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This article examines the unfolding of integrated water resource management ( IWRM) reforms in southwest Burkina Faso, where water resources are subject to conflicting claims by a diversity of users. We first describe the establishment a local water user committee, showing how choices regarding composition and operations grant varying levels of recognition to different stakeholders. We then discuss the implications for key dimensions of decentralized governance, namely representation and accountability. In particular we focus on: (a) how the interplay of political agendas and policy disconnects shapes the committee's viability and credibility and (b) how tensions between techno-scientific and local knowledge affect participation and transparency. We argue that in contexts defined by contentious politics and neo-patrimonial practices, representativeness is better ensured by the direct inclusion of user groups rather than elected officials. Though limited discretionary power, information access, and technical capabilities of committee members inhibit accountability, rural producers uphold their claims through social mobilization and reliance on local knowledge. Recognizing the opportunities offered by the country's recent democratic turn, we formulate recommendations aimed at addressing structural drivers and enabling citizen agency in decentralized water governance. At the same time, further research is needed on local people's understandings of representation and accountability, to ensure that they are involved in institutional design and practices in ways that affirm what they value and what they know. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an empirical case study of the institutional design process of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change from December 2011 to May 2014. Powerful countries, corporations and banks have favoured a deepening of neoliberal environmental governance, while civil society actors have argued over retaining movement concepts, won small representational victories, while participating in a process that has subjected them to a deepened practise of advanced liberal governance. The process has thus far produced 'non-outcomes' that fail to meet hopes that the GCF could provide a significant scaling up and paradigm shift in global climate finance. However, civil society engagement appears to be, somewhat inadvertently, exposing the 'overflows', limits and contradictions inherent in advanced liberal governance. The impasse created has prompted alternative governmentalities to emerge, not least of spectacle and (non-)performativity, which may be generating an anti-politics in environmental governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of hydraulic fracturing techniques is generating a dramatic expansion of the development of domestic natural gas resources in the United States and abroad. Fracking also poses a series of environmental protection challenges that cut across traditional medium and program boundaries. Formal constraints on federal government engagement thus far devolve considerable latitude to individual states for policy development. This provides an important test of whether recent scholarly emphasis on highly innovative state environmental and energy policies can be extended to this burgeoning area. Pennsylvania has moved to the epicenter of the fracking revolution, reflecting its vast Marcellus Shale resource and far-reaching 2012 legislation. This article examines the Pennsylvania case and notes that the state's emerging policy appears designed to maximize resource extraction while downplaying environmental considerations. The case analysis generates questions as to whether this experience constitutes an influential state early mover that is likely to diffuse widely or is instead an aberration in a rapidly diversifying state policy development process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information on the workshop entitled "The Worlds of Ecology and Environmental Policy: Never the Two Shall Meet?" of the Ecological Society of Australia (ESA) in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory on December 4, 2009 is presented. It states that the workshop explores how the society, scientists, and policy-makers can fully incorporate science and policy. It says that the event attracted around 70 participants from government agencies, non-government societies, and academic institutions.

Objective. This article serves as a pilot study of three central aspects of sociological research concerning the impact of local agriculture on local communities: food equity, social integration, and natural human capital. Methods. Four CSA farmers, four partners in a direct-market organic farm, and four community garden site coordinators working in the Intervale, a local agriculture project in Burlington, Vermont, were interviewed in person for this research. Additionally, the author collected observational data in the Intervale, at two local farmers' markets, and as a member of a local community garden. Result. Different modes of local agricultural production have distinctive effects on the local population with regard to equitable access to healthy food, social inclusion, and experiential knowledge of the natural world. Conclusions. Given class-based disparities in local agricultural participation, local food projects should consider promoting programs designed for broader social inclusion, including subsidized farmer-to-family coupons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective. The controversial expansion of a hazardous waste facility in a poor, minority neighborhood in Phoenix illustrates the unanticipated consequences of siting hazardous facilities in vulnerable communities, and the need to recognize neighborhood health/safety issues such as drug-related crime as environmental justice struggles. Methods. Qualitative methods include participant observation, document analysis, Census data, GIS mapping, and interviews. Results. South Central Phoenix's history reveals a disproportionate share of poverty, pollution, and drug crimes. Most commercial hazardous waste facilities in Phoenix were sited in minority areas. Residents contended that the siting, permitting process, and expansion of the facility and the drug crimes that later occurred there were all due to environmental racism. Conclusions. The expansion of the facility exacerbated environmental injustice in Phoenix through distributional and participative injustice, and was criminogenic. The dual impact on the community of hazardous waste and drug crime argues for a more holistic understanding of environmental justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

1. ‘The British Ecological Society aims to promote the science of ecology through research and to use the findings of such research to educate the public and influence policy decisions which involve ecological matters.’ Yet, how successful have we been in influencing UK and EU environmental policy? 2. Many scientists hold to the ‘deficit model’ of turning science into policy, the view that if only politicians are told what the science reveals, ‘correct’ policies will automatically follow. Nothing could be further from the truth. Politicians have all kinds of reasons, some valid, some less valid, not to adopt what often seem to us to be common sense policies to protect the environment. 3. Here, I explore some of the successes and failures of ecologists to influence UK and European environmental policy, using acid deposition, the collapse of global marine fisheries, GM crops and climate change, carbon dioxide and ocean acidification as examples. I briefly review the extensive literature (largely ignored by natural scientists) on what social scientists have to say about evidence-based policy-making (or the lack of it) and why it often appears to be so difficult to persuade politicians to adopt sound environmental policies. 4. Synthesis and applications. Ecologists can, and do, influence government policy on the environment, but often via complex and iterative interactions that can be painfully slow, and may require fundamental changes in politicians’ belief systems, values and norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Along with the renewed attention ecological issues have received in policymaking circles, the rapid growth of research on environmental politics and policy in recent years has compounded a longstanding problem in the field. This article reports on one effort, a panel held at the 1992 Western Political Science Association annual meeting that was devoted to four books on environmental politics. These books serve usefully to distinguish the potential of political science from that of, say, economics. They also remind one that the study of environmental politics and policy must be broader than what one typically finds in work dealing with policy analysis, policy-oriented environmental science and engineering, administrative planning and program implementation and evaluation.

Arguments over issues with environmental implications are increasingly salient in the public arena, and appeals to justice are made by both those who favor and those who oppose environmental regulations. But can justice really be claimed by each side with equal plausibility? The concept of justice can be defined in different ways, which may tend to favor one side or the other. Although there is a high degree of variability among the arguments presented, the environmental crisis seems most generally to pit justice for the individual, or microjustice, against justice for a larger group, or macrojustice. The present article examines the evidence for this, and reports the results of a study examining appeals to different principles of justice. Subjects were asked to evaluate arguments based on microjustice principles, such as procedural justice, or macrojustice principles, such as equality and responsibility, by each side of the environmental debate. Although pro-environmental arguments received stronger ratings over- all, it was also found, as expected, that appeals based on procedural justice were relatively stronger when phrased in terms of an anti-environmental stance, and other arguments were relatively stronger for the pro-environmental position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]