Search

The political linkages between trade and environmental policy have rapidly increased since 1990. In this paper, I suggest a novel mechanism behind this phenomenon – 'defensive issue linkage.' As the scope of trade law expanded, it increasingly touched upon domestic and international environmental policies. As a result, environmental groups mobilized to seek carve-outs that preserve their traditional policy space. However, their opposition also led to the increased inclusion of proactive clauses that further the linkage between trade and the environment as policymakers strove to bolster ratifying coalitions. Using qualitative evidence from the US, EU, and Malaysia, I show that environmental groups mobilize in reaction to the expanding scope of trade policies and explore how this influences trade agreement content. A quantitative analysis of preferential trade agreements concluded between 1989 and 2016 then shows that general patterns of environmental clause inclusion are consistent with the channel of 'defensive issue linkage.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

France has made considerable progress on biodiversity policy in the last 15 years. However, the literature on French environmental politics remains unclear as to how effective this progress has been and what kind of political context has conditioned this progress. To answer these questions, I present here four discourses that characterize French biodiversity politics, discourses that have emerged from a documentary analysis, stakeholder interviews, and participatory event observations. I show that progress is conditioned by three discursive factors: the dominance of ecological modernization discourse, which only goes so far in enabling progress and transition; the continuing importance of economic development discourse, which is reluctant to further biodiversity conservation; and the limited prominence of two more radical discourses, ecological solidarity and ecological collapse, which are not taken up by the government but benefit from significant support in civil society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article illustrates the post-euphoric development of the environmental movement in the period since 2010 that was marked by democratic backsliding and the consolidation of 'illiberalism' in Hungary. Embedded from a historical perspective that spans the last three decades, we present two case studies of urban environmental mobilisation and identify 'localization', the reorientation towards grassroot activism, as a new trend driven by the closure of political opportunity structures. Localization combines with the alienation of protesters from institutional channels of influence-seeking and the weakening of ties with potential political allies, such as political parties or professionalised NGOs, and the increase of mistrust between the different actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Don't let Belgrade D(r)own, protest movement against the city's controversial waterfront development, is one of the largest civil society campaigns in post-Milošević Serbia. Despite engaging an eclectic mix of activists, there has been no tangible participation by Belgrade's well-established environmental NGOs (ENGOs). The absence of ENGOs is all the more surprising given the project's well-documented threat to surface water, increased risk of flooding, and air pollution. The extant literature would suggest that EU enlargement, distancing of green organisations from domestic grassroots agendas as a consequence of external donor funding, and widespread NGO fatigue are to blame. In addition to these explanations, we contend that the limited participation of ENGOs was also due to ideological differences and initial framing of the activism by those who had emerged from, and become disenchanted with, the NGO sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China and Russia provide critical insights into the nature of environmental politics under authoritarian governments. Developing a paired comparison of activism over waste management in both countries, we explore how environmental civil society interacts with the state and mobilizes social support. We find that despite greater political liberalization, NGOs in hybrid states such as Russia can still find it highly challenging to resist state pressure and introduce policy changes. In contrast, China, notwithstanding its harsher authoritarian system and the use of more repressive measures against social activism, can still be tested by a well-strategized NGO alliance. We challenge the linear logic of existing theories on environmental politics, which assume that social movements are all moving towards a defined end point (e.g. liberal democracy), and argue that environmental politics under authoritarian regimes is both dynamic and contested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can environmental provisions in preferential trade agreements (PTAs) foster an environmental race to the top? The ways in which different enforcement mechanisms in North-South PTAs affect the implementation of environmental standards in developing countries are examined. It is argued that environmental provisions in European Union (EU) and United States (US) PTAs will be effective in instigating policy change in partner countries, although the timing of the effect will vary significantly. Fines and sanctions in US PTAs incentivize partner countries to reform during the negotiation process. Reform in EU PTA partners is predicted to occur during agreement implementation as a result of the EU's policy dialogue approach. Illustrative evidence is provided and the hypotheses are tested using statistical estimations of EU and US PTAs with environmental provisions on developing countries' environmental policy reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Paris Agreement contains a separate article for loss and damage – an outcome that aligns with a central demand of many nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) at