Reflexivity and developmental constructs: the case of sustainable futures

ABSTRACT

The quest for sustainability signals a departure from industrialist presuppositions about the human capacity to control nature that had hardly been questioned during the modern era. Environmental politics, indeed, entered the public scene with warnings of environmental crisis that disrupted industrialist assumptions and supported a call for a dramatic change in course. As environmental problems became part of an agenda of sustainable development, however, there came a shift from a disruptive politics towards professionalization and a managerial emphasis. A reflexive approach to sustainability needs to reconsider the relevance of politics while also thematizing problems of history and power. The concept of ‘developmental constructs’, which Harold D. Lasswell offered as part of his proposal for a reflexive project of contextual mapping, is advanced here as relevant to that end. Comparing the early interventions of Rachel Carson and Amory Lovins to Lasswell's conception of developmental constructs, the article maintains that such proposals for sustainable futures highlight the importance of a political connection.     

Imagined citizens and participation: Local Agenda 21 in two communities in Sweden and Austria

Abstract

Local Agenda 21 (LA21), which has its roots in the UN Conference on Environment and Development held in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, aims at fostering processes of sustainable development on a local level. In this article, we compare the LA21 processes of two cities, Helsingborg in Sweden and Vienna in Austria, to seek insight into the varying implementation approaches of common international political commitments. Our focus of analysis is on the social organisation of the two processes, the way local residents are integrated into LA21 work, and especially the political images of citizens—which we call ‘imagined citizens’—that different actor groups hold. The results of the study illustrate two almost diametrically opposed organisational forms of local sustainability governance, the Swedish process relying on a more expert-led, technocratic model of implementation and the Austrian process strongly building on deliberative forms of citizen participation.     

Social Capital and Sustainability in a Community under Threat

Abstract

Engaging with dialogue concerning the relevance and applicability of social capital to a model of sustainable community development, we illustrate an in-depth case of a community experiencing an ideological clash with the dominant politico-societal structures. We argue that while the exclusivity of bonding social capital has been described as the ‘dark side’, it may be essential for progressive sustainable community development (PSCD). When faced with a development threat, such bonds are essential for building links, bridges and solidarity, enabling cultural reproduction and promoting environmental protection for sustainability.     

Sustainable coasts? Perceptions of change and livelihood vulnerability in Nordland,Norway

ABSTRACT

Northern coastal regions are facing multiple challenges from accelerating global environmental and socioeconomic changes, such as ecosystem degradation, climate change, intensified resource extraction, land use change and declining populations. Based on interviews with 13 farmers, fishers and aquaculture employees from coastal Nordland, northern Norway, this study demonstrates how the local stakeholders’ perceptions of change and experiences of vulnerability are closely linked to their livelihood values and worldviews. What the informants consider a sustainable and meaningful way of coastal living does not coincide with national goals for sustainable, natural resource dependent development of the region. The article demonstrates the importance of attending to local values if policymakers and managers are to ensure successful local mobilisation, reduce vulnerability to ongoing and future processes of change, and ensure legitimacy and consistency in development goals of coastal zone management. Insights from this study are useful for local and regional decision makers with responsibility for natural resource policies and development efforts.     

Thinking Habits into Action: The role of knowledge and process in questioning household consumption practices

Despite occupying a central place in the sustainable development paradigm, calls for individuals in high-income countries to adopt patterns of sustainable consumption have failed to gain ground in the past decade. The low uptake of public messages that emphasise links between the environment and the home are caused by a plethora of 'barriers to action', which range from individual circumstances to public norms and structures. This article argues that in addition to these barriers, consideration of how individuals read and react to sustainable consumption information is important. Based on interviews with participants of a sustainable behaviour change programme called Action at Home, this article considers both how, and in what form, knowledge is mobilised when individuals rethink their personal practices. Using Giddens' structuration theory, a framework is presented. This framework emphasises the importance of 'known' or 'local' information, as well as discursive processes, in addressing individual consumption practices and argues that a 'cultural politics' of sustainable consumption needs to be factored into on-going academic and policy debates.     

