Privatizing conditions of production: trade agreements as neoliberal environmental governance

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

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.     

Privatization of neighborhood governance in transition economy: a case study of gated community in Phu My Hung new town,Ho Chi Minh City,Vietnam

Literature on common-interest development (CID) in housing, most common in the form of gated communities, has been based largely on the US’s experience, where the interpretation has centered on the interaction between three actors (local government, private developer, and homeowner association) and barely focused on the privatization of neighborhood governance in transition economies. This paper, through a case study of gated community in Phu My Hung new town shows that Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam—in the context of transition from centrally-planned to market-based economy—has been witnessing this privatized phenomenon of neighborhood governance. It employs both primary data, collected through observation and key informant interview, and secondary data to explain the contextual factors for the rise of gated communities in the city and find out the mechanism of neighborhood governance. In the city, housing privatization reforms, influx of foreign direct investment, and the formation of urban middle class have constituted the supply- and demand-side factors for the rise of gated communities. In addition, the reforms towards grassroots participation created a favorable environment for a privatization of neighborhood governance in which the private developer plays a dominant role in partnership with local government and homeowner association. To a certain extent, this privatization is similar to the case of US’s gated communities, however, it does not threaten the public authority and instead maintains a good collaboration between these three actors. This is an indigenous innovation of gated communities in Vietnam due to its socio-economic conditions and political context.     

Conservation planning in the west, problems, new strategies and entrenched obstacles

The United States is often considered the progenitor of conservation planning in the world, the first to establish a vast public domain, for example. But with continued population growth, conservation planning on private lands—rural and at the urban fringe—continues to be a substantial challenge due to a tradition of local home rule in land use planning and strong private property protection afforded by the US Constitution. New “bottom-up” collaborative approaches, as well as other innovative strategies seem to be emerging. How effective these will be given pressures for growth and high property values remain to be seen without a rethinking of ideas of nature, a rebalancing of the role of property in American local fiscal regimes, and of private property rights.     

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+.     

Mobile pastoralism on the brink of land privatization in Northern Côte d’Ivoire

Côte d’Ivoire’s adoption of land privatization policies promoted by the World Bank and European Union is producing new land use patterns in the countryside. A centerpiece of these policies is the 1998 Rural Land Law that aims to restructure rural economic life along agrarian capitalist lines. The purported “development” objective of land privatization is to stimulate agricultural productivity based on the assumption that land titling will lead farmers and herders to make greater investments in their production systems. This paper argues that the mobile livestock raising system of immigrant FulBe pastoralists in Côte d’Ivoire is threatened by the new land law. Since mobility is crucial to animal health and fertility rates, I argue that reduced mobility will lead to lower livestock productivity. Although the land law has yet to be implemented, its very existence is leading prospective claimants to test their land rights by planting orchards and lending land to immigrant farmers. The monetization of land lending and grazing rights is increasingly common. Land disputes over who has the power to allocate land are also on the rise. I argue that this heightened interest in “tenure building” is constraining herd mobility, especially for herders with limited resources to negotiate access to rangelands. On the other hand, land privatization is strengthening the hand of local cattle-owning farmers who increasingly practice mobile livestock raising and compete with FulBe herders for grazing lands. Under these new conditions of land access, control, and competition, FulBe herd mobility and productivity are at risk of declining.     

Neoliberalisation,rural land trusts and institutional blending

In the context of rural land conservation, neoliberalisation involves an increasingly wide range of changes in formal and informal institutional arrangements. These affect the relationship between the state and the market in a variety of ways and have different implications for the governance of rural land. In the context of rural land conservation in the UK, we identify a broad range of changes to policy that promote altered ownership and market related institutional forms, all of which might be seen as forms of neoliberalisation. In some instances these promote market forces and private ownership, while in others they push back the market and support collectivisation. We argue that the complex processes of the decomposition property and reassignment of property rights and the emergence of new forms of governance and partnership are better characterised in terms of institutional blending.     

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.     

Hybrid drinking water governance: Community participation and ongoing neoliberal reforms in rural Rajasthan,India

This paper examines a Rajasthan (India) drinking water supply project that relied on hybrid governance reforms in its original design. Decentralization and marketization, combined with a participatory approach, were intended to facilitate an empowering shift in state-citizen relationships. Paying citizens were expected to make quantity and quality demands of the state as consumers, not welfare beneficiaries. Research on the project 3 years after its completion revealed that although payment for water and community participation were intended to compel the state to provide clean water, they failed in this regard. The problem of an unreliable state supply was solved through small scale privatization, a decision ‘independently’ reached at the local scale, but one that served to further undermine the state’s ability to provide clean water.In this paper, we trace the shifts in regulation that evolved in the post-project phase at both the state and village scale that resulted in the delivery of contaminated water. Ethnographic research indicates that community participation was introduced as a set of institutions that would govern how villagers interacted with the state and its water supply, but villagers altered community participation by introducing reforms in water governance as a way of coping with an unresponsive state and increased work burden. Community participation evolved in contradictory ways as the impacts of neoliberal environmental governance were felt. The paper contributes to understandings of neoliberalization processes’ local impacts by analyzing their ongoing hybridization at multiple scales. It further calls into question foundational notions that community participation in resource governance is the appropriate solution to drinking water supply.     

