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.     

Sustainable lifestyles: Framing environmental action in and around the home

This paper examines the nature of environmental action in and around the home. Given the rise of local sustainable development and the emphasis placed on individual actions for sustainability, the paper examines the role of citizens in adopting sustainable lifestyles, incorporating a range of behavioural responses from energy saving and water conservation, to waste recycling and green consumption. Focussing on the debate in geography concerning the engagement of the public in environmental action, the paper argues that despite the assertions of those who advocate a deliberative approach to engagement (see [Owens, S., 2000. Engaging the public: information and deliberation in environmental policy. Environment and Planning A 32, 1141–1148]), an approach based on a social–psychological understanding of behaviour can have significant benefits. Such an approach is being developed by geographers in a range of settings and in this paper these developments are situated within the context of existing research that has identified environmental ‘activists’ in terms of their values, attitudes and demographic composition. The paper aims to examine environmental behaviour in relation to two key issues: (1) the way in which environmental action is framed in everyday practices (such as consumption behaviour) and (2) how these practices are reflected amongst different segments of the population to form lifestyle groups. The paper provides new insights for examining sustainable lifestyles that further our appreciation of how actions to help the environment are lived in everyday practices and framed by different lifestyle groups. Accordingly, the paper offers both academics and policy makers new insights into the potential use of focussing on lifestyle groups as a means for changing behaviour.     

Contesting sustainable development in Tierra del Fuego

Despite wide ranging interpretations of the concept of sustainable development there is growing consensus about the ecological, social, and economic conditions necessary to foster a sustainability transition. In addition to quantitative assessments of sustainability indicators, qualitative process indicators are being identified. For example, active, democratic, and inclusive decision-making are shown to lead to more informed decisions and, presumably, more sustainable use systems. The creation of these conditions, however, often requires bridging lack of mutual trust and scientific uncertainty. And while the ideals of sustainable development suggest that all stakeholders get what they want, without compromise nothing approaching sustainable development is attainable. Obstructing compromise, environmental ideology represents a key remaining hurdle to achieving a middle ground in environment and development debates. In the 1990s, the US-based Trillium Corporation sought to implement a large-scale logging project in Tierra del Fuego, Chile, but was rebuffed by environmentalists who embraced ecotourism as the preferred development option. The case is analyzed in the context of calls to reconsider conceptually nature-society relationships and ideas in sustainability science about which land management systems best match sustainability goals. Findings show that the decision-making process for determining whether or not to implement the logging project was flawed. We explore two implications. First, achieving sustainable development requires a consensus view of nature-society relationships that embraces humanized landscapes. Second, inclusive and effective decision-making about sustainable development necessitates free and open exchange of information, collective learning about regional environment and development, and the identification of compromise positions.     

Towards sustainable agriculture in post-apartheid South Africa

This paper assesses the possibility of sustainable agriculture in South Africa in the context of recent policy initiatives. The new environmental strategy for agriculture represents a significant break with policy initiatives developed during apartheid. The likelihood of sustainable farming practices being adopted in South Africa will, however, face at least three obstacles. These are the integrated structure of industrial farming, the concern over yields, and current political and economic changes in South African agriculture. It is argued that sustainable techniques are unlikely to develop in the large scale farming sector in the near future. If the considerable research and extension resources of the state are reoriented quickly enough, sustainable farming methods can be embraced by an emerging class of black commercial farmers.     

Situated justice in environmental decision-making: Lessons from river management in Southeastern Australia

The practical application of environmental justice in natural resource management depends upon moving beyond generic principles to situated understanding. This understanding in turn requires knowledge of both historical and geographical contexts, including how decision-making frameworks develop and the nature of the biophysical environment itself. This paper examines these requirements based on case material from the Hunter Valley, New South Wales. In the Hunter Valley, the colonial history of river management was one of the creation, and subsequent inclusion and exclusion, of particular ‘stakes’ from the decision-making process, resulting in a narrowly defined ‘community of justice’ that became institutionalised at the catchment scale. However, even within this restricted community, distributive injustices occurred due to a failure of policy to engage with environmental variability at both spatial and temporal scales. This combination of procedural injustice and environmental variability also resulted in ecological injustice - that is a disconnected or even antagonistic human-nature relationship that restricted the opportunity to redress the severe degradation of riverine ecosystems that had occurred since European settlement. In the light of these examples, broader challenges in the application of environmental justice to river management are explored in terms of ecological complexity and contested perceptions of environmental health. Based on this material, a historically and geographically situated, ecologically informed vision of environmental justice is proposed as an essential part of sustainable river management.     

