Search

Sets out the legislative background to the recycling of waste materials in the United Kingdom. Benefits from recycling; The provision of recycling credits under the 1990 Environmental Protection Act; The draft Economic Community (EC) Packaging Waste Directive; The German DSD scheme; The setting forth of the elements of a cost-benefit analysis of waste paper recycling; Application of that analysis to a recycling scheme in central Scotland; Conclusions.

Through a case study of the regulation of the Canadian pulp and paper industry over a 20-year-old period, the article examines the political-institutional variables that help explain the policy and regulatory outcomes that occur in an industrial sector. It examines six variables: (i) the industrial structure of the sector and its particular interactions with environmental elements (water, air and land); (ii) changing configurations of interest group politics; (iii) specific features of how environment departments are organised and how they approach regulatory versus resource management task; (iv) scientific controversies and how they affect political and negotiating stances; (v) problems of precise statutory capacity, especially in federal political systems; and (vi) political-managerial leadership or the lack of it within the sector. The analysis shows that a sectoral focus is needed in environmental political analysis because macro approaches simply too often ignore variables that are vital in understanding policies more concretely. It also shows how some of the above variables are too easily shunted aside as organisational or technical factors when in fact they are embued with issues of power and influence. A sectoral focus must also recognise some of the practical boundary problems of what the sectoral industrial realm is in practice and it must be based on a longitudinal depth of coverage to capture some of the interplay among the variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to assess the effectiveness of the so-called ‘Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) cluster approach’ when applied to environmental policies, by focusing on the case history of the industrial paper production cluster located in the Province of Lucca (Italy). The Lucca cluster represents approximately 20% of Italian paper production, and Italy is the fourth leading paper producer in Europe. In the last 10 years, environmental policies have been developed under the common ‘umbrella’ of a strong public and private partnership based on stakeholder networking within the application of the EU EMAS Regulation. This article evaluates the outcome of such an approach, by comparing the environmental performance indicators for the Lucca’s paper industry using data collected from more than 40 plants before and after the adoption of this voluntary tool. The results show considerable improvements for many environmental performance indicators, consistently with the implementation of the cluster approach. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article addresses the importance of research and development (R&D) collaboration for environmental adaptation in the Swedish pulp and paper industry. It reviews the collaborative efforts initiated during the first half of the twentieth century, and investigates in particular how these efforts were influenced by the advent of modern environmental legislation in the late 1960s. We find that during the early period the underlying motives for environmental R&D collaboration were related to the presence of local resistance to pollution, over time turning into increased requirements from tightening environmental regulation. When the Swedish Environmental Protection Act was implemented in 1969, the long-lasting tradition of collaborative R&D activities facilitated the development and the adaptation of cleaner technologies in the sector. The article concludes that in the case of the Swedish pulp and paper industry, the significant environmental improvements witnessed during the 1960s and onwards can only be fully comprehended by acknowledging the role of the industry-wide collaborative activities in R&D. The positive outcomes of this collaboration were in turn reinforced by an environmental regulation system, which facilitated long-term investments in environmental R&D and, in contrast to their Finnish and American counterparts, encouraged internal process changes in the industry. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We asked two members of the Editorial Board, Erik Jones and Martin Lodge, to act as jury and select what they considered to be the best article published in JEPP in 2020 (excluding those published as part of a "Special Issue"). The winner of 2020 JEPP Best Paper Prize is: Burns, Charlotte, Eckersley, Peter & Tobin, Paul (2020). Jury statement I " i We were very impressed by the articles that we read, but we had a shared enthusiasm for the originality of the paper by Charlotte Burns, Peter Eckersley and Paul Tobin. [Extracted from the article]

This study analysed 40 planning applications in the East of England to investigate the practice of translating paper recommendations in the environmental statement (ES) into legal conditions and obligations. A high proportion (50%) of suggested mitigation measures were not translated into planning conditions or obligations. However, a significant number of additional conditions or obligations, not directly based on the ES, were imposed on developers. The research suggests a mismatch between the practice of those producing ESs and the expectations of planning authorities, leading to inefficiency and, possibly, emasculation of environmental impact assessment through a failure to implement mitigation. Several recommendations are made to increase the effectiveness of the implementation and integration of mitigation measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pulp production in Sweden and Finland changed when Sweden adopted a chlorine- free policy. The information that drove policy changes in Sweden, and ultimately across the OECD, had different causal inferences linking pulp mill discharges and environmental impacts that were related to mill siting. Furthermore, Sweden and Finland had differing perception of risks over knowledge gaps linking bleached pulp mill effluent and downstream environmental effects. There was a collective learning process in which a measure of reconciliation between science and legislative actions was reached through a complex dynamic of knowledge authentication tied to the political economy of pulp production. Knowledge-based analyses are a necessary counterpoise to conflict-related theories in understanding the problematic link between policy and technological change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Second home