Search

Vietnam's economy will be the fastest-growing in 2023 and 2024 compared to ASEAN-5 countries. Since the country is following a development pathway, it is in a position to bet on a Circular Economy (CE), which is a widespread phenomenon for Sustainable Development. This study identifies major environmental challenges and remarks on the evolution of regulations and notable actions in the CE direction. For instance, emphasizes the approximately 4,000 Recycling Craft Villages that poorly implement a CE, focusing on Da Hoi. Finally, this article aims to identify challenges and opportunities, provide recommendations, and portray the future of circularity. Both desk and field research was conducted, including interviews and event attendance. Three principal conclusions are depicted; the limitations in the waste value chain of Recycling Craft Villages, the necessity to minimize air pollution through circularity, and budgetary restrictions are noted as continual hurdles to moving toward circularity. This article will interest policymakers, Vietnamese and international businesses, and academics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vietnam's economy will be the fastest-growing in 2023 and 2024 compared to ASEAN-5 countries. Since the country is following a development pathway, it is in a position to bet on a Circular Economy (CE), which is a widespread phenomenon for Sustainable Development. This study identifies major environmental challenges and remarks on the evolution of regulations and notable actions in the CE direction. For instance, emphasizes the approximately 4,000 Recycling Craft Villages that poorly implement a CE, focusing on Da Hoi. Finally, this article aims to identify challenges and opportunities, provide recommendations, and portray the future of circularity. Both desk and field research was conducted, including interviews and event attendance. Three principal conclusions are depicted; the limitations in the waste value chain of Recycling Craft Villages, the necessity to minimize air pollution through circularity, and budgetary restrictions are noted as continual hurdles to moving toward circularity. This article will interest policymakers, Vietnamese and international businesses, and academics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1970s, the Reef has been a site where Australian environmental policy has flourished, mirroring global environmental policy seeking to 'balance' human activity through 'ecologically sustainable development'. The article examines the parallel and intersecting processes of modern environmental policy and news media practice in the context of the Reef to unveil how Australia's news media are communicating critical moments in the protection of the Reef. Through two key conservation moments – the 1981 World Heritage Listing and the 2012 threat to place the Reef on the List of World Heritage in Danger – the article examines the role of news media in different geographic contexts, highlighting the complex politics of protection from early conservation campaigns to the contemporary era of protecting the Reef in the context of global environmental crisis. We identify how ecologically sustainable development discourses can be used to communicate positions that challenge and discredit policy initiatives aimed at protecting natural environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can institutions foster greater environmental awareness in a developmental state? Can a policymaking process driven by “autonomous” bureaucrats include civil society and does this affect policy outcomes? With these questions in mind, I explore the politics behind hydroelectric dam construction in environmentally and culturally sensitive locations in Brazil. Using mixed methods to compare two distinct developmental periods, I find developmental policy makers are becoming more sensitive to the environmental and social costs of large dams instead of solely prioritizing economic objectives. Constitutional protections, indigenous rights, a licensing process with mandated public audiences, and an active public prosecutor are compelling the democratic developmental state to better engage civil society and the environment. Ultimately, the Brazilian state is building a more inclusive developmental model and my research demonstrates how democratic political institutions and environmental protections changed the policy-making process and created a preference for less damaging but less efficient run-of-the-river dams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The December 2015 Paris Climate Agreement is better than no agreement. This is perhaps the best that can be said about it. The scientific evidence on global warming is alarming, and the likelihood depressingly small that the world can stay below a 2°C—even less a 1.5°C warming—over pre-industrial times. The Paris Agreement does not provide a blueprint for achieving these stabilization objectives. But it is ultimately the hope, however small, that a fundamental and rapid energy transition is achievable that must inform social and political behavior and activism in the coming years. In this sense, the Paris outcome is an aspirational global accord that will trigger and legitimize more climate action around the world. The question is whether this will happen quickly enough and at a sufficient scale to avoid disastrous warming of the planet. What is certain is that it will not occur without determined and far-reaching government intervention in energy markets in the next few years, particularly in the largest polluting countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twenty years ago, governments gathered for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro. The “Rio Declaration” laid out several principles of sustainable development, including the central role of policy instruments. In this article, we take stock of where we stand today in implementing sound and effective environmental policy instruments throughout the world, particularly in developing and transitional economies. We argue that, as our experience with market-based environmental policies has deepened over the past two decades, so has the ability to adapt instruments to complicated and heterogeneous contexts—but we are only just beginning, and the need to be further along is dire. One key factor may be that economists have not yet meaningfully accounted for the importance of political feasibility, which often hinges on risks to competitiveness and employment, or on the distribution of costs rather than on considerations of pure efficiency alone. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With the advent of environmental 'governance by commission', associated with evidence-based policy and market mechanisms, there is a need to (re)imagine Australia's nature politics. I identify two distinct domains of nature politics - one associated with distribution of goods produced in nature, and another concerned with constituting nature itself. The paper offers two analytically distinct readings of a tender bids hearing to select a contractor to assemble a diagnostic design for a government funded project of river rehabilitation. The tool that enables these incommensurable accounts is a purposefully crafted ethnographic story of the hearing. These dual readings engage alternative framings in order to see alternative political domains. The first reading mobilises an orthodox relativising framing to show a familiar politics evident in the competition for the contract; a politics over the distribution of goods produced from nature. This can be read as a politics over valuing nature. The second reading, proposing an alternative nature politics that should be understood as sitting alongside, utilises an alternative analytic framing. It offers a reading of the tender bids hearing as a politics contesting the form of the entities that should order Australian nature. In concluding I propose that the juxtaposed alternative readings, analyses made with disparate explicit metaphysical commitments, which reveal separate but connected political domains, constitute a politics of imagination, and ask how to configure the analyst who can engage such a politics? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This year marks the 40th year of Africana Studies in the academy, and while great gains have been made, there is one glaring area of study absent from the field—the environment. Given that African peoples globally suffer disproportionately from environmental degradation as well as the role that the burgeoning “Green Jobs” sector could have in engendering job growth in the Black community, the environment should play a role in Africana Studies programs and research. This article showcases the absence of an environmental focus in both Black scholarly research and Africana Studies programs—and other academic programs—across the country. Given the important role that the environment plays in the Black community and could continue to play in the near future, this article advocates for the necessity of an environmental focus within the field of Africana Studies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Previous research has identified factors affecting local government (LG) adoption of Local Agenda 21 (LA21). The objective of this research is to propose a measurement model and test it in the case of a specific region, the Basque Country. Research results show that the embrace of LA21 by LOs is explained by internal characteristics of LG and factors associated with LG environment, which is fostered, fundamentally, by higher levels of government that can create connected or networking processes. The most relevant external factors are associated with a concept under-emphasised in previous sustainable development literature: cocreation. We propose that, to achieve generalised diffusion of LA21-type tools, we should emphasise cocreation in networks instead of networks in general. The measurement model used in this research could be used in other contexts as a means of confirming or refuting our results and offer politicians a guide for achieving a more generalised and robust diffusion of LA21 processes. This research contributes to LA21 and innovation-adoption literatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The state of São Paulo, the most populous state in Brazil with 40 million people, is leading the way in Brazilian environmental policies. This article discusses the implications this has particularly for climate change policies. Located in the southeast part of the country, far from the Amazon rainforest, São Paulo state has adopted policies and actions that are leading to effective improvements in the quality of air and to the partial recovery of the original Atlantic rainforest, and that promote sustainable practices for ethanol production from sugarcane. Compared to the state of São Paulo, Brazil as a whole faces a considerably different situation, with the federal and the state governments having chosen different pathways for addressing the challenges posed by climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies the need to develop a conceptual approach that moves away from dichotomous thinking about pro-environmental behaviour by considering the meso level of reality, through which macro level change can be observed and micro level activity can be contextualized. The discussion reviews pro-environmental behaviour literatures, presenting an alternative conceptual approach that incorporates the importance of scale and the social units to which people belong. In particular, the paper argues that greater understanding of the household, as a unit within the meso level, offers an opportunity to rethink the future research agenda for the study of pro-environmental behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Woking Borough Council in the United Kingdom has long been committed to protecting the environment, a goal explicitly stated as one of the borough's top three priorities. Woking is also known for its pioneering approach in operating an extensive networked electricity and district heating system based on co- and trigeneration, as well as what is understood to be the United Kingdom's first commercially operating 200kWe fuel cell. Its other innovative measures to protect the environment and to reduce pollution include the adoption of energy- and water-saving techniques for council-owned buildings and public places, with revenue savings reinvested back into still additional measures to further improve sustainability. These various initiatives are providing a practical framework for advancing a more equitable, clean, decentralized, and socially cooperative energy system in service to Woking's inhabitants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A discussion is presented of an article by Andrew B. Whitford and Karen Wong, "Political and Social Foundations for Environmental Sustainability," published elsewhere in the same issue. It is noted that the article helps to address the need for social sciences to make greater use of empirical hypothesis testing and quantitative models. However, Whitford and Wong's use of the components of the Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI) as dependent variables is said to be problematic. It is argued that the ESI is not a valid measure of sustainability, and that this detracts from the soundness of Whitford and Wong's conclusions.

