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When are transnational networks likely to convince policymakers in developing countries to adopt potentially costly environmental regulations for the good of managing biodiversity? Since most of the world’s remaining biodiversity is found in developing countries, identifying the pathways through which policymakers in these states are incentivized to engage in conservation is critical. This book argues that networks of nonstate experts are most likely to convince policymakers to address an emerging environmental problem if three conditions are met: First, network members must have a scientifically validated consensus about the cause-and-effect relationships and parameters of the problem, since a consensus about the science delegitimizes competing arguments and strengthens the authority of a network’s arguments. Second, networks must build mechanisms for socialization with policymakers in domestic regulatory agencies. Doing so promotes norms of shared ownership and responsibility for knowledge claims about conservation. Third, networks will have to make scientific arguments for conservation consonant with local environmental justice claims by communities residing in and around areas of globally important biodiversity. Networks can do so by arguing for policies that would protect biodiversity in a way that ensures continued, if environmentally sustainable, access for low-income populations that may otherwise be excluded from natural resources. If these three conditions are not met, conservation efforts are likely to face resistance from groups of local actors, policymakers, or both, who cannot reconcile global claims for biodiversity conservation with their immediate demands.

Thousands of synthetic chemicals are used to make our clothing, cosmetics, household products and electronic devices. However, many of these chemicals are hazardous and potentially dangerous to our health and the environment. For fifty years, the conventional approach to hazardous chemicals has focused on regulation, barriers, and control. Today, there is a growing international interest in going beyond a singular focus on toxic and hazardous chemicals and developing broader policies for managing all chemicals. This book proposes a new strategy for chemical management based on changing chemical production and consumption systems. Reviewing the many initiatives now on-going in the product and chemical markets, in industry, and in science, Chemicals without Harm offers a strategy based on characterizing, classifying and prioritizing chemicals, identifying and adopting safer alternatives to hazardous chemicals, and promoting the research and innovation needed to develop those alternatives.

In communities across the country and around the world, people are coming together to rebuild and restore local environments that have been affected by crisis, disinvestment, or disaster. In New Orleans after Katrina, in New York after Sandy, in Soweto after apartheid, and in any number of postindustrial, depopulated cities, people work together to restore nature, renew communities, and heal themselves. In Civic Ecology, Marianne Krasny and Keith Tidball offer stories of this emerging grassroots environmental stewardship, along with an interdisciplinary framework for understanding and studying it as a growing international phenomenon. Krasny and Tidball draw on research in social capital and collective efficacy, ecosystem services, social learning, governance, and social-ecological systems, and other findings in the social and ecological sciences to investigate how people, practices, and communities interact. Along the way, they chronicle local environmental stewards who have undertaken such tasks as beautifying blocks in the Bronx, clearing trash from the Iranian countryside, and working with traumatized veterans to conserve nature and recreate community. Krasny and Tidball argue that humans’ innate love of nature and attachment to place compels them to restore nature and places that are threatened, destroyed, or lost. At the same time, they report, nature and community exert a healing and restorative power on their stewards.

China's carbon dioxide emissions now outstrip those of other countries and its domestic air quality is severely degraded, especially in urban areas. Its sheer size and its growing, fossil-fuel-powered economy mean that China‗s economic and environmental policy choices will have an outsized effect on the global environmental future. Over the last decade, China has pursued policies that target both fossil fuel use and atmospheric emissions, but these efforts have been substantially overwhelmed by the country's increasing energy demands. With a billion citizens still living on less than $4,000 per year, China's energy and environmental policies must be reconciled with the goals of maintaining economic growth and raising living standards. This book offers an integrated analysis of China's economy, emissions, air quality, public health, and agriculture. It first offers essential scientific context and accessible summaries of the book's policy findings; it then provides the underlying scientific and economic research. These studies suggest that China's recent sulfur controls achieved enormous environmental health benefits at unexpectedly low costs. They also indicate that judicious implementation of carbon taxes could reduce not only China's carbon emissions but also its air pollution more comprehensively than current single-pollutant policies, all at little cost to economic growth.

