Why are there cattle in the conservation area? Social barriers to biofuel governance in Brazil

Amid a rapid expansion of global investments in biofuels there has been an equally rapid proliferation of concerns about the inadequacies of current governance schemes to mitigate the environmental impacts of growing agroenergy production. Managing the land use practices of small producers in a way that ensures their activities are financially and environmentally sustainable is a particularly pressing issue that has been overlooked in research on biofuel governance. I illuminate these challenges through an ethnographic study on the multiple breakdowns of environmental governance in the Southern Goiás region of Brazil, a major expansion region for sugarcane ethanol production. I focus on one of the most pressing compliance issues among small and medium size sugarcane farmers; their persistent use of federally mandated conservation areas for cattle production. I find that while these transgressions are often perceived by administrators and officials as being the result of a lack of “environmental awareness” among rural farmers, they are better understood as a safety net to protect landowners against perceived risks of sugarcane production. These violations are further enabled by continuing ambiguity in the enforcement structure for conservation legislation in the region. Recalibrating regulatory systems to better address these issues of accountability and risk is a critical step toward improving environmental governance of global biofuel commodity chains.     

The neoliberalization of ecosystem services: wetland mitigation banking and problems in environmental governance

Wetland mitigation banking is an American neoliberal environmental policy that has created a functioning market in `ecosystem services', commodities defined using the holistic measures of ecological science. The development of this market is discussed as a project of environmental governance, defined as the nation-state's regulation of ecological relations within its territory towards stabilizing capitalist relations of power and accumulation. I argue that the wetland banking industry serves as a bellwether that presages problems that other strategies of neoliberal environmental governance will experience. Ethnographic, economic and ecological data from the Chicago-area wetland banking industry inform a discussion of two major obstacles to neoliberal strategy: the problem of relying on ecological science to define the unit of trade, and the problem of aligning the somewhat independent relations of law, politics, markets and ecosystems across an array of spatial scales. Theoretical guidance is sought from recent work on `social natures' and from the Regulationist approach to institutional political economics.     

Mega-RTAs and LDCs: Trade is not for the poor

Various upcoming large regional trade agreements dealing with new generation trade issues and involving the developed, as well as several emerging market developing economies, exclude the Least Developed Countries (LDCs). The LDCs are not strategically important enough for the other players to figure in these agreements. Nonetheless, these have important implications for the LDCs, particularly in terms of loss of preferential market access. Such preferential access, the paper argues, is likely to get confined to the WTO’s multilateral framework in the longer-term leaving LDCs little strategic economic space outside the WTO.     

Pudrición del Cogollo and the (post-)neoliberal ecological fix in Ecuador's palm oil industry

This paper examines the variegated natures of (post-)neoliberal environmental governance in Latin America using environmental crisis as an entry point. It examines the institutional measures put forth by Ecuador’s government, in concert with other actors, to contain and manage the damaging effects of an insidious palm oil plant disease known as Pudrición del Cogollo (PC). Using empirical data collected through qualitative means, my analysis demonstrates that nature’s biophysical processes – in particular, disease ecologies – can play a crucial role in the pursuit and achievement of national accumulation goals. Specifically, I argue that the ecologies of the PC crisis have been rendered functional to the Ecuadorian government’s current political and economic strategies of intensified accumulation and market competitiveness. By making environmental crisis the basis of key accumulation strategies, the state is able to convert negative environmental outcomes into opportunities for profit-generation. Utilizing the notion of the ‘ecological fix’, this paper reveals two major conclusions: (1) plant health emergencies and the actions used to mitigate environmental crises are not only challenges but opportunities that can be mobilized to support further accumulation strategies and (2) the study of PC and Ecuador’s palm oil industry provides new fruitful terrain to examine the connections between the deepening variegated effects of neoliberalism through nature and environmental crisis solutions in Latin America.     