tourism has emerged as a significant area of research because of the intersection between tourism and migration that has been encouraged by new forms of mobility. The social and economic aspects of second homes have been studied extensively, yet research on the environmental impacts of second home tourism remains limited. The paper aims to review second home research in general, identify environmental policies and the relevance to second home tourism, and discuss the applicable environmental research themes undertaken to date and those that should still be researched. The paper concludes by advocating for greater academic scrutiny of the environmental aspects of second home tourism to enable a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon as part of tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we are interested in how ethnographic research can contribute to the promotion of public deliberation. We do not use ethnography only to study deliberative processes but rather we intend to interpret ethnographic research as a social practice, and we research conditions under which ethnographic research might have deliberative consequences. The paper summarizes the results of the multidisciplinary research project Stories of Drought, which combines natural and social sciences in its approach. The project aims to understand how people in Czech rural areas respond to localized effects of climate change, especially drought. Following a systemic approach to deliberative democracy, we study how ethnography contributes to fulfilling three deliberative functions: (1) the epistemic function; (2) the ethical function and (3) the democratic function. In the context of irrigation disputes in South Moravia, we map the arguments of main actors and critical tensions in local discourses. We conclude that ethnographic research, due to its hybrid position between different sources of knowledge, its institutionally recognized expertise and its ability to establish an ethnographer as a trustworthy actor, can outweigh local critical power imbalances blocking deliberative capacity in local policy systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of Greta Thunberg, the Swedish 'flygskam' (flight shame) movement, and school strikes for climate: the context for apprehending environmental affairs changed significantly in 2018, enabling the construction of a new environmental discourse of which practices of eco-shaming and emotions of eco-shame are visible expressions. This paper conceptualizes this 'eco-shaming' discourse by exposing the complex set of constituents underpinning it. It demonstrates how the eco-shaming discourse embodies a conception of the environment as public good and how it relies on the idea of shared but differentiated responsibilities in caring for the environment. As such, the paper adds the eco-shaming discourse as an eleventh environmental discourse to the ones famously identified in The Politics of the Earth. The paper then compares the eco-shaming discourse with other environmental discourses and discusses its implications for environmental politics. The paper draws upon a specific methodological application of discourse analysis that gives emotion a place it usually lacks in environmental discourse analysis. The empirical analysis includes text documents (n = 2155) from three societal domains (media, policy, and advocacy) in Belgium. This paper contributes theoretical and empirical knowledge on eco-shaming, environmental discourses, policymaking, as well as methodological insights on how to acquire such knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social and environmental justice across generations is a fundamental attribute of sustainable development. In this article, which is also a call for papers for a future theme in Public Money & Management (PMM), we develop our case for further research on how governments and public service organizations seek to address sustainable development in their decision-making processes. We believe that accounting for social and environmental aspects is an underdeveloped area of research and practice that is worthy of further critical enquiry. We therefore call on researchers and practitioners to submit their research to a themed issue of PMM on managing and accounting for sustainable development in public services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the combined effects of Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) ratings on the level of leverage and its speed of adjustment (SOA). We find that both the EPU and ESG ratings are negatively associated with leverage when assessed separately. However, when EPU and ESG ratings are combined, we show that ESG ratings mitigate the detrimental impact of EPU on leverage. Our results also indicate that higher EPU levels force firms to increase their speed of adjustment due to tighter financing requirements, while ESG ratings overcome that issue and enable firms to maintain lower SOA. These results are robust to various robustness checks and are mainly driven by environmental and social factors. Our paper contributes to the growing ESG literature by showing that ESG ratings can alleviate the adverse effects of EPU on leverage and SOA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a personal reflection on the first 25 years of the journal, Environmental Education Research. It begins in the 1990s with the ideas behind the need for a new journal and explores the journal's early years as it established itself. The paper then looks at two quite different papers from Volume 1 of the journal that identified issues that remain pertinent today, albeit in the very changed social context that we now experience where rapid climate change demands national and international responses from governments and educators. The paper then draws on three recent studies published in Environmental Education Research to examine what research might now focus on. It ends with a personal reflection on how all those involved in the journal are bound together by more than the professional imperative to publish; that is, by a need to address great questions of our time that are now much more urgent than they were when Environmental Education Research was started, or when the modern environmental movement and environmental education as we know it today began. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The response of energy firms to green credit policy is of great significance, which is related to the emission reduction effect of green finance and transformation of energy firms. This paper analyzes the impact of green credit policy on the growth of energy firms based on the data of Chinese listed companies from 2009 to 2019. The empirical results show that green credit policy has significantly promoted the growth of energy firms. Further research shows that green credit policy promoted the growth of energy firms by reducing financing costs and promoting green innovation. Besides, the owned firms, big-scale firms and firms in central and eastern China are more susceptible to the impacts of the green credit policy. This study is relevant to the implementation of green credit policies and the promotion of the development and transformation of energy firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the single and the joint influence of environmental policy stringency and oil prices on green innovation, admitting the possibility of different magnitudes of the response of innovation depending upon whether oil prices are increasing or decreasing, and accounting for endogeneity of policies. A panel data set of OECD countries is used over the period 1990–2016. Results suggest that increasing the stringency of environmental regulation can, beyond inducing green innovation, shield the effect of oil prices on innovation. In addition, a more stringent environmental policy reduces the asymmetric response of innovation when oil price increases or decreases. Thus, environmental policy and oil prices can be complements when inducing green innovation. Exploiting these complementarities requires an interdependent use of environmental and energy policies, through dynamic adjustments of subsidies and taxes on oil prices alongside reasonable levels of stringency in environmental policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing climate change concern invites policy responses from all corners. Governments and central banks in emerging market economies pose interests in environmental urgencies. This paper reexamines fiscal and monetary policies' effects on environmental quality in five large emerging economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) from 1990 to 2018. Effects of population, economic growth, and technology on CO2 emissions are also estimated. According to the Pooled Mean Group-Autoregressive Distributed Lag estimations, Panel Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares, and Driscoll-Kraay estimations, expansionary fiscal and monetary policies significantly improve environmental quality. Technology also promotes environmental quality. However, economic and population growth degrade the natural environment in the long run. The paper also discusses potential policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how monetary policy can be calibrated to promote a greening of finance. The paper reviews existing literature and notes a tendency to either focus narrowly on one policy instrument or provide a menu of options, without much depth or discrimination. This Perspective paper undertakes a theory-based analysis of green monetary policy options using an institutional approach to monetary economics. In so doing, it identifies a policy mix that would reorient finance by structurally modifying the relative incentives of financing green vs dirty assets. More specifically, the proposed green central banking strategy consists in the combined adoption of several, recalibrated monetary policy instruments. The two main ones are core elements of central banks' collateral policies: making (more) green assets eligible in credit operations with central banks and using so-called 'haircuts' to give green assets preferential treatment over dirty assets in those credit operations. Combined, the adoption of the proposed, recalibrated instruments promises to reorder the collateral asset hierarchies that are the backbone of modern financial systems, providing strong financial incentives for enhanced financing of investment in green assets and divestment from dirty assets. Monetary policy can help speed up a greening of the financial sector. Enhanced financing of green assets, as well as divestment from dirty assets, can be incentivized through a range of monetary policy tools. Among the most potent green monetary policy tools is differentiated treatment of green and dirty assets in credit operations, known as collateral policy. Several green monetary policy options can be pursued without compromising other monetary policy objectives (such as price stability). While most central banks currently remain reluctant to engage proactively with such policy tools, the increasing manifestation of climate change is likely to erode such resistance in coming years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper constructs a unique dataset of clean energy and collects firm-level green innovation data that matches it with provinces and cities. Then, this paper executes quasi-natural experiments on green innovation to examine the effects of China's emission trading policy on green innovation. Further, this paper introduces the interactive terms of the pilot time and pilot area dummy variables into the spatial Durbin model (SDM) and spatial dynamic panel model (SDPM) to construct quasi-natural experiments to examine the spatial effect. The findings confirm a negative association between the 'policy treatment effect' and green innovation. The results also indicate a significant negative association between the emissions trading policy and clean energy. Besides, the empirical results reveal a positive correlation between clean energy and green innovation; clean energy promotes green innovation in the region and the surrounding areas. This paper complements existing research and provides empirical evidence and policy implications for developing clean energy, promoting green innovation, and improving the emission trading policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the international community attempts to unite to combat climate change, American party politics could hardly be more divided on this issue. This paper offers an additional explanation for how US congressional politics on environmental policy has polarized: the ongoing education realignment in American party politics. As the Democratic Party increasingly relies on college-educated voters and the opposite is true for the Republican Party, this can affect the parties' positions on environmental policy based on public opinion research which finds a positive relationship between education and pro-environment attitudes. Using League of Conservation Voters legislative scorecards from 1983 to 2020, this paper finds the education realignment contributed to the removal of pro-environment Republicans and anti-environment Democrats in Congress in recent decades; and this primarily occurred through elite replacement rather than conversion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The breadth and depth of the environmental crisis and the consequently wide and inclusive interpretations of 'sustainable development' has promoted a disparate range of