On climbing trees: an Australian perspective on sustainability and political risk>

This paper examines how political risk taking is necessary for gains in sustainability. It provides a personal perspective covering some of the key turning points in Australia (and some global examples) to demonstrate how policy innovation in sustainability will always require political leaders to go out on a limb and then in hindsight the policy will be seen as obvious and normal. The key components of sustainability (vision, interdisciplinary, geographical and sectoral synergies) are used to illustrate stories of tree climbing. Some deeper levels of sustainability applied to thinking, creativity, belonging and spirituality are then used as the framework for illustrating the significance of political risk taking for sustainability.     

Incorporating sustainable development concerns into an urban regeneration project: how politics can defeat procedures

It is often thought that new procedural arrangements can help embed sustainable development as a policy goal into policy practice. This is the hope of tools such as environmental assessment, sustainability audits and sustainability indicators. Using a case study of urban regeneration in the London Borough of Southwark, this paper critically examines these claims. It shows how sustainable development was sidelined as a policy goal during the evaluation of the Master Plan for the area, the appraisal of individual projects for funding under the Single Regeneration Budget and the development of two local sustainability indicator projects. In each case the local political circumstances were key factors in shaping policy practice and outcomes. This leads to a re-evaluation of such procedural policy tools, emphasizing the importance of local governance contexts.     

Drivers of agricultural sustainability in developing countries: a review

Agricultural development has been an effective instrument for poverty alleviation and economic development in developing countries over the latter half of the twentieth century, and over 80 % of rural people globally still depend on agriculture for their living. However, issues such as water availability, land degradation and an increasing dependence on chemical fertilisers and pesticides continue to be on-going threats to sustainable agricultural development. These threats are being driven by the pressing need to ensure food security in the face of rapidly growing and urbanising populations. Developing countries will therefore continue to need improved methods for planning sustainable agricultural development. This paper presents a review of agricultural sustainability assessment in developing countries. The review highlights some of the key weaknesses that persist in sustainability assessment and the need to consider not only indicators of sustainability but also the drivers that influence indicator behaviour. We argue that without a good understanding of the drivers of sustainability and their systemic relationships to indicators, sustainability assessments run the risk of focusing on symptoms without addressing underlying causes of adverse indicator trends. Drivers of agricultural sustainability in developing countries encompass a range of demographic, natural, socio-economic, political, institutional and management factors. Understanding these and their relationships to sustainability indicators is needed in order to develop agricultural development policy that supports sustainability. The paper presents a conceptual framework for guiding systemic agricultural sustainability assessment and agricultural development planning in developing countries that includes both sustainability indicators and drives, and considers the broad relationships between them.     

A framework for sustainable invasive species management: Environmental,social, and economic objectives

Applying the concept of sustainability to invasive species management (ISM) is challenging but necessary, given the increasing rates of invasion and the high costs of invasion impacts and control. To be sustainable, ISM must address environmental, social, and economic factors (or “pillars”) that influence the causes, impacts, and control of invasive species across multiple spatial and temporal scales. Although these pillars are generally acknowledged, their implementation is often limited by insufficient control options and significant economic and political constraints. In this paper, we outline specific objectives in each of these three “pillars” that, if incorporated into a management plan, will improve the plan’s likelihood of sustainability. We then examine three case studies that illustrate how these objectives can be effectively implemented. Each pillar reinforces the others, such that the inclusion of even a few of the outlined objectives will lead to more effective management that achieves ecological goals, while generating social support and long-term funding to maintain projects to completion. We encourage agency directors and policy-makers to consider sustainability principles when developing funding schemes, management agendas, and policy.     

Embedded value systems in sustainability assessment tools and their implications

This paper explores the implications that arise with the selection of specific sustainability evaluation tools. Sustainability evaluation tools are conceptualized in this paper as value articulating institutions and as such their choice is a far from a trivial matter. In fact their choice can entail various ethical and practical repercussions. However, in most cases the choice of the evaluation tool is made by the analyst(s) without taking into consideration the values of the affected stakeholders. By choosing the analytical tool the analyst essentially “subscribes to” and ultimately “enforces” a particular worldview as the legitimate yardstick to evaluate the sustainability of a particular project (or policy). Instead, this paper argues that the selection of evaluation tools should be consistent with the values of the affected stakeholders. With this in mind, different sustainability evaluation tools’ assumptions are critically reviewed and a number of suggestions that could facilitate the choice of the most appropriate tool according to the context of the sustainability evaluation are provided. It is expected that conscious evaluation tool selection, following the suggestions made in this paper, will reduce the risk of providing distorted sustainability evaluations.     