The limits to good governance and the state of exception: A case study of North Sea fisheries

This paper explores a series of maxims, widely known in policy and academic circles as the ‘principles of good governance’, which state that policymaking in the European Union (EU) should be participatory, conducted as close to citizens as practicable, transparent, accountable, effective and coherent. These maxims were introduced into EU fisheries management as part of a radical reform of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) in 2002. This reform was instituted in response to criticisms of a prevailing management regime alleged to be inefficient, undemocratic, and potentially responsible for an environmental crisis: the exhaustion of key fish stocks. The research for this work has found that there are limits to the actual achievement of good governance in EU fisheries. In practice governance innovations are very often contradictory and rife with tensions. I reason that such problems result not merely from policy implementation failures; they constitute a more endemic feature of the CFP reforms. We can begin to understand these limits to good governance principles by looking to Agamben’s permanent state of exception thesis. Agamben’s theory helps to show how these contradictions and tensions occur under new governance regimes, because the relationship between democratic norms (like good governance) and political power is no longer clear. I argue that this blurring has been exploited by groups seeking influence in these new regimes. They do this through citing a supposed need for emergency measures to mitigate crisis. Although this research broadly supports the state of exception thesis, my analysis leads me to question some aspects of its application in contemporary governance spaces.     

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.     

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.     

Contested expectations: Trump International Golf Links Scotland,polarised visions,and the making of the Menie Estate landscape as resource

In initiating the development of a large-scale golf resort in Aberdeenshire, Trump International Golf Links Scotland made a relatively unknown site central to Scottish planning debates. A stretch of land along the North Sea coast north of Aberdeen became linked to new possible futures.Part of the site developed consisted of moving sand dunes given environmental protection as a Site of Special Scientific Interest and from the onset a heated debate has concerned the transformability of these dunes. The land was simultaneously seen as perfect for a golf resort of a scale previously unseen in the UK and as sensitive land threatened by the development. Proponents asserted that future economic benefits would outweigh any environmental impact. Opponents in turn contested such expectations through asserting other variables to be counted, or questioning the possibility to control the dunes altogether. Hence, the resort’s eventual relation to sand dunes, migrating pink-footed geese and fog along the coast became political arguments.In this article I utilise this case to illustrate how the ways futures are expressed produces both political subjects and objects in the present. I argue that a process where social struggle is conducted as the production of future scenarios posits important opportunities for public engagement while also leading to new problems. This I shed light on by bringing together Callon’s notion of performative theories with the literature on post-politics, offering a critique of expert-led environmental governance.     

International economic institutions: Formal mechanisms for dealing with resource conflict

States employ international economic institutions as formal mechanisms in resource related conflict management. It is little known that states incorporate water resource management treaties in regional trade agreements (REIs) to jointly manage (1) the multifaceted use of rivers and (2) the territorial implications of rivers as borders. Both can lead to political tensions. I evaluate institutional effectiveness, through REI institutional design, in militarized interstate conflict. The role of trade institutions in geo-politics is a broad theme addressed. African dyads, REIs and conflict from 1950 to 1996 are the focus. I test the liberal hypothesis that institutions diminish the likelihood of militarized interstate conflict. Findings suggest allies that share memberships in REI water treaties with provisions for territorial boundary issues are more likely to fight than are other states. This relationship is weak, however, lending support to realist claims.     

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 governance in New Mexico: Adjudication,law, and geography

Water rights adjudications lie at the intersection of law, space, and the geography of resource governance, combining elements of field cartography, archival research, and judicial supervision and decree. However, few geographers have examined the water rights adjudications now active in most western US states. Using case material and ethnographic vignettes from a larger geographic project on water rights and governance in New Mexico, I examine water adjudication as a vital instrument in the state’s pursuit of spatial knowledge. Resources and water users are seen by the state through this process, while at the same time, water users may elude or confuse state legibility. In this process, altered forms of governance are produced. Here, I explore how the formalizing of water rights in New Mexico has articulated new legal-spatial relationships, which are often viewed differently by state and local agents. I then examine the products of adjudications and the tension between local and expert knowledge in natural resources governance over being seen and governed by the state and the struggle to retain local autonomy and governance in water management.     