This article quantitatively investigates several possible foundations for environmental sustainability, as measured across countries with varying geography, development patterns, social customs, and political arrangements. Two central hypotheses about the roles of democracy and federalism, as well as other hypotheses about economic development, religion, and demographics, are tested. The study provides moderate evidence that sustainability levels depend on democratization, but little evidence that it depends on the presence of federalism. In addition, it is found that the effects of environmental interests, development paths, and religious orientations vary across different measures of sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fear-inducing representations of climate change are widely employed in the public domain. However, there is a lack of clarity in the literature about the impacts that fearful messages in climate change communications have on people's senses of engagement with the issue and associated implications for public engagement strategies. Some literature suggests that using fearful representations of climate change may be counterproductive. The authors explore this assertion in the context of two empirical studies that investigated the role of visual, and iconic, representations of climate change for public engagement respectively. Results demonstrate that although such representations have much potential for attracting people's attention to climate change, fear is generally an ineffective tool for motivating genuine personal engagement. Nonthreatening imagery and icons that link to individuals' everyday emotions and concerns in the context of this macro-environmental issue tend to be the most engaging. Recommendations for constructively engaging individuals with climate change are given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate on sustainable development emphasizes the importance of integrating environmental policy into all policy sectors. It is increasingly recognized that this integration is needed at both the national and the local levels of governance. The Environmental Policy Integration (EPI) principle agreed upon in a number of international and EU commitments is receiving the attention of more urban planning scholars. The EPI phenomenon is underresearched, and in many countries, its implementation, particularly subnationally as in urban planning, is hindered by organizational and administrative weaknesses. This article seeks to show how a communicative approach can be used to improve EPI in the urban planning context, based on a literature review of organization theory and communicative planning. The review sheds light on the relevance of the communicative approach to EPI by comparing it with existing EPI approaches. The authors conclude that a communicative approach to EPI is potentially illuminating in changing organizational structures and how individual actors interact in urban planning processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This critique of inherent flaws in today's growth-driven natural capitalism argues its key contradictions and basic conflicts can be typified by the cultural politics and political economy found in the environmental advocacy of Al Gore Jr, especially in his Nobel Prize winning activities on global climate change in works like An Inconvenient Truth. In such criticism he aims neither to dismiss the dangers of global climate change nor to derogate the findings of ongoing scientific research, like that done by the co-awardees of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, namely, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Rather, it is meant to begin a more pointed reassessment of how today's global climate-change debates are too entwined in the reproduction of most existing power relations and global market exchange. At best, Gore's work seems essentially to 'greenwash' existing networks of corporate organization and expert technocracy with renewed institutional legitimacy that only rinses today's unsustainable economic status quo in the refreshing, but not fully cleansing, waters of sustainable development ideology. While there is a need for systemic reforms in economic production, government regulation, technological innovation, and social distribution to mitigate climate change, Gore's many engagements with big business, venture capital, and global media do not appear to offer such a radical transformation. Instead, his basic project of decarbonizing the commodity chain mainly would appear to be a new program for further economic development that might not even retard, much less fully reverse, current climate-change trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the challenges of building pathways to Sustainability in the context of contested knowledge and power relations in environment and development. Drawing on two case studies concerning tropical forests in West Africa and the Caribbean, it explores clashes between the conceptions of social — ecological systems embedded in dominant scientific and policy practices, and the more dynamic, nonequilibrial perspectives that emerge from understandings of forest history and users' own experiences. Forest and conservation policy, I find, have persistently ignored these dynamics. Yet, as people and nature have 'bitten back', forest histories are revealed as mutually constituting interplays of ecological process, social practice, policy and intervention, and response. Policy makers often do not see this, and are thus surprised when their schemes fail. In this paper, I argue that alternative analytical approaches are needed that take seriously human — ecological dynamics, history, path dependency, and the ways in which different people frame or construct problems, linked with notions of Sustainability that respect diverse goals-including forest users' own. This, in turn, suggests the need for alternative approaches to the governance of environment and development issues that are more adaptive, deliberative, and reflexive, and for politically engaged efforts to institute these in contexts where pervasive power-knowledge relations perpetuate less dynamic views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows the main limitations and difficulties in the efficiency argument of ecological modernization. Eight limitations in the concept of eco-efficiency are revealed. Recommendations to improve the use of eco-efficiency in ecological modernization policy and management are derived from the critique. Eco-efficiency serves as an important technical tool, practical instrument, or indicator in environmental policy and management, but is not suitable as the overall goal and strategic vision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article works toward a conceptual framework for designing games to support policy development for managing natural resources. The point of departure for this framework is a typology for functions of games in support of policy. This typology consists of six classes of functions of a policy games research and analyze policy contexts as systems, design and recommend alternative solutions to a policy problem, provide advice to a client on what strategy to follow in the policy process, mediate between different stakeholders, democratize policy development by actively bringing in stakeholder views, and clarify the values and arguments pertinent to the policy discourse. These functions are illustrated using specific examples of games that have been used in the domain of natural resource management (NRM). The framework discussed in this article may help game designers to match specific game properties (players, roles, rewards, and representations of the NRM context) with the intended function of the game in the policy-development process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the effect of development assistance programs on Local Agenda 21 (LA21) programs in three municipalities of Thailand. First, the article examines institutional changes in Thailand geared toward decentralization. Second, the article analyzes the effect based on the frameworks of Noda and Ouchi for the level of participation. The results indicate that participation was a top-down participation of local residents who presumed some benefits from the municipality in exchange for their attendance in meetings. Third, the article evaluates the effect in terms of project efficiency. The results show that municipalities conducted most of the actions declared in their LA21 but the sustainability of these actions is questionable. It is contended that LA21 has its limitations as a planning guide for sustainable cities in developing countries. An assistance program should be designed that helps the government of a developing country to institutionalize meaningful involvement for a participatory environmental policy formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first remarkable environmental initiatives in Bangladesh were taken because of the Stockholm Conference on Human Environment in 1972. The provision that requires Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for any new public and private project was first incorporated in the National Environmental Policy, 1992. Still environmental degradation is one of the major concerns in Bangladesh. Like some other developing countries, it initiates and conducts EIA in order to satisfy international donor agencies. Now, EIA is becoming matured through the positive steps of government, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and international agencies. However, EIA cannot adequately address all the prevailing environmental issues in Bangladesh because of its inherent and contextual limitations. This article explores the evolution of environmental assessment in Bangladesh, mostly at the strategic level. It investigates some of the policy failures, which resulted due to the absence of environmental assessment at the strategic level. Through a questionnaire survey (e-mail) and extensive literature review, this research concludes that Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) as a process can effectively address the limitations of EIA and contribute to policy development in order to ensure sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The difficulties of achieving sustainable development reflect several internal tensions in the three-pillar approach: The adoption of economic development as a separate pillar from social development challenges the view that the purpose of one is to achieve the other; economic valuation of the environment removes the distinction between environmental and economic goals; and no distinction is drawn between the development of developing countries and the development of developed ones. These tensions are shown to be symptomatic of difficult issues being avoided. A closer examination revives doubts about whether the conservation of the global commons and the development of developing countries can both be achieved without major changes in economic structures and governance systems, nationally as well as globally. It is concluded that the development of more appropriate systems requires imaginative research in every discipline of the social sciences, with a vital role for cooperation between American and Chinese institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the importance of tuna fisheries in the western and central Pacific Ocean to Pacific Island Countries (PICs) and examines whether current and proposed institutional mechanisms for tuna management are sufficient to promote long-term tuna-led development. Potential gains exist from cooperation on tuna management; however, it seems unlikely such benefits will be realized in the short or medium term despite the Convention on the Conservation and Management of Highly Migratory Fish Stocks in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean. Without improvements in the institutional capability of many PICs the tuna fisheries will likely fail to sustain the region's long-term development. Greater effort should be directed to support multinational institutions that reduce harvests, allow for transferability of harvesting rights across countries and vessels, manage financial risk, and for initiatives that improve the capacity and government effectiveness of PICs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the quest for sustainable development, numerous examples of 'best