Barriers to implementing sustainability locally: a case study of policy immobilities

This study aims to contribute to the field of urban planning by applying policy mobilities and transfer theories to a case study of the Capital Regional District and its 13 municipalities in British Columbia, Canada, in order to analyse and understand the dynamics of how sustainability is governed locally, with a special focus on barriers to sustainability policy mobility. The empirical material is primarily based on interviews with key stakeholders who guide policy development and creation in the region to inform an understanding of how sustainable development initiatives are developed and shared. This study finds that while there is interest and demand in sustainability, policy-makers are frustrated with their lack of success in implementing sustainability programmes. While there are some instances of policy sharing and transfer among municipalities in the region, there is a clear desire for more exchanges which would allow municipalities to respond more effectively to the demands placed upon them. Significant barriers to policy mobility are also identified, in particular, an unclear understanding of sustainability, a culture of competition and hostility among municipalities, difficulty with the process of transfer itself, and a lack of time, money and resources. These barriers are in part a result of a broken governance structure which does not provide clear leadership to the municipalities, sets municipalities to be competitive with each other and provides ineffective support for municipalities through an unwieldy regional administrative body which is not well regarded by the municipalities.     

Environmental space and barriers to local sustainability: Evidence from Edinburgh, Scotland

This paper steps into the minefield that is urban sustainability studies. It defends a rigorous definition of sustainable development called Environmental Space. This approach starts from the assumption that (1) there are limits to the biophysical capacity of the ecosystem and (2) that — within these limits — each individual has equal access rights to natural capital. On this basis, per capita sustainable consumption targets are calculated which can be (and are being) used as policy objectives. The paper explores how environmental space has influenced local sustainability politics in Edinburgh, Scotland. By doing so, it finds that environmental space targets are still far from being achieved. Reasons for this failure are investigated and Edinburgh's continued commitment to the material growth of her economy is identified as one key barrier. This point is illustrated through the investigation of recent policy decisions in Edinburgh which were justified as being necessary for growth, but which clearly contradict the aims of sustainable development.     

Sustainable development control? Zoning and land use regulations for urban form,biodiversity conservation and green design in Australia

This paper examines how Australian land use plans incorporate provisions for sustainable urban form, design, biodiversity conservation, and climate change. Despite the long-standing sustainability objectives in state policy frameworks, a survey of 291 comprehensive plans finds implementation within local instruments is far from universal. Differences in patterns of policy adoption, as well as potential explanations for these differences, including geographical location, patterns of residential growth, the socio-economic composition of local communities, political forces, and policy evolution over time, are explored. Overall, areas experiencing more intensive growth tend to have newer plans, which in turn, contain more sustainability provisions, suggesting a responsive rather than repressive relationship between development pressures and regulatory development control.     

Examining strategic sustainability plans and smart-growth land-use measures in California cities

Given many potential obstacles, what types of strategic plans and measures for climate protection and/or energy sustainability are more likely than others to be adopted by cities? What are the key internal and external obstacles to adopting and implementing these plans and measures? Based on data obtained from a survey conducted from 2010 to 2011 and other sources, this paper develops a framework derived from political contracting theory and strategic orientation literature to examine how public management obstacles, socio-economic factors, and political factors influence a city's likelihood of having strategic energy sustainability plans and measures in place. Moreover, this paper finds that many California cities remain reluctant to require residents and businesses to comply with more challenging sustainability measures, such as smart-growth land-use practices, and that those cities with a strategic energy sustainability plan already in place tend to be more willing to adopt smart-growth land-use measures.     

Uneven Environmental Management: A Canadian Perspective

Advocates of community-based approaches to environmental management argue that by respecting local circumstances, skills, and concerns we may improve the prospects of achieving environmental sustainability; yet, within nation states such as Canada, environmental conditions, management and enforcement costs and capabilities, and power differentials within and among civic and public sectors may result in a highly differentiated capacity for environmental management across different localities and regions. This article draws on insights of political ecology to 1) create a conceptual framework that identifies key elements shaping regional environmental management regimes and to 2) undertake a comparative analysis to assess how elements interact to generate uneven management outcomes. I compare experiences of two Canadian biosphere reserves designated in 2000: Clayoquot Sound, BC; and Redberry Lake, SK. Analysis reveals that differences in governance and institutional capacities in the biosphere reserves are key to explaining uneven local outcomes. Where the public and civic sectors are strong, a robust and publicly vetted form of management will emerge. Where these sectors are weak and land is held as private property, environmental nongovernmental organizations can set the type and level of management, to the exclusion of effective civic and state involvement. This result may improve environmental sustainability but hinder social sustainability of a management regime and raises questions about the efficacy of community-based management.     