The intersection of corporate social responsibility guidelines and indigenous rights: Examining neoliberal governance of a proposed mining project in Suriname

With neoliberal reforms and the growth of multinational mining investment in developing countries, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become notable (and debatable) for its potential to fill a social and environmental governance gap. As yet, there has been limited analytical attention paid to the political struggles and power dynamics that get reflected through specific CSR guidelines and their implementation in local contexts; this is particularly apparent with respect to the human rights dimension of CSR, and more specifically, indigenous rights. This study documents the debates, issues of accountability, and different interpretations of CSR between NGOs representing indigenous rights and a mining corporation. These debates focus on environmental impact assessments; indigenous rights to land; and the indigenous right to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent. These exchanges illustrate the socio-political, as well as economic, positioning of these actors, and the different agendas associated with their positions that determine issues of accountability and shape alternate interpretations of CSR guidelines. The outcomes of these debates also reflect the different degrees of power that these actors hold in such contexts, irrespective of the strength or validity of their arguments about CSR. This dialogue is thereby a lens into the more complex and contentious entanglements that emerge with CSR as a mode of governance, as it plays out ‘on the ground.’ These findings also reinforce questions regarding what we can expect of CSR as a mode of governance for addressing human rights issues with resource extraction projects, particularly within the constraints of overriding political and social structures.     

From regime protection to urban resilience? Assessing continuity and change in transnational security governance rationales in Guatemala

This article analyzes changing forms of transnational security governance and security expertise in Guatemala. It is argued that the dynamics of transnational security governance in Guatemala are directly related to the local appropriation of knowledge promoted by external security experts. As an expertise-based form of “intervention by invitation,” local political and economic elites engage in securitization strategies in order to invite external experts to intervene. In turn, through their intervention these experts provide resources that are “captured” and exploited by local actors to pursue their own interests. As a consequence, transnational security governance fails as it deviates from the original plans and programs experts try to implement. The analysis of these processes sheds light on how and why failure in the context of transnational security governance is productive. Failure, we argue, triggers a self-reinforcing interventionary feedback loop that aims at “fixing” the shortcomings of previous interventions by mobilizing new forms of external security expertise. In tracing the dynamics of this interventionary feedback loop over time, this article contributes to understanding of the role of experts and policy failure in the (re)making of transnational security governance.     

Grantocracy: Conservation grant-making and the territorialization of neoliberalism in Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula

This paper uses the concept of “grantocracy” as an analytic to understand a form of governance through grant-making by state actors as one aspect of the reregulation wrought by neoliberalization of the state. We explore this idea through a case study of conservation grant making in the Keweenaw Peninsula of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, a highly rural and remote forestry-dependent economy. Grantocracy requires the disaggregation and rescaling of the public good, as grants are provided to address specific problems and provide single-purpose solutions. We found that while grants were intended for single purposes, in practice the use of partnerships and matching funds espoused by these programs resulted in funding programs being recombined in often conflicting and unstable ways. Moreover, limited transparency in the grant-making process restricted opportunities for public input and has helped to elide the role of the state in land conservation, undermining democratic environmental governance. This further promotes a neoliberal ideology that government is the problem, never the solution. Many of these difficulties, we conclude, arise from reliance upon the territorial strategy of private property to achieve land conservation goals.     

Environmental governance and the hybrid regime of Australian natural resource management

In this paper we explore hybridity in Australian natural resource governance, both ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of neoliberalism. We develop an understanding of this governance regime as an assemblage of subjects, ethics, ends and techniques that constitute a hybrid of practices directed by three mentalities of government: neoliberalism, localism and ecocentrism. This three-way parentage engenders particularly complex internal dynamics - tensions and congruencies, grounds for contest and opportunities for collaboration - that shape and transform the regime. Our analysis clarifies the formative roles of the three logics and in so doing offers a new perspective of tripartite governance dynamics. We conclude by showing how the co-existing mentalities compete to establish NRM policy that is in accord with their respective ends and ethics, subjectify problems and other actors to fit with their own agendas, and attempt to secure primacy for those technologies congruent with their logics. At the same time, as mutually constitutive forces of the regime, they exhibit varying degrees of adaptivity as they co-opt or accommodate technologies favoured by their competitors.     

