Environmental literacy in interpreting endangered sustainability: Case studies from Thailand and the Sudan

This paper examines how people explain reasons and impacts of environmental change in the low-rain savanna of the central Sudan and mountainous forest lands of northern Thailand. The explanations are analyzed by using the concept of environmental literacy, which refers to the people’s ability to grasp the environment and its interactions. The paper aims to study people’s conceptions of the environment, which compose one factor in directing their behavior. For the study, rural inhabitants in the State of North Kordofan, the Sudan, and the Chiang Mai Province in Thailand were interviewed.It was noted that an individual’s capability to understand the environment is alone insufficient to address environmental problems because the efficient alleviation of the problems requires collective actions at all levels, and because of factors beyond an individual’s control. However, the results supported the assumption that the local people have knowledge of their environment that may help in developing sustainable environmental management practices. The main advantages of using the environmental literacy concept are argued to be its dynamic and synthetic essence, its link to sustainable behavior, and wide applicability in various contexts within heterogeneous communities.     

Oil pipeline construction in Eastern Siberia: Implications for indigenous people

Traditional economic activities, lifestyles and customs of many indigenous peoples in the Russian North, such as reindeer herding, hunting and fishing, are closely linked to quality of the natural environment. These traditional activities that constitute the core of indigenous cultures are impacted by extractive sector activities conducted in and around traditional territories of indigenous peoples. This paper examines implications of an oil pipeline development in Eastern Siberia on the Evenki community in the Aldan district of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). It examines community concerns about potential environmental damage and impacts on traditional livelihood. The paper analyses the interaction of indigenous communities with the pipeline project through interrogation of elements such as impact assessment, consultation, compensation, benefits, communication and public activism. The paper discusses how state policy and industry’s approach towards land rights and public participation affects the position of indigenous peoples and discusses barriers for their effective engagement. The analysis shows a number of policy failures in the protection of traditional natural resource use of indigenous peoples and provision of benefits with regards to the extractive sector that leave indigenous peoples marginalised in the process of development. There is a need to involve indigenous peoples on the basis of dialogue and partnership, improve regulation and shift industry’s approach towards consideration and engagement.     

Domesticating neo-liberalism: Everyday lives and the geographies of post-socialist transformations

This paper examines the ways in which neo-liberalism is both constructed and made ‘more tolerable’ through everyday practices and livelihoods in post-socialist cities. It argues that existing conceptualisations of neo-liberalism centre too fully on the role of powerful global forces and institutions in constructing marketisation processes, and consequently neglect the ways in which everyday lives are embroiled in the formation of neo-liberal worlds. Through an exploration of the experience of neo-liberalism in the Slovak Republic and drawing upon research with households in one large housing estate in Bratislava, the paper examines the ways in which everyday lives construct neo-liberal possibilities in the attempt to make them ‘more tolerable’. In particular, the paper explores the postponement of the future by some members of the middle-aged generation failing to reap the benefits of economic reform, the role of economic practices ‘outside’ of market-based capitalist relations in constructing engagements with the formal market, and the role of domestic food production in sustaining household networks and social reproduction for some of the most marginal households in the context of low-wage employment and state benefit reductions.     

Tales of transformation: The potential of a narrative approach to pro-environmental practices

Individual lifestyles and practices play an important part in governmental strategies to improve environmental outcomes, both in the UK (DEFRA, 2008) and elsewhere. This often involves promoting actions deliberately aimed at reducing one’s environmental impact, or pro-environmental practices. However, our understanding of these practices has weaknesses; notably regarding the “Value-Action Gap” and the conditions promoting enduring change. This article explores how narrative methods could further our knowledge of pro-environmental practice. It illustrates the utility of the approach using the example of moments of sudden change, or “transformative moments”, in the lives of individuals who take action to address climate change. Drawing on three cases from an ongoing study, it uses narrative tools to explore the nature of these transformations, including the inter-related roles of context, information, emotions and relationships with other people. The discussion highlights tentative conclusions regarding these moments of sudden change, and offers suggestions for future research. Finally, it evaluates the utility of narrative approaches to pro-environmental practice, suggesting that despite some limitations, this method has significant potential to address unresolved issues in the field.     