The right to refuse: Public attitudes and behaviour towards waste in the west of Ireland

Abstract

During the last decade waste management has become one of the most problematic and demanding issues to be addressed in Ireland. Increasing waste production and landfills reaching their capacity are placing unprecedented pressure on the land, and are unsustainable in the long term. However, while surveys of public opinion present a picture of a population increasingly concerned about the quality of the environment and the problem of waste management, there has been an increase in amounts of municipal waste being sent to landfill. Although not unique to Ireland, this gap between values and actions is one that deserves further critical consideration if positive sustainable waste management strategies are to be developed. This paper, based on research being conducted in two case study locations in the west of Ireland, engages with value–action gaps in terms of waste management strategies in Ireland. Based on empirical evidence the paper examines the public's self-reported barriers to more sustainable waste management. The paper argues that some of the greatest barriers to improved waste management are cultural, social and political and that contextual variables such as notions of responsibility and lack of trust in waste regulators contribute greatly to the gap between citizens' attitudes and actions towards waste management.     

Municipal solid waste management in South Africa: from waste to energy recovery through waste-to-energy technologies in Johannesburg

ABSTRACT

“Waste-to-energy” (WTE) technologies have been presented as one of the avenues to improve the management of solid waste whilst promoting clean and healthy urban environments through the recovery of waste and generation of energy. Research suggests that with the right investment in technologies and institutional changes, waste can potentially become a resource that can contribute to the socio-economic development of cities. It is in this context that this paper presents a review of the literature on WTE technologies and their implications on sustainable waste management in urban areas. The paper particularly contributes to our understanding of WTE technologies and its potential on Municipal Solid Waste Management (MSWM) in Johannesburg, South Africa. It is estimated that the city of Johannesburg’s landfills airspace will be completely depleted by year 2023. This projection becomes a motivation for the identification of suitable WTE alternative avenues to manage waste in the city. The paper argues that WTE technologies can contribute significantly to sustainable waste management, economic growth, ecological and environmental well-being.     

Affiliative behaviour during escape to building exits

Two models of escape behaviour are contrasted in an analysis of flight from a fire by 128 people in a public building. The ‘panic’ model assumes that escape involves a homogeneous population of individuals concerned with self-preservation, competing with each other for limited exits. The ‘affiliative’ model² predicts individuals with close psychological ties will attempt to escape in groups of two or more; flight is assumed to involve escape to familiar persons and places. Causal loglinear analysis was used to model the inter-relationships between four variables in a 2 × 2 × 3 × 2 cross-classified categorical table: (A) Group Membership (family/mixed); (B) Group Attachment at Cue (attached/separated); (C) Cue (ambiguous/verbal/unambiguous); (D) Group Affiliation at Exit (affiliated/separated). Associations were found between [BC] and [ABD] indicating strong support for model. In a situation of potential danger ‘separated’ individuals responded more often to ‘ambiguous’ cues. ‘Family’ members who were attached at cue were most likely to be together and ‘mixed’ group members apart when exiting from the building. Family members tried to adopt an optimal strategy for group rather than individual survival.     

Effects of an educational campaign on public environmental attitudes and behaviour in Poland

This paper examines the effects of educational campaigns on municipal solid waste management in Jasło City (Poland). In Jasło, a separate waste collection system for recyclables was introduced 11 years ago. Although household segregation was extensively promoted, the quality of recycled materials collected remained low. The City Council decided in 1999 to adopt a British approach to public education, based on home advisors (selected from the local schools and trained on the sustainable waste management principles) visiting as many households as possible, informing residents about the local waste segregation system, conducting a short survey about residential attitudes and behaviour, and providing people with appropriate educational materials. In 2003 and 2004, home advisors visited 687 households in the private housing estates situated in 37 streets of the city. Their effectiveness and the tonnage of recyclables segregated were monitored across the city. The educational campaign has proved a success, resulting in an increase in recycled wastes collected and the number of inhabitants participating, with the home advisors having positively influenced the way residents think and act towards the wastes they produce. Residents valued the home advisors and appreciated the involvement of young people in the campaign. The education campaign also impacted positively upon the students’ (home advisors) knowledge about waste issues, and provided opportunities for students’ relatives and the whole local community to become more environmentally conscious, through the process of intergenerational communication and influence.     

