Search

Studies that focus on different urban governance structures, especially unitary states and semi-authoritarian regimes, are still lacking in the urban climate governance literature. This research aims to explain how climate change is governed under a unitary state structure, particularly focusing on how urban climate governance incorporates higher-level government policy and external stakeholders to set a climate agenda and actions. Four main themes are framed from the urban climate governance literature, including agenda setting, the divergence between the existing policies and urban climate agendas, policy entrepreneurs' roles, and civil society organizations. By focusing on the four themes, we aim to understand how climate change is governed in Istanbul, the biggest and the richest city of Turkey, under a unitary system of government. Based on semi-structured interviews, field notes based on participant-observations, and review of existing official documents, we find that swings in political leadership, the divergence between the existing laws and newly adopted urban climate agendas, and conflicting priorities between policy entrepreneurs generate barriers to long-run and tangible climate change actions in Istanbul. Nevertheless, we argue there is an opportunity space for local governments to co-create new governance mechanisms, as the national government does not have the capacity to lead climate change action, nor is there a political will and focus at the highest levels of government to engage deeply in this policy space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the instrumental variable method and a fixed-effects model, this paper uses panel data from 283 prefecture-level cities in China from 2004 to 2016 to analyse the impact of environmental regulation on the international competitiveness of China. The results suggest that (1) the strengthening of environmental regulation hinders the international competitiveness of Chinese cities; (2) technological innovation, resource allocation and government intervention all have partial mediating effects between the intensity of environmental regulation and the international competitiveness of Chinese cities. Nevertheless, if reasonable environmental policies can be formulated to enable the organic coordination of technological innovation, resource allocation and government intervention, it is possible to achieve a win-win situation between environmental regulation and the international competitiveness of Chinese cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban environments are key to mitigating the effects of climate change, contributing to sustainability and improving people's lives. A significant part of the commitment to sustainable development is made by assuming the vital role played by local governments as the administrations closest to citizens and responsible for providing most of the essential services for the community. Therefore, knowing local governments' levels of spending efficiency in urban environments, as well as the exogenous factors that explain these levels, will allow us to analyse the management carried out in this area and propose improvements to achieve the commitments made (Agenda 2030, the Green Deal, Fit for 55). One of the novelties of our research is considering climate as an exogenous variable in explaining efficiency levels. We find that cities with more extreme climates are more efficient in managing environmental expenditure, and densely populated municipalities are less efficient. We also conclude that local governments with more revenues or where tourism is one of the main economic activities improve efficiency, while the gender of the mayor (in our case, women) and political fragmentation reduce it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union is increasingly resorting to a decentralised enforcement strategy in which it relies less on the Commission-initiated infringement procedure, and more on domestic litigation by particularly NGOs. In order to better understand whether this is a suitable strategy to tackle the compliance deficit, we need more insight into NGOs as decentralised enforcers of EU law. What do NGOs do to stimulate domestic compliance, and is this a potentially effective alternative to the centralised enforcement strategies? Analysing the actions by the German NGO Deutsche Umwelthilfe in relation to the Ambient Air Quality Directive, reveals high potential for the role to be played by NGOs. This exploratory case illustrates that particularly the strategy of flooding the country with a wave of legal proceedings was effective in increasing the salience of the topic, thereby indirectly releasing those capacities that the authorities had still lacked to comply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of market-oriented environmental policies to achieve a win-win situation for the economy and the environment has become the focus in many countries, and environmental innovation is an important way for firms to achieve dual benefits. However, the overall framework for market-based environmental policies, environmental innovation, and firms' performance remains unclear. In order to reveal this relationship, this study selected 113 articles from the Zhejiang Daily as the research sample and adopted the grounded theory method to construct the theoretical framework. The results revealed that market-oriented environmental policies that were composed of incentive-based policy tools and constraint-based policy tools had a promotional effect on environmental innovation. Resource redundancy and government action, as internal and external contextual factors, moderated the relationship between market-oriented environmental policies and environmental innovation, and environmental innovation can promote improvements in a firm's performance. This study provides a useful reference for how governments can better promote the construction of an ecological civilization and how firms can utilize policy opportunities to promote their green development, thus providing empirical evidence for future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the non-linear effect of education level on ecological