Young adult households and domestic sustainabilities

Young adults in the Global North occupy a contradictory environmental identity: they are purportedly more environmentally concerned than older generations, but are also labelled hedonistic consumers. Most studies have focused on young adults still residing in parental homes, neglecting that Generation Y (born between 1975 and 1991) has ‘grown up’. The consumption patterns and environmental implications of their newly established households demand scholarly attention. Through a large-scale household sustainability survey, conducted in Australia, we have uncovered important inter-generational differences in environmental attitudes and everyday domestic practices. We found that generational cohorts hold distinct environmental attitudes. Younger households were most concerned with climate change, and least optimistic about future mitigation. However, generational differences influenced everyday domestic practices in more complex ways. All households engaged extensively with those ‘pro-environmental’ practices that reflected established cultural norms, government regulations and residential urban form. For other pro-environmental practices there were clear differences, with Generation Y households being the least engaged. A widening ‘value-action gap’ was apparent across our sample population, from oldest to youngest. However, rather than reflecting Generation Y’s supposed hedonism, we argue that this gap reflects generational geographies: how lifecourse intersects with housing and labour markets and norms of cleanliness to shape everyday domestic practices. Our research illuminates the shortcomings of a one-size-fits-all approach to household sustainability. The young adult stage is a time of transition during which homes and independent lifestyles are established, and practices are altered or become entrenched, for better or worse.     

Sustainable development and `warm fuzzy feelings': discourse and nature within Australian environmental imaginaries

This paper adopts the concept of `environmental imaginaries' to explore the influence of environmental discourses upon supporters of Australian environmental movements. Rather than investigate knowledge, values, attitudes or behaviour, as is often the focus of research into public environmentalism, this study analyses the presence, absence, influence and interactions of different environmental discourses at the interpersonal scale. The relative acceptability and familiarity of different environmental philosophies, with their radically different approaches to nature, has important impacts upon the political strategies, actions and directions adopted by environmental movements. Through conducting a series of ongoing discussion groups with self-identifying `environmentalists' it is found that nature is constructed predominantly through the language and concepts of sustainable development, although this discourse coexists with a number of concurrent and oppositional viewpoints. The power of sustainable development is self-sustained through the normalisation of particular languages and modes of expression. Alternative ideas and discourses are inhibited by a lack of language and familiarity and consequently disempowered and relegated to subordinate positions within discussions. The paper concludes by arguing that the lack of acceptance of alternative ecocentric ideas within the environmental community risks de-radicalising the movement and limits the diversity of political strategies and options that it could potentially adopt.     

Critical moments? Life transitions and energy biographies

Family and youth research has highlighted the importance of lifecourse transitions, illustrating how they can have a substantial impact on people’s everyday lives and anticipated futures. Given their apparent significance, it is surprising that relatively little attention has been paid to life transitions – particularly unexpected ones – to explore how they can impact upon everyday energy use. This is a central concern of Energy Biographies project. The project’s qualitative longitudinal design makes an original contribution, affording a detailed view of how transitions unfold and their significance for energy demand and environmental action. Central to elucidating these issues is the concept of ‘linked lives’, recognising that people live interdependently. In this paper, we explore the accounts of three participants who experienced one or more life transitions during the course of the project, in order to consider the impacts of these events (both planned and unanticipated) on their everyday energy use and environmental actions as part of their linked lives with others.     

Nationalising local sustainability: Lessons from the British wartime Utility furniture scheme

Analyses of sustainable design and commodity networks often make a priori assumptions about the capacity of markets to provide solutions to environmental problems; and have a tendency to celebrate local scales of action. This paper offers a contrasting account, in which the national state sought to carefully manage scarce natural resources and to ensure equitable consumption at a time of deep crisis. We utilise the historical example of the British wartime Utility furniture scheme in order to draw out three lessons for sustainable and equitable environmental practice. First, we argue that national states do not simply provide an institutional backdrop to sustainable production but rather can act as important organising agents. Second, the paper emphasises that sustainability is best achieved through interventions across a commodity network, beyond simply modifications to a single node such as design. Finally, we underscore the value of ‘pragmatic centralism’ in environmental decision-making, calling attention to the collaborative practices that underpinned the scheme. The example of Utility’s adaptive responses—borne out of crisis, scarcity and shortage during wartime—offers much that is of intrinsic interest to current concerns about resource consumption and the drivers of sustainability in commodity networks.     