academic responses encouraging a loose interpretation of environmental education and Education for Sustainable Development. This in turn reduces the capacity for the development of a clearly defined discourse and for a sufficiently robust debate conducive of effective change. This paper attempts to assess the current situation within environmental education in this respect, by means of an analysis of papers presented at the recent World Environmental Education Congress in Durban, South Africa (July 2007). By quantifying the use of specific terms and words used in presentations, the authors reveal evidence to suggest that there is not the degree of self critical analysis and academic rigour that the urgency of the environmental crisis might reasonably demand. On this basis a recommendation is made which should lead to greater precision in the identification of relevant themes and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The low efficiency of environmental policy implementation is an important issue in China's environmental governance. The Environmental Protection Interview (EPI) policy is an administrative means for the central environmental protection department to urge local governments to earnestly fulfill their environmental protection responsibilities. This paper takes China's EPI policy as a quasi-natural experiment. We use panel data of 261 prefecture-level cities in China from 2009 to 2018 as research sample and use spatial difference-in-differences (SDID) model to investigate the effect and mechanism of EPI policy on air pollution. The results show that EPI policy can effectively improve air quality, EPI policy has obvious spatial spillover effects. Namely, the EPI policy can not only reduce the local air pollution, but also reduce the air pollution in neighbouring cities. The EPI policy reduces the air pollution in the neighbouring cities within a spatial attenuation boundary of 400 km.The results of mechanism test show that the EPI policy can improve air quality by promoting industrial structure upgrading and technical advancement. Moreover, the pollution reduction effect of EPI is more significant in resource-based cities. The research results of this paper provide important reference for China and other developing countries to improve air quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The overall condition of biodiversity in many parts of Australia is poor and declining, despite the establishment of national parks and other reserves, and the adoption of conservation activities on private land. The impacts of climate change add further challenges to sustaining biodiversity. In response to these issues, in December 2009, the State Government of Victoria released a major policy statement that aimed to provide the framework and directions to secure the health of Victoria's biodiversity and associated land and water resources over the next 50 years. Given Victoria's reputation for environmental policy reform and innovation, the question arises as to whether the Victorian approach will provide a model for other Australian jurisdictions to adopt or adapt. Drawing on insights from environmental policy, discourse theory, and ecological theory, this article provides a critique of Victoria's approach, focusing on the way in which biodiversity is conceptualised and governed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments develop policies that set strategic directions on matters of national significance, referred to in this paper as strategic policies. Australia's Commonwealth Government develops and influences national environmental and sustainability policies despite having limited constitutional powers in the management of natural resources. The Commonwealth Government has, over the past three decades, developed strategic policies aimed at sustainably managing forests, water, soils and agricultural lands. The design and implementation arrangements of environmental policies that have endured is not well studied, and this paper addresses this knowledge gap in the context of a federal system. The National Forest Policy Statement, the National Water Initiative and the Natural Heritage Trust have endured centre-left Labor and centre-right Coalition Governments, and serve as case studies. These policies have required structural adjustments to industries to varying degrees to limit impacts on the environment, leading to contestations about policy objectives. The policy cycle serves as the primary heuristic for analysis and the research finds that policy objectives are constrained by the Commonwealth Government's limited constitutional powers on environmental matters. Its participation in strategic policies is driven through notions of resolving a crisis and the policies endure in a phase of indifference to the original policy objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Green Deal (EGD) represents the most ambitious environmental policy framework in European history, aimed at improving the health and well-being of citizens and future generations through climate action and becoming the first climate-neutral region in the world by 2050. The EC has initiated the European Democracy Action Plan and the European Climate Pact to include the participation of citizens in a meaningful way to help achieve these goals (i.e. not simply a tokenistic gesture or box-ticking exercise). While these efforts to ensure greater citizen participation and deliberation in environmental policy are good first steps, there is still a lack of clarity about what meaningful citizen engagement should look like. This paper will propose that for such efforts to be successful, we need to assess different perspectives in the debate and provide recommendations based on this. This paper provides a systematic review of various approaches within the academic literature on citizen participation and deliberation in environmental policy (ecocentrism, biocentrism, ecomodernism, ecofeminism, environmental pragmatism, environmental citizenship, environmental rights, and environmental justice). Following this, we provide a list of 16 criteria (in five thematic sections) for policymakers, civil society organisations (CSOs), and society, to ensure meaningful citizen participation and deliberation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's government has launched the innovative city pilot (ICP) policy since 2008 and taken green development as the principle goal of innovative city construction. However, whether or not the ICP policy shapes green development remains largely unknown. Leveraging variation in the timing of the ICP policy implementation across cities, we investigate the causal impact of innovative city construction on green development, as measured by green total-factor productivity (GTFP). Our staggered