and Dauvergne 2005), its formulation of “sustainable development” informed the World Commission of Environment and Development’s (WCED’s) report Our Common Future. Chief objective: maintenance of essential ecological processes; preservation of genetic diversity; sustained utilisation of species and ecosystem.
• 1987 - Our Common Future (Brundtland WCED commission) - Official outline of sustainable development - received criticism for not proposing a concrete agenda.
• 1989 - Blueprint for a Green Economy

Question 34

Name 5 important moments between 1893 and 1969?

Answer 34

• 1893 - Behring Sea Seals Case 65 - first instance of protection of marine mammals in high seas.
• 1952 - Great London Smog
• 1956 - Minamata Disease (Japan); UK Clear Air Act
• 1960s - Acid Rain - Scandinavia and Finland. Resulted in the theory of long-range transboundary air pollution which was the result of Ruhr production. Ruhr sulphur combined with rain to kill forests and fish.
• 1969 - National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA)

Question 35

Name six key moments between 1970 and 1986

Answer 35

• 1970 - First Earth Day
• 1972 - UN Conference on the Human Environment: Stockholm Declaration
• 1982 - UN Nairobi Meeting - Stockholm+10; Declaration - Whilst nations had made progress, this was insufficient to reverse the rate of environmental degradation occurring throughout the world. Solutions for both poverty alleviation and environmental protection were required.
• 1983 - WCED formed
• 1984 - Forest Dieback, Germany
• 1986 - Chernobyl

Question 36

What were the seven key moments between 1989 and 2015?

Answer 36

• 1989 - Exxon Valdez Oil Spill; birth of the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (BDT).
• 1992 - UNCED: (Conference on Environment and Development) Rio Declaration and Agenda 21. Earth Charter: Principle 1 of the declaration describes that, human beings are at the centre of concerns for Sustainable Development. 10,000 representatives, 178 nations.
• 2000 - UN Millennium Assembly
• 2002 - Johannesburg Summit - responding to the rapid advancement of market globalisation, sp. Investment flows from global north to south.
• 2012 - Rio+20 - to reinvigorate international efforts to promote sustainable development. Promoted the notion of the Green Economy as the means to achieve WCS agenda.
• 2010 - Deepwater Horizon
• 2015 - MGDs to be replaced with SDGs for 2015-30 period.

Question 37

Provide information about the Stockholm conference

Answer 37

• The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (also known as the Stockholm Conference) was an international conference convened under United Nations auspices held in Stockholm Sweden, from June 5-16, 1972. It was the UN’s first major conference on international environmental issues, and marked a turning point in the development of international environmental politics.
• The Stockholm Declaration also describes that the present generation has a duty to know an environmental quality but also have a “solemn responsibility to protect and improve the environment for present and future generations.”
• Principle 1 of the UNCHE emphasised the fundamental right to adequate conditions of life for present and future generations.
• Principle 2 of the declaration emphasised that the natural resources must be safeguarded for the benefit of present and future generations.
• Principle 8 emphasised that, economic and social development is essential for ensuring a favourable living and working environment for man that are necessary for the improvement of the quality of life.
• Motive for the Conference came from Sverker Astrom. Astrom suggested the meeting after discussing peaceful uses for atomic energy.
• Swedish desire for an environmental conference was inspired by the problem of acid rain.

Question 38

What were some of the findings from the Brundtland commission?

Answer 38

• Environment and development ‘inexorably linked’
• Posited requirements for sustainable development: I) a political system which secures effective cities participation in decision making; II) Economic system that is able to generate surpluses in tech knowledge on a self-reliant and sustained basis; III) Social system that provides solutions from tensions arising from disharmonious development; IV) A production system which respects the obligation to preserve the ecological base for development; V) A technological system that can search continuously for new solutions; VI) An international system that fosters sustainable patterns of trade and finance; and VII) An administrative system with the capacity for self-correction.

Question 39

What did the UN Millennium Project set?