Waste governance and ecological identity in Maui,Hawaii, USA

Recent scholarship examining environmental governance and solid waste management (SWM) in Hawaii has demonstrated the complexities of managing refuse in a remote, ecologically sensitive archipelago. Despite decades of calls for intensive recycling, composting, incineration, and other non-landfill disposal technologies, most islands of Hawaii continue to rely on sanitary landfilling. On Maui, a minor bureaucratic scandal centered on landfill permitting triggered the formation of an ad hoc entity intended to change SWM once and for all – the Solid Waste Resources Advisory Committee (SWRAC). I mobilize scholarship on waste governance, and in particular the ‘modes of governing’ framework to interrogate the decision-making processes of the SWRAC, evaluate their outputs, and consider the reasons for their ultimately limited impact on SWM governance on Maui. Based on a close reading of SWRAC meeting minutes and documents, I identify several factors, including the lack of clear goals or targets for SWRAC activity; a flawed, consensus-oriented decision-making process; and a failure to contextualize SWM within the broader environmental and cultural terrain of Maui. Taken together, I contend that these three problem areas underline the significance of seriously incorporating and harmonizing competing conceptions of ecological identity into both the ‘modes of governing’ framework and the scholarship of environmental governance more broadly.     

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.     

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.     

Protecting tourism labor? Sustainable labels and private governance

This paper examines the application of private governance through certification labels and industry initiatives in the tourism industry. These efforts are sold as a way to achieve decent working conditions for tourism workers who participate in global value chains in the global South. The question at hand is, are these mechanisms an effective way to support tourism labor? Specifically, this research documents two main findings. First, I evaluate the programs through a tourism global value chain approach and demonstrate how tour operators use language about sustainability and the certification of accommodation suppliers for brand product differentiation and marketing. My findings demonstrate that these programs do not support tourism workers. Second, even with certification and recommendations, the standards are limited and do not include measures to protect against precarious employment, gendered divisions of labor, and emotional labor demands. Thus, these initiatives do not fully protect tourism workers. Finally, I argue a new governance research approach focused on workers’ rights and empowerment provides insights into achieving a more equitable international tourism landscape. This has implications for a governance analysis focused on rights and ‘synergistic’ governance strategies.     

Resilience at the periphery: Insurgency,agency and social-ecological change under armed conflict

Armed conflict has played an increasingly important role in the transformation of key social and environmental systems at multiple spatial and temporal scales. Accelerated resource flows and environmental change dynamics intersect with conflict processes in ways that are substantial and yet inadequately understood. Drawing on research along the Pakistani border in eastern Afghanistan’s embattled province of Nangarhar, we employ a coupled systems approach for understanding the ways in which social-ecological processes shape and are shaped by armed conflict. Based on field surveys, geospatial analysis of land and forest change, and participatory research among local communities, government agencies and military actors, we identify several causal processes linking conflict and dynamics of social-ecological change in the context of multiscalar geopolitical processes. We focus attention on four inter-related elements: (1) transitional modes of resource governance relating to armed militia groups and state intervention, (2) forest changes related to illegal logging and trade networks, (3) the erosion of upper-montane rangelands through encroachment and changing pastoral responses to conflict, and (4) significant land use changes in the agricultural sector toward the cultivation of opium poppy. Our research highlights the importance of center-periphery relations, the problematic nature of local agency, and the ways in which local social-ecological elements—here, particularly, timber and opium—become political objects within competing narratives of (in)security and ongoing state formation.