difference-in-differences (DID) estimator shows that cities which implement the ICP policy experience a 5.3% increase in GTFP. This effect appears one year after the introduction of ICP policy and shows an upward trend over time. Our mechanism analysis further confirms that the ICP policy effect is driven by green innovation effect, which is realized through the support of innovation policy and increased investment in innovation. Finally, substantial heterogeneity is explained by geographic location, environmental constraint, resource endowment, city size and different levels of innovation. Our paper underscores the pivotal role of innovative cities in promoting green development, which warrants nationwide expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy forums are lightly institutionalized and stable forms of governance networks that include administrative authorities, interest groups, and scientists. They are said to produce different types of outputs, from simple actor coordination to position papers and implementation documents, but their productivity has also been questioned. Metagovernance strategies can improve the capability of policy forums to produce outputs. To determine how different metagovernance strategies influence the capability of forums to produce joint position papers, 29 policy forums in the Swiss environmental sector are compared through a qualitative comparative analysis. Results indicate that metagovernance strategies such as state actors as forum members or majority decision rules need to be combined with small forum size or low actor heterogeneity. Furthermore, forum foundation by the state complicates the production of position papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much effort has been devoted to understanding how trade openness is linked to technological progress. Less documented is the effect on green technology, which is particularly important as it is green technological progress that alleviates environmental degradation while improving economic growth. To fill the void, this paper empirically examines whether trade openness drives green technology development and whether the effect depends on the extent of trade openness and environmental policy stringency. In a sample covering both advanced and developing countries, the paper finds that green technology first decreases and then rises with increased trade openness, meaning that a sufficient level of trade openness is required for green technological progress. Tighter environmental policy is also found to weaken the beneficial effect of trade openness on green technological progress, implying that lax environmental policy creates a better environment for more open countries to develop green technology. However, these effects vary across countries, depending on the origin and destination of trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As governments of various countries attach importance to green transportation, governments have focused their attention to understanding how they can shift the cargo shipping in coastal areas from land to water. Motivated by this, this paper establishes a green policy design model for coastal transportation systems. The model aims to minimise the comprehensive cost (i.e. the sum of the transportation cost and carbon emission tax) in the research area and optimise the government's shipping network design scheme and waterway freight rate control scheme under the established subsidy level. An active set algorithm is designed that can explore the local optimal solution of the model. Taking the Bohai Rim region of China as the research area, sensitivity analyses of different subsidy scales and origin-destination demand scales are carried out. The results show that the government's policy schemes will lead to a significant shift in the mode of transportation used for cargo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research on inventory control has been wide ranging, yet the environmental implications of an $ ({s,S}) $ (s , S) inventory policy remain uninvestigated. This paper seeks to bridge the gap by characterising a firm's voluntary environmental policy in the setup of an $ ({s,S}) $ (s , S) inventory control policy. We suggest a mixed model structure wherein, due to the presence of fixed production costs, the inventory is determined continuously by sales and impulsively with ordering decisions obeying an optimal stopping process, while the uncertain sales process is controlled by continuous-time environmental goodwill-related decisions. We show that a firm should successively use voluntary environmental efforts to stimulate its sales when there is inventory and to increase backlogging to improve its production efficiency. Given the recurrent pattern of this policy, we conclude that voluntary environmental efforts under an $ ({s,S}) $ (s , S) inventory control is not compatible with using these efforts as a means to generate ephemeral reputation insurance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how varied systems of governance work at the European city level to deliver different policy mixes for implementing nature-based approaches which support integrated water management and policy. Urban systems provide unique insights here due to the concentration of consumption, economic activities and excessive land-use pressures. However, few studies are providing generic insights, rooted in policy and political theory perspectives, on the dynamic impact of urban governance systems on different mixes of policies to integrate urban nature and water management approaches. The paper fills this gap through an extensive literature review. It first draws on analysis that focuses on institutional logics of operation to understand how urban institutional arrangements of governance shape the framing of the policy problem and how this influences the choice of policy approaches. It then explores the related administrative processes including decision support tools, participatory approaches, and funding regimes. These administrative approaches deliver, potentially, different policy responses that take into account integrated nature-based policy approaches to urban water governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between the environment and climate change on one hand and the financial system, financial regulation and monetary policy on the other is growing in importance. This paper examines the possible impact of the European Central Bank's monetary policy of quantitative easing on the environmental policy of the European Union. Using data from Climate Bonds Initiative, the paper analyses the variation in the amount of "green labelled bonds" issued in the individual member countries of the Eurozone areas, as a function of liquidity inducing monetary policy variables. The