The urban growth machine goes South: Conditions and capacities for more sustainable place-building

Abstract

The prospects for global sustainable development are thoroughly tied to the future of cities. Our goal is to better understand how cities actually get built and with what substantive consequences. Beyond designing and implementing public policy tools, this requires a better understanding of the underlying political economy of urban place-building. Beginning with the ideal type of the urban growth machine, we outline frameworks for analysing both the ‘conditions for urban place-building’ and the ‘capacities for sustainable urban place-building’. We apply these in the Chilean context by examining general features of the urban political economy and then specific development exemplars from the urban region of Valparaíso. We outline frameworks for further comparative work.     

The Nottingham Cycle-friendly Employers Project: Lessons for encouraging cycle commuting

The Nottingham Cycle Friendly Employers Project studied the effectiveness of measures to promote cycling to work by eight large city employers under the 1995 governmentfunded Cycle Challenge. Progress was monitored by ‘before’ and ‘after’ surveys, by examination of the measures, and by discussions with the employers. Overall cycling awareness and activity were increased by the project: 42% of employees said their cycle commuting had increased. The main influences, about equally, were providing workplace cycling facilities, a house or job move making cycling more attractive, and heightened awareness of the importance of regular exercise for health. The most welcomed and best used measures were secure cycle parking, showering and changing facilities, and cycle purchase loans.     

Health,Environmental and Social Justice

Health is a basic human right. Improving health requires social and environmental justice and sustainable development. The 'health for all' movement embraces principles shared by other social movements—in sustainable development, community safety and new economics. These principles include equity, democracy, empowerment of individuals and communities, underpinned by supportive environmental, economic and educational measures and multi-agency partnerships. Health promotion is green promotion and inequality in health is due to social and economic inequality. This paper shows how health, environmental and economic sustainability are inextricably linked and how professionals of different disciplines can work together with the communities they serve to improve local health and quality of life. It gives examples of how local policy and programme development for public health improvement can fit in with global and national policy-making to promote health, environmental and social justice.     

Reflexive governance: exploring the concept and assessing its critical potential for sustainable development. Introduction to the special issue

ABSTRACT

Elaborated in publications on transition management, sustainability governance and deliberative environmental governance, ‘reflexive governance’ addresses concerns about social-ecological vulnerabilities, flawed conceptualisations of human-nature relations fragmented governance regimes and conditions for a sustainability transition. Key barriers to reflexive government include unavoidable politics; the influence of broader discursive systems that shape actors’ strategic interests; and structural and deliberate limitations to the range of admitted epistemological understandings, normative perspectives and material practices. Against this background, the contributions to the special issue provide novel conceptual linkages between reflexive governance and boundary objects, intercultural dialogue, conflict management heuristics, discourse linguistics, theories of the policy cycle and reflexive law, network and learning theories, and Lasswell’s ‘developmental constructs’. Based on the contributions, we identify five inherent conceptual tensions of reflexive governance: between the openness of horizontal learning processes and the desired direction towards sustainable development; between reflexive governance as a normative or procedural concept; between expected learning orientations and other, strategic orientations; between governance as a precondition for reflexivity and reflexive learning as a precondition for reorganized governance structures; and between reflexivity as an open-ended, evolutionary process and the need to strategically defend the space for reflexivity against powerful groups with an interest in the status quo.     