footprint considering changes in population structure and per capita income. The results show an inhibitory effect for the level of education on increases in ecological footprint. In high-income countries, this inhibitory effect is non-linear. The inhibitory effect of education level on ecological footprint increases with increases in education level. In addition, population structure also has an inhibitory effect on the increase in ecological footprint. In both high-income and low-income countries, the inhibitory effect of population structure on the ecological footprint decreases when the population structure exceeds the threshold. However, there is a promotional effect of GDP per capita on the increase in ecological footprint. And the threshold regression results show that this promotional effect is linear in all income groups. Finally, this study suggests that countries should develop environmental sustainability policies according to the threshold range in which their education level, population structure, and per capita income are located. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What can we learn from the prodigious expansion of the non-government protected areas that now comprise 12% of terrestrial Australia? An increasingly professional, formal, and diverse non-government sector has developed since 1990, comprising private individuals, non-government organizations, and First Nations and having close ties to governments. We investigate the drivers, dynamics, and diversity of this sector through thematic analysis of 24 key informant interviews and associated gray literature. Changing environmental movements, science-led conservation, partial recognition of First Nations land rights, international agreements, and neoliberal reforms combined to formalize the sector during the 1990s. A bipartisan policy framework for incorporating non-government lands in the national conservation estate, diverse partnerships, transnational networks, and innovation in public and private funding helped grow the sector. The confluence of interests that has transformed the politics and practice of nature conservation in Australia is likely to inform those engaged with similar changes elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is crucial to observe how international policy initiatives are implemented in each country's environmental policies to ensure global environmental conservation and sustainable development. This study aims to comprehensively analyze the trend of environmental policy in Korea over time. To this aim, we use semantic network analysis to explore the main keywords and to identify the characteristics of the key themes in each period based on the national environmental comprehensive plan. Our results show that the value of economic growth and technological development are regarded as priorities in Korean environmental policy because the economy and technology are closely related to the environment. Similarly, when it comes to the fundamental concept of environmental policy, the concept of "green growth" is applied in preference to the concept of "sustainability." The results contribute to expanding the approach of existing policy research by providing the potential for semantic network analysis based on policy documents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canadian environmental governance formally began in the 1970s with an ambitious vision critical of the status quo. Until the Justin Trudeau government from 2015, this vision had been largely eroded when compared to the transformative environmental ideas, ambition, and efforts initially put forth. Drawing on elite interviews in Canadian environmental politics and an articulation of the dominant system, we develop and demonstrate a novel explanation for Canada's systematic failure to act more ambitiously on the environment. We argue that this failure is the result of progressive selection of Canadian environmental governance in relation to the dominant system at key selection moments. It is at those moments when the environment is least prioritized and the economy most urgently needs attention that environmental governance suffers the most. The paper concludes by emphasizing how features of the dominant political-economic system not typically thought of as environmental can have systematic environmental impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of Europeanisation on domestic policies is often associated with the alignment of European policies and discourses with national ones. The Habitats Directive mandating wolf protection entailed heated debates across the EU, suggesting diverging values and interests at various levels of policy-making. I present an analysis of wolf policy and politics in Germany, where wolves have returned after a long period of extinction. Tracing the dynamics of institutions involved in wolf management in 2000–2021, I identify key groups involved, their activities and positions as well as the impact of European rules and discourses. Unlike in some other Central in Eastern European countries, German wolf policy was strongly influenced by Europeanisation that helped to sustain the institutional path of wolf conservation, despite criticism from dominant land-use actors who politicised the issue to relax conservation rules. I suggest adding safeguarding of latent policies to the catalogue of outcomes of Europeanisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neoliberal thought has exerted significant influence over the crafting and delivery of environmental policy. This has manifested in enlisting non-state actors to advance environmental policy agendas in ways that were previously the responsibility of the state. The participation of these non-state actors is positioned as integral to solving intractable environmental challenges, such as the degradation of fish habitat. Drawing on responsibilisation as a technique of governance, this research adopts a case-based study of fisheries rehabilitation policy to explore how recreationists are being mobilized to address environmental problems. Deploying interpretive policy analysis to analyze key policy artifacts this research highlights how fishers as recreational users of aquatic areas are constituted as moral, political and authoritative actors who bear responsibility for ameliorating degraded fish habitats, despite the impacts of recreational fishing on these habitats being contested. We conclude by identifying the implications of this responsibilisation for the implementation of co-management and shared stewardship of fisheries resources. [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]