COP21. By shifting to a justice framing of loss and damage, NGOs were able to expand their mobilization and, in turn, enhance their influence. While it is not claimed that NGO advocacy was sufficient to produce the outcome, pathways by which issue framing can support increased NGO influence via persuasion and coercion are illustrated. First, the justice frame garnered additional media attention and raised the stakes should states fail to include the issue in the Paris Agreement. Second, the climate justice frame helped forge alliances with vulnerable countries and within civil society that enhanced bargaining. The findings contribute to theory building in NGO politics, connecting framing shifts to important outcomes in the global governance of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-state actors are increasingly participating in international climate diplomacy. The tactics employed by diverse civil society agents to influence climate policymaking are radicalizing through the adoption of more confrontational language. Activist groups have been seeking opportunities to influence policymakers regarding the rules related to transparency, public participation and accountability in the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). By scrutinizing efforts of three environmental NGOs (ENGOs) – Climate Action Network, Center for International Environmental Law and Carbon Market Watch – the analysis concentrates on what tactical shifts have occurred in the framing positions and approaches of these activists during the 1997–2015 period. After several years of legal advocacy, expertise and/or critique in an effort to reform input legitimacy of CDM governance, the selected ENGOs have recently drifted away from narratives of green governmentality and ecological modernization and, instead, radicalized their rhetorical tactics by turning to a human rights perspective under the umbrella of climate justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the world, unfettered capitalism and the obsession with economic growth have led to the destruction of many ecologically important sites, and generated sharp conflicts between the state and civil society actors concerned to protect the environment. Some optimists about the role of civil society actors gloss over the power dynamics in which they are embedded, and their economic and political contexts. The roles civil society organisations (CSOs) can play are contingent on such relationships and contexts, which in turn are affected and transformed by the dynamics of neoliberal globalisation. Our study of environmental CSOs in Turkey, focusing on their institutional context, identifies two crucial dimensions that shape their contribution: their interactions with the state and with financial donors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governance scholars have demonstrated that the agendas, discourses, and actions of global civil society groups are affected by powerful states. In neoliberal globalisation, powerful states push for market-based schemes to resolve global environmental problems, and civil society groups often contribute to that agenda. Through the lens of governmentality, scholars have shown how civil society acts in ways that relegitimise and sustain state power/influence at the global scale. This study illustrates how international environmental non-governmental organisations operating in the Montreal Protocol contribute to the neoliberalisation of ozone governance, in some cases changing tactics to fit the neoliberal discourse of the treaty. Consequently, some international environmental non-governmental organisations have recently abandoned discourses of global environmental health, global security, and general welfare to address neoliberal concerns of individualism, competition, and transparency in ozone politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How is the organisational structure of urban environmental stewardship groups related to the diverse ways that civic stewardship is taking place in urban settings? The findings of the limited number of studies that have explored the organisational structure of civic environmentalism are combined with the research on civic stewardship to answer this question. By bridging these relatively disconnected strands of research and testing their expectations on a structured sample of civic groups that were surveyed in New York City, a statistically significant relationship is found between the organisational structure of groups and both the organisational characteristics, as well as the types of environmental work they are doing. How these findings advance the research on urban environmental stewardship is discussed, as well as what these results tell us about the ways civil society engages in urban stewardship more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, increased pressure from civil society and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) has heightened the need for companies to engage with their critics. As the notion of corporate social responsibility has come to the fore in the business world, there has been a rapid expansion in the commitment to stakeholder engagement and dialogue. The changing relationship between NGOs and businesses is examined by focusing upon the impact of stakeholder dialogue processes on these relationships in the United Kingdom. The use of new social movement theory in identifying NGOs as key ‘secondary’ stakeholders is highlighted. Further application of new social movement research can provide key insights into the pressures of institutionalisation that may face groups engaging in dialogue. Empirical data on stakeholder dialogue is utilised and comparisons are made with the experiences of European environmental movements during the 1980s and 1990s. The potential for institutionalisation that accompanies opportunities for engagement is considered, as are the mechanisms through which NGOs seek to contain this threat. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite the government of Canada's close relationship with the biotechnology industry, critical social movement organisations have had a significant impact on the adoption of genetically modified organisms in that country. Two cases of products rejected after widespread resistance - recombinant bovine growth hormone (1999) and herbicide-tolerant Roundup Ready (RR) Wheat (2004) - are revisited. Informed by empirical research that brings to light new factors shaping the RR wheat outcome in particular, two theoretical arguments are advanced. First, in response to those critics of a neo-Gramscian framing of hegemony who see it as overly deterministic, these cases highlight just how deeply alliances with hegemonic ambitions may be forced to compromise. Second, these cases demonstrate that any study of civil society must still pay close attention to institutional and material 'relations of force' when seeking to explain the impact of social movements on environmental governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From an examination of the impact of international civil-society-building programmes on Czech environmental movement organisations (EMOs), it is clear that international influence left a deep imprint on eastern European civil societies. It did not however curb opportunities for environmental political activism, as supposed by an important part of the traditional scholarship, but instead helped create a particular form of activism based on advocacy organisations capable of staging political protest when necessary. While international donors have clearly channelled activist organisations towards professionalisation, this process has not necessarily been accompanied by de-politicisation and de-radicalisation of activist organisations. In fact, drawing on quantitative as well as qualitative data, employing protest event analysis and the small-N comparative method, it appears that activists dependent on foreign funding have often displayed a more assertive stance in political conflicts than their domestically embedded counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How has Europeanisation of environmental policy, as represented by the adoption of European Union (EU) biodiversity policies, influenced the agendas and repertoires of action employed by environmental non-governmental organisations (ENGOs) in Hungary, Poland and Romania? The EU's environmental acquis gave ENGOs new and often forceful tools to reach their aims by emphasising the importance of collaborative relations between state and non-state actors and by offering opportunities to civil society actors to circumvent their national governments in the policy process. Implementation of the EU's Natura 2000 network in Hungary, Poland and Romania further reinforced endogenously driven professionalisation and institutionalisation of civil society groups. While EU accession benefited from the expertise of professional ENGOs, the logic of the accession process together with the weakness of both state actors and civil society has not led to the development of sustainable cooperative state-society relations in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its conception in 1999, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) has become a leading template for voluntary sustainability reporting by companies. Emerging on the crest of the debate about corporate social responsibility, appropriate roles for business, government, and civil society in the sustainability transition, and private forms of global governance, it is also a descendant of 1970s social movements. Drawing on extensive empirical data collected through interviews and documentary analysis in four countries, the institutional entrepreneurship framework is used to analyse three types of tactics deployed by GRI champions: discursive, material and charismatic. Central to GRI entrepreneurs' success was maintaining balance between the individual and collective interests of their diverse constituencies, between inclusiveness and efficient pursuit of technical objectives, and between building a new institution and not challenging existing institutions and power relations. This strategy, though perhaps appropriate under the circumstances, left a legacy of unresolved tensions. How these are resolved will determine GRI's future shape and function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The management of Ireland's household waste is a key environmental area where systems of governance can be identified. However, while policy statements clearly support public-private partnerships and have encouraged householders to modify their waste management behaviour, civil society remains on the periphery of waste policy development and implementation. Two contrasting areas of waste-related civil society activities are examined to establish potential reasons for this marginalisation: community-based recycling organisations and coalitions against the imposition of household waste charges. The findings indicate that despite the different tactics used by these civil society groupings similar contingent conditions serve to constrain their operation and the development of future initiatives. So, while the existence of the three spheres of waste governance is undeniable, significant imbalances remain between those spheres in terms of policy influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines collective action frames of environmental organisations acting in St Petersburg, Russia. By studying diagnostic, prognostic and motivational framings of the organisations the article evaluates the framings reflect organisations' opportunities to act and have influence. The findings of this analy'sis indicate that, while it is clear that the current political situation in Russia does not favour civil society-based political activity, there are possibilities to act. What is needed is a positive diagnosis and prognosis – the belief that the situation is ameliorable and that individuals and civil society