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Ambitious carbon reduction targets are driving a new era of carbon control reflecting the UK, the EU and international commitment to mitigating the predicted impacts of global warming and climate change. Observed as a transition away from the more holistic goals of sustainable development (While et al., 2001), the ‘low carbon’ (LC) agenda is increasingly recognised as problematic in so far as it is pro-technological and promethean, marginalising the importance of social, political, economic and wider environmental issues. With specific implications for housing and householders, the paper explores how the current preoccupation with ‘LC’ presents some potential pitfalls in relation to advancing sustainable housing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This papa seeks to develop a new understanding of the implementation of EU policies as a mixed process of both Europeanization and domestication. While some scholars equate the implementation of EU policies with Europeanization, this fails to capture the dominance of national factors and the relative impact of EU policies. The implementation of EU policies is best conceptualized as a blend of effective EU influence over domestic policy choices in a given policy area - defined as Europeanization - and of domestic choices of non-prescribed or non-recommended policy options in the same policy area - which is termed domestication. Domestication and Europeanization usually work as complementary forces. These concepts are employed for art analysis of the implementation of the 1990 EU Directive on Access to Environmental information in Ireland, Britain and Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To comply with EU recycling targets for packaging waste, the UK relies on an industry run and market based eco-tax levied by reprocessors on obligated businesses. After examining the details of this approach, the use of Packaging Waste Recovery Notes is assessed in terms of its allocative impact and the contribution made to eco-efficiency. The evidence indicates the UK system has minimized the cost of delivering current EU targets, but has not been able to deliver allocative efficiency or to demonstrate dynamic improvements in resource use. Its effectiveness in meeting impending higher targets remains open to question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the development and implementation of European Union (EU) biodiversity policy, a policy relating to the protection of flora, fauna, and habitats in Great Britain from the 1970s to 2000. Theoretical frameworks of the EU; Origins and implementation of the Birds Directive and Habitats Directive; Conclusions.

A distinctive feature of the recent literature on environmental regulation in the UK is the emphasis placed upon the influence of the European Union (EU) in transferring a process characterized by informality, pragmatism and flexibility to a more formal footing. By comparison, relatively little attention has been paid to the domestic policy context for the formalization of pollution control policy. This paper addresses this shortcoming in the literature by charting the evolution of environmental regulation within a specifically Scottish context during the 1990s. It does so by examining water pollution control, as undertaken by Scotland's River Purification Authorities (RPAs) prior to the creation of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) on 1 April 1996. The paper argues that, in this area of pollution control, the formalization of the regulatory process was primarily attributable to developments emanating from the domestic policy environment as opposed to external pressures exerted by the EU. It goes on to assess the impact of RPAs' more formal enforcement style upon the regulatory process. Finally, the paper examines whether the trend towards formal enforcement has continued under the auspices of SEPA. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A central problem for improving the implementation effectiveness of European legislation lies in the impact of national administrative traditions. The dependence on national administrations for implementing European policies implies that the formal transposition and practical application of supranational policies are crucially influenced by administrative traditions prevalent in a certain policy field, which may differ substantially from country to country. Focusing on the implementation of EU environmental policy in Britain and Germany, it is the objective of this article to investigate the interplay of national administrative traditions and European policy implementation in closer detail. The main argument is that the extent to which administrative traditions affect implementation effectiveness is less dependent on the 'real' costs of adaptation than on the level of embeddedness of existing structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the EU Presidency plays a more important role than is generally assumed. It is not so much that the incumbent Presidency may try to 'push through' legislation close to the national interests but that it has an important role in fostering the Europeanization of national environmental policy-making. Holding the Presidency creates strong pressures to achieve agreement and fosters a subtle but important learning process about the European and national dimensions of policy problems. This is one of the main reasons why national objectives and 'styles' tend more often to give way to 'European thinking' about environmental policy when the Presidency is held. National differences in running the Presidency become more apparent during informal Councils which do not make decisions directly resulting in legislation. It will be shown that there appears to be little difference overall in the way the British and German governments run their respective Presidencies despite considerable differences in their national 'styles' of environmental policy- making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]