practice' have been created and circulated in national and international arenas. Yet despite the vast array of examples, demonstration projects, case studies, and the like, little is known about the ways in which best practices are produced and used, and their role in processes of policymaking. Focusing on best practice for urban sustainability, the author argues that, rather than conceptualising its role and impact in terms of policy transfer or lesson drawing, the creation, dissemination, and use of best practice can be better understood as a discursive process, in which not only is new knowledge created about a policy problem, but the nature and interpretation of the policy problem itself are challenged and reframed. Drawing on insights from concepts of governmentality, the author argues that best practices are at once a political rationality and a governmental technology through which the policy problem of urban sustainability is framed and defined. Illustrations of the practice of best practice show how contradictions emerge between claims for general applicability and the need for policy actors to understand the contingencies of the process of urban sustainability, in order to enrol it for their own struggles over sustainability. The local stickiness of best practices points to the very real struggles that the rationalities of urban sustainability have in competing with other governmentalities which seek to shape urban futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One group of discourses often neglected within the study of international environmental politics are those of business actors. Comparing two key events in international environmental politics, the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and the 2002 Johannesburg Earth Summit, provides an excellent opportunity to examine the changing character of business discourse over time. This article systematically analyses and compares the business-environment discourses of two books written for the summits respectively, representing the view of the international business community: Changing Course (1992) and Walking the Talk (2002). The comparison of both texts reveals some continuity but also major changes. One area of continuity is that business discourses on the environment attempt to mask a traditionally antagonistic view of environmental issues. Major changes include an increasing willingness to reach accommodation with environmental non-governmental organizations and a desire to overcome business's traditionally defensive, reactive role. Characterizing this is the adoption of a proactive approach to shaping the international environmental agenda. The article also discusses the significance of these findings for our understanding of the environmental role of business in a globalized society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I interrogate the relationship between environmental science and local governance in the United Kingdom. Effectively linking science and policy is critical to sustainable planning, and within the rhetoric of evidence-based policy it is often assumed that science conducted in a locality will feed linearly into the governance of that locality. This assumption is unpacked through the detailed study of an end-user-oriented environmental research project. I argue that the reproduction of separate scientific and political spheres prevented the research from being relevant to the governance of that locality. Theoretical and practical approaches to the spatialities of the research-policy interface are considered in order to politically reconstruct the local as a meaningful field of environmental governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last 20 years, the implications of international trade for environmental distribution between North and South gained increasing attention in the debate on sustainable development. In this article, the authors take a biophysical perspective to analyze the distribution of environmental goods versus environmental burdens in North-South trade relations. Studies based on physical accounting are particularly suitable to elucidate environmental consequences of economic specialization processes in different world regions, as they clarify implications for both the use of natural resources and the generation of waste and of emissions in a coherent and comprehensive manner. Empirical evidence from biophysical accounting studies suggests that the formation of specific metabolic profiles of societies in the North and in the South, as a consequence of economic specialization, leads to an unequal environmental distribution. The article closes with an evaluation of policy measures and instruments appropriate for reducing negative environmental consequences of North- South trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores the ecological modernization policy in Sweden. Background on the country's environmental policy; Implementation of the policy in various municipal projects; Role of ecological modernization in sustainable development.

Examines the commitments of the international organizations, national governments and local authorities towards sustainable development. Relation of sustainable development with environmental policy-making in industrialized countries; Conceptual and historical background of the notion of sustainable development; Factors affecting economic sustainability.

The state of São Paulo, the most populous state in Brazil with 40 million people, is leading the way in Brazilian environmental policies. This article discusses the implications this has particularly for climate change policies. Located in the southeast part of the country, far from the Amazon rainforest, São Paulo state has adopted policies and actions that are leading to effective improvements in the quality of air and to the partial recovery of the original Atlantic rainforest, and that promote sustainable practices for ethanol production from sugarcane. Compared to the state of São Paulo, Brazil as a whole faces a considerably different situation, with the federal and the state governments having chosen different pathways for addressing the challenges posed by climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]