Political Ecologies of Gentrification

This article explores the possibilities for a political ecology of gentrification. Gentrification research, while firmly rooted in materialist social science, has not yet broadened its interests to consider ecological aspects of, or the role in gentrification of, discourses, social movements, and state policies of the environment. Understanding the political ecologies of gentrification involves recognizing the ways in which material relations and uneven resource consumption, concepts of nature, and the politics of urban environmental management affect gentrification processes. By synthesizing diverse literatures in urban studies, political ecology, urban environmental governance, consumption studies, and gentrification, this study argues that Vancouver, British Columbia represents a well-developed urban crucible for the new political ecologies of gentrification in North America. New developments in Vancouver increasingly contribute to gentrification using languages of sustainability and green consumption in a process of ecological gentrification.     

Navigating climate crises in the Great Barrier Reef

A dramatic escalation of extreme climate events is challenging the capacity of environmental governance regimes to sustain and improve ecosystem outcomes. It has been argued that actors within adaptive governance regimes can help to steer environmental systems toward sustainability in times of crisis. Yet there is little empirical evidence of how acute climate crises are navigated by actors operating within adaptive governance regimes, and the factors that influence their responses. Here, we qualitatively assessed the actions key governance actors took in response to back-to-back mass coral bleaching – an extreme climate event – of the Great Barrier Reef in 2016 and 2017, and explored their perceptions of barriers and catalysts to these responses. This research was, in part, a product of collaboration and knowledge co-production with Great Barrier Reef governance actors aimed at improving responses to climate crises in the region. We found five major categories of activity that actors engaged with in the wake of recurrent mass coral bleaching: assessing the scale and extent of bleaching, sharing information, communicating bleaching to the public, building local resilience, and addressing global threats. These actions were both catalyzed and hindered by a range of factors that fall within different domains of adaptive capacity; such as assets, social organization, and agency. We discuss the implications of our findings as they relate to existing research on adaptive capacity and adaptive governance. We conclude by coalescing insights from our interviews and a participant engagement process to highlight four key ways in which the ability of governance actors, and the Great Barrier Reef governance regime more broadly, can be better prepared for, and more effectively respond to extreme climate events. Our research provides empirical insight into how crises are experienced by governance actors in a large-scale environmental system, potentially providing lessons for similar systems across the globe.     

More than planning: Diversity and drivers of institutional adaptation under climate change in 96 major cities

A key challenge for effective, ongoing urban climate adaptation is to adapt institutions within urban governance. While an extensive foundation of empirical knowledge on urban climate adaptation has accumulated over the last decade, our image of institutional adaptation continues to be dominated by a focus on planning. Whilst understandable, this can obscure a fuller range of areas in which institutional adaptation to climate change is being pursued. Furthermore, methodological path dependency in large-N analysis via a common focus on analyzing formal planning documents risks a skewed perspective as such documents may only offer a partial view. Building on the rich range of work to date assessing climate adaptation in cities, and notwithstanding continued major gaps such as in small-medium cities, we now need to find ways to examine the diversity of institutional adaptation occurring in practice, and to comparatively draw on the situated interpretive knowledge of case experts within individual cities to do so. With this aim in mind, this paper explores institutional adaptation in a specific domain (urban water) in a sample of 96 major cities across six continents through a survey of 319 case experts, examining the diversity of institutional adaptation across contexts and exploratively probing its drivers. Findings show that multiple forms of institutional adaptation are being jointly pursued in cities across all continents, leaning towards ‘softer’ rather than ‘harder’ forms, but nonetheless revealing a wide range of activity. Patterns in drivers suggest a political explanation for institutional adaptation (e.g. involving change agents and political pressure) rather than a rational one (e.g. involving response to climate-related risks and/or extreme events). Overall, there is a need to combine parsimony with expanded interpretive sensibility in advancing large-N research on institutional adaptation diversity in comparative perspective.     

吉林永吉县大黑山钼矿区矿山地质环境保护与治理

介绍了吉林永吉县大黑山钼矿区的基本情况和矿山地质环境影响现状,并提出了相应的环境治理措施。     

Co-management and the co-production of knowledge: Learning to adapt in Canada's Arctic

Co-management institutional arrangements have an important role in creating conditions for social learning and adaptation in a rapidly changing Arctic environment, although how that works in practice has not been clearly articulated. This paper draws on three co-management cases from the Canadian Arctic to examine the role of knowledge co-production as an institutional trigger or mechanism to enable learning and adapting. Experience with knowledge co-production across the three cases is variable but outcomes illustrate how co-management actors are learning to learn through uncertainty and environmental change, or learning to be adaptive. Policy implications of this analysis are highlighted and include the importance of a long-term commitment to institution building, an enabling policy environment to sustain difficult social processes associated with knowledge co-production, and the value of diverse modes of communication, deliberation and social interaction.     