Answer 39

• Set out Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to be met by 2015. These focused on the eduction of poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and discrimination against women.
• By 2007, clear that many MGDs would not be met.

Question 40

what was Agenda 21?

Answer 40

500-page collection of agreed healthy practices for achieving sustainable development across the globe. Organised around: Quality of Life, efficient use of natural resources, protection of global commons, management of human settlements, sustainable economic growth.

Question 41

What was the Founex Report of 1971?

Answer 41

• Deliberations of panel at Founex, convened by UNCHE head Maurice Strong. Helped to change the agenda of Stockholm so that it addressed the concern of low- and middle-income nations and recognised the relationship between environment and development. Barbara Ward acted as an advisor but not a speaker.

Question 42

Provide some detail about the IIASA

Answer 42

• Founded 1972 by US and SU + blocs. Not an institute for spying (classified data not permitted). Born of the 1967 Glassboro Summit between LBGJ and Kosygin. Soviets sought to learn from the US. Technoscientific development was the key rationale behind East-West Institute.
• CERN saw a similar reconciliation between cybernetics experts during the CW.
• Facilitated the dissemination of Russian economic theories in the West, such as the Kondratiev theory of long-wave development cycles, dev. In 1920s and 1930s. Was integrated into STRATEGEM-2 - a simulation to communicate Kondratiev long-wave theory.
• IIASA, post-1970, positioned itself as the avant-garde of global modelling.
• Nuclear Winter Project - SU -> deeply transformed the understanding of the relationship between mankind and nature by revealing the limits to governability and to the control of human activities’ impact on the environment.
• Nuclear winter scientist - Paul Crutzen - went on to theorise ‘Anthropocene’ in 2002.
• ‘500 days’ - involved privatisation, liberalisation of price and stabilisation of the market, developed by the IIASA. Combined transformation with conservation, but was never adopted by the SU Central Committee.

Question 43

Modernisation Theory

Answer 43

• Powerful narrative of change, which Gilman suggests accords to the Marxist-Leninist version of development, which set out clearly defined, universal historical stages of development.
• Protagonists: enlightened rulers w/ scientific expertise, vs. Traditionalism. Can be both democratic and non-democratic.
• Modernisation theory was compatible w/ SU.

Question 44

What were some responses to the Limits to Growth 1972 report

Answer 44

• Strikes at the very foundations of the World Bank’s commitment to growth, growth, and more economic growth as the key to the solution of world problems.
• SOVIET RESPONSE: Was not surprised. Met with fascination and scepticism, mirroring the West. Differentiated between the Malthusian line of LtG but saw potential in generating policy from cybernetic reports.
• Opened up new understanding of the parameters required for scientific governance.

Question 45

Provide information and case studies about the World Bank

Answer 45

ORIGINS

Conceptualised by Keynes and White.

Emerged PW to ‘assist in the reconstruction and development of territories of members by facilitating the investment of capital for productive purposes.’

Original capital - $10bn - monumental, unprecedented. 80% callable as a guarantee; though paid-in to callable ratio decreased over time. Only to lend to specific projects.

McNamara - drove unprecedented expansion between 1968 and 1981. Lending increased from $953 million to $12.4 billion (sixfold real-term increase). Staff went from around 1500 to 5000. Brought a moral mission to the bank.

1972 @ Stockholm, McNamara: ‘The question is not whether there should be continued economic growth. There must be. Nor is the question whether the impact on the environment must be respected. It has to be. Nor – least of all – is it a question of whether these two considerations are interlocked. They are. The solution of the dilemma revolves clearly not about whether, but how’.

Aimed to achieve 14% growth per year, aimed at absolute poverty. Believed that powerful elites in developing nations could be induced to make institutional and structural changes for the benefit of the poor and powerless.

60-70% of the 800million of the poorest were landless farmers.

CASE STUDIES:

1945 - Dutch Reconstruction Loan - indirectly bankrolled colonial oppression of rebels in Indonesia for over a year, with 145,000 troops, air support and mechanised tank forces.