paper finds a positive and significant relationship between the two measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses discourse theory to obtain a broader understanding of how research impact of sustainable tourism research develops in the environmental policy domain. Discourse theory shifts emphasis from the substance of science versus policy to the use of science in policy processes and explains the political dimensions of policymaking. We first review a well-documented science-policy gap in sustainable tourism research on climate change to develop an alternative conceptualisation of research impact. Then, using a case study approach, we investigate this framework by evaluating the impact of a PhD thesis about aviation's global CO2 emissions on the Dutch aviation policy process. The case study shows research impact is entwined with various other elements, and embedded in a specific governance context. Research influenced contrasting science-policy interactions and contributed to conflicting policy actions and reactions. The impact of research in this case was manifested through the formation and interplay of multiple knowledge objects that were both embraced and marginalised. In settings like this, research is used to legitimise pre-existing policy positions rather than to develop new policies. We discuss the implications of narrow conceptions of research impact. The paper highlights the need for advanced policy analysis in sustainable tourism research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporate environmental protection investment (EPI) is one of the ways to accelerate green development. This paper develops a theoretical model of EPI focusing on three factors: the government, the public, and the enterprises. It uses data from A-share listed Chinese companies from 2008 to 2014 to analyse the effects of the government environmental policy and public participation on the corporate EPI. Results of this research show that both the environmental regulations issued by the government and the demands put forward by public opinion encourage enterprises to increase investment in environmental protection. Moreover, the government's green policy efforts and public participation result in synergy in governance. Relevant regulations issued by the government improve the efficiency of actual public participation. However, redundant government intervention is not conducive to increasing corporate investment in environmental protection. According to this research, market-oriented reforms can boost the positive impact of government and public efforts on corporate EPI. In order to improve environmental governance and achieve green development, it is necessary to deepen market-oriented reforms and build a coordinated, complementary, and incentive-compatible governance system that deals with issues, demands, rights, and responsibilities of the government, the public, and enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a review of scholarship found in the pages of The Pacific Review over the last 30 years. It does so in three ways: (1) it highlights issues in the theory and practice of the international relations, strategic studies, political culture and political economy of the Asia Pacific region. (2) It looks at change in the region over time by an analysis of the shifting fortunes of the major regional powers, namely Japan, China and Indonesia and the challenges they, and China in particular, post to US regional hegemony. (3) It looks at regional process reflected in the fate and fortunes of the regional integrative project in the key policy domains of trade, finance and the environment. The paper concludes with a reflection on the strains on the regional political and economic orders by the rise in nationalist politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is increasingly recognised that regional environmental policy is important not just for implementing national or international targets but also for policy innovation and leadership. However, international progress is limited by significant variation, with many regions failing to deliver effective environmental governance. In this paper, we argue that one important explanation of this variation is the power dynamics within multi-level governance systems. Specifically, using the UK as a case study, we identify the constraints and enablers of regional environmental policy that emanate from power asymmetries in the wider governance system. Through semi-structured interviews and document analysis, we identify the constraints and enablers faced by three UK regions: the West Midlands, the Humber and the Cardiff Capital Region. We find that while enablers tend to be isolated and region-specific, constraints are consistent across regions and form interlocking webs that significantly limit the effectiveness of regional environmental governance in the UK. This implies that attempts to implement holistic, long-term environmental transitions need to look to more fundamental reforms to the structure of political systems, paying particular attention to the constraining effects of asymmetric power dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-compliance with EU environmental policy not only impedes Europeanization, but jeopardizes the protection of human health and the environment. However, research on failed policy implementation still applies traditional top-down or bottom-up approaches and disregards complex actor constellations and contextualization. The research in this paper applies a comprehensive multi-level governance (MLG) approach to overcome this gap and explain non-compliance with EU environmental policy. We conducted a qualitative analysis of non-compliance with the Air Quality Directive (2008/50/EC) within an MLG context, based on a case study in Germany. Our findings revealed a dynamic interplay of local government's lack of action, an absence of serious support and pressure from superordinate levels, business actors exerting influence across all levels, and media reporting contributing to misinformation, all of which contribute to non-compliance. At the same time, there was a lack of awareness of the negative effects of air pollution and thus a lack of public pressure to act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a conceptual and analytical framework of states' legitimacy-seeking to comprehensively investigate the motivation behind China's climate and environment policy. While previous research has largely overlooked political factors that underlie China's climate policy, this paper argues that these factors are crucial in understanding China's policy changes, which are evident at both domestic and international levels. By examining sources such as government documents, leaders' speeches and authoritative