Neoliberalism and natural resource management: Agri-environmental standards and the governing of farming practices

Private standards and certification schemes are widely acknowledged as playing an increasingly important role in agri-environmental governance. While much of the existing research concludes that these mechanisms consolidate the global extension of neoliberalism – enhancing the power of corporate actors to the detriment of smaller producers – we argue that this overlooks the complex ways in which standards are used by governments and farmers in the governing of farming practices. Focusing specifically on a process standard – Environmental Management Systems (EMS) – promoted by the Australian government as a way of verifying the ‘clean and green’ status of agricultural exports, we examine how one regional group of producers has sought to use EMS standards in practice. Our analysis of a case study in the state of Victoria appears to confirm that EMS was a successful instrument for the extension of neoliberal governance, reinforcing the production of neoliberal subjectivities and practices amongst farmer participants and enabling the government to compensate for gaps in environmental provision. However, it would be a mistake to interpret the development of this EMS scheme as an example of naïve farmers manipulated by the state. In practice, farmers used the opportunities provided by government funding to undertake actions which expressed their own agri-environmental values and practices. Establishment of an EMS and associated eco-label enabled producers to demonstrate and extend their capacity to act as good environmental stewards. Our research highlights how the local application of environmental standards negotiates and shapes, rather than simply contributes to, neoliberal rule.     

Spaces of sustainable development in the Lower Hunter Regional Strategy: An application of the ‘cultural sociology of space’

Sustainable development was introduced as an approach to overcoming growing concerns about consumption and the limitations of the natural resource base upon which society depends. It advocates a system in which economic growth can still occur, but within natural resource limits and such as not to disadvantage either current or future generations. However the implementation of sustainable development has proven problematic due to definitional problems, institutional constraints and unresponsive socio-political systems. This paper examines the mechanisms through which an aspatial policy such as the Australian Government’s National Strategy for Ecological Sustainable Development is reinterpreted through the recent spatial planning processes of Lower Hunter Regional Strategy. This paper applies the cultural sociology of space theoretical framework which considers the dialectical relationship between material practices and the symbolic meanings that people attach to their environment. The framework provides insights into how within this spatial planning process, through a combination of language and representation, spatial practices and power rationalities produce discourses and spaces. Applying the framework also shows how a desired “sustainable future” is achieved through the predominance of land development rationality.     

Bushfire and everyday life: Examining the awareness-action ‘gap’ in changing rural landscapes

In this paper we use the notion of ‘everyday life’ to critically examine an apparent ‘gap’ between bushfire risk awareness and preparedness amongst diverse landholders in rural landscapes affected by amenity-led in-migration in southeast Australia. Landholders were found to bring their own agency to bushfire preparedness in the relationships between everyday procedures, dilemmas, and tradeoffs. Consequently, regardless of landholders’ awareness levels, attitudes towards bushfire and natural resource management influence if, how, and to what extent landowners prepare for bushfires. We argue that not only is the ‘gap’ complex but also paradoxical in that it is both evident in, and constituted by, landholder attitudes and action and simultaneously dissolved in their practices and decision-making in everyday life. Three dilemmas of everyday life in particular were found to underpin these attitudes: costs (in terms of monetary and time values), gender roles, and priorities. Using a mixed-methods research approach, this simultaneous cultural construction and material nature of bushfire in everyday life is mapped out through landholders’ narratives and actions that embody living with fire on the land. The place of bushfire in landholders’ everyday life has direct relevance to recent international discussions of the vulnerability of the growing number of people living in bushfire-prone rural-urban interface areas.     

Exploring the ‘ethical everyday’: An ethnography of the ethics of family consumption

Using ethnographic research with six families in the North West of England (2007–2009), this paper opens up the ‘black box’ of everyday ethical consumption by adding colour and form to these everyday experiences. While recent geographical literature has recognised the ethical considerations that are implicit in everyday consumption practices, there is a noticeable void of research that explores and fleshes out the everyday ethical actions of individuals and families as consumers. By exploring the everyday ethics of money, waste and health choices in family consumption practices, this paper makes the case for recognising the ethical nature of everyday practices and choices of consumption. It is argued that rather than consumers subscribing to a given set of ethics in consumption, there are multiple ways of recognising consumption as an ethically-embedded process.     