Administrative traditions have become a central concept in public policy and public administration research. Despite substantial insights gained, it is still unclear how administrative traditions affect the effectiveness of public policies. This paper addresses this shortcoming. It analyzes whether the effectiveness of a specific type of public policy, namely direct regulation, varies by a country's administrative tradition. Empirically, the focus is on regulations in the area of environmental protection. By analyzing the changes in air pollutant emissions of 14 OECD countries over a period of 25 years, the article finds that the effectiveness of environmental regulations is higher in countries with a managerial administrative tradition. While both managerial and legalistic bureaucracies can successfully implement minor policy reforms, it is primarily managerial systems that can effectively handle more ambitious regulations. Overall, it thus seems that a major benefit of managerial systems is the more flexible approach towards policy implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains the convergence among Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) on climate change? While Brazil, India, China and South Africa caught attention due to their economic dynamism in the 1990s and accelerating momentum as of the early 2000s, Russia progressed to increase its influence in the twenty-first century. This shift in the material capabilities of BRICS has increased their significance in global climate governance. Merging governmentality and social constructivist approaches, this article argues that material changes in the post-Cold War period led Brazil, India, China and South Africa to experience a change in their ideational framework, repositioning themselves at the international level, recognising new responsibilities, and reaching a common point on the road to the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in 2009. Therefore, they went through a convergence process, bringing them closer to Russia, whose position invited major developing states to take tangible actions for emissions reduction. This process of convergence marked the onset of the future BRICS partnership on climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract To understand the harm caused by air pollution and attract attention from government agencies, this study estimates the exposure to the elevated level of PM10 and its effect on health. This study employed two distinct approaches: cost-of-illness (COI) and willingness-to-pay (WTP). The results revealed that people are willing to pay for risk reduction initiatives, and the difference between COI and WTP is negligible. The entire sum estimated from the COI and WTP is adequate to pay the complete expenses of air pollution mitigation measures such as the deployment of Bus Rapid Transit. Therefore, government officials may concentrate on the best technique for lowering air pollution, notably in Vietnam. In the short term, hiking taxes to reduce carbon emissions in the city and implementing a subsidy plan for impacted stakeholders may be necessary. On the other hand, long-term solutions may include economic transformation and the building of a greener metropolis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Recent research suggests that public support for climate action can be increased by bundling environmental policy with social and economic programs – the Green New Deal being one of the most widely known iterations of this strategy. Yet, party cue theory suggests that public support for the policy will be shaped by the strong Democratic associations of the proposal. In a preregistered survey experiment conducted among 1,203 residents of the rural western United States, I find strong evidence that the phrase 'the Green New Deal' functions as a partisan cue, lowering support for a bundled climate policy among rural residents by 9.1 percentage points. This depressive effect is robust even when framing around region-specific climate impacts is added to the survey question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this interview, Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development, outlines the climate change problem in the Arctic, tells of the increasing speed with which the ice is melting, and outlines some possible solutions, ranging from relatively benign approaches to methods that call for increasingly more intrusive tinkering with the planet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this commentary, we reflect on COP26, its outcomes, and the UNFCCC processes. While the value and results of COP meetings are often contested by researchers and activists, we highlight three areas that deserve more attention in post-COP assessments. First, the COP process creates an arena where state leaders, researchers, climate activists, and private actors regularly meet, which facilitates cooperation over time. Second, COP meetings are sites of parallel multi-level games that often result in bilateral or multilateral side agreements or initiatives. Third, COP meetings are regularly scheduled critical events, where social movements and civil society actors shape the public discourse around climate change. Our brief analysis illustrates there is still an urgent need for COP meetings as spaces that provide transparency for global climate governance, as well as media and public visibility for civil society voices, which would otherwise be lost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than a million Rohingya have fled Myanmar to live in Bangladesh, mostly in Cox's Bazar district. The government has been praised worldwide for sheltering them, but this enormous influx has strained its limited