Consumer understanding of product lifetimes

Throwing products away before they fail or are broken is at the heart of consumer behaviour in developed economies such as the UK. Products are often discarded for reasons of fashion, or to keep up with technological advances, rather than because they have reached the end of their functional life. Such behaviours contribute to resource depletion, greenhouse gas emissions, and physical waste which needs to be managed. Extending the length of time that products are kept in use (whether by their original or subsequent owners) can contribute to greater resource efficiency, with significant potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This research was undertaken to support the development of evidence-based policy in the UK on the role of longer product lifetimes in achieving sustainable consumption and waste prevention. Twelve qualitative discussion groups, involving 115 consumers, were carried out to explore consumer influences on product lifetimes including: which factors influence purchase decisions; the care of products in use; and disposal decisions. A new typology was developed to describe how products meet consumers’ various needs for ‘workhorses’, ‘investment’ and ‘up-to-date’ products; and how lifetime is an outcome of the ‘nature’ of a product (functional life) and its ‘nurture’ (lifetime in use) by consumers. The results demonstrate that consumers have come to expect constant and rapid up-dating of products. In particular, having the latest versions of products is strongly associated with personal identity and feelings of success in life. There is little evidence of concern about the environmental consequences of a ‘throwaway society’. The low cost of new products, which enables rapid updating for reasons of fashion, is a key barrier to encouraging consumers to keep products in use for longer. Some opportunities were identified however for certain ‘workhorse’ and ‘investment’ products that are valued more for their functionality than fashion.     

A discussion to promote global sustainability techniques for motivating plastic waste to minimize carbon footprints

This paper emphasizes the significant challenges facing the sustainable environment, including managing and handling plastic waste and reducing carbon footprints. To tackle these challenges, it is essential to identify people's awareness levels of waste handling techniques and their pro-environmental behaviors. The study focuses on Guwahati, one of the most important cities in Northeast India, which generates increasing plastic waste daily. The paper aims to identify the factors contributing to the reduction of carbon footprints resulting from plastic waste management activities. The data collected from 1326 respondents was analyzed using factor analysis, and the reliability of the dataset was confirmed using Cronbach's alpha (0.84 for the awareness level of waste management techniques and 0.780 for the prevalent mode of plastic waste management techniques). KMO (0.796), Bartlett's test of sphericity (p < 0.001), and determinant score (0.019) were used to assess the data adequacy and factorability of the dataset, and the results were found to be satisfactory. Principal component analysis, exploratory factor analysis, and varimax orthogonal rotation method were used to identify high-loaded factors by reducing the number of variables. The results showed that two highly loaded components, namely awareness level of waste management techniques (AWMT) and prevalent mode of plastic waste management techniques (PWMT), explained 27.53% and 24.34% of the total variance, respectively, with eigenvalues of 3.35 and 2.88. The regression model confirmed the statistical significance of these factors (p < 0.001) and their relationship with the dependent variable, greenhouse reduction (GHGR). The study proposes that minimizing carbon footprints in the environment can be achieved by focusing on a limited number of controllable factors such as AWMT and PWMT. This study provides valuable insights to the authorities in controlling waste generation and achieving a pollution-free environment.     

Buying green: the crucial role of public authorities

Abstract

A strategic approach to local sustainability assessment requires that sustainability implications of proposed policies, plans and programmes are evaluated. These evaluations need to critically consider organizational structures, processes and outcomes. The establishment of ‘communities of practice’, groups or networks of practitioners with shared interests, is a helpful mechanism for facilitating change in a wide range of organizations. This paper analyses the potential for communities of practice to contribute to the implementation of sustainability assessments by local government. Focusing on Sutherland Shire Council in Sydney, Australia, this paper presents the findings of a project that engaged practitioners in the design of a sustainability assessment system. The establishment of communities of practice helped to break down the ‘silos’ created by institutional divides within local government, but this approach also raises challenges in maintaining momentum and overcoming political agendas.     

Breathtaking Clarity,Delicious Ambiguity

Abstract

A new institutional architecture is emerging in Wales to govern sustainable development. The National Assembly for Wales (hereafter referred to as the ‘Welsh Assembly’)1 ¹The National Assembly for Wales is the legal entity and title given to the devolved body in Wales. ‘Welsh Assembly Government’ is the term used by the current administration. has a statutory duty to promote sustainable development in the exercise of all its functions; its response has been to design a set of political and organizational arrangements to manage this policy area, and to prepare a Scheme that sets out how it proposes to discharge this duty. Devolved government in Wales has also been the catalyst for the emergence of collaborative relationships and partnerships between different sectors and interests. The Welsh Assembly and the Welsh Local Government Association have published a Compact jointly committing them to promote sustainable development; national non-governmental organizations such as Oxfam and the World Wide Fund for Nature have set up Welsh agencies; local government sustainable development coordinators have formed a national network; a national Sustainable Development Forum has been created; and the Welsh Assembly has taken the lead in establishing a European network of countries interested in sharing best practice on sustainable development. A new Wales-specific structure and system is materializing and the test now is how far this will be effective in delivering sustainable development policies and solutions at local and national levels. This paper examines the challenges in managing sustainable development, and the potential for success of this new governance system, drawing on recent research undertaken by the author on behalf of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The examination is set in the context of different theories of governance, and sustainable development is conceptualized as a ‘wicked issue’—one that cannot be resolved by organizations and agencies acting autonomously, but rather needs concerted focus and action across all sectors.     

