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 and power in Santiago de Chile: Socio-spatial segregation through network integration

The analysis of the history of the management and distribution of electricity, water and sanitation networks in Santiago de Chile throws light on a problem which is central to thinking on the relationship between urban services management and territorial splintering: what is the impact of urban policy, in particular housing policy and urban planning, on access to services and on the potential levels of social segregation and institutional splintering of metropolises?The Chilean example is eminently anchored in its political and institutional history. We shall see, for example, that the authoritarian urban policy of the military government, associated with early liberal reform, enabled the improvement of access to networks in every municipality of the Greater Santiago area. However, this success, leading to the integration by urban services of a large territory, does not signify that networks remained neutral as regards the process of spatial segregation. Inversely, we can defend the theory that the presence of an integrated service was a necessary condition and a reinforcing factor of the process of urban spread and residential segregation. This paradoxical argument is a result of the ambivalent liberal network and urban policies of the military government. Urban expansion was largely sustained by the development of integrated infrastructures and universal services. The processes of liberalising land and urban services were mutually sustaining and provided the necessary conditions for the birth of an extremely intense movement of urban sprawl and segregation between 1985 and 2000.     

Models in geography revisited

Agent based models (ABMs) have many applications, and illustrate a rapidly developing field of enquiry, spanning both the physical-mathematical and human-social sciences. ABMs are seen as most appropriate in situations where decisions or actions are distributed around particular locations, and in which structure is viewed as emergent from the interaction between individuals. ABMs may be used either as representational devices, to reproduce the patterns observed or desired in the system of interest, or as foundational tools contributing to the development of social or economic theory. The role and status of models and modelling is itself an instantiation of a wider debate concerning representation and explanation. Today, a case can be made that the nature of explanation and the use of scientific interpretation reflect much less definite and exclusive positions and permit more diverse approaches than hitherto. The underlying proposition of this commentary is, therefore, that the time is right for a positive application of ABMs within the discipline of geography, and for a rediscovery and reappraisal of the richness and depth of insight in the model-building enterprise more generally. First, the context for ABM development and application is set with reference to the agency-structure debate. Second, some aspects of the heritage of models in geography is presented, based upon reviews of two benchmark publications bearing that title. Next, some of the most significant characteristics, uses, potentials and limitations of ABMs, are reviewed. Finally, some constructive ways forward are suggested, as informed by theory and method from the interpretative social sciences.     

GMOs and their contexts: A comparison of potential and actual performance of GM crops in a local agricultural setting

In this paper, I argue that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have inherent potential to contribute to socially and environmentally sustainable agriculture by virtue of their ‘biological embeddedness’. Their actual ‘performance’ and how this contributes to sustainability depends on the ‘mutual shaping’ of technology and context. While much attention has been given to the design context of GMOs, this paper considers the influence of the application context and of users. A case study investigating the use of insect-resistant and herbicide-tolerant GM cotton in the cotton-growing region of New South Wales in Australia is presented. The study was based on focus groups with farmers and other stakeholders in a cotton-growing community. It demonstrated a range of direct and indirect effects of GM cotton use, both positive and negative for sustainability, and the ways in which these effects were influenced by the local social context. The influences of the biotechnology industry context, in limiting the contributions that gene technologies can make to sustainability, were also considered, and remedies suggested. I argue that the polarity of the GM debate is hindering progress on these issues, and that a more balanced approach to our analysis of GMOs is necessary in order to fully understand, and to influence, their role in the future of rural spaces.     

The 2002 reform of the Common Fisheries Policy's system of governance—rhetoric or reality?

The 2002 Reform of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) was claimed to be a radical overhaul of a failing system. Several EU fish stocks—particularly North Sea cod—had reached dangerously low levels, and there was widespread dissatisfaction with the way in which the CFP was operating. The European Commission took the opportunity of the legal requirement to review some features of the CFP (principally access provisions) in 2002, to undertake a broader reappraisal of the CFP. One of the features of this reappraisal was an attempt to improve the CFP's system of governance by increasing the amount of stakeholder participation, decentralisation, transparency, accountability, effectiveness and coherence. In this paper, the conclusion is reached that this attempt to improve the quality of governance in the 2002 CFP reform package has been more rhetorical than real.     

Evaluation of the ocean governance system in Korea

Considering the small land, dense population and poor natural resources, the oceans are important to Korea, but the recognition of oceans has been weak in Korean society. So ocean governance was fragmented in both institution and policies, which resulted in serious problems in the coastal waters and oceans. However, a series of maritime accidents and failures of policies increased the recognition of the coastal waters and resources and led to the establishment of one single ocean-related governmental agency in 1996. Over the last decade, the ocean governance in Korea has been successful and strong.     

山东郓城矿井建设项目环境经济损益分析

建设项目环境影响评价中的环境经济损益分析部分,目前多是定性的简单分析,不能满足环境影响评价精度要求。本文对山东里能集团有限公司巨野矿区郓城矿井环境影响评价时,探讨了定量化的环境经济损益分析。     

An essay on the interactions between climate and society

There has been increasing concern about the lack of involvement by social scientists and humanists in a global change program, although many social scientists are already directly involved in various aspects of research on environmental change, and their research interests are clearly central to a global change research agenda. Based on a historical review, the role of social science disciplines as well as social science institutes in an emerging multidecadal global change program is discussed. Both “plan of action” and “plan of inaction” are suggested to avoid potential pitfalls due to the rush development of a social science program into the existing global climate change problem.     

Racism and Intolerance in Eastern Australia: a geographic perspective

Racism has become a fact of life in Australia over the past decade or so, yet there are relatively few studies of its nature or extent, and still fewer on its geography. Using a social constructivist approach, this study draws on a survey of 5056 respondents to investigate attitudes to racism and cultural diversity in New South Wales and Queensland, and of perceptions of out-groups as instances of ‘strangers in our midst’. On racism, results show the presence of a continuum of attitudes ranging from generally tolerant to generally intolerant, a presence which cuts across compositional (social or aspatial) characteristics to emphasise the existence of a distinctive geography, an everywhere different nature to racist and non-racist attitudes which transcends urban–rural and traditional social layers. On the other hand, perceptions of out-groups are not uniformly correlated with presence or absence of cultural diversity. In many cases, the ability to make judgements about significant ‘others’ or out-groups has been shown to relate more to abstract notions of self and national identity, reproduced in public by mainstream news media and political leaders. In particular, it may reflect an Anglo (or Anglo-Celtic) view on nationalism, which is a hallmark of the ‘new racism’: an assimilationist or ethnocultural view of Australian society which is different from the ‘civic nation’ ideal envisaged by multiculturalism. That the geography of attitudes and perceptions people have towards and about different cultural groups is so ‘everywhere different’ has important implications for attempts to address and redress issues of intolerance in Australia.     

Withered Geography

This commentary is a response to an article by Jay R. Harman in the November 2003 issue of The Professional Geographer. I argue that Harman's claim that scholarly disciplines offer social “returns” in a competitive “market” obscures the fundamentally political nature of how social resources are allocated and how social needs are defined. Harman would have us subordinate scholarly research to agendas set elsewhere, by politicians and other powerful interests, but I argue that such a vision would turn geographers into mere technicians. A healthier role for the discipline is for geographers to seek ways of asserting intellectual leadership and of shaping social agendas along more humane and socially just lines.