1966 - Loans of $10 million to Portugal and $20 million to South Africa - despite colonial domination and apartheid.

1976-1986: $360m lent to support Indonesia Transmigration: move millions of Indonesians from the inner islands (Java, Lombok, Bali) to the outer islands (Borneo, Indonesian New Guinea); which contain 10% of remaining rainforest. Resettlement was supposed to be voluntary, but was forced.

1980: Ceausescu’s regime in Romania was one of the biggest borrowers. $2.364bn in 8 years. 1979 - published report called ‘Importance of Centralised Economic Control’ - defending state planning, and accepts uncritically the government’s prediction that per capita income in 1990 would reach $3000 in 1963 terms, or over $15000 in 1993 dollars.

1982 - supports Polonoreste development - $200 million, despite ‘indisputable evidence of ecological holocaust’. 1983 - Approves funding of Phase III Polonoroeste loan, $65.2million.

Question 46

When were the significant smog episodes in the West?

Answer 46

Pennsylvania, 1948; London, 1952; LA, 1954.

Question 47

Washington Consensus?

Answer 47

Redefined development ‘as a process aimed a increasing the role of the market and reducing the role of the state’. BWI (Bretton Woods Institutions) rose to prominence.

Question 48

What was the positive outcome of Rio according to Scoones?

Answer 48

• Post-Rio enthusiasm saw the birth of the International Institute for Environment and Development (London), Centre for Science and Environment (Dehli), World Resources Institute (Washington D.C.). These had access to and influence over policy debates which would have been inconceivable years prior; but were ultimately derailed by bureaucratisation and commercial lobbies in the US.

Question 49

What did Bass conclude in Beyond Brundtland?

Answer 49

• Brundtland: ‘kicked off an unprecedented process of international summitry, with its highest peaks at Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and Johannesburg in 2002.’
• National level - production of National Sustainable Development Strategies, and Multi-Stakeholder Sustainable Development Councils.
• Brundtland has encourage poverty alleviation, but has done little to encourage global south environmental policy.
• Unsustainable development is pervasive due to:
  
  • Dominant economic growth models which negate the importance of rights, welfare or environmental processes and limits.
  • Environmental benefits or costs are not integrated into the price of products.
  • The poor are marginalised and distanced from political power.
  • Governments are not configured to care about the environment. Still run along 20th century lines.
  • Unsustainable behaviour not suitably challenged.

Question 50

Gudmundsson

What failings does Gudmundsson highlight?

Answer 50

• Historical perspective highlights that compromises ewere made when crafting the key sustainable development texts OCF and Rio Declaration.
• Additionally, throughout Brundtland, UNCED, Rio+20 and post-2015, a clear theme of technological optimism and market liberalisation can be traced.

Question 51

Shodhganga

What does Shodhganga contribute?

Answer 51

• Provides legal understanding of environmentalism.
• The UNCHE is described as Magna Carta on environmental protection.
• Concept of Sustainable Development is a buzzword.
• Modern international law transformed the practice among states in the form of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs). Rio Declaration, in its various legal elements, mandate national governments to make appropriate measures the need for effective conservation of resources both for the benefit of present and future generations at all level.

Question 52

What did Bac Dorin Paul contribute?

Answer 52

• 1972-2002 conferences -shift in the political debate from primary emphasis on environmental issues at Stockholm, through a shared emphasis on environmental, social and economic development, to arguably a primary emphasis on poverty alleviation at the Millennium Summit in 2000 and the Johannesburg World Summit in 2002.
• Claims the main insurmountable barriers was global consciousness in households and boardrooms.

Question 53

Conca

What was Conca’s perspective on envirionmental motions since Stockholm?