Birds as lines: The production of alternative regimes of environmental management in the aftermath of a toxic disaster

This paper analyses how in the aftermath of one of the worst environmental disasters ever to occur in Spain – the Aznalcóllar Disaster – various environmentalist and conservationist groups mobilised migratory birds to bring new insights and the need for new precautions to the controversy elicited by the spill. The case study, thus, revolves around how environmentalists established a “hybrid collective action” to draw attention to unconsidered risks and impacts of the disaster and thereby make the case for open debate. Building upon this, I engage with two different, though interrelated, theoretical debates that contribute to a rethinking of environmental management (EM) as a social and materially situated practice. Drawing on the idea of “tactic” (De Certeau, 1984), I draw attention to the devices, actions and procedures that environmentalists carried out to resist attempts to minimise the spill and to undermine administrations’ assumptions of control, coherence and singularity associated the idea of management. Drawing on Tim Ingold’s latest work (2007, 2008, 2011), I analyse environmentalists’ most successful tactic: the enactment of migratory birds as “lines”. Together with other authors in this special issue, I will use this notion to make an argument against some of the assumptions of the “hybrid ontology”. In contrast to more essentialists and static notions of non-human agency and politics, the idea of line is particularly useful as a way of understanding how nature(s) can be effectuated differently and how this leads to the imagining of new regimes of cohabitation, human and non-human management and intervention.     

Performative justice: New directions in environmental and social justice

New explorations of justice are arising in the wake of post-structuralist and feminist critiques of abstract, generalized notions of justice in Western liberal democracies. These interventions are opening new avenues of study on discursive practices and performances that contest social and environmental injustices in everyday life. Feminist scholars argue for greater attention to the local and the particular, the embodied, gendered, emotion-based, ethnic subject of justice and injustice. Yet, limited research has been conducted on performative and performance-based relationships to justice, despite its potential to inform matters related the use and conservation of public goods and common spaces in everyday life. This critical review examines the notion of performativity and its application to justice, aiming to clarify and advance understanding and theorizing of a potentially valuable direction in environmental and social justice at the local level. We draw on Hobson’s articulation of performative justice, as it offers some useful insights into how injustices related to the appropriation of public green spaces agendas are being identified and new meanings are being constituted through local-level citizen practices. We argue, however, that such attempts appear to be identifying injustices and demonstrating the ‘what is’ of environmental and social justice, but not ‘what ought to be’. Directions for future research are offered, which include clarifying the application of performative theories to the study and practice of justice at the local level.     

Are we all environmentalists now? Rhetoric and reality in environmental action

Throughout the western world, public support for environmental protection measures has grown consistently during the past three decades. Endorsement for a wide array of measures to reduce the human impact on nature and conserve resources has been high among individuals in the UK, relating to a variety of environmental issues, such as transport, waste management, water quality and green consumerism. These stated concerns are somewhat in contrast to the behavioural responses which similar research projects have reported. This attitude-behaviour inconsistency, or more colloquially, the ‘value-action gap’, has become a major area of soul searching for policy makers who have used techniques such as contingent valuation and willingness to pay models to construct their policy measures. Accordingly, this paper presents an alternative means of investigating the attitude-behaviour inconsistency, with the use of research by social psychologists, sociologists and geographers. A framework of environmental behaviour is presented, so as to provide environmental researchers with a means of examining which variables modify the relationship between stated intention and action. The results indicate that whilst there is a moderately strong relationship between stated intention and behaviour, the factors influencing these two constructs are significantly different so as to suggest that public rhetoric towards environmental action may be influenced by different antecedents to that of actual behaviour. As such, the paper provides a fresh perspective on the difference between rhetoric and reality in environmental action.     

Re-thinking rural-amenity ecologies for environmental management in the Anthropocene

The migration of lifestyle-orientated landholders (amenity migrants) to rural landscapes is resulting in the production of new rural ecologies. To date, the future implications of these ecologies for environmental management have been framed largely in ‘traditional’ conservation biology terms, focusing on how we can conserve or restore natural environments to a past ecological benchmark. However, the Anthropocene provides an opportunity to critically examine how we can progress environmental management in a way that locates ecologies as emergent products of human–environment interaction through time. We extend from Tim Ingold’s work on wayfaring to position people and plants in environmental management as cohabitants who are traversing a world that is continually in the making. We conducted qualitative research in the hinterlands of Melbourne, Australia, involving narrative interviews with landholders and walking their property with them, using a form of participant observation called the ‘walkabout’ method. We found that the conservation aspirations of amenity migrants were mediated by the landscape histories that were embodied in the plants they engaged with on their property. These embodied landscape histories served to structure the trajectory of ecological emergence in which landholders were a part. We develop the concept of ‘landscape legacy’ to explain how past actions and future aspirations come together in management practice to produce novel and often unanticipated ecologies. Landscape legacy grounds the Anthropocene in everyday environments, capturing the need to progress environmental management as a wild experiment in rural-amenity landscapes, focusing on ecological form, function, relationship and process.     