resources. As the host communities struggle with the Rohingya for control over and access to the scarce natural resources they depend on for their livelihood — land, water, agriculture, and forests — tension and conflict arise. The host community members perceive that the government and aid agencies prioritize the Rohingya over the host communities in allocating resources, exacerbating their resentment. I argue that although both the locals and the Rohingya are poor and marginalized, as citizens, the locals have a stronger claim to environmental citizenship and rights to state resources. Any ecological policies taken towards the safeguarding of resource usage rights of the Rohingyas should also be inclusive and should give equal consideration to the local host community members. [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 Murray–Darling Basin Plan, a major initiative to return water from irrigators to the environment, has been lauded as world-class water reform. The enabling legislation for the Basin Plan, the Water Act, gains its constitutional legitimacy from international treaties such as the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands. This Act mandated that water be returned from consumptive uses to the environment. An allocation of 2,750 GL/yr was set but has been reduced by the 'Sustainable Diversion Limit Adjustment Mechanism' (SDLAM), intended to achieve equivalent environmental benefits with less water. We present a synthesis of changes in decision contexts that have led to water reforms being 'watered down'. We analysed the policy discourse of water reform to assess whether SDLAM projects will achieve outcomes congruent with Australia's international treaty obligations. We found little or no alignment between the purpose of the SDLAM projects and the principles of the treaties and the Water Act. As water scarcity increases under climate change, attempting to conserve wetlands (including rivers) with less water while maintaining or increasing irrigation diversions is likely to prove maladaptive. A major reframing of environmental water policy and management is required to enable meaningful and effective adaptation to climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the configuration of conditions that trigger pro-environmental policy agenda setting (PAS) in an uncertain social context. It discusses the suitability and explanatory power of Kingdon's Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) in this context. It employs the MSF and implements a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis on 25 pro-environmental cases in China. The results indicate that the seven solutions that could be recombined into three successful driven patterns may trigger the establishment of China's pro-environmental policy agenda. China's pro-environmental PAS does not require the complete collection of conditions for all three streams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research is designed to illustrate the process of customers' switching behavior from a traditional hotel to a green hotel by applying a pull-push-mooring theory and an exploratory mixed methods design. The push factors, including environmental policy, social media effects, and social norms, drive customers away from traditional hotels, while the pull factors, including personal norms, perceived health benefits, and emotional well-being, attract customers to green hotels. The mooring factors, including inertia and switching cost, show a vital moderating effect. This study provides a conceptual mechanism that clarifies factors that drive customers' green behavior in the hotel industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the potential effects to the United Kingdom's (UK) economy and environmental policy if it exits the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) under the law of treaties. Also cited are the countries exiting ECT like Australia, Russia, and Italy, the efforts to modernize ECT, and how the ECT could hinder the UK's transition to renewable energy and sustain its dependence on fossil fuels.

This study investigates the relationship among environmental regulation, trade openness, and pollution emissions using a two-way fixed and mediating effect model based on the panel data of 283 prefecture-level cities obtained from 2005 to 2019. The results reveal that trade openness has a significant impact on the production of polluting emissions. Environmental regulation policies can effectively reduce the adverse impact of trade openness on polluting emissions. By further investigating the intermediate mechanism, it is found that the environmental regulation policies negatively regulate the trade openness and polluting emissions, mainly by promoting industrial upgrading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2009, the Australian Senate rejected the government's ambitious Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. In the prevailing narrative surrounding these events, the Labor government, under Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, made a series of strategic errors that led to the scheme's – and ultimately, Rudd's and the Labor Party's – downfall. However, by taking a closer look at of some aspects of Australia's parliamentary system, including the norms of partisan voting and the numbers game in parliament, a different story is apparent. A counter-narrative is that the Rudd Labor government's approach was reasonable at the time, but that institutional factors and election outcomes presented significant obstacles to passing climate legislation of any kind. Correcting this narrative will enable a better understanding of the political circumstances in which environmental policies are enacted in Australia, a country with the potential for regional policy leadership on climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article responds to a recent reengagement with Ecocritique: Contesting The Politics of Nature, Economy, and Culture which was published 25 years ago. The authors who have engaged with this work in this symposium not only address the relevance of ecocritique as a theory and methodology for addressing contemporary