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In recent years within the UK, behaviour change as a policy tool has gained popularity. Concurrently, the role of local authorities in both tackling unsustainability and reducing carbon emissions has become more prominent. This paper describes a recent study in the UK that aims to understand how local authorities are working to tackle unsustainability and encourage pro-environmental behaviour change in the population. Through interviews with local authority sustainability officers from London, this paper reviews the extent of sustainability work currently being undertaken by local authorities to assist residents transition to a more sustainable lifestyle. The study discusses key findings from the interviews, drawing on the commonalities and factors that influence local authority sustainability programmes. The key finding from these interviews is that there is a need for more robust monitoring and evaluation of local authority sustainability programmes. Robust evaluation would improve understanding of the potential contribution that local authority sustainability work could make towards addressing unsustainability and meeting national emission reduction targets. In addition, it would assist the development of the evidence-base on behaviour change interventions and their effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Drawing on an empirical study of environmental policies in Manchester (UK) and Saint-Etienne (France), this article attempts to provide a periodization of the evolution of the management of urban environmental issues. The periodization traces the shift in discourse from a focus on ‘local environment’ to ‘sustainable urban development’. Three main sequences are identified corresponding to three different ways of tackling environmental issues covering a period from the late 1970s up to the present. The aim of this article is twofold. First, it will use environmental policies as a tool to understand the transformations of urban governance, and in particular the transformations of the actors involved in policy-making. Second, it will show how sustainable development policies are used by local elites to neutralize urban conflicts by excluding environmental grassroots movements from the management of environmental issues. Finally, the article will discuss how this marginalization should be considered as a sign of the emergence of a post-democratic era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ways in which issues of differential times and time-scales make themselves felt in environmental politics are explored. Official and industrial `control' of time-scales within environmental regulatory processes is seen to be an important determinant of the forms such politics take in countries like the UK. It is argued that the opening up of `time' debates carries far-reaching and positive implications for `sustainability' aspirations in the industrial world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]