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.     

Making territory through infrastructure: The governance of natural gas transit in Europe

Recent political and military events in Ukraine have brought into sharp focus concerns over the security of European gas supplies from Russia. At the same time, the creation of an infrastructural and political ‘energy union’ has become a key stated priority for the governing bodies of the European Union. Both contingencies have highlighted the 28-nation bloc’s dependence on energy sources well beyond its state boundaries, underpinned by the existence of a transnational network for the transport and distribution of natural gas. We develop a theoretical framework predicated upon assemblage and governance approaches to explore the regulatory practices and spatial features associated with this hitherto largely unexplored infrastructural realm. Qualitative evidence from interviews, policy documents and media reports is interrogated interpretively and with the aid of social network analysis techniques. The paper reveals the existence of a socio-technical assemblage for the transmission of natural gas across national boundaries emerging as a result of the erosion of decision-making power away from established state actors, and the rise of new institutional orders. While undermining the organizational arrangements that have traditionally dominated the European gas sector, these contingencies also challenge existing understandings of transnational energy governance as they apply to overland gas transit.     

Landscape governance: The “politics of scale” and the “natural” conditions of places

Governance has become an iridescent concept in recent years. The term is widely used in almost all social-science disciplines as well as in the political process. The intention of this paper is not so much to clarify these sometimes vague meanings but to highlight some characteristics of environmental governance connected with the restructuring of the spatial dimensions of politics. It starts from the assumption that the quest for multi-level decision making is particularly pressing for environmental governance. However, multi-level governance raises concern about the constitution of various spatial levels and their relationships with each other, as discussed under the term of “politics of scale”. Moreover, it is argued that for environmental governance the spatial reference is strongly connected with another challenge, which concerns the question of how to deal with the biophysical conditions of particular places. The term landscape governance is introduced to tackle this question without referring to an ontologically given space. Thus, landscape governance deals with the interconnections between socially constructed spaces (the politics of scale) and “natural” conditions of places. For this task, the concept of societal relationships with nature is introduced and applied to the term “landscape” as a bridging concept between social and natural sciences. The paper illustrates the approach of landscape governance with examples of problem-oriented interdisciplinary research at the UFZ-Centre for Environmental research in Leipzig, Germany.     

Tradeoffs in carbon commodification: A political ecology of common property forest governance

Carbon markets have gained traction worldwide as an ostensibly win–win solution to climate change, providing low-cost emission reductions in the Global North and sustainable development in the Global South. However, sustainable development and livelihood co-benefits have largely failed to materialize in a range of carbon offset projects, particularly those in forest communities. While some scholars explain this failure as an outcome of fundamental tradeoffs between market efficiency and sustainable development, others argue that institutions of common property land tenure can resolve tradeoffs and generate important co-benefits for local communities. Using a political ecology approach, integrating insights of Karl Polanyi and Noel Castree on the commodification of nature and evidence from a carbon forestry project in Chiapas, Mexico, this article grapples with the ways in which carbon market requirements shape forest governance within common property tenure arrangements. I argue that the centralization of forest governance and decision making into the hands of project implementers and brokers, the necessity for legible land rights and boundaries, and the technical requirements for measurement, calculation, and monitoring of carbon have reshaped forest governance in ways that have undermined the social and ecological benefits often associated with common property management schemes. This research therefore demonstrates that so-called tradeoffs between market efficiency and equitable sustainable development goals may not be inherent to carbon forestry and calls into question the reliance on disembedding market mechanisms for climate change mitigation in forest ecosystems. As such, this work has important implications for REDD+.     

Governing jurisdictional fragmentation: Tracing patterns of water governance in Ontario,Canada

This article examines how jurisdictional fragmentation has been addressed in Ontario’s governance of the Great Lakes Basin from 1912 to 2012. The water resources literature has frequently lamented fragmentation in water governance and called for integration; however, it infrequently specifies how and what to integrate. By examining key moments in water quality and quantity governance, this study provides insight on how the presence or absence of particular institutional arrangements in the context of jurisdictional fragmentation produced different governance patterns and outcomes. Specifically, to determine governance patterns the study focused on four elements: an institution that facilitates coordination, agreement on roles and responsibilities, agreement on the issue management plan, and the scope of the issue. Combinations of these elements can produce governance patterns that are cooperative, conflictual or reactive and outcomes that are innovative, stagnant, or piecemeal. The study results suggest that when governing in the context of jurisdictional fragmentation efforts may best be directed at particular institutional arrangements. Further, it suggests that jurisdictional fragmentation be understood as a feature of the institutional complexity of water management that can be mobilized to develop unique solutions to multi-scalar water governance challenges.     