Partnerships for local sustainability and local governance in a Tasmanian settlement

This research is concerned with effects and actions at the local level, where it is argued that local governing processes are key to developing sustainable communities. The roles of the citizen and of formal government are changing such that the implementation of sustainability praxis at the local level requires that citizens and governments reconsider both the meaning and techniques of governance. Indeed, how we are governed, participate in governing processes and internalise and accept the need for change will affect how local communities make constant and lasting a dynamic praxis of sustainability. Actors in local governments and communities may be crucial in this task—especially as facilitators, enablers, leaders and partners. In this paper we focus on the Huon Valley Council and some members of one of its communities. We examine how they are experimenting with partnerships as a form of governance to unify, control, mobilise and regulate the conduct of various actors, and how such partnerships may foster sustainability praxis in the Valley's diverse communities of place and interest.     

Water and the politics of sustainability transitions: from regime actor conflicts to system governance organizations

This study contributes to the analysis of the politics of sustainability transitions by developing a focus on regime actor conflicts and a processual model for how these conflicts develop and are resolved. In a comparison of water-supply systems in four U.S. cities, we show how conflicts among regime actors and political jurisdictions lead to the formation of system governance organizations (SGOs) that bridge jurisdictional boundaries to manage conflicts over a technological system (TS). SGOs coordinate relations among water utilities and diverse stakeholders to reduce pervasive conflicts, but they can also serve as drivers of improved sustainability. We analyze resistance that can emerge, such as from urban growth coalitions, which limit the capacity of SGOs to drive changes. We develop a four-stage processual model (first-order regime conflicts, SGO formation, sustainability transition expansion, and second-order regime conflicts) that opens research in the politics of transitions to the dynamic of regime actor conflicts and provides the basis for generalizations about the causes of SGO formation and their effects on the governance of TSs such as water-supply infrastructure. Policy implications regarding how to improve political support for SGO sustainability efforts are also discussed.     

Partnerships for local sustainability and local governance in a Tasmanian settlement

This research is concerned with effects and actions at the local level, where it is argued that local governing processes are key to developing sustainable communities. The roles of the citizen and of formal government are changing such that the implementation of sustainability praxis at the local level requires that citizens and governments reconsider both the meaning and techniques of governance. Indeed, how we are governed, participate in governing processes and internalise and accept the need for change will affect how local communities make constant and lasting a dynamic praxis of sustainability. Actors in local governments and communities may be crucial in this task—especially as facilitators, enablers, leaders and partners. In this paper we focus on the Huon Valley Council and some members of one of its communities. We examine how they are experimenting with partnerships as a form of governance to unify, control, mobilise and regulate the conduct of various actors, and how such partnerships may foster sustainability praxis in the Valley's diverse communities of place and interest.     

Managing water through change and uncertainty: comparing lessons from the adaptive co-management literature to recent policy developments in England

Water management is set to become increasingly variable and unpredictable, in particular because of climate change. This paper investigates the extent to which water policy in England provides an enabling environment for ‘adaptive co-management’, which its proponents claim can achieve the dual objective of ecosystem protection and livelihood sustainability under conditions of change and uncertainty. Five policy categories are derived from a literature review, and are used to conduct a directed content analysis of seven key water policy documents. The findings reveal that although, in part, English water policy serves as an enabling environment for adaptive co-management, there is a level of discrepancy between substantive aspects of the five policy categories and water policy in England. Addressing these discrepancies will be important if English water policy is to allow for the emergence of processes, like adaptive co-management, that are capable of coping with the challenges that lie ahead.     

Embracing sustainability: the incorporation of sustainability principles in municipal planning and policy in four mid-sized municipalities in Ontario,Canada

The issue of planning for sustainability is becoming more established within Canadian municipal planning. As municipalities begin to align their planning policy to reflect a more sustainable approach, there is an increased interest in how sustainability is being operationalised within municipal documents. This research aims to better understand how principles of sustainability are imbedded within Ontario municipal documents, with a specific focus on the Integrated Sustainability Community Planning approach that has emerged in Canada. Drawing on a nested comparative case study of four mid-sized municipalities, we uncover the language and strategies employed by the municipalities as they relate to the principles of sustainability developed by Gibson [2006a. Sustainability assessment: basic components of a practical approach. Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal, 24 (3), 170–182]. The findings suggest that current policy-based approaches to sustainability are considering more socially oriented strategies focused on promoting community involvement, inclusive decision-making, equity, socio-ecological civility, long-term integrative planning, and responsibility through stewardship. However, there are potential limitations that will require future research to examine policy outcomes associated with sustainability uptake. The ICSP approach must still overcome the issues relating to lack of regulatory authority and the incorporation of policies based on popular trends rather than empirical evidence.     