This book explores the relationship between common pool property and resources, and ecological sustainability. The debate between Hardin, who developed the idea of the ‘tragedy of the commons’ and Elinor Ostrom who showed commons could be sustainable, is discussed. The enclosure of the commons is examined. The contribution of virtual commons, social sharing to reduce resource use and conservation via commons are all critically discussed. The need to link cultural change, political action and ecological ethics to protect future generations is examined.

Concepts are thought categories through which we apprehend the world; they enable, but also constrain, reasoning and debate and serve as building blocks for more elaborate arguments. This book traces the links between conceptual innovation in the environmental sphere and the evolution of environmental policy and discourse. It offers both a broad framework for examining the emergence, evolution, and effects of policy concepts and a detailed analysis of eleven influential environmental concepts. In recent decades, conceptual evolution has been particularly notable in environmental governance, as new problems have emerged and as environmental issues have increasingly intersected with other areas. “Biodiversity,” for example, was unheard of until the late 1980s; “negative carbon emissions” only came into being over the last few years. After a review of concepts and their use in environmental argument, chapters chart the trajectories of a range of environmental concepts: environment, sustainable development, biodiversity, environmental assessment, critical loads, adaptive management, green economy, environmental risk, environmental security, environmental justice, and sustainable consumption. The book provides a valuable resource for scholars and policy makers and also offers a novel introduction to the environmental policy field through the evolution of its conceptual categories. Contributors Richard N. L. Andrews, Karin Bäckstrand, Karen Baehler, Daniel J. Fiorino, Yrjö Haila, Michael E. Kraft, Oluf Langhelle, Judith A. Layzer, James Meadowcroft, Alexis Schulman, Johannes Stripple, Philip J. Vergragt

This book explores the practical and conceptual implications of the de facto necessity of consensus for development of international environmental law. Juristic democracy emphasizes the role of the citizen rather than the nation-state as the source of legitimacy in international environmental law. It would allow international law to be rooted in local knowledge and grounded in democratic deliberation and consensus. The aim is to construct a global jurisprudence based on collective will formation. Building on concepts presented in two previous books, Deliberative Environmental Politics and Global Democracy and Sustainable Jurisprudence, the authors examine in detail the challenges that consensus poses for a system of juristic democracy. Baber and Bartlett analyze the implications of deliberative consensus for rule-bounded behavior, for the accomplishment of basic governance tasks, and for diversity in a politically divided and culturally plural world. They assess social science findings about the potential of small-group citizen panels to contribute to rationalized consensus, drawing on the extensive research conducted on the use of juries in courts of law. Finally, they analyze the place of juristic democracy in a future “consensually federal” system for earth system governance.

Buildings are the nation's greatest energy consumers. Forty percent of all our energy is used for heating, cooling, lighting, or powering machines and devices in buildings. Despite decades of investment in green construction technologies, residential and commercial buildings remain stubbornly energy inefficient. This book looks beyond the technological and material aspects of green construction to examine the cultural, social, and organizational shifts that sustainable building requires, examining the fundamental challenge to centuries-long traditions in design and construction that green building represents. The chapters consider the changes associated with green building through a sociological and organizational lens. They discuss shifts in professional expertise created by new social concerns about green building, including evolving boundaries of professional jurisdictions; changing industry strategies and structures, including the roles of ownership, supply firms, and market niches; new operational, organizational, and cultural arrangements, including the mainstreaming of environmental concerns; narratives and frames that influence the perception of green building; and future directions for the theory and practice of sustainable construction.

Humans are no longer spectators who need to adapt to their natural environment. Our impact on the earth has caused changes that are outside the range of natural variability and are equivalent to such major geological disruptions as ice ages. Some scientists argue that we have entered a new epoch in planetary history: the Anthropocene. In such an era of planet-wide transformation, we need a new model for planet-wide environmental politics. This book proposes “earth system” governance as just such a new paradigm. It offers both analytical and normative perspectives. It provides detailed analysis of global environmental politics in terms of five dimensions of effective governance: agency, particularly agency beyond that of state actors; architecture of governance, from local to global levels; accountability and legitimacy; equitable allocation of resources; and adaptiveness of governance systems. The book goes on to offer a wide range of policy proposals for future environmental governance and a revitalized United Nations, including the establishment of a World Environment Organization and a UN Sustainable Development Council, new mechanisms for strengthened representation of civil society and scientists in global decision making, innovative systems of qualified majority voting in multilateral negotiations, and novel institutions to protect those impacted by global change.