environmental issues, but provide new insights into the work through their criticisms. My reply discusses their commentaries and offers response in the form of elaboration and reflection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Irish party system has been exceptional both for the weakness of its left-right conflict and for its long-run stability. How then can party competition on policy, and particularly competition between the main parties, be characterised? This study examines the Irish party system from an issue competition perspective, examining the party system agenda and asking whether Irish party competition is marked by differences in issue focus. New data from Irish party manifestos (1981–2020) coded within the framework of the Comparative Agendas Project show that rather than competing by focusing on different issues, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael's issue focus is very similar and has moved in parallel over time. Nor is a distinct focus on new issues evident in Sinn Féin's offering as they have emerged as a major party. Moreover, it finds that 'new politics' issues have remained marginal and it examines how this has occurred using the 'crucial case' of environmental policy. While differences in issue focus do not help us to distinguish the main parties, the politics of competence continues to have an important role and positional politics may be coming to the fore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolution of environmental policy is increasingly driven by the emergence and interaction of policy concepts and the frameworks, knowledge, and ideas they employ. We argue that policy actors' creative use of policy concepts often leads to their combinatorial development. In this policy process, the concepts interact and shape each other's policy relevance and future development under the influence of ideas, knowledge, and political factors. We formulate this new research approach using ideational and policy process theories. In particular, we explicate internal and contextual combinatory elements that enable policy change resulting from mutual development of policy concepts. For an empirical demonstration, we analyze the conceptual innovation, rise, and ramifications of nutrient recycling as a new segment of Finnish environmental policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This explorative study draws on content analysis of the environmental policy documents of voluntary sport organizations in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. We develop a typology of ways in which sport organizations frame environmental problems and find four ideal typical frames: (1) a general non-committal frame; (2) a sport-specific technical frame; (3) a growth-oriented opportunity frame; and (4) a crisis frame viewing environmental issues as an existential crisis for sport. We then explain the emergence of these frames. To this task, we discuss how materialities, institutional mechanisms and wider environmental discourses matter for environmental framing in voluntary sport organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines price bubbles in the relatively new carbon emission trading scheme of Beijing carbon market by employing a recently proposed econometric test which can stamp the occurrence and burst of financial bubbles. We find multiple bubbles in Beijing carbon market over the sample period between January 2014 to April 2018, and that the occurrences of carbon price bubbles are closely related to the announcements of environmental policies by the Chinese government. Comparing our results to the EU ETS, we find that the volatility of carbon price in Beijing market is higher than EU, and interestingly, the bubbles in Beijing market occur when the price volatility is relatively low, while in EU market the bubbles correspond to the peaks of volatility. Our empirical results provide insightful policy implications in the context of the actual China's carbon market reform. To achieve effective stabilization of carbon price, policymakers should publicize alert notifications of the price fluctuations, and strengthen the carbon markets supervision and promote its improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assesses the extent to which the academic community engaged with climate change in Central Asia between 1991 and 2021. The article finds that climate change has been neglected in the field of Central Asia area studies. Out of a total 13,488 journal articles in eight key journals for Central Asia research, only 33 articles (0.24%) were on climate change or a related topic. Climate change has been similarly neglected at the events of 17 Central Asia area studies associations. Out of 1305 conference panels, none was focused on climate change. Out of 10,249 individual presentations, only two (0.02%) were focused on climate change. The very same scholars who have been most active in the securitization of Central Asia have ignored the severe security threats that climate change poses to the region. The article contributes to the field of Central Asian studies by drawing attention to severe knowledge gaps that hinder the Central Asian countries from adapting to climate change. It concludes with six recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In international politics, is environmental protection largely a "rich-country" priority? We perceive four reasons why, although individual exceptions are possible, the answer would be yes: as a country meets more of its basic economic needs, it can better take on environmental policy's long-term thinking, policy expenses, collective action problems, and quality-of-life issues. To cut through lip service paid by governments that are not serious about environmental protection, and the fact that the "BASIC" countries (Brazil, South Africa, India, China) occupy a gray area between rich and poor, we employ computer-assisted textual analyses on all 3,774 paragraphs of statements made by national governments between 1995–2012 in the Committee on Trade and Environment (CTE) within the World Trade Organization (WTO). Controlling for other factors, we find a general pattern of environmental discussions