Seeding nature, ceding culture: Redefining the boundaries of the marine commons through spatial management and GIS

The oceans are not only being transformed through privatization as management moves towards market mechanisms, the oceans are also being “zoned”, with zoning increasingly proposed as the ideal conduit for weighting different uses of the ocean. This is concomitant with a move towards ecosystem-based management that also partakes in a policy environment imbued with the commodification of nature, in which environmental services are ranked and valued according to neoliberal percepts. Crucial to these projects are the utilization of GIS technologies. This paper considers these zones of preservation and sites of conflict through an ethnographic case study of the scallop fisheries of New England, examining conflicts between harvesters, different projects to map the fishery, and ongoing efforts to reseed scallop beds. The paper explores how participants themselves articulate the changing practices of fishing and farming, redefining boundaries of nature and culture. While reseeding projects, for example, arguably participate in the market logic of neoliberalism, at the same time they may resist and redefine the terms, as communities see themselves sowing the seeds of their own sustainability and changing the terms of what counts, literally, as nature.     

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.     

Resource conflict,policy change and practice in Canadian fisheries management

The Canadian marine fisheries are presently in the midst of a grave crisis. On both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, fish stocks have been depleted through overfishing. Fish habitats are being damaged or permanently destroyed through industrial development. Gross overcapacity exists in both the primary and secondary sectors of the fishing industry, which is primarily attributable to the common property status of the resource. Many fishermen and processors have been or are in states of near bankruptcy as increasing energy costs, high product inventories and market weakness have crippled operations. A lack of alternative employment opportunities for many participants coupled with a high regional and community dependence on depressed resource-based industries has confounded attempts by government to introduce measures leading to more rational fisheries management. The outcome has been a strategy characterized as ‘incremental ad hocery’. Major inquiries were conducted into both the Atlantic and Pacific fisheries in the early 1980s. Conflict between and among the federal and provincial governments, various sectors of the commercial fishery, Indian and recreational usergroups, fishery interests and other industries, as well as Canada and other nations, has made it difficult to implement needed reforms. Stock and habitat maintainence and improvement; user regulations, coupled with tenure rights for fishermen; and marketing research and promotion are accepted as key components of any long-run fishery management strategy. In the short-run, the need is to develop approaches that are implementable in the context of diverse conflicting and vested interests.     

REDD+ for Red Books? Negotiating rights to land and livelihoods through carbon governance in the Central Highlands of Vietnam

In Vietnam, initial programs to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) have proliferated through international finance and new governance regimes for climate change mitigation. National capacity and legal frameworks have been adjusted to make the country eligible for REDD+ financing. In some local areas, activities have been implemented to ‘produce’ carbon credits intended for the international voluntary carbon market. Through a case study of a pilot REDD+ project in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, we examine how REDD+ has intersected with property rights institutions and agrarian change to influence changing property relations and commodity markets. Our findings show that REDD+ implemented through state and local institutions has articulated with the local political economy to coproduce conditions that embody local norms, needs, and desires. Specifically, local actors negotiate state-sanctioned tenurial instruments used for REDD+ governance, not for the purposes of carbon sequestration but instead in order to reassert their rights to land and forest for the cultivation of boom crops—the antithesis of REDD+ objectives. In the fine balancing act of adjusting local forestland holdings, REDD+ implementation has effectively facilitated increased opportunities for upland villagers to strategically claim land titles from local political authorities in the form of communal land certificates for forests called ‘Red Books’. In securing communal Red Books, villagers redefine or co-constitute the purpose of REDD+ to secure land for cash crop and commercial timber production. As with other forms of environmental governance, REDD+ is thus co-constituted locally in line with state and local institutions and histories and present day realities.     

The silent articulation of private land rights in Soviet Estonia: A geographical perspective

With an explicit focus on the spatial articulation of landownership, this paper explores various ways in which pre-Soviet land rights were expressed in rural Estonia during the Soviet period (1940-1941, 1944-1991). Drawing on cartographical analyses and interviews made in the rural district of Muhu, the paper demonstrates that people who owned land before the Soviet occupation kept track of the officially annulled pre-Soviet land rights, by relating to inertial landscape elements as memory-aids. To local inhabitants the landscape, in which past and present structures always merge, provided substantial evidence in support of the idea of legal continuity of pre-Soviet land rights. Hence, the post-Soviet land restitution reform often implied a re-discovery or re-expression of property rights that had been silenced, but not lost.     