Answer 53

• The “Rio+10” summit in Johannesburg, the intergovernmental dialogue focused so little on the environmental side of “environment and development” that activists ruefully dubbed the event “Rio minus 10.”
• UNEP exists, in theory, to coordinate and catalyze UN activities on the issue. Yet its annual budget is smaller than that of a decent liberal-arts college, and UNEP routinely struggles just to collect the paltry amounts of funding promised by member states.
• The definition of sustainable development put forward by Brundtland was not much different from the concept of ‘eco-development’ fronted by the UNEP in the late 1970s.
• The 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), known popularly as the Earth Summit, marked a convergence of these three trends—the “sustainable developmentalization” of the environmental issue, the subsuming of human rights to a statist North-South discourse on development, and the prioritization of global regulatory accords. Held in Rio de Janeiro, UNCED was an unprecedented global gathering; it featured the heads of state for nearly all UN members and a panoply of civil-society organizations that straddled the formal and informal activities.
• Power in the 21st century is wielded more so by trans-sovereign entities than nation-states.
• Agenda 21 - no mention of sustainability as a human right; however there were brief mentions of what would later gain momentum as ‘rights-based approaches’ - including a call for govts to affirm the rights of NGOs.
• The treaty-centred approach to human rights has limited the growth and spread fo environment-rights linkages.
• Member-state resistance to ‘environmental security’ goes beyond a reflexive defence of national sovereignty.
• UN’s highly segmented approach to conflict has fragmented environmental peace-building initiatives.
• There exist strong synergies between human rights practice and environmental protection: quality env. Strengthens a range of human rights, while exercise of rights creates accountability for protecting the environment.
• R2P theoretically acts as a global security mechanism to defend human rights, has not adapted well when applied to env. Crisis: Cyclone Nargis, 2008, devastated Myanmar. Government banned international aid operations, leading France to propose invoking R2P. Making R2P apply to env. Would run the risk of destroying the consensus behind R2P in practice.

Question 54

What did Hopgood conclude about American FP in the coming of environmentalism?

Answer 54

• 22nd UN Conference was the beginning of international environmental politics
• World consciousness of environmentalism can be linked to major theories such as climate change, ozone damage, destruction of tropical rainforests and the loss of biodiversity.
• Six reasons for the importance of US environmental policy:
• I) US is most powerful actor;
• II) Domestic environmental politics in the US have been remarkably extensive.
• III) US has been one of the most prominent participants in international env. Orgs.
• IV) Degree of openness is conducive to study
• V) US is ‘weak’ state insofar as governmental institutions have been penetrated by societal groups.
• VI) American national experience important to IR theory.
• Skocpol - 1985 - people rarely think of ‘states’. Two ‘states’ in the US: one an internal actor - complex of institutions which draws power; second - geographical, territorial entity comprised by a physical space and resources.
• Nixon’s ambitions at Stockholm (executed through 35 representatives)
• Oppose efforts to turn voluntary fund into broader dev. Fund.
• Oppose a new specialised body, support ECOSOC
• Oppose attempts to increase UN target aid donations for global south
• Oppose environmental clean-up plans
• Oppose attempt to alter the vague language from the preparatory committee on nuclear testing.
• Clean Air drew Congress into the environmental fray. By 1960s it provided research support for pollution measurement and engaging in more and more congressional oversight.
• 1980s saw growth and expansion of environmental lobbyist groups.
• NGOs in 1989 were greater in size and number in 1972. Visibility masks an absence of impact however.
• Epistemic communities - networks of knowledge-based experts - is an interesting development in the pluralist literature, yet it fails to present an adequate alternative to central importance of the state.
• Changes between 1970 and 2000: environmental problems are now seen as ‘real’, problems are more sophisticated that simply pollution, need for collective discussion and action is better understood.

Question 55

Rindzeviciute (The Power of Systems)

What does Rindzeviciute contribute?