increasing as development level increases. This contributes substantively and methodologically to the literatures on the environment/development nexus and rising powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land fragmentation is a growing issue in New Zealand, however, no consistent or regular national monitoring has been established. A methodology for assessing land fragmentation was applied nationally for the first time, revealing that the greatest proportion of fragmentation occurred on land used for diffuse rural residence (>0.40 to ≤2.0 ha) and small parcels (>2.0 to ≤8.0 ha) with a 128% and 73% increase, respectively, between 2002 and 2019. In New Zealand, the most highly productive land (Land Use Capability (LUC) class 1, 2 and 3) is most impacted by continued fragmentation with 38%, 28% and 17% of baseline area, respectively, occupied by medium sized parcels or smaller (≤40.0 ha) with a dwelling in 2019. Impacts were greatest for Auckland with 40%, 44% and 25% of the region's LUC 1, 2 and 3 land, respectively, occupied by small sized parcels or smaller with a dwelling, increasing to 64%, 67% and 47%, respectively, when including parcels ≤ 40.0 ha. Protection of LUC class 1 and 2 land, particularly, requires national attention. This metric provides an opportunity to evaluate land fragmentation and development over time that could serve both the assessment of policy performance and environmental reporting at national and regional levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores the connections between the global rise of antidemocratic governments and the escalation of the human-driven climate emergency. As political leaders and corporations (particularly those in fossil fuel and energy industries) work together in the pursuit of profits and power, anti-environment policies that favour these industries have become politicised and weaponised. We see this occurring in many liberal democracies as well as in more explicit autocratic regimes. Focusing primarily on the United States under former US president Donald Trump, it is argued that the rolling back of environmental policies facilitated by his antidemocratic government connects the political erosion of liberal democracy with the corrosion of the environment. Degradation of the environment in turn accelerates the negative impacts of climate change, disproportionately harming marginalised and racialised communities from lower socio-economic backgrounds. The implications of this deadly alliance between accelerating environmental destruction and the weakening of peoples' electoral rights and ability to oppose anti-environmental policy in the Global North and Global South are nothing short of catastrophic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change and rapid urbanization have significant impact on green spaces and natural resources in African countries. To investigate this impact in the city of Marrakech, this study develops remote-sensing data to monitor changes in land cover and land use from 1990 to 2020. Results show almost 35% diminution of vegetation cover over the investigation period. In 1990, the city of Marrakech had a vegetation cover of 4.2 km2, which fell to 2.7 km2 in 2020. The main change occurred between 1990 and 2000 with a decrease of 13.7%, which is essentially due to the increase in build-up areas, related to the rapid growth of the city's population. This evolution in land cover affects the urban environment negatively including air quality and temperature regulation. This research provides a better understanding of changing trends, confirms the importance of using satellite imagery to monitor vegetation cover in urban settings, helps determine efficient environmental management, and affects successful green infrastructure policy and planning, thereby allowing for improved adaptation and mitigation to climate change. Remote sensing and GIS confirm the potential benefits of their use to develop urban planning policies that address green heritage. Land classification of Marrakech confirms that part of vegetation cover and fallow land were converted to built-up areas from 1990 to 2020. Green resources are under significant pressure due to the expansion of the city. To guarantee a decent ratio per capita, a plan for environmental improvements assess specific green spaces needs by implementing or preserving existing green heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interactions and relationships between front-line regulators and the regulated impact the implementation of environmental policy. Much of the existing research to date investigates the regulatory enforcement styles of regulators or the compliance motivations of firms. It is equally important to consider the role of women and their experiences as front-line workers. This qualitative research is one of the first to provide insight into the untold stories of women on the front-lines of environmental regulation. Through an examination of original interview data from 25 environmental regulators with the Danish Environmental Protection Agency (DEPA) and Montana Department of Environmental Quality (MT DEQ), the findings suggest steps must be taken to ensure the voices of women on the front-lines of environmental regulation are no longer overlooked. Instead, we recognize how their day-to-day experiences impact our understanding of the implementation of environmental regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we explore rights of nature (RoN) as an emerging rights-based environmental governance that intends to reframe nature from property to an entity with a right to exist unharmed. Its proponents claim this is a paradigm shift that reworks the imbalanced human–nature hierarchy. We interrogate this claim using data collected from more than 60 U.S. communities where RoN ordinances have been implemented. Our analysis identifies three reoccurring themes within the U.S. settler colonial context, including a coconstitution of rights for nature alongside a community's right to a healthy environment, the emphasis of self-governance and individual community empowerment, and the overwhelming Whiteness of settler communities that implement RoN