From post-politics to a politics of possibility? Unravelling the privatization of the Berlin Water Company

This article explores the constraints and contingencies of contemporary urban governance, with reference to the partial privatization (1999) and partial remunicipalization (2012) of the Berlin Water Company (BWB). It outlines the processes through which this major shift in Berlin politics occurred, showing how the mainstream consensus on privatization was disrupted and alternatives to apparent neoliberal conformity emerged. Dynamics apparent in the BWB case – commercialization, privatization, re-regulation, public contestation and remunicipalization – are indicative of the challenges and opportunities of making policy in and beyond the global norms of neoliberalism. It is argued that this case is important because it reveals something about what we might call the “politics of possibility” within the paradigm of neoliberal urban governance: the continuing potential for change within the constraints of an urban governance configured to the logics and needs of markets. Given this, the paper concludes that local contingencies in urban governance problematize sweeping notions of a post-political condition. However observable post-political strategies and outcomes in Berlin and elsewhere are, researchers should not assume that they are inevitably dominant or universal.     

Political ecology and habitat conservation for endangered species planning in Southern California: Region, places, and ecological governance

The county of Riverside California has a long history of land conservation. In this comparative case study between Western Riverside County and the Coachella Valley area in the county we show how governance institutions that encompass regions that have very different ecologies, are governed by rules and regulations that are undifferentiated relative to those differences. The study argues, however, that what may differ are the workings of the local urban regimes and the metabolic appropriation of ecosystems for economic growth. In this close investigation of the sprawling county of Riverside we find very different approaches to habitat preservation and the enrollment of nature for wealth production by the local urban regimes.     

Privatization of rural industry and de facto urbanization from below in southern Jiangsu, China

At the heart of China’s economic transformation from plan to market is the institutional rearrangement of the ownership of property rights. Privatization of collectively owned township and village enterprises (TVEs) in recent years has significantly changed the rural economy and affected small town development in China. Located mainly in villages and small towns and producing 62% of the total industrial output in Jiangsu in 1994, TVEs played a crucial role in southern Jiangsu (Sunan)’s economic development and urbanization, giving rise to the well-known “Sunan model” of regional development during the 1980s. Since the mid-1990s, ownership transition (zhuanzhi) of the TVEs from collective to private in Sunan has altered the nature of the regional economy and the pattern of small town development. The privatization of TVEs in Sunan has been so pervasive that it can be seen as the “second industrial divide” in the region’s economy. This paper traces the evolution of ownership reform in Sunan’s rural industries leading to the current phase of privatization and analyzes the effects of privatization on de facto urbanization from below in Sunan. Given the importance of privatization, continuous scholarly monitoring of its relationship to regional economic development and urbanization from below is necessary.     

Hydrocarbons, popular protest and national imaginaries: Ecuador and Bolivia in comparative context

This paper examines contemporary struggles over hydrocarbon governance in Ecuador and Bolivia. Our comparative analysis illustrates the ways that petro-capitalism, nationalist ideologies, popular movements and place conjoin in the governance of oil and natural gas. In the case of Ecuador, state employees drew on their labor relations and political training to oppose the government’s efforts to privatize the state oil company. In Bolivia, urban popular movements opposed the privatization of the hydrocarbons industry and its domination by foreign firms. In both cases, hydrocarbons struggles involved the production of imaginative geographies of the nation and it hydrocarbon resources, which in turn drew on historical memories of nationhood. Whereas neoliberal political and economic restructuring sought to re-organize national hydrocarbons companies, redraw concessions, and draft new resource extraction laws, hydrocarbon movements aimed to counter these processes by re-centering hydrocarbon governance within a populist vision of the nation-state. In contrast to analyses of resource conflict in the environmental security and resource curse literatures, the cases of Ecuador and Bolivia demonstrate that such struggles cannot be reduced to models of opportunity structure, war profiteering, or resource scarcity (or abundance). Rather, these cases show that political economy and cultural politics are inseparable in the context of resource conflicts, which involve struggles over the meanings of development, citizenship and the nation itself.     

‘Bringing government to the people’: women, local governance and community participation in South Africa

This paper considers the ongoing political transformations in South Africa in the context of debates about good governance and participatory democracy. It first appraises the current transformations of local government in South Africa, focusing specifically on relationships between gender equality and citizenship on the one hand, and local government policy, legislation, and community participation on the other, and then explores meanings of participation and how they inform approaches towards local socio-economic development. The findings of primary research conducted with civil society organisations and black women in communities in the Cape Town metropolitan area are explored through three interrelated themes. First, the model of structured participation that is central to South Africa’s democratic transformation is assessed from the perspective of black women. Second, cultures of alienation, both within local governance structures and amongst black women and the extent to which recent restructuring is combating or contributing to these are explored. Third, how participation policies are dealing with conflict within and between target groups are analysed, whether stakeholder group politics obliterate important differences in interests and whether alternative structures might be more effective in terms of women’s participation and empowerment. Finally, the findings are interpreted in relation to theoretical concepts of good governance and participatory democracy, and the potential and problems of realising South Africa’s transformation process toward developmental local government are assessed.