Asymmetry in an uneven place: migrants’ lifestyles,social capital,and self-rated health status in James Town,Accra

This exploratory study examines how migrants’ lifestyles are associated with subjective assessment of their health status in a relatively poor urban neighborhood in Accra. For more than half a century, urban centers have been on the receiving end of internal migrants in Ghana with Accra, Kumasi, and Sekondi-Takoradi receiving the lion’s share. However, a lot of migrants end up in poor neighborhoods due to inability to afford relatively costly rents in the better residential areas in the cities. Migrants who live on the margins of society are adversely impacted by poor environmental conditions that make them susceptible to environmentally-induced diseases such as malaria, cholera, and typhoid. While the poverty, health, and place research in Accra, Ghana, have focused on spatial distribution of inequalities in health, burden of sexual ill health, double burden of diseases, environment, wealth and health relationship, as well as income and health connections, there is paucity of research on association between the daily lifestyles of migrants in poor urban neighborhoods and their health status. Specifically on lifestyle and contextual factors, we examine (1) eating and drinking behavior, (2) perception of environmental factors, (3) attitudes and practices during illnesses, and (4) physical activities. Results from Ordinal Logit Regression models suggest that the key predictors of self-rated health status are: (1) socio-demographic elements like length of stay, job type, and religiosity; and (2) eating and drinking behavior—frequency of buying food from food vendors, and (3) social capital.     

Dimensions of environmental justice in anti-gold mining movements in Latin America

The present article examines two Latin American gold mining conflicts, one in the city of Esquel (Patagonia in Argentina) and the other in Pascua–Lama (Chilean border with Argentina). We identify the emergence of three dimensions of environmental justice (distribution, recognition, participation) in the anti-mining movements of these two cases. The study finds that some dimensions of justice appear first (participation and recognition), while distribution emerges later, as movements jump scales engaging with national and international networks that provide a systemic perspective of the conflicts. The findings are consistent with other studies that refer to environmental justice as multi-scalar and context related. We also point to the relevance of studying decision-making procedures and jumping scales to understand how environmental justice claims are framed in resource extraction conflicts.     

Rising to the challenge of environmental behaviour change: Developing a reflexive diary approach

The relationship between expressed attitudes and actual behaviour in the context of sustainable development is complex and difficult to apply in a policy-relevant manner. The household, however, represents a key ‘lens’ for understanding the environmental impact of consumption patterns and for instigating policy designed to change consumer behaviour. This paper assesses the use of a household diary approach as a means of framing and collecting household environmental data, and, critically, as an educational vehicle for bringing about behavioural change by encouraging reflexivity. Evaluating the success of the diary approach at instigating behavioural change, the paper concludes that the diary approach: (1) created awareness about pro-environmental behaviour where there was none; (2) extended existing awareness to a wider range of pro-environmental behaviours and range of household members, and; (3) induced change in pro-environmental behaviour. In particular, the paper argues that current research neglects the potential that participating in the research process may contribute to changing the outlook or behaviour of participants.     

Standardizing sustainable development? The Forest Stewardship Council’s plantation policy review process as neoliberal environmental governance

Trans-nationally-scaled, multi-stakeholder, non-governmental product certification systems are emerging as important elements of neoliberal environmental governance. However, analysts question the extent to which they represent effective alternatives to the damaging impacts of neoliberalized, global production. They call for work examining the environmental politics arising in these new arenas of regulation, where social movements advocating environmental conservation and social justice interact with business interests in debates over how to use neoliberal tools to govern global commodity chains. This article examines The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) process to revise tree plantation certification standards. First, it considers the political process surrounding standard-setting and argues that tensions between rigor, legitimacy, and acceptability restrain the political struggles over standards within voluntary, multi-stakeholder environmental governance organizations. It proffers findings at odds with the expectation that mainstreaming diminishes the rigor of social and environmental standards. Second, it speculates on the implications of this form of neoliberal environmental governance for promoting more sustainable productions of nature. The review process failed to adequately consider the role of plantation certification in strategies for natural forest conservation. Neither did it adequately consider vital questions of the appropriate scale and location of production, the community actors best suited to deliver both forest conservation and poverty alleviation, or the need to encourage reduced consumption. The reliance on a neoliberal framework and values limits the scope of action. These contradictions suggest that FSC certification is an important part of what needs to be a broader movement questioning current practices of environmentally damaging production and complicit, complacent, consumption.