Answer 55

• Focuses on the IIASA - hitherto overlooked when discussing globalisation.
• System-cybernetic governmentality - mode of scientific governance that emerged after WWII and led to different outcomes in different contexts.
• Suggests systems-cybernetic approach constituted a different resource for scientific governance which was non-modern rather than high-modern.
• LBJ relied on science as an instrument of policy, esp. Geophysical East-West policy.
• Computer-based global modelling came fo age in the 1970s. Global modellers conceived of the planet as complex, interconnected system, which relied on transnational scientific cooperation, enabled transcendence over CW divides.
• Suggested that the nuclear winter report showed that nature, previously understood as a “passive opponent” in game theory terms, could in fact be “provoked” by nuclear explosions and retaliate in ways that transgressed superpower interests by making the winner into a loser.
• Crutzen’s thesis on the Anthropocene was so influential that it led to a rethinking of the basic premises of historical and sociological research, most famously by Dipesh Chakrabarty, who outlined the shift from the notion of nature as a backdrop to human activity to human agency as a geological force.
• End of 1980s - system cybernetics became widespread and institutionalised globally - impactful on education and private consultancy.

Question 56

What did Bruce Rich contribute concerning the role of BWI institutions?

Answer 56

• WB product of ND optimism.
• Bankrolled countries and institutions with questionable ends. Ultimately, stands as apolitical only because it says so.
• WB was schizophrenic in terms environmental and social guidelines. The more time and effort they put into tailoring - a project to respond to both local ecological and social conditions and to Bank guidelines, the less attractive it became for developing country bureaucrats eager to build influence in their ministries.
• The Brundtland commission shied away from hard choices and uncomfortable thoughts, arguing that sustainable development has to be achieved by increasing economic growth in the developing and industrialised worlds. Growth is central to poverty alleviation, it held. Whilst the report stressed the need for conservation and enhancement of the natural resource base, it failed to provide a blueprint for how this might come about.
• To reinvent the WB as an accountable and responsible institution, its charter would have to be rewritten.

Question 57

What does Borowy add about WCED, nature and economic theory, development, and PW developments?

Answer 57

• WCED
  
  • Ambition to reconcile four dimensions: present vs future, economic vs environmental, north vs south, scientific accuracy vs political acceptability.
• The elimination of nature from economic theory was part of the fragmentation and specialisation of disciplines in the late 19th century.
• Millennialism - evident in all societies secular or religious (think: Norse mythology - Ragnarok; The Flood; Hindu-Buddhist Cyclical Destruction; Science’s expansion of the sun).
• Development is an intrinsic social construct
• 1890-1990: CO2 ↑ seventeen-fold; water ↑ nine-fold; agriculture ↑ two-fold; fishing ↑ 35-fold.
• A lot is attributed to the ‘Great Acceleration’ PW.
• Main crises PW - economic crises and underdevelopment. Solution -> Bretton Woods institutions (WB, IMF, GATT, WTO), UN agencies (ECOSOC, UNCTAD, UNDP), European agencies (OEEC, OECD).
• WECD was built not for intellectual contributions put to produce tangible policy.
• Rio+10 was met with disillusionment -> the high rhetoric of 1972 was at odds with the global reality of 1980.

Question 58

Who did Carson work with?

Answer 58

Raymond Pearl

Question 59

Why were empires interested in Mauritius and St Helena?

Answer 59

They were isolated islands in geostrategically important locations. The need for conservation was out of necessity - we do not necessarily see the environmental policy promulgated to the same extent elsewhere - something Grove does not leave much room to consider.

Question 60

Explain contributory and interactional expertise, and what impact they had

Answer 60

• This was supposed to be in the Environment book (2018) but was cut by the publisher. About expertise, there are contributory and interactional types:
• Contributory expertise suggests that, to be respectable, an expert is measured by how much they have contributed to the academic field. This changes over time – whereas Osborn and Vogt rested to primitive extrapolations from limited datasets, by the 1970s, one had to compete with cybernetics to be respectable. Contributory expertise meant more to academic circles than popular circles.
• The other type of expertise was interactional -> how well experts communicated with the public, or to scientists. Compare how Carson starts with the quote ‘THERE WAS ONCE a town in the heart of America’ compared to report of the US President’s Science Advisory Committee 1965. The importance of interactional versus contributory varies dependent on the audience (important!)

Question 61

What did Elizabeth Cohen argue?

Answer 61

In the second half of the 20th century, America was essentially a consumption driven democracy?