organisations can contribute to making political change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Up to now China's environmental reform has been mainly a state-led process. Yet, to enable further environmental improvements increased involvement of citizens and consumers is inevitable. This article explores existing, newly developing and future forms and channels of public participation in China's environmental management. Opportunities for public participation are analysed against the background of actual environmental parameters and in relation to China's specific political and socio-cultural dynamics. This contextual analysis of the (potential) roles for civil actors is framed around five environmental issues, which are central to the contemporary Chinese environmental debate: (1) protection of nature and bio-diversity; (2) local control of environmental pollution; (3) construction of green company images; (4) establishment of sustainable household practices; and (5) participation in international conventions and treaties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the face of unprecedented economic and industrial growth levels, China is rapidly developing its system of environmental governance. Coming from a conventional command-and-control approach to environmental policy, which fitted well its centrally planned economy, transitional China is swiftly reforming and diversifying its environmental approaches, instruments, arrangements and legal regulations. This article aims to grasp and assess the direction, extent and speed of change in China's environmental governance. New relations between state, market and civil society, and an opening up towards the outside world characterise new modes of environmental governance that try to turn China's development path in more sustainable directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrary to established ideas about the European Union's (EU) democratic deficit, a conception of European civil society based on contestation and communication within and across multiple public spheres is good for green politics and ecological democracy in the EU. This article shows that the European Commission's own proposals for restructuring its relationship to civil society organizations follows a trajectory from “passive inclusion” to “active inclusion” of civil society groups. This historical sequence, I argue, is associated with weakening civil society's capacity to serve as a reservoir of democratic innovation in the EU's system of multilevel governance. I aim to show that efforts to green and democratize the EU are better served by a non-integrated European civil society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What opportunities does the World Trade Organisation (WTO) offer for the representation of transnational environmental concerns by non-governmental organisations (NGOs)? Even prior to the Seattle protests in 1999, social movement pressure prompted WTO to increase its engagement with civil society groups, derestrict documents, facilitate NGO-oriented symposia and briefings, and extend access to ministerial meetings. A survey of NGO participants in recent WTO environment briefings reveals their positions on current and proposed modes of civil society input, the feasibility and legitimacy of which are discussed. Their recent coalition-building with development NGOs on specific trade campaigns is evidence that transnational environmental NGOs have grasped the need to appeal to developing country interests in order to widen political support for ecological concerns within the WTO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the implication of European Union (EU) accession for Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) environmental transition. Information on capacity limitations in governmental, non-governmental and private sectors across CEE countries to meet the demands and requisites in the transition towards EU accession; Limitations of EU environmental policies; Importance of civil society and non-governmental organizations.

The article discusses the highlights of the second session of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) held from May 14 to 26, 1994. There were 39 ministries of the environment who attended the event, plus the odd minister from other departments, while representation of civil society was dominated by the larger northern environmental nongovernmental organisations. It is stated that there was little progress made on consumption patterns repeating Agenda 21's existing call for research.

In the Czech Republic, as elsewhere in east and central Europe, a neglected and abused environment symbolised many of the failures of the Soviet-style planned system. In the post-communist era the environmental issue can be used as an indicator of the process of political change. The transition is primarily a process of altering the legacies of over 40 years of communist rule. Dismantling the command economy and establishing free elections and a multi-party system were merely the first steps in a lengthy process that had also to include the re-establishment of civil society after years of repression by the state, and the re-integration of the Czech Republic into Europe as an independent actor. In addition to the creation of new legislation, evidence of a decision-making process based on an active role for the public, and discussion between policy-makers and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), will be the hallmarks of a new political order which has overturned the legacies of the communist past. The process of improving the environment incorporates all aspects of the transition process: consultation between policy-makers and environmental NGOs, the adoption of new legislation in line with EU environmental policy, a competent administrative system capable of implementing the new legislation and, finally, a re-defined relationship between the state, the economy and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]