Local/Global Institutional Systems of Environmental Public Action (original) (raw)
Related papers
France's ‘Grenelle de l'environnement’: openings and closures in ecological democracy
Environmental Politics, 2010
Since 2007 France has been systematically renovating government policy under the banner of sustainable development. This process, called the Grenelle de l'environnement, extends the official role given to environmental associations in certain of the State's advisory bodies. The institutional roots of the Grenelle are located in various precedents for consultative environmental practice in French administration. The role of Nicolas Hulot's 2006 ecological pact in making democratised environmental policy a higher presidential priority is then reviewed. At a procedural level, the Grenelle is shown to take France's meso-corporatist practices in the direction of deliberative democracy. Its newly adopted Energy-Climate tax shows how environmental groups can use discursive power to shape environmental legislation.
Drawing on an empirical study of environmental policies in Manchester (UK) and Saint-Etienne (France), this article attempts to provide a periodization of the evolution of the management of urban environmental issues. The periodization traces the shift in discourse from a focus on 'local environment' to 'sustainable urban development'. Three main sequences are identified corresponding to three different ways of tackling environmental issues covering a period from the late 1970s up to the present. The aim of this article is twofold. First, it will use environmental policies as a tool to understand the transformations of urban governance, and in particular the transformations of the actors involved in policy-making. Second, it will show how sustainable development policies are used by local elites to neutralize urban conflicts by excluding environmental grassroots movements from the management of environmental issues. Finally, the article will discuss how this marginalization should be considered as a sign of the emergence of a post-democratic era.
Environment, Development and Sustainability, 2009
Since Rio, governments have increased measures to promote sustainable household consumption, but this has induced limited changes in consumers' daily practices. This article argues that one of the reasons behind the poor efficiency of these policies is the low level of consideration granted to local decision-making. The article discusses the results of a study which aims at better ascertaining the practices and representations of local government leaders in promoting sustainable development in households. We shall analyse the motivations, obstacles, interaction of players, communication and action plans associated with promoting sustainable development, in which individual will and effort are the keywords. The results obtained show how important it is to introduce better management systems for information and resource exchange between the different institutions involved. The study was carried out in a suburban area of south-west France counting 71 small towns and villages, characteristic of the spatial dynamics triggered by the global phenomenon of urbanisation.
ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENTS, INSTITUTIONS AND CIVIL SOCIETY A new way to preserve common goods
Paco Partecipazione&Conflitto, 2014
This paper aims at studying environmental participative movements which have national/Euro- pean/international relevance and use digital media, as well as local connections and conventional net- works for interacting, socializing, mobilizing people and tackling civic and social issues. By using a compara- tive approach, this article focuses on Italian and European projects promoted by movements in order to support a culture of environmental security and a sustainable development for everybody. The analysis hi- ghlights significant differences among movements in terms of capability of interacting with institutions and other stakeholders, establishing partnerships and cooperating for local development and community em- powerment. The objective is to provide a first model of environmental socialization based on several pro- mising features: networks and innovative forms of partnership; level of activism and capability of planning participative initiatives; intensity of civic cohesion that is the ability of creating connections beyond their own movement, rooting inside the territorial community in a meaningful and enduring way.
The Terres d'Espérances: Integration of Domestic and Green Worths into a Civic Polity
European Journal of Creative Practices in Cities and Landscapes, 2022
This study focuses on the participatory revision of the Greater Quebec City Area land use planning and development schema which develops into a polemical process of political will formation that is analysed with the tools of the sociology of justification. The challenge is to determine whether the engagement of citizens, representatives of agricultural lobbies, environmental activists and spokespersons for cultural heritage associations into the controversy calls across institutional and social arenas for a requalification of cultural and natural goods threatened with destruction in order to ensure their protection and transmission to future generations.
Governing local sustainability
Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 2006
This paper draws upon the DISCUS (Developing Institutional and Social Capacity for Sustainable Development) research project, co-funded by the European Commission. The project was undertaken during 2001-2004 and involved an in-depth study of 40 European towns and cities in order to understand the institutional and social factors and conditions that might contribute to policy 'achievement' or 'failure' in local sustainable development policy and practice. Based on the findings of this research it proposes a conceptual framework for local sustainable development, linking the concepts of institutional capital, social capital and governance to provide a model for understanding the governing of local sustainability. The research shows that in those cases that exhibit sustainable development policy achievements, there are also greater levels of civil society activity and knowledge regarding sustainability issues, and high levels of institutional capacity. Confident local government is crucial to the development of institutional capacity and to institutional learning. One aspect of this is local authorities being equipped to address the longer-term issues and to have a strategic vision for a sustainable future.
2005
Payments for environmental services (PES) are increasingly discussed as appropriate mechanisms for matching the demand for environmental services with the incentives of land users whose actions modify the supply of those environmental services. While there has been considerable discussion of the institutional mechanisms for PES, relatively little attention has been given to the inter-relationships between PES institutions and other rural institutions. This paper presents and builds upon the proposition that both the function and welfare effects of PES institutions depend crucially on the co-institutions of collective action (CA) and property rights (PR).