Private agri-food governance and greenhouse gas abatement: Constructing a corporate carbon economy

Private sector actors are playing an increasingly significant role in the definition and governance of ‘sustainable’ agri-food practices. Yet, to date little attention has been paid by social scientists to how greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are addressed as part of private agri-food governance arrangements. This paper examines how private actors within agri-food supply chains respond to emerging pressure for measures to reduce GHG emissions from agriculture. Drawing upon the Anglo-Foucauldian governmentality literature, we introduce the notion of the corporate carbon economy to conceptualise the practical techniques that enable private agri-food actors to make GHG emissions thinkable and governable in the context of existing market, regulatory, and supply chain pressures. Using a case study of the Australian dairy industry, we argue that private agri-food actors utilise a range of techniques that enable them to respond to existing government environmental regulations, balance current market pressures with future supply chain requirements, and demonstrate improved eco-efficiency along food supply chains. These techniques – which include environmental self-assessment instruments, tools for measuring GHG emissions, and sustainability reporting – have little direct relevance to the ‘international climate regime’ of carbon trading, and carbon markets more broadly, yet individually and in combination they are crucial in enacting an alternative regime of GHG governance. In concluding, we contend that the growing use of sustainability metrics by international food companies is likely to have the most powerful implications for GHG governance in the agri-food sector, with potentially far-reaching consequences for how future action on climate change is rendered thinkable and practicable.     

Institutionalising IWRM in developing and transition countries: the case of Mongolia

Integrated water resources management (IWRM) forms the widely accepted ecosystem approach to managing water and its related resources in a sustainable way. Nevertheless, its implementation is still lagging behind, especially in developing and transition countries which are often short of essential resources and face complex political dynamics. IWRM often requires a fundamental realignment of governance structures. This may lead to problems of fit and institutional interplay as particular challenges of multi-level governance. Against this background, a case study of Mongolia was carried out, a transition country suffering from extreme climatic conditions and increasing depletion of its resources. While an attempt to introduce IWRM exists on paper, it is less clear how it will be made politically and institutionally applicable. A document review and stakeholder interviews were carried out to understand the progress and problems of introducing IWRM in Mongolia in the face of its transition and decentralisation process. Problems of fit and interplay—which are in part results of the transformation—were identified, as well as the approaches for their solution. Attempts are underway to overcome problems of fit such as the establishment of river basin councils which are presently facing the challenges concerning their room for manoeuvre. Problems of interplay arise when it comes to the cooperation and coordination of numerous water-related organisations which often lead to inconsistent water governance.     

Contested claims over space and identity between fishers and the oil industry in Mexico

This essay examines neoliberal forms of resource governance and emerging struggles over control of sea space between coastal fishers, the para-statal oil industry and government authorities in the State of Tabasco, Mexico. The analysis focuses on the changing mechanisms of resource governance and networking related to contested claims over rights to offshore space. The study is based on material collected during ethnographic field research in Tabasco in 2011–2014. By linking a post-Foucauldian approach to governmentality with a Deleuzian perspective on networks, our research examines resource governance as a socio-political arena, constructed in negotiation between multiple governmental, private and civil society actors, including heterogeneous groups from local populations. The study demonstrates how hybrid techniques of resource governance lead to fishers’ socio-spatial displacement, marginalization in the fields of political representation and subjection to ideas of aquaculture entrepreneurship. The ensemble of private regulation and governmental control provides a venue for drawing fishers into clientelist practices of governing while it diffuses questions of responsibility. These modes of governance fragment the fishers’ efforts to mobilize politically, making them rely on less visible networks of contestation shaped by heterogeneous fishing groups, with varying access to resources and political representation. Recent transformations in environmental legislation and the fishers’ mobile tactics of networking may offer opportunities for them to reclaim their resource rights.     

Europeanizing Timisoara: neoliberal reforms, continuity with the past, and unexpected side effects

This paper analyzes how processes of Europeanization opened up opportunities and generated ideals, which in turn changed the articulation between political and economic powers in the city and county of Timisoara, Western Romania. It builds on case studies of local government agencies and foreign investors from Italy. In doing so, it discusses the circular relationship between the European and the local levels of governance: European governance affected the interactions between firms and institutions in the city, while at the same time city authorities used different understandings of ‘Europe’ to pursue their own agenda. It also shows some of the unexpected side-effects of Europeanization, due to the political activism of Italian investors. Beck and Grande’s concept of ‘reflexive modernization’ and the literature on regional economies frame the discussion.     