laws. We put these themes into conversation with critical race scholarship, which evaluates the racialized impacts of a liberal legal system of rights to examine how within the U.S. settler colonial context RoN mobilizes Western White liberal conceptions of legal rights to address our current environmental crises. In analyzing these themes through the lens of critical race scholarship, we contend that rights-based environmental governance in the form of RoN laws appears to reinforce many of the entrenched social-legal-environmental relations that characterize White liberalism recast through a language that claims universal rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I investigate the origin, limits, and possibilities of just transition as a policy framework to support labor organizing in the energy sector. Just transition first emerged within the labor movement to describe measures to "make whole" workers laid off as the result of necessary environmental policy. Following Gidwani (2015), I analyze claims for income replacement or continued employment as an assertion of "jobs property" based on the collectively bargained standards that unions have negotiated for dangerous jobs in fossil fuel sectors. Although the uses of just transition have grown to encompass broader demands for a democratic and equitable shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy including energy, environmental, and climate justice, I observe that the objectives of labor-centered climate policy often remain focused on the defense of jobs property for dislocated workers. I argue compensation for the loss of jobs property is insufficient to address historical exclusions of people of color and women from energy industry employment or secure the livelihoods of dislocated workers given increasing precarity. Drawing from more than eighty interviews and field work with energy justice campaigns in Atlanta, I consider the case of energy-sector workers in the U.S. South to center a just transition framework that reconstitutes a social wage to address the uneven spatial development of the U.S. labor market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the impact of economic inequality and educational background in shaping how non-activist "standby" youth in London experience environmental politics. Focus groups were carried out with 33 young people aged 16 to 22 in three groups from higher and lower positions of socio-economic status and educational background. The intention of this article is to offer learning that signals a need for further research into the ways in which intersecting inequalities impact young people's participation in environmental politics. The findings reveal that these "standby" young people have distinct experiences of their political agency in navigating the inequalities that impact their lives. Key to these understandings of agency are collective and individual feelings of efficacy and the ability to make positive change happen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is extensive evidence linking air pollution exposure to physical health. Less is known about the mental health impacts of poor air quality, especially in developing countries. We use data from India and estimate the causal impact of air pollution exposure on feeling sad, experiencing cognitive difficulties, and feeling unable to control and cope with important things in life. We instrument for air pollution exposure using the annual number of nighttime thermal inversions and show that air pollution exposure in the previous calendar year significantly worsens mental health in the current year. We examine potential mechanisms and find that air pollution exposure negatively impacts self-reported physical health, worsens respiratory conditions, and increases the likelihood of experiencing sleeping difficulties. Accounting for mental health impacts of pollution exposure is critical to accurately estimating the true health costs of air pollution and designing optimal environmental policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-resolution ecosystem maps increase the efficiency of policy implementation. However, due to challenges related to both data and methods, such maps of appropriate scale and quality are still rarely available for nationwide analyses. We present solutions to some typical challenges of national-scale ecosystem mapping through the new Ecosystem Map of Hungary. It is a comprehensive, spatially and thematically detailed map with a hierarchical typology. The mapping methodology combined several novel elements from the integration of various large-scale databases in a (theoretical) data cube to the use of image-based predictive mapping (with a Random Forest classifier, using Sentinel-1 and -2 and environmental data). A participatory method involving local experts was used for validation, addressing the lack of suitable reference data as well as improving map-maker and map-user interaction. Besides the original objective of supporting conservation-related decision-making, further uses emerged from a variety of fields including spatial planning, education and recreation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tackling environmental problems is one of the main policy challenges facing governments. The process of forming attitudes starts at a young age, and is mostly shaped by education. Participation in pro-environmental initiatives at schools is mainly voluntary. Local governments can play an important role as the institution that links communities with the environment. In this paper, we examine the role of local governments/municipalities on school participation in an environmental educational program, with a special focus on primary and secondary education. We use data from the Sustainable School Program in Chile. We model schools' participation and level of participation by an ordered probit model with sample selection. Results show that public schools are more likely to participate in the program compared with private schools, and schools with more teachers reveal a higher probability of being part of the program. In addition, while school performance and teachers' perceptions correlate with