Ecuador is biologically diverse, petroleum rich, and economically poor. Its extraordinary biodiversity has attracted attention and funding from such transnational environmental organizations as Conservation International, the World Wildlife Fund, and the United States Agency for International Development. In Ecuador itself there are more than 200 environmental groups dedicated to sustainable development, and the country’s 2008 constitution grants rights to nature. The current leftist government is committed both to lifting its people out of poverty and pursuing sustainable development; but petroleum extraction is Ecuador’s leading source of revenue. While extraction generates economic growth, which supports the state’s social welfare agenda, it also causes environmental destruction. Given these competing concerns, will Ecuador be able to achieve sustainability? In this book, Tammy Lewis examines the movement for sustainable development in Ecuador through four eras: movement origins (1978–1987), neoliberal boom (1987–2000), neoliberal bust (2000–2006), and citizens’ revolution (2006–2015). Lewis presents a typology of Ecuador’s environmental organizations: ecoimperialists, transnational environmentalists from other countries; ecodependents, national groups that partner with transnational groups; and ecoresisters, home-grown environmentalists who reject the dominant development paradigm. She examines the interplay of transnational funding, the Ecuadorian environmental movement, and the state’s environmental and development policies. Along the way, addressing literatures in environmental sociology, social movements, and development studies, she explores what configuration of forces—political, economic, and environmental—is most likely to lead to a sustainable balance between the social system and the ecosystem.

Energy is the only universal currency; it is necessary for getting anything done. The conversion of energy on Earth ranges from terra-forming forces of plate tectonics to cumulative erosive effects of raindrops. Life on Earth depends on the photosynthetic conversion of solar energy into plant biomass. Humans have come to rely on many more energy flows—ranging from fossil fuels to photovoltaic generation of electricity—for their civilized existence. This book provides a comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today’s fossil fuel-driven civilization. Humans are the only species that can systematically harness energies outside their bodies, using the power of their intellect and an enormous variety of artifacts—from the simplest tools to internal combustion engines and nuclear reactors. The epochal transition to fossil fuels affected everything: agriculture, industry, transportation, weapons, communication, economics, urbanization, quality of life, politics, and the environment. This book describes humanity’s energy eras in panoramic and interdisciplinary fashion, offering readers a magisterial overview.

Engaging Nature is an edited collection that explores how past political theorists conceptualized the natural world and humanity’s relationship with it. The theorists profiled are largely from the Western canon, but other influential theorists have been included in order to bring in insights related to race, gender, and non-Western perspectives. The theorists covered in the book are: Plato, Aristotle, Niccolò Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Edmund Burke, Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, W. E. B. Du Bois, Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, and Confucius. The essays also draw insights from these theorists into how we might address our contemporary environmental crisis. In many cases, the authors present unorthodox readings of particular theorists who have been pigeonholed as ‘anti-environmentalist’ or not recognized for their insights into nature and environmental issues. The essays also highlight the complexity of Western political thought in its approach to nature, as many individual theorists present perspectives that transcend anthropocentrism. In pursuing a chronological review of Western thinkers but then ending with Confucius, the editors also wish to highlight the importance of expanding the discussion beyond the Western canon. This book is intended for a fairly broad audience, from advanced undergraduates to mature scholars in both political theory and environmental studies.