Sustainable indigenous futures in remote Indigenous areas: relationships, processes and failed state approaches

In many Indigenous territories, continuing processes of primitive accumulation driven by governments?? claims to resources and territory simultaneously deny Indigenous rights and insist on market forces as the foundation for economic and social futures in Indigenous domains. Drawing on research in North Australia, this paper identifies the erasure of Indigenous governance, the development of wickedly complex administrative systems, continuing structural and procedural racism and state hostility to Indigenous rights as constructing Indigenous vulnerability to poverty, addiction and underdevelopment. Shaping sustainable Indigenous futures in remote areas that are characterised by long-term development failure requires rethinking of remote local and regional economic relationships. Recognising remote regional economies as hybrid economies that rely on environmental, social and cultural wealth is an important first step in reorienting policy settings. It is also crucial that we acknowledge sustainable Indigenous futures cannot arise from policy interventions that rely on creating wealth for state and corporate appropriation and assume enough of this wealth can be redistributed to local Indigenous communities to constitute ??development??. Politically constructed crisis interventions, such as Australia??s recent actions in remote Northern Territory communities, represent a failure of state relationships rather than an appropriate and sustainable response to the challenge of Indigenous vulnerability. This paper argues that attention to Indigenous rights and development of good relationships and good processes of governance, autonomy and responsibility within communities as well as between them and governments is fundamental to sustainable Indigenous futures. Without this, neither government programs nor large-scale natural resource-based development projects can deliver sustainable futures for remote Indigenous groups.     

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.     

The impact of decentralised forest management on charcoal production practices in Eastern Senegal

In accordance with Senegal’s decentralisation policy, important forest management tasks, including the right to allocate charcoal production rights, have been transferred to rural councils. This paper investigates the impact of these institutional reforms on charcoal production practices using the environmental entitlement framework developed by Leach et al. [Environmental entitlements: dynamics and institutions in community-based natural resource management. World Development 27 (2) (1999) 225]. The councils have not been able to turn their new endowments into entitlements because they lack sufficient strength and legitimacy. Informal institutions, notably the coalition between merchants, state agents and village chiefs, continue to run the charcoal business and are hardly affected by decentralisation efforts. Most rural people, especially those relying solely on agriculture for sustenance, do not benefit at all from the charcoal trade. They do suffer from the environmental costs it brings with it, however. Although tensions between pro-exploitation actors and pro-conservation actors are evident, the pro-exploitation actors’ firm grip on the informal institutions will probably lead to a prolonged subversion of the laws that seek to enhance local control and to sustain the forest.     

Something in the Air: Civic science and contentious environmental politics in post-apartheid South Africa

The emergence of an environmental movement in post-apartheid South Africa has involved the reframing of the environment as a ‘brown’ issue, articulating the discourse of social and environmental justice and a rights-based notion of democracy. Environmental movements have pursued a dual strategy of deliberation and activist opposition. Environmental movements have deployed science to pursue the strategic task of democratic opposition and have established networks of environmental knowledge and expertise. Ecological modernization is the dominant approach to environmental governance and adopts a science-based policy approach. In this context the regulation and management of the environment is premised on the need for science, which provides the authoritative basis for a regulatory response. In local environmental movements, there exists a fundamental tension between a cumulative history of lay knowledge about pollution and the lack of official acknowledgement of qualitative narratives. This is accompanied by a lack and suspicion of reliable official data. Environmental movements have thus employed ‘civic science’ strategically to place the issue of air pollution on the political agenda. This paper uses the case of environmental politics in Durban to reflect on the ways in which civic science and lay knowledge, together constituting community hybrid knowledge, are produced and disseminated in order to pressure the state and capital. The three ways in which knowledge is deployed are: to frame environmental problems, in strategies of oppositional advocacy, and in deliberative policy forums. Empirical analysis shows that civic science is produced through knowledge networks, and both lay knowledge and civic science are opportunistically used by environmental movements to engage both inside and outside formal policy making arenas. This deployment of hybrid knowledge by environmental movements represents a broader challenge to the power of science and technology based on increasing evidence of the hazards and risks facing ordinary people in their daily lives.     