Household behaviour and attitudes with respect to recycling food waste--experiences from focus groups

It is a challenge to reduce the ever-increasing flow of waste. In Norway the systems for recycling of organic waste, paper, glass, metals, etc. differ between municipalities, both with regard to organizational and to technological structures. Our hypothesis is that people's attitudes and behaviour may differ with different systems of waste management. People's behaviour and attitudes regarding (organic) waste recycling were investigated in two municipalities with differing technical and organisational systems. Data came from interviews with municipal employees, questionnaires, focus groups and multi-criteria mapping. People seem to be better informed and more positive about organic waste recycling in one of the municipalities (MH, which has recycling of organic waste) than in the other (MS, which has no such recycling). The two municipalities had similar sets of important criteria for waste management (price, environmental friendliness, easy solutions, information). Many participants stated that they had learned from the group process, though only a few reported changed preferences. The institutional context seems to be important for people's behaviour and attitudes towards waste management. This implies that people's recycling behaviour does not only depend on technical and organisational aspects, but also on institutions. These are important messages for policy makers. On an individual basis, the different systems in the two municipalities seem to affect people's stated attitudes. These differences diminish when they are in a common setting where process and dialogue stimulate new thoughts and encourage people to act more altruistically.     

Economic instruments for sustainable community development

Abstract

In recent years there has been increasing interest in the use of so‐called ‘economic instruments’ in environmental policy. Economic instruments influence the behaviour of economic agents by providing financial incentives for environmentally improved behaviour, or disincentives for damaging behaviour. This paper explores the use of economic instruments in the field of sustainable community planning and development. It does so in the wider context of how environmental economic policy is made. The focus of this paper is to examine the role of policy instruments in community planning, and to review the different types of instruments that are available to policy‐makers. Numerous examples of the various instruments at the community level are described. It is widely believed that policy making should occur at the lowest or most local level possible while maintaining effectiveness. A system of government that does not give adequate legal power to local governments, and does not allow local governments considerable flexibility in the use of funds, cannot be expected to achieve all community objectives. Central governments must give local governments permission to take measures towards sustainable community planning, even though that requires giving them power to address broader issues. At the same time, when issues that should be addressed at national and international levels are not addressed, local governments may be able to take action individually. Given the general reluctance (and perhaps inability) of governments at all levels today to consider non‐economic and, particularly, non‐market policy instruments, it is pragmatic as well as timely to improve our understanding of economic instruments for sustainable community development.     

Evaluating an Employer Transport Plan: Effects on travel behaviour of parking charges and associated measures introduced at the University of Sheffield

Journeys to work form a significant proportion of all car journeys and employer transport plans have been advocated as a way to manage the transport needs of workers in order to contain the level of car trips and, therefore, emissions and other negative effects. A questionnaire survey and focus group interviews were used to evaluate the success of an employer transport plan implemented by the University of Sheffield in September 1997. The policy was associated with a marginal (7%) reduction in car use and promoted a limited increase in travel diversity. An objection to the principle of paying to park at work and ineligibility for a permit both deterred car use. The policy caused a re-evaluation of the journey to work. Nevertheless, a number of factors worked against switches in behaviour, particularly employees' perceptions of the university's motivation for introducing the plan and attitudes towards car use and public transport. Disincentives to car use need to be much more significant to persuade more employees to leave their car at home, and need to be tied to substantial improvements in the availability of non-car alternatives.