Addresses a central dilemma facing efforts to promote environmental sustainability: while environmental challenges including climate change threaten the very fabric of our lives, ambitious efforts to address these rarely resonate with the everyday concerns and ideas most pressing to citizens. The book analyzes both the opportunities and constraints facing such efforts to promote environmental sustainability. It first theorizes an approach to “contested materiality” and then draw upon this to engage values embedded in everyday material practices – including land use, automobility, and householding – in affluent postindustrial societies. The aim is to open up new ways of thinking about property, freedom, and citizenship that might foster a more resonant and expansive political imagination, while also modeling a distinctive approach to environmental political theory.

This book provides the first comprehensive assessment of the federal government’s implementation of environmental justice policy. Decades of scholarly research has demonstrated that low-income and minority communities experience disproportionate environmental burdens. During the mid-1990s, the federal government initiated several policies to address these environmental inequalities, including an executive order signed by President Clinton in 1994 (Executive Order 12898) that called on federal agencies to consider environmental justice concerns in its programs, policies, and activities. Yet, twenty years later, there has been not been a systematic evaluation of the implementation of the executive order or the other environmental justice policy commitments made by the Environmental Protection Agency. This book provides such an evaluation. The chapters in this book carefully examine federal environmental justice policy as it has been carried out over the past two decades, with an emphasis on the performance of the Environmental Protection Agency. The contributing authors focus on different aspects of environmental decision-making, including permitting, standard-setting, economic analysis, public participation, enforcement, and use of the courts, but reach a similar general conclusion: the federal government, and the EPA in particular, has generally failed to deliver on the promises articulated in Executive Order 12898 and in subsequent policy commitments. Although the conclusion is a disappointing one, the authors also share optimism that progress can be made, and they each provide recommendations for improving policy moving forward.

In Fighting King Coal, Shannon Elizabeth Bell examines an understudied puzzle within social movement theory: why so few of the vast number of people who suffer from industry-produced environmental hazards and pollution rise up to participate in social movements aimed at bringing about environmental justice and industry accountability. Bell investigates the challenges of micromobilization through a case study of the coalfields of Central Appalachia, where mountaintop removal mining and coal industry-related flooding, sickness, and water contamination have led to the emergence of a grassroots environmental justice movement that is demanding protection from and accountability for the destruction and pollution in coalfield communities. The coal industry’s impact on communities has been far-reaching; however, recruiting new local residents to join the environmental justice movement has proven to be an ongoing challenge. Drawing on in-depth interviews, participant observation, content analysis, geospatial viewshed analysis, and an eight-month “Photovoice” project, Bell uncovers numerous factors contributing to the low numbers of local environmental justice activists, including depleted social capital, the coal-related hegemonic masculinity of the region, the coal industry’s cultural manipulation efforts, the fact that much of the mining activity is hidden, the power of local elite, and the changing face of the environmental justice movement. Through the Photovoice project, Bell reveals the importance of identities to the success or failure of local recruitment efforts in social movement struggles, ultimately arguing that if the local identities of environmental justice movements are lost, they may also lose their power.

When natural gas drilling moves into an urban or a suburban neighborhood, a two-hundred-foot-high drill appears on the other side of a back yard fence and diesel trucks clog a quiet two-lane residential street. Children seem to be having more than the usual number of nosebleeds. There are so many local cases of cancer that the elementary school starts a cancer support group. In this book, Jessica Smartt Gullion examines what happens when natural gas extraction by means of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” takes place not on wide-open rural land but in a densely populated area with homes, schools, hospitals, parks, and businesses. Gullion focuses on fracking in the Barnett Shale, the natural-gas–rich geological formation under the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. She gives voice to the residents—for the most part educated, middle class, and politically conservative—who became reluctant anti-drilling activists in response to perceived environmental and health threats posed by fracking. Gullion offers an overview of oil and gas development and describes the fossil-fuel culture of Texas, the process of fracking, related health concerns, and regulatory issues (including the notorious “Halliburton loophole”). She chronicles the experiences of community activists as they fight to be heard and to get the facts about the safety of fracking. Touted as a greener alternative and a means to reduce dependence on foreign oil, natural gas development is an important part of American energy policy. Yet, as this book shows, it comes at a cost to the local communities who bear the health and environmental burdens.