achieving higher levels of certification, a more intense commitment to the program is more likely in communes whose local authorities have the capacity to promote voluntary financial and environmental initiatives. Thus, in order to promote successful co-management of environmental policy, local governments should take into account the heterogeneity of the school system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern societies have loose ties to nature, environmental processes and problems remain mostly invisible to our eyes. This paper investigates environmental experts' motivations, thoughts, attitudes and beliefs in relation to environmental communication and their practice in promoting changes in people's environmental behavior via fifteen in-depth interviews from Hungary. The interviews reveal the potential for establishing human-nature connectedness in childhood or through field encounters, faith, but reflect the ambiguous nature of fear appeal in environmental communication. Many barriers hinder communication, such as inadequate messaging, social inability and defense mechanisms that could be overcome by using examples and policies close to people. The answers given in interviews suggest that grassroots initiatives are not satisfactory, yet an engaged society can influence decision-makers to strengthen the aims with top-down regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As Brexit becomes reality, concerns are growing over environmental degradation due to differences in environmental policies on both sides of the border. At the same time, post-conflict peace occupied by neoliberal ideas remains fragile. However, there is no research that explores the nexus between environmental cooperation and peacebuilding in the Irish context. To narrow this loophole, first, this essay engages with the theory of environmental peacebuilding and sheds light on the role of environmental cooperation as an instrument for peacebuilding in post-conflict societies. Then, it proposes three models for environmental peacebuilding that likely fit in the Irish context. While not singling out one most feasible model, the paper concludes that the island of Ireland already has institutional arrangements and resources to implement any of the proposed models. Building a sustainable peace requires an approach to not only facilitate good relationships between divided human communities, but also resolve the human-nature conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Respecting connections between the diversity of values and forms of knowledge is essential to support a decision-making that fosters relationships between ecosystems and people. However, little theory has been developed for clarifying interactions between values and knowledge, and their relevance for environmental policy. We surfaced the overlooked relationship between values and knowledge by studying individual cognitive and emotional processes during a guided visioning exercise in the context of the multifunctional landscapes of Östergötland, Sweden. We investigated these cognitive processes using 30 semi-structured interviews and questionnaires organized around three types of relationships: vision ⇔ values, vision ⇔ knowledge, and especially values ⇔ knowledge. The analysis of the relationship between vision and values reveals that all types of values including core human values, relational, and intrinsic values are important in shaping the decision-making context in which landscape management visions arise. The relationship between vision and knowledge uncovers the mix of experiential and theoretical knowledge that informs the decision-making context. Interviews unfold three modalities in terms of how values and knowledge relate: i) linked and not necessarily connected (e.g. when individuals perceive a high conflict between their knowledge and their values leading to one construct silencing the other); ii) mutually reinforcing (e.g. when values and knowledge are seen as feeding into one another); and iii) intertwined (e.g. when individuals perceive that values and knowledge can co-exist). We discuss our findings in the context of their relevance for a collaborative decision-making process for balancing consensus and dissensus in multifunctional landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While political environmentalism played an important role in social mobilization against communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe before 1989, throughout the 1990s and early 2000s conservationism appeared to be in decline across the region, and external pressure from European institutions and Western donors influenced environmental policy. What explains the effectiveness of protest since the environmental movement emerged in the 1980s? We trace the emergence and evolution of Polish political environmentalism, looking at three levels of the environmental movement's legitimacy: the level of practices, societal support, and discourse. Each phase identified between 1980s and 2017 saw shifts on different levels of legitimacy, and each ended with a spectacular environmental protest or a decision, bearing implications for the following phase. Since 2010, we see a deep polarization of Polish politics, limiting the effectiveness of environmental protest despite the movement's regained triple legitimacy in large parts of the society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unsustainable dependence on natural resources combined with the absence of strict regulation and political stability have battered the environment of Lebanon. Examining the work of Ricardus Haber, we analyse how local institutional arrangements have shaped policy outcomes in a mostly top-down, politicised context. Lack of political will and communication between different sectors, institutional deficiencies and embedded corruption hinder effective governance of natural resources. The Lebanese environmental movement has failed to build on Haber's early success but, if we have peace, there are still opportunities for networking with policymakers, increasing incentives and creating a better participatory platform for stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]