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Urban political ecology (UPE) has become an important and influential paradigm for the geographic analysis of socioecological transformation. Despite considerable progress in its empirical and theoretical sophistication, however, what it means to analyze the specifically political dimensions of change in UPE accounts remains largely unspecified and underdeveloped. One option receiving attention is to confine analysis of the “properly political” to the disruption of prevailing orders by egalitarian challenges. As an alternative, we propose and elaborate a pragmatist approach to political analysis that has emerged in science and technology studies. Through accounts of two efforts to imagine the socioecological future of an urban river, we aim to demonstrate the potential of such an approach. We argue that in addition to local variation and the deployment of knowledge, analyses of the political trajectories of issues should address historical variation and the mobilization of desire. We contend that such an approach provides a methodology for tracing connections between conventional political processes and extraordinary moments of disruption and that it is also compatible with multiple perspectives on the “political” within UPE. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In studying rivers, physical and social science researchers tend to analyze water resource regulation at a national scale, treating “the state” as a monolithic entity mechanistically executing its regulatory code. Yet variation abounds in the interpretation and application of any national environmental policy. This study examines the complex geography of a small but crucial component of the U.S. Clean Water Act—compensatory stream mitigation—and how particular states and federal agency districts, and the individuals occupying key roles in those units of government, have interpreted the same national law in quite different social and environmental settings. The appearance of monotonic regulatory outcomes at a relatively coarse scale obscures a high degree of fine-scale heterogeneity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the late 1990s there have been many calls to bring critical geography into conversation with science and technology studies (STS). Although the strongest cross-fertilization to date has been ontological, political economy is another productive area for conversation between the two fields. More specifically, I argue that fully understanding the role that environmental science plays in expropriation requires expanding our focus of analysis to include not just the application of science but also its production and circulation. Through a field analysis of the Rosgen Wars, a fight that has convulsed the American stream restoration field since the mid-1990s, I demonstrate how Bourdieu's analytical framework can bridge political ecology and STS, revealing the political economic relations central to the development of scientific knowledge claims, education, authority, and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article considers the integrity of the emerging emissions allowance markets for greenhouse gases (GHG) under the international emissions trading system created by the Kyoto Protocol and the parallel European Union Emissions Trading Scheme. In particular, we suggest that accepted definitions of emissions baselines, initial allocation of emission credits, verification of “additionality” for GHG reduction beyond what would have occurred without trading, assuring permanence for offset-generating projects, preventing leakage of emissions-generating activities from protected project areas, monitoring, and reporting requirements are problematic. As with previous reforms that also rely on market allocation and expansion of private property rights, GHG trading deflects change in the social relations of production required for more sustainable production while commodifying access to the atmosphere and nature's ability to recycle carbon. Alternatives to this modern-day GHG indulgence system are considered, especially an upstream carbon tax, designed to force change in energy procurement and use. Although we found that most of the conditions required for the efficient operation of the international GHG markets are not being met thus far, further changes in the trading systems are being made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Environmental Policy Act and the pollution control powers of environmental protection agencies present a potentially significant new influence on the location of economic activity within the United States. This study examines whether traditional factors such as markets, labor, and materials remain predominant in manufacturing-location decision making, despite the recently added dimension of environmental regulations. Personal interviews and mailed questionnaires were used to identify the factors that were most important in the location of 162 new branch plants of large U.S. corporations. For most of the locational decisions investigated, environmental regulations did not rank among the most important factors considered" when such regulations were of some significance, uncertainties about when the necessary permits would be obtained were more important than spatial variations in direct costs. The results indicate that environmental regulations have had no consistent effect on the size of the search area, the number of sites considered, the sizes of facilities built, or the decision to expand existing plants versus building new plants. Environmental regulations will not lead to major shifts in the location of industry' within the U.S. for the traditional location factors remain predominant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a reply to researcher Madhusudana N. Rao for his comments on a article by the authors. According to them they are familiar with most of the citations mentioned by Rao. as they were commissioned by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to develop a complete bibliography on climate/health relationships as part of the effort to evaluate the impact of a predicted global warming on the environment. In addition to that, the article presents various other information.