Neoliberalizing environmental governance? Land trusts, private conservation and nature on the Oak Ridges Moraine

With recent changes in the ways that state agencies are implementing their environmental policies, the line between public and private is becoming increasingly blurred. This includes shifts from state-led implementation of environmental policies to conservation plans that are implemented and managed by multi-sectoral networks of governments, the private sector and environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs). This paper examines land trusts as private conservation initiatives that become part of neoliberal governance arrangements and partnerships that challenge our conceptions of environmental preservation and democratic participation. The paper starts with an examination of the concept of neoliberalized environmental governance. Next, it addresses the shifting social constructions of property and land in the context of protecting large scale ecosystems. Through a case study of the extension of new environmental governance arrangements on the Oak Ridges Moraine in Ontario, we examine the relationships that have formed between different levels of the state and environmental non-governmental organizations. Finally, we analyze the expansion of land trusts and private conservation initiatives that are predicated on private land ownership and the commodification of nature, the emerging discourses and practices of private conservation, and how these are implicated in the privatization and neoliberalization of nature.     

Water and power in Santiago de Chile: Socio-spatial segregation through network integration

The analysis of the history of the management and distribution of electricity, water and sanitation networks in Santiago de Chile throws light on a problem which is central to thinking on the relationship between urban services management and territorial splintering: what is the impact of urban policy, in particular housing policy and urban planning, on access to services and on the potential levels of social segregation and institutional splintering of metropolises?The Chilean example is eminently anchored in its political and institutional history. We shall see, for example, that the authoritarian urban policy of the military government, associated with early liberal reform, enabled the improvement of access to networks in every municipality of the Greater Santiago area. However, this success, leading to the integration by urban services of a large territory, does not signify that networks remained neutral as regards the process of spatial segregation. Inversely, we can defend the theory that the presence of an integrated service was a necessary condition and a reinforcing factor of the process of urban spread and residential segregation. This paradoxical argument is a result of the ambivalent liberal network and urban policies of the military government. Urban expansion was largely sustained by the development of integrated infrastructures and universal services. The processes of liberalising land and urban services were mutually sustaining and provided the necessary conditions for the birth of an extremely intense movement of urban sprawl and segregation between 1985 and 2000.     

The 2002 reform of the Common Fisheries Policy's system of governance—rhetoric or reality?

The 2002 Reform of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) was claimed to be a radical overhaul of a failing system. Several EU fish stocks—particularly North Sea cod—had reached dangerously low levels, and there was widespread dissatisfaction with the way in which the CFP was operating. The European Commission took the opportunity of the legal requirement to review some features of the CFP (principally access provisions) in 2002, to undertake a broader reappraisal of the CFP. One of the features of this reappraisal was an attempt to improve the CFP's system of governance by increasing the amount of stakeholder participation, decentralisation, transparency, accountability, effectiveness and coherence. In this paper, the conclusion is reached that this attempt to improve the quality of governance in the 2002 CFP reform package has been more rhetorical than real.     

Evaluation of the ocean governance system in Korea

Considering the small land, dense population and poor natural resources, the oceans are important to Korea, but the recognition of oceans has been weak in Korean society. So ocean governance was fragmented in both institution and policies, which resulted in serious problems in the coastal waters and oceans. However, a series of maritime accidents and failures of policies increased the recognition of the coastal waters and resources and led to the establishment of one single ocean-related governmental agency in 1996. Over the last decade, the ocean governance in Korea has been successful and strong.     