Volume control: Stormwater and the politics of urban metabolism

This paper engages with emergent conceptualizations of political–industrial ecology to understand the politics surrounding how the volume, composition, and material throughput of stormwater in Los Angeles is calculated and applied by experts. The intent is to examine the unfolding relationship between the volume and material flow of stormwater, and the social, political, and technical practices involved in identifying stormwater as a new and underutilized water resource. Specifically, it seeks to understand how the active processes of calculating the metabolic inflows and outflows of stormwater in Los Angeles serve as a way for the city to render value and meaning to the flows of stormwater. I suggest that the ways urban metabolisms are calculated reflect a volumetric approach to environmental governance that serves to achieve certain political goals. I refer to this type of governance as volume control—a way of organizing technopolitical interventions around overcoming problems related to the volume of resources flowing and circulating into, through, and out of cities and industrial systems. I argue that understanding this form of governance relies on taking a political–industrial ecology approach that accounts for both the social and material dimensions of resource flows. While the categories and motivations of stormwater governance remain contested over time and space, it is shown that stormwater in Los Angeles needs to be understood in relation to the ecological systems and scientific, political, and cultural practices designed to make it into a resource and align with existing patterns of growth and development.     

New Europe; a political geography of fragmented unity

The Europe of the European Union has an ever more important set of policy arenas at the European level, still strong states, and a series of strong regions that put their demands on the table. The EU is deeply involved in its immediate surroundings and it acts in conjunction with member states in global policy forums. Europe is an unprecedented example of multi-level, multi-sector governance. Europe has been politically re-ordered on a number of occasions and this is one of them. In the current debate abundant use is made of historical examples. The new Europe is in need of institutional re-structuring. Following the traditions of European cooperation this is very slow in coming. Geographers should particularly be concerned with the consequences of terrioriality at several scales simultaneously.     

Building deliberative public-private partnerships for waste management in Asia

Public-private partnerships in environmental policy should not simply be viewed in instrumental terms as means of providing environmental infrastructure and services, but also as sites where norms of environmental concern and political accountability are formulated and replicated. Deliberative public-private partnerships--or partnerships that allow greater public participation in the formulation of these norms--may therefore become an important new form of local environmental governance and help make partnerships more relevant to local environmental needs. This paper examines case studies of public-private partnerships in waste-to-energy projects in the Philippines and India to identify how principles of institutional design may enhance the deliberative nature of public-private partnerships in environmental policy. The paper argues that current approaches to deliberative, or cooperative environmental governance concerning public-private partnerships need to acknowledge insights from network theory concerning the communication of environmental and political norms before they can be successfully transferred to developing countries.     

Underground political ecologies: The second Annual Lecture of the Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers

Based on the 2011 Annual Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group Lecture, this paper makes the case for a political ecology of the subsoil. Arguing that subsoil resources have received comparatively little attention within the wider corpus of political ecological writing, the paper explores several ways in which the extraction of mineral and hydrocarbon resources is constitutive of, and constituted by, wider capitalist political, economic and institutional arrangements. Drawing on material from El Salvador and the Andean countries, the paper explores the contemporary governance of extractive industries, and points to significant convergence among the approaches taken by neoliberal and ostensibly post-neoliberal regimes alike. The intersections between the extractive economy, livelihoods and patterns of social protest are also explored. Through these examples, the paper also highlights the ways in which “activist political ecologists” play important roles in counter-movements seeking to re-govern the extractive economy. These countermovements are found in both civil society and different parts of the state. Such activist political ecologists are central to the broader enterprise of an “underground political ecology” and are often vital to the success of scholarly interventions in such political ecologies.     

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.     

Substitution and scalar politics: negotiating environmental compensation in Cardiff Bay

One of the most contested dimensions of sustainable development is the issue of substitutability--the extent to which environmental qualities can be substituted, either for human-made assets, or for some equivalent environmental function. The main argument of this paper is that dominant economic discourses of sustainability neglect long-standing geographical concerns with scale, embeddedness and abstraction that are inevitably embroiled in the practical negotiation of substitutability. In particular, it seeks to demonstrate how relations of ecological and political scale frame the ‘decision space’ within which debates about substitution take place. These arguments are developed by analysing conflicts over the development of an amenity barrage across the Taff-Ely estuary in Cardiff, South Wales, and the provision of new wetlands to compensate for the resulting loss of wildlife habitat. This case shows that the scale at which environmental ‘assets’ are constructed--whether local, national or global--can reveal or obscure distributive effects incurred in maintaining environmental capital through compensatory measures. It also demonstrates how the re-scaling of governance arrangements (in this case to the European Commission) can empower the delivery of environmental management measures but simultaneously re-structures the objects of sustainability, rendering habitats and wildlife populations as disembedded symbols.     