literature, this study contends that China's climate change initiatives are part of a broader effort to enhance domestic and international legitimacy. The issue of climate change has become highly politicised in China under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, and it serves as a crucial test of the ruling party and the state's capacity to govern effectively. As such, legitimacy-seeking is the key driver that links China's domestic measures and international commitments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the effects of different types of government policies related to environmental pollution liability insurance (EPLI) and how these policies promote the demand for EPLI of polluting enterprises. Based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB), we establish a research framework to analyze the effects and mechanisms of the three different policies (mandatory, incentive, and monitoring policies). Our empirical results suggest that the mandatory and monitoring policies can effectively promote companies to buy insurance, but the incentive policies have no significant impact on the insurance demand overall. Furthermore, companies with more positive environmental attitudes are not sensitive to mandatory policies. Although the overall effect of incentive policies is not significant, they have a significant positive impact on the EPLI demand of non-state-owned companies. The monitoring policies prompt enterprises to purchase insurance by strengthening information disclosure and compliant production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green banking has become dominant in academics' and practitioners' discourse. The purpose of the research is to investigate whether banks' attitudes, in deciding to go green, change under the influence of other banks through their mutual interaction and whether hysteresis plays a part in the process. A mathematical model, described by a differential system with time delay, considering three variables, i.e.: green, outsider and undecided banks, is used as a research method. We investigate the local stability of the two equilibrium points. Moreover, we look for the optimal control strategy targeting the undecided banks so that the outsiders' group diminishes. The main contribution is that the paper sheds more light on the qualitative rather than on the quantitative side of the banking business given that banks' behaviours are examined when it comes to implementing green policies. The research has policy implications since bank managers can decide whether to follow the greening trends of other banks and bank regulators can use the instrument for tracking the overall changes in banks' behaviours in this respect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines alley life in three Taiwanese cities, demonstrating that the investigation and interpretation of those mundane everyday practices and events in these alley-places lead us to think about the ethics of everyday dwelling. This ethics, though mostly forgotten now in the Taiwanese public realm, was actually the center of attention in the 1990s when a concept was proposed about urban environmentalism that is significantly different from the current public perception of it. This form of environmentalism related to a new momentum for placemaking that was happening at that time nearly three decades ago and propagated across the island and into its alleys during the new millennium. Delving into alley places, this article shows how ordinary landscapes of proximity have turned into extraordinary lifeworlds for dwelling. To materialize this dwelling imaginary, this paper first addresses theories that seek to spatialize culture in order to identify these unexpected lifeworlds in their ordinary urban settings. Theorizing those tiny little places, often hidden in plain sight, brings back to the attention of researchers what I call dwelling ethics that characterizes quotidian judgments, choices, decisions, as well as its consequences. This paper concludes that conceptualizing dwelling ethics in the contemporary circumstance of urban explosion provides a baseline for the idea of environmentalism of life through which a critique of everyday life becomes possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The collection of papers in this issue brings new insights to the processes of international policy transfer and learning in the fields of regional and urban development policy, regional innovation and transit-oriented development. It explores, through the perspective of different disciplines, the motivations of actors, tangible and non-tangible outputs, the role of factors affecting the process, and the spillover effects of such process. The contributions bring new insights into what represents success and failure in policy transfer and provide valuable lessons for policy-makers facing the challenges of a fast-changing global context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses environmental narratives in the legislative stages presented in UK white papers, the Prime Minister's speeches, and the Queen's speeches, all of which were released between 1997 and 2011, during the regimes either of New Labour (1997–2010) or of the currently governing Coalition (2010–). This research acknowledges that the link between risk perception and environmental policy is strong because environmental policy narratives either reflect or influence risk perceptions, or both. The findings of this research demonstrate that the risk of climate change has emerged as a key agenda due to combined risk perceptions on economy and environment. Subsequently, that risk has developed a connection to the risk of energy scarcity and energy facilities. Nuclear power has posed a possible resolution to the energy risk, but at the same time, it has posed another kind of risk too. Under the Coalition government, the risk of natural diversity loss emerged while the risks of climate change and energy continued. The dynamics of the negotiation among different risk perceptions would depend on the power relations among the groups. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper investigates the link between organized crime and municipal solid waste management costs. Using a panel dataset of 7069 Italian municipalities in the 2015–19 period, we find that organized crime operating in the environmental sector is associated with an increase in waste management costs. The effect of organized crime is stronger in macro-regions where organized crime is historically rooted. These results are established after controlling for municipality fixed effects as well as national and regional trends in the total cost of service delivery. This paper contributes to a deeper understanding of local service costs and provides implications for policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concerns about a crisis of mass irreplicability across scientific fields ("the replication crisis") have stimulated a movement for open science, encouraging or even requiring researchers to publish their raw data and analysis code. Recently, a rule at the US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) would have imposed a strong open data requirement. The rule prompted significant public discussion about whether open science practices are appropriate for fields of environmental public health. The aims of this paper are to assess (1) whether the replication crisis extends to fields of environmental public health; and (2) in general whether open science requirements can address the replication crisis. There is little empirical evidence for or against mass irreplicability in environmental public health specifically. Without such evidence, strong claims about whether the replication crisis extends to environmental public health – or not – seem premature. By distinguishing three concepts – reproducibility, replicability, and robustness – it is clear that open data initiatives can promote reproducibility and robustness but do little to promote replicability. I conclude by reviewing some of the other benefits of open science, and offer some suggestions for funding streams to mitigate the costs of adoption of open science practices in environmental public health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction of eco-city is in full swing at home and abroad, and scholars all over the world have done a lot of research on it. Building an eco-civilized city is to realize the harmonious interaction between human and nature, and to constitute a new settlement system with an ecological, harmonious, and virtuous cycle. The construction of this new settlement system requires the participation of all subjects, emphasizing the co-construction of multi-subjects. However, domestic and foreign scholars have paid little attention on how to coordinate multi-subjects to build eco-civilized cities. Therefore, taking the construction of ecological civilization in the Wuhan East Lake High-tech Development Zone in China as an example, this paper establishes a 'cooperative construction mechanism with multi-element objects' based on the local government, enterprise, and the public. With this mechanism, we explore how to establish a cooperative construction mechanism among multi-subjects and how to implement this mechanism in the construction of eco-civilized cities, which is the core of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering our living environments directly affect the quality of our daily lives, many believe that the environment should only be safeguarded by the mighty hands of the government instead of leaving the environmental stewardship in the hands of profit-making private enterprises. As such, the government often intervenes with the way private enterprises conduct business through many different forms of environmental regulations and business incentives. However, the efficiency and effectiveness of such government intervention are still unknown and unclear at best. Many sceptics still think that economic growth and environmental protection are in conflict with each other and subsequently the firm’s environmental performance and export performance cannot be achieved simultaneously even with active government intervention over the firm’s environmental management. To clarify this misconception, this paper aims to examine whether government intervention leads to the affected firm’s both environmental and export performance (export sales performance). In addition, it investigates whether government intervention enhances the firm’s environmental and technological innovation capabilities and thus makes the firm more competitive in the global marketplace. In so doing, this paper verifies the ecological modernisation theory and institutional theory using the empirical analysis of the survey data obtained from the Korean manufacturing industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women and youth support climate policies to a larger extent than their counterparts, and they are underrepresented in formal politics. This paper explores whether descriptively underrepresented groups also are substantively underrepresented on climate issues. I study issue congruence between the public and elected representatives on climate policies in Norway and find high levels of overall congruence. However, representatives are less congruent with women and youth than they are with men and older age groups, linking descriptive and substantive representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of environmental policies on eco-innovation and trade performance are studied separately in the literature, and varying inferences across the studies are reported. This paper sheds light on this debate as it theoretically and empirically studies the pollution haven effect and strong Porter hypothesis in a unified framework that accounts for productivity and size heterogeneity at the firm level. The present study discusses a detailed analysis of theoretical predictions and empirical outcomes, based on the regulation–innovation–trade nexus, to assess the specific channels through which such effects might operate. Based on German and East European cross-sectional data at the firm level, results show that an eco-innovation that a regulation induces can generate either a positive effect or a detrimental effect on exporting propensity. Results also suggest that productivity, size and geographical heterogeneity of firms are extremely relevant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing volumes of solid waste, implicated in environmental pollution and health problems, are central to the current environmental crisis. In two randomized field experiments, we demonstrate that convenience dramatically boosts recycling and composting rates in multi-family dwellings and university residences. When compost bins were placed on each floor in a multi-family residence, instead of on the ground floor, composting rates increased by 70%, diverting 27 kilograms of compost from the landfill per unit per year. When recycling stations were placed just meters from suites in student residences, instead of in the basement, recycling increased by 147% (container), and 137% (paper), and composting increased by 139%, diverting 23, 22, and 14 kilograms of containers, paper, and compost, respectively, from the landfill per person per year. Simply making recycling and composting convenient can significantly increase waste diversion, and as such this single intervention has important implications for waste management and environmental policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]