The fall and rise of metropolitan government in Copenhagen

In this paper it is argued that the re-establishment of a metropolitan government in the Greater Copenhagen Area in 2000 (Greater Copenhagen Authority) is not to be seen as a return to the kind of regional, coordinative authority (Greater Copenhagen Council) that was abolished in the Thatcherite climate of the 1980s. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s new forms of urban governance, entrepreneurialism and a higher national priority to the capital region were introduced, which changed the conditions under which the new metropolitan government is operating. This `contextualization' of the analysis of the two generations of metropolitan government points to the fact that typologies of metropolitan government, such as the one put forward by Sharpe (1995), often lacks analytical cogency. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Milan: The city of constant renewal

Traditional models of urban development are no longer adequate to describe current metropolitan transformations. These are now at the centre of a debate concerning management and administration. In Italy, delays in resolving problems of urban and metropolitan government, despite the legal framework provided by Law 142/90, have weighed heavily on the larger urban areas of the country: Rome, Naples, Milan, which have not been able to tackle the issue of metropolitan government. Recent legislation, while not providing a pre-defined institutional solution, allows separate administrative districts to collectively establish metropolitan institutions of `variable geometry'. The Milan urban area is not one city, but a system of mutually-dependent cities, linked to each other and the rest of the world by a transport network still requiring much investment. The vitality of its economic structure (especially its small firms) is held back by seriously inadequate infrastructure and low external economic efficiency. The provincial capital may boast `historic centrality' but the most interesting potential for development is to be found on the periphery and in the administrative districts immediately surrounding it, in the recovery of derelict industrial areas and dormitory towns established in the 1950s and 1960s, especially to the north. Recovery of derelict areas, green areas, and better transport links within the urban area and with the outside world are the key elements in the reorganization of `Greater Milan'. In this situation of rapid transformation the most appropriate political strategies involve negotiated planning. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Placing geographies of public health

Following the move to a 'post–medical' geography, a large amount of research has come to focus on public health issues. This paper explores these current geographies of public health and argues for the development of a more critical perspective. In particular, it draws on commentary that has emerged out of debates that have taken place within a body of literature usually identified as the critical 'new' public health. The paper goes on to argue that such scholarship offers crucial insights for the production of a critical geography of public health.     

Oil-spill disasters and the rural hazardscape of Eastern Nigeria

The objective of the paper is to investigate the links between the patterns of incidents, the amount of hazardous materials locally present and capability of local emergency preparedness in rural local government councils. Four states Abia, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa and Rivers State were used to examine the nature and pattern of oil-spill disasters in rural Nigeria. It is argued that oil-spill hazards are more than isolated engineering malfunctions. They can be alternatively understood as reflections of the social, economic and political contexts in which they occur. Discriminant analysis is used to examine the relationship between 71 country risk-related and preparedness variables and incident frequency. The findings illustrate the usefulness of contextual analysis in examining the restructuring of rural life and the capacity of fiscally and socially stressed rural communities to respond to environmental change.     

Devolution, the governance of regional development and the Trade Union Congress in the North East region of England

The devolution and regionalisation of political and administrative structures following the election of New Labour in 1997 have changed the nature of the state and territorial development and governance in the UK. A regional and sub-national tier has opened up within the existing multi-layered governance system operating at the supra-national, national and local scales. This ‘new institutional space’ is increasingly open to the participation of social institutions--including trade unions--in economic and social governance. Drawing upon empirical analysis of the experience of the Northern Trade Union Congress (NTUC) in the North East region of England, the paper argues that the NTUC--in contrast to its national organisation--is beginning to engage with the emergent institutional structures but its role is inhibited by the centralised strategy and structure of the TUC nationally, its own need for upgrading, capacity building and greater financial resources and the interaction between the North East’s particular legacy of tripartite corporatism and the more pluralist modes of regional development governance emerging in the English regions. Unless such issues are addressed regional trade union centres--such as the NTUC--risk remaining relatively junior partners in the emergent regional governance structures.     

Privatizing conditions of production: trade agreements as neoliberal environmental governance

Recent multilateral trade agreements are among the major manifestations of neoliberalism. They are also emerging as some of the most important sites of environmental governance in the 21st century. I argue here that these trade agreements, particularly the sweeping new protections they provide for investors, are redefining property rights and environmental governance in fundamental ways. I suggest that in addition to furthering the centuries-long process of the enclosure of nature under capitalism, the neoliberal agenda of NAFTA and similar trade agreements also involves something new: the privatization, or primitive accumulation, of conditions of production as an accumulation strategy. I explore these dynamics through examination of two cases, one in the United States and one in Mexico. I also explore the roles of social movements in these dynamics.