A no-camp policy: Interrogating informal settlements in Lebanon

As fewer refugees move into formal camps, what kinds of non-camp spaces are emerging and how does that challenge the ways in which we understand the management and politics of refuge? This paper seeks to shed light on this question through an analysis of informal settlements in Lebanon. The Syrian crisis has displaced millions of people, most of whom have moved into neighbouring countries such as Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. The Lebanese government, faced with a longer history of Palestinian camps and their militarization has refused to allow the establishment of official refugee camps for Syrians. As a result of this ‘no camp’ policy, Syrians are forced to either live in private rented accommodation in towns and cities throughout the country, or in informal settlements (ISes) built on private, often agricultural land. These informal settlements are built and developed through a complex assemblage of humanitarianism, hospitality, security, economic and political considerations. In this paper, I look at the physical and social spaces of informal settlements in the Bekaa Valley, Eastern Lebanon, examining how differential access to aid, support, security and tacit recognition by the state has led to variations amongst them. In doing so, I expose how an informalized response to the crisis through a system of deregulation is enabling refugee spaces to emerge that are visible, yet unrecognized, flexible, yet precarious. These spaces destabilize the city/camp dichotomy by drawing together elements of both. In engaging with debates on informality, the paper contributes to a growing critical literature on refugee geographies and seeks to expand beyond the reductive narratives of refugee camps, thereby offering insights into refugee futures in increasingly uncertain times.     

Climate adaptation at what scale? Multi-level governance,resilience, and coproduction in Saint Louis,Senegal

Natural Hazards - This paper utilizes a multi-level governance framework to explain how and at what scale climate adaptation, exemplified by flood risk management, was governed in the medium-scale...     

Amenity migration: diverse conceptualizations of drivers,socioeconomic dimensions,and emerging challenges

Rural communities throughout the postindustrial world are in the midst of a significant transition, sometimes referred to as rural restructuring, as traditional land uses, economic activities, and social arrangements transition to those associated with “post-productivist” or “multifunctional” landscapes. Amenity migration, the movement of people based on the draw of natural and/or cultural amenities, can be thought of as both driver and implication of this transition, resulting in significant changes in the ownership, use, and governance of rural lands, as well as in the composition and socioeconomic dynamics of rural communities. In concert with other social, economic and political processes, amenity migration is contributing to the fundamental transformation of rural communities throughout the world. This paper presents a review of the social science literature related to the concept of amenity migration, focusing on the ways in which it has been conceptualized, theorized, and documented by different communities of scholars. We then profile and summarize diverse perspectives on drivers and socioeconomic impacts, highlighting emerging challenges and opportunities related to this type of migration occurring at multiple scales and in multiple sites. The paper also identifies and discusses particular areas where further research is needed.     

Religion and governmentality: Understanding governance in urban Brazil

In this paper I argue that geographies of religion are fundamental to understanding governance and social order in contemporary urban space. More specifically, I show how Foucault’s notion of governmentality characterizes regimes of power beyond the state apparatus, positing that religion and churches also produce and maintain the knowledges, truths, and social order associated with governmentality and self-regulated governance. By considering the geography of religion literature within the context of Foucualt’s work, I illustrate the importance of religious and spiritual practices to contemporary urban space, and the roles they play in producing and maintaining governance and socio-political order. My purpose is not to suggest that governmentality has been misapplied as a theoretical tool for understanding the state and political power, but to show how the term actually describes power more generally, including spiritual moments in addition to political ones. Drawing from my case study in Fortaleza, Brazil, I substantiate my theoretical argument using empirical examples, showing how governmentality is produced through religion and churches and the relationship between spiritual practices and governance in everyday space.     

State rescaling and new metropolitan space in the age of austerity. Evidence from Italy

This article presents the changes that are emerging in the Italian national policies mainly through the discussion of the contents both of the recent metropolitan reform initiative, and the national programming documents for metropolitan cities related to European Programming period 2014–2020. In Italy, which faced severe political difficulty and economic stagnation after 2008 global crisis, the production of the new metropolitan scale became one of the tools for the implementation of austerity measures. The paper examines whether the understanding of the new metropolitan scale in the Italian geography of austerity can be strengthened through a careful engagement with the body of literature on state rescaling and on austerity policies. The paper illustrates how that the apparently neutral emphasis on metropolitan city scale, first can be understood as a crucial tool of an austerity measures; second, it implies a rescaling of public power and, third, it neglects the multifaceted notion of the urban and the trans-scalar territorial governance relationships.