Editorial: Reflections from Ireland

Responses of governance systems to change in coastal and marine ecosystems vary from country to country around the globe. Lessons can be learned from country specific case studies, as national governments strive to adapt and respond to issues of concern. This short paper highlights the benefits of a country-specific, special edition of Marine Policy, with a focus on Ireland. Despite the uniqueness of socio-ecological setting, many of the issues faced by policy makers in Ireland, such as the reconciliation of economic development and conservation needs, are shared elsewhere. This special edition was produced at the end of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ in Ireland. As a result, it reflects an era when economic development was very much a priority. The same period represented an unparalleled investment in marine science since the foundation of the State in 1922. Despite this, the papers in the Special Edition point to varying degrees of progress in policy integration and implementation. Papers covering a range of sectors (fisheries, ocean energy, conservation and fisheries) and disciplines (economics, science and management) will be of interest to academics, policy makers, students and practitioners of marine policy.     

Key challenges for maritime governance in West Africa: Fishery-based lessons from Guinea and Mauritania

Maritime governance stakes are important in West Africa, if only due to the dominant role of fisheries, which coastal populations mainly depend on. In this context, with reference to the fishery sector mostly studied in two countries (Guinea and Mauritania), this paper aims to identify and synthesize the challenges to be met towards developing the governance of marine spaces. To this end, the analysis is based on field knowledge, which provides input into a grid set according to the various integration levels of the concept of ICZM. This paper thus reports the major methodological obstacles to be overcome, commensurate to the stakes insofar as marine policies can and must contribute to the economic and social development of this region.     

Trust relationships between fishers and government: New challenges for the co-management arrangements in the Dutch flatfish industry

Until the 1990s fisheries were largely managed by the state. Since then, Dutch government and the sector increasingly recognized that a fishing industry cannot be managed effectively without the cooperation and participation of fishers to formulate policy and to implement and enforce laws and regulations. As a result, in the nineties, the existing neo-corporatist arrangement was replaced by a co-management system in the Dutch flatfish fishery. Co-management is often seen as leading to greater procedural legitimacy and subsequently compliance. However, constructing an effective co-management arrangement is not only a matter of building institutions but also a matter of building trust relations between the government and industry. Institutional arrangements such as co-management can contribute to these trust building processes; however, a too strong reliance on institutional arrangements can lead to distrust when new challenges are being faced and institutional arrangements fail to adapt to these changes.     

大都市郊区化中的社区碎化与治理

本文从“城市生活空间质量观”的角度,首次运用城市空间公正的“社会论”观点,通过分析中外国家城市郊区化的社会内涵和机制以及由此引发的社会空间分异,揭示了中国快速郊区化过程中大城市郊区社区碎化的现状和原因,并提出对应空间治理措施。     

From “cartoneros” to “recolectores urbanos”. The changing rhetoric and urban waste management policies in neoliberal Buenos Aires

This study contributes to the existent literature on neoliberal urban governance examining the process-based character of this formation. I maintain that neoliberal governance is a fluid and evolving formation which is continuously being constructed and reconstructed beneath a rhetorical veneer of inevitable emergence and permanence. In this context, this work examines the interconnections between neoliberal urban ascendancy, changing rhetoric and urban waste management policies, and waste pickers (cartoneros), in a case study setting, Buenos Aires. Since 2002, the neoliberal urban governance in Buenos Aires (its institutions, programs and policies) has mobilized different rhetoric and policies to negotiate the waste pickers’ “disturbing” and “dirty” presence in the streets. In that process, the waste pickers, originally marginalized and stigmatized by the neoliberal discourse, have been regulated and disciplined into legal and “well behaved” workers. I would argue that, regulating this activity does not entail giving the waste pickers an opportunity to become central actors in the future of urban waste management in the city. Rather, it is compatible with the logic of the local neoliberal urban projects, focused on disciplining the city’s physical and social landscape as new opportunities for growth and development continue to emerge.