Place and the implications of ‘the local’ for sustainability: an investigation of the Ugu District Municipality in South Africa

Sustainable development is accepted worldwide as a programme for the improvement of human-environment relations. It has been argued that the local level is the optimum level at which to implement sustainability. However, variability of local characteristics problematises this process as engagements with the principles and practices of sustainable development in unique places are likely to result in varying interpretations of the internationally accepted discourses of sustainable development. In order to assess local level interpretations of sustainability [Sharp, L., 1999. Local policy for the global environment: in search of a new perspective. Environmental Politics 8 (4), 137-159] calls for a more contextual analysis of the relationship between sustainability and the local level.This paper evaluates the interpretations of sustainability that were evident in a capacity building workshop in the Ugu District Municipality on the south coast of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa through consideration of the context in which they emerged. The notion of place as a construction of social and spatial interrelations, the social relations of power within places and the environmental discourses through which debates over sustainability often occur have been used in this study to consider how unequal power relations and the process of political and social transition taking place within the Ugu District Municipality drive the social construction of sustainability agendas. Consequently, the case study draws attention to the need to consider the ways in which local contexts set the terms for interpretations of sustainability as these conceptualizations can direct actions for sustainability and may interrelate to assist or hinder the implementation of local level sustainability plans.     

Public participation in China’s green communities: Mobilizing memories and structuring incentives

In recent years, there has been heightened interest in creating more environmentally sustainable forms of urban development in China. Central in these greening initiatives has been increased attention on promoting public participation in community-based environmental activities. Focusing on China’s green community initiatives, we examine the production and effects of participation in a state-led development program. Our analysis considers how incentives for program organizers and participants are structured by broader political and economic imperatives facing Chinese cities. We also consider what influence China’s history of neighborhood-based mobilization campaigns had on the meanings and methods of participation in green communities. To understand how urban development processes and memories of mobilization influence participation at the local level, we present two examples of the community greening process from the city of Guangzhou, comparing policy outcomes between a new and older neighborhood. This article seeks to demonstrate that the participatory processes associated with such an urban environmental initiative cannot be adequately understood without reference to earlier participatory practices and broader policy priorities guiding development in Chinese cities.     

Creating sustainable communities through tenure-mix: the responsibilisation of marginal homeowners in Scotland

The idea that the deprived communities of the UK’s towns and cities are ‘unsustainable’ has been a central theme of government housing policy since New Labour came into power in 1997. The creation of ‘mixed-tenure communities’ has been heralded by some policy makers as a key component of creating sustainable communities by overcoming concentrations of deprivation as well as creating responsible citizens who make few demands on the state. Since devolution, support for owner-occupation has been promoted by both Scottish Labour and SNP regimes as a regeneration tool, and has been included in the Local Housing Strategy of many local authorities in Scotland. Drawing on research in Glasgow, this paper achieves three things. First, it highlights the ethopolitics associated with the identities of owner-occupiers and social rented tenants as skilled or flawed consumers; second, it explores the tools used in recent years to create mixed communities through encouraging owner-occupation; and third, it questions the continued uncritical support of the insertion of owner-occupiers into deprived areas as a regeneration and responsiblisation tool.     

Confronting scale in watershed development in India

The issue of scale is examined in the context of a watershed development policy (WSD) in India. WSD policy goals, by improving the natural resource base, aim to improve the livelihoods of rural communities through increased sustainable production. It has generally been practiced at a micro-level of less than 500?ha, as this was seen to be a scale that would encourage participative management. There has been some concern that this land area may be too small and may lead to less than optimal hydrological, economic and equity outcomes. As a result there has been a move to create guidelines for meso-scale WSD of above 5,000?ha in an endeavour to improve outcomes. A multidisciplinary team was assembled to evaluate the proposed meso-scale approach. In developing an adequate methodology for the evaluation it soon became clear that scale in itself was not the only determinant of success. The effect of geographical scale (or level) on WSD is determined by the variation in other drivers that will influence WSD success such as hydrological conditions, land use and available institutional structures. How this should be interpreted at different levels in the light of interactions between biophysical and socio-economic scales is discussed.     

Global environmental sustainability: Intragenerational equity and conceptions of justice in multilateral environmental regimes

With specific focus on two environmental regimes (the Basel Convention on the Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and the Climate Change Convention), this paper seeks to indicate the prospects and limitations of the aspirations for distributive justice by the political South within the context of sustainability in general, and the institutions for global environmental governance in particular. It is argued that while these aspirations have produced important normative shifts in the rule-structure of global environmental management, they have not proved momentous enough to generate policies outside of what the prevailing neoliberal socio-economic regime might permit. Hence, although the texts of global environmental agreements accommodate concepts that express egalitarian notions of justice, core policies remain firmly rooted in market-based neoliberal interpretations of justice, which mainly serve to sustain the status quo.     