A debate has emerged recently about the role of information in environmental politics. Much of this debate has focused on the emergence and effectiveness of product eco-labels and corporate sustainability ratings as a new form of environmental governance. “Information optimists” believe that the provision of information can be an effective strategy to protect the environment, while “information pessimists” are concerned that information-based approaches serve as a distraction from more effective forms of governance that rely on the rule of law. This book advances a third position of “information realism,” which acknowledges both the contributions and limitations of information -based governance initiatives. It asserts that these initiatives must develop into more mature governance initiatives for them to overcome their current weaknesses and produce long-lasting and substantial environmental benefits. The book uses a series of in-depth case studies and an original dataset on 245 cases of environmental certifications and ratings to discuss their contributions and limitations and highlight their best and worst practices. These include programs such as ENERGY STAR and USDA Organic, the Sustainable Forestry Initiative and the Forest Stewardship Council, and LEED and Green Globes. Each chapter is organized around a different component of the information value chain that is at the heart of these initiatives, and applies concepts such as legitimacy, validity, and usability to analyze how they are both constructed and perceived. The book concludes with a set of recommendations for policymakers, designers and users of these initiatives that can improve their long-term effectiveness as a form of environmental governance.

The book provides an overview of the development of German environmentalism from the late nineteenth century to the present. Looking at Germany in an international context, it discusses the full range of environmental issues and how it evolved from a concern about pollution and natural monuments to global warming and biodiversity. It defines environmentalism broadly and looks at civic activism, government policies and culture and life. The book seeks to historicize the notion that Germany may serve as a role model for other industrialized countries. It shows that much of what environmentalists admire is of fairly recent origin. It was not until the 1970s and 1980s that Germany, previously an average performer compared with other Western countries, began to advance more than its neighbors. Strict laws, a powerful network of NGOs and an influential Green Party, world-class firms for sustainable technologies and, most recently, the phase-out of nuclear power and the shift to renewable energy—environmentalists all over the world have come to view Germany as a country of special interest.However, many of these achievements are under threat in the twenty-first century due to persistent roadblocks such as lignite mining and automobilism and a declining vigor of green sentiments. The Green Germany has come to stay, but whether it will continue to advance and inspire is highly uncertain. Here and elsewhere, environmentalists are facing a number of difficult choices. Germany may be a laboratory for the future of environmentalism.

Greening the Global Economy develops a workable solution to stabilizing the global climate through investments in energy efficiency and clean renewable energy. The investment program advanced in the book will also generate millions of new job opportunities in all regions of the world. This is even after we allow for the dramatic and unavoidable contraction in the production and consumption of oil, coal, and natural gas. Burning these fossil fuels to generate energy is the single largest cause of climate change. The clean energy investment program does not require reductions in economic growth; to the contrary, it will advance most effectively within a framework of healthy global growth. The book shows if we commit to investing every year approximately 1.5 percent of global GDP on energy efficiency and clean renewable energy investments, we can hit the CO₂ emission reduction targets set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The book’s focus is the intermediate, 20-year target of a 40 percent emissions cut relative to today. The book discusses the need for “just transition policies” for workers and communities that are presently dependent on fossil fuel industries for their livelihoods. It also describes prospects that will open up for small-scale enterprises, community enterprises, and cooperatives as an outgrowth of the transition away from fossil fuels to green energy and high efficiency.

Humanity faces immense hurdles as it struggles to define the path toward a sustainable future. The multiple components of sustainability, all of which demand attention, make understanding the very concept of sustainability itself a challenge. Information about whether global agriculture can be made sustainable, for example, or calculations of the global need for water are useless unless we understand how these issues connect to each other and to other components of sustainability. This book engages in an extended dialogue concerning these linkages, arguing for a comprehensive view of sustainability. It emphasizes the constraints imposed by the relationships among the components—for example, how the need for clean, easily accessible water intersects with the need for the energy required to provide it—and distinguish those constraints that may pose severe limitations on humanity’s future from those of less concern. The book also highlights areas for future research and debate. It urges a transformation in the way we view sustainability—a transformation that is necessary if we are to plan responsibly for a more sustainable world.