The discursive framework of sustainability in UK food policy: the marginalised environmental dimension

ABSTRACT

In the context of food policy, sustainability functions as a normative principle but also constitutes a highly contested arena. The study presented in this paper establishes how discursive dynamics amongst professionals involved in matters of food distribution, retail, consumption and waste lead to food policy themes being framed as issues of sustainability. Analysing varied UK-based data (trade magazine articles, policy documents and interviews with retail, non-profit and consultancy representatives), three interpretative frames of sustainability are identified: consumer sovereignty, economic rationality and stewardship. Focusing on three themes of food sustainability – organic consumption, protein diversity and waste reduction – it is shown how these interpretative frames constitute the discursive framework relevant to food policy. Based on these findings, it is shown how in the analysed debates environmental concerns are sidelined.     

Victoria's emerging framework of regional governance for sustainability: the case of catchment management authorities and regional catchment strategies

The aim of this paper is to presents a progress report on how a subnational jurisdiction, the Australian state of Victoria, is attempting to implement regional governance for sustainability through its catchment planning framework. The paper examines the lessons learnt from a best practice approach to the implementation of network governance to see whether there are actions that can be taken to improve regional governance for sustainability in Victoria. The authors argue that Victoria is implementing a network governance approach to natural resource management (NRM) as a significant component of sustainability and that this has certain advantages. In particular the emergence of Regional Catchment Strategies developed by the State's ten statutory Catchment Management Authorities as 'regional sustainability blueprints' is bringing a significant level of maturity to the state's governance framework. Furthermore the state is currently working to complete its governance for sustainability through new statewide integrating frameworks—an Environmental Sustainability Framework as well as a statewide Catchment Management and Investment Framework. The paper concludes that taking a network governance approach could have transformative potential but there are significant challenges ahead: the complex task of aligning of national, state, catchment and local government strategies through an outcomes focus; the scarcity of mechanisms and tools to assist in translation of strategies into integrated investment priorities; gaps in knowledge and understanding of natural resource management problems; limitations in the capacity of regional and local bodies, including local government; and getting the policy tools right within the framework. However, as the best practice examples illustrate, taking a gradual approach to the development of the institutions—building on successive wins in capacity—is the best and only way to proceed.     

Governmentality,environmental subjectivity,and urban intensification

This article delineates concepts of eco-modernisation and urban sustainability (including its associated discourses), elucidating Foucault's notion of governmentality and examining select moments of contested urban governance in the neighbourhood of Old Ottawa South, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It shows how intensification – a “compact city approach” to urban sustainability – as both policy and practice, serves to both discipline and regulate by “conducting the conduct” of environmental and entrepreneurial subjects. It reveals that zoning has more explicitly become a political technology (albeit a flexible one) for achieving “highest and best use” of private property, privileging intensification projects proposed by developers, through a hierarchical exercise of state power that privileges market processes, while undermining community values and priorities.     

Urban sustainability and environmental justice: evaluating the linkages in public planning/policy discourse

Many cities' municipal governments have made some version of “sustainability” an explicit policy goal over the past two decades. Previous research has documented how the operationalisation and conceptualisation of sustainability in urban sustainability plans vary greatly among cities, particularly with respect to environmental justice. This article reports on whether and how large American cities incorporate environmental justice into their urban sustainability indicator projects. Our findings suggest that while there has been an increase in the number of cities incorporating environmental justice elements into sustainability plans since the early 2000s, their conceptualizations and implementations of sustainability remain highly constrained. The paucity of evaluative tools suggests that environmental justice efforts are potentially losing traction in public debate over macro-scale sustainability concerns (e.g. climate change) or the need for regionally competitive environmental amenities (e.g. parks). This paper concludes with suggestions for revising existing sustainability plans to better reflect environmental justice concerns.     

THE (POLITICAL) SCIENCE OF WATERSHED MANAGEMENT IN THE ECOSYSTEM AGE1

ABSTRACT: Ecosystem management has become an important unifying theme for environmental policy in the past decade. Whereas the science of ecosystem dynamics suggests that it will remain difficult to define ecosystem borders and all of the natural and anthropogenic effects that influence them, the politics of ecosystem management require that a national ecosystem delineation standard be adopted. Moreover, a political framework for ecosystem management decision making must be designed in such a way as to complement the hierarchical, interrelated nature of ecosystems generally. This paper advocates that a watershed-based ecosystem delineation standard is the most politically suitable because it will be easily understood by the public and watersheds have a long history as a medium of environmental policy. The paper then proposes that the political framework for watershed-based ecosystem management must depend heavily on state and local autonomy, subject to federally prescribed standards and goals. The Coastal Zone Management Act provides a model for how a national ecosystem management policy can work within state and local watershed cultures and economies.