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This paper draws on fieldwork in rural Ireland to argue that environmental data can reinforce knowledge systems that shield structural problems and blunt efforts to rethink the role of community engagement in environmental governance. It offers a cautionary reading of how data has been instrumentalised by the EU and Irish State by showing how data diffuses responsibility and depoliticises environmental activism in cycles of funding and data collection. Since the 2000 Water Framework Directive, water governance in the European Union has increasingly relied upon extensive scientific, evidence-based decision-making and community and stakeholder involvement. We explore how these changes shape efforts to document and remediate water pollution. We expand upon Shapiro et al.'s (2018)'s "data treadmill" to understand how data rescales responsibility for pollution and its effects. The "data treadmill" gives name to cycles of data and funding that propel logics and strategies of environmental governance. We show how the data treadmill operates by perpetuating a narrative that effective action requires more precise data and evidence and solves questions of responsibility through bespoke approaches to environmental pollution. The data treadmill constrains communities through prevailing logics that surround data and environmental governance: communities become tied into European funding programmes that require, on one hand, the expertise of various professionals and consultants, on the other, place-based knowledge and social relationships to deliver innovative responses to structural problems. We offer a critical analysis of current institutional and policy in the EU and Ireland to highlight perils and contradictions of data-centric environmental governance as practiced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Confederation in 1867, official Canadian settler government policy on the environment has sought to simultaneously preserve “wilderness” and exploit natural resources for market gain. In the 1960s, the nascent North American modern environmental movement pushed for stronger regulation on pollution and toxics - and a more institutionalised state-led response to environmental problems emerged. Throughout the last five decades, three principal “eras” of federal government reaction have emerged in response to mounting scientific evidence and public pressure to act on environmental issues. The first, from the late-1960s to mid-1980s, saw the development and implementation of early environmental policy and programmes. The second era, from the mid-1980s to mid-2000s co-occurred alongside the rise of the sustainable development paradigm, and is marked by the Canadian government’s attempt at leadership on the global stage. The third era, from the mid-2000s to 2015, demonstrates a shift from environmental regime-building and multilateral collaboration toward rollbacks and obstructionism. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the government of Canada reversed decades of progress and cooperation on the environment and sustainable development through its muzzling of government scientists, superficial co-optation of climate policy, rollbacks of environmental legislation and disparagement of environmental activists. In total, by shifting the federal government from a position of ineffective benevolence on environmental issues to one of contention and antagonism, the Harper government’s approach represents a departure from Canadian environmental governance norms and sought to remake the identity of Canada as an energy superpower inextricably tied to its oil and gas industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental justice sheds light on the distributive and procedural aspects of planning and decision-making. We examined the challenges arising from the perspective of environmental justice on multi-level and participatory environmental governance by exploring the governance of aquatic environments in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. We found three main challenges and potential responses to them. First, even though most of Helsinki’s shoreline is free and/or accessible by road and accordingly used actively by people for recreational purposes, many parts of the shoreline are perceived as inaccessible, reflecting a need to combinefactual and perceived accessibility of aquatic environmentsin detail during the planning processes and to discuss reasons for possible discrepancies between these two. Second, there was a remarkable seasonal variation in the use of aquatic environments, so more attention should be paid tosocial-demographic factors explaining the distribution of the use of urban nature. Third, it seems to be difficult to capture the variety of perceptions of people and to integrate them into planning and decision-making processes even on a local scale, and this challenge is likely even more pronounced on higher levels of planning and governance. Thus, betterintegration of regional and local-scale planning procedures should be encouraged. Building on these observations, we conclude that integration of procedural and distributive environmental justice into the practices of the governance of aquatic environments could remarkably decrease unwanted trade-offs and potential conflicts in their use and management. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of this article is to evaluate public participation as a driver of sustainable urban governance. This study deals at a theoretical level with a relational view of urban sustainability, conceived as a multidimensional process determined by the socio-ecological interconnections that modify the local environment. It observes these interconnections in the practice of urban governance, presenting an ethnographic investigation of the case of theIguaçu Project, in the Rio de Janeiro Metropolitan Region. The analysis provides two levels of results: the micro-level (the participatory process) and the macro-level (the public environmental policy). At the micro-level, the research shows the capacity of participatory arenas to enhance relations between citizens and the environment. At the macro-level, it highlights the existence of concurrent policy mechanisms in the same local environment, which undermines the results of public participation. The conclusion stresses apoliticised organisationof the public engagement process so that local environmental governance achieves sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this article is to reflect upon the motivations and the outcomes of the socio-political conflicts which attempted to challenge the rationality of conservation in the Galápagos Islands, in light of recent inquiries into the post-political condition. Protected areas, we argue, are paradigmatic examples of post-political spaces where universal moral imperatives and the overwhelming role of scientific knowledge reduce the possibility for disagreement, and make traditional political means useless. In order to sustain this argument, we discuss the idea of a post-political condition in relation to the debates about biodiversity, social justice and the political ecology of protected areas in the Global South. We will see how the alliance between conservation science, the State and the tourism industry strongly influenced the territorialisation of the Galápagos Islands and what the political implications are. Such alliances became the object of violent confrontations during the 1990s, which favoured the adoption of reforms inspired by the principles of sustainability and environmental governance. The idea of a post-political condition, in our opinion, can help to understand the outcome of these conflicts and, more generally, the difficulties in reconciling environmentalism with social justice in protected areas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]