‘Think globally,act locally’: sustainable communities,modernity and development

This article sets out to explore the political relationship between the global and the local through the prism of the sustainable development. The ideal of sustainable communities is explored in the context of evolving political fictions that define alternative conceptions of modernity. While the article uses Ireland (reputedly the most globalised society in the world) as a microcosm of development, the context is firmly located within the wider sphere of European and planetary politics. It is argued that the ideal of sustainable communities offers the opportunity of reviving the civic republican tradition of democracy (the Ancient Greek agora) as a metaphor for the public sphere in the conditions of late modern society. The agora in Ancient Greece provided a site of political assembly, based upon participation (citizens’ engagement in decision-making) and deliberation (a process of reached argument). Today, concepts such as ‘participatory civility’ and ‘discursive democracy’ seek to revive these classical ideals, as the basis for building sustainable communities in a transforming modernity that searches for a new logic of development.     

当前国际环境地质工程(环境岩土工程)研究的热点领域及其相关技术

当前环境地质工程(或称环境岩土工程)(EnvironmentalGeotechnology)国际学术讨论会的频繁召开, 反映了世界各国对解决环境问题的迫切愿望, 预示着一个世纪性的环境地质工程研究热潮已经到来。结合我国的国情分析这些会议所研讨的内容, 将有助于提高对当前环境地质工程热点研究领域的认识, 从而在解决国家所面临的环境问题及经济社会可持续发展中发挥应有的作用。本文是作者对当前国际环境地质工程(环境岩土工程)研究热点领域及其相关技术的集成。由于环境问题的广泛性, 对于国内的传统环境工程地质和地质灾害内容不加重复, 但它们同样重要。     

The political ecology of ecosystem services

The dominance of “ecosystem services” as a guiding concept for environmental management – where it appears as a neutral, obvious, taken-for-granted concept – hides the fact that there are choices implicit in its framing and in its application. In other words, it is a highly political concept, and its utility depends on the arena in which it is used and what it is used for. Following a political ecology framework, and based on a literature review, bibliometric analyses, and brief examples from two tropical rainforest countries, this review investigates four moments in the construction and application of the ecosystem services idea: socio-historical (the emergence of the discourse), ontological (what knowledge does the concept allow?), scientific (difficulties in its practical application), and political (who wins, who loses?). We show how the concept is a boundary object with widespread appeal, trace the discursive and institutional context within which it gained traction, and argue that choices of scale, definition, and method in measuring ecosystem services frustrate its straightforward application. As a result, it is used in diverse ways by different interests to justify different kinds of interventions that at times might be totally opposed. In Madagascar, the ecosystem services idea is mainly used to justify forest conservation in ways open to critique for its neoliberalization of nature or disempowerment of communities. In contrast, in the Brazilian Amazon, the discourse of ecosystem services has served the agendas of traditional populations and family farm lobbies. Ecosystem services, as an idea and tool, are mobilized by diverse actors in real-life situations that lead to complex, regionally particular and fundamentally political outcomes.     

Vernacular heritage and evolving environmental policy in Australia: Lessons from the Murray–Darling Outreach Project

The interface between environmentalism and neoliberalism in industrialised nations is dynamic and evolving with each of these significant socio-political movements exerting influence on the other. In the context of Australian environmental policy, ideas of heritage, sense of place and belonging are increasingly invoked to support the current policy emphasis on the role of regional communities for realising goals for land and water conservation and environmental restoration. To explore the broader meaning and consequences of these developments, we focus on the manner in which ideas of heritage are employed and evoked within the Murray–Darling Outreach Project, a collaboration between the Murray–Darling Basin Commission, a key natural resource management agency, and the National Museum of Australia. The Murray–Darling Outreach Project has the aim of increasing community involvement in local environmental issues by promoting ideas of vernacular heritage.     

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.     

The myth of community and sustainable grassland management in China

Within national and international domestic academic circles, there are increasing calls for enhanced involvement of communities in formulating and implementing grassland management arrangements. In contrast to the current national policy of contracting grasslands to households, many scholars call for support for collective grassland use arrangements. Several reasons are given for increased recognition and support for community-based management of grasslands, including lower costs of exclusion and dispute resolution, economies of scale in herding and marketing, mitigation of environmental risk, and ensuring equitable access to grassland resources. One conclusion from this literature is that devolving authority for designing and implementing grassland management systems to communities would lead to more sustainable grassland use, a position that I term as the ‘myth of community.’ This paper presents the results of a study of grazing systems in two communities in Hongyuan County, Sichuan Province. Each community uses its grasslands collectively. However, the study found evidence of severe overgrazing, especially in winter pastures, suggesting that community-based management of grasslands is not necessarily sustainable. The paper discusses three potential policy innovations required to support sustainable grazing systems in China’s grassland areas: overcoming constraints in labor and land markets, and payments for environmental services that reward sustainable stocking levels.