Washing away poverty: Water, democracy and gendered poverty eradication in South Africa

This article discusses ways in which the South African Government and grassroots organizations envisage and implement democracy achieved since 1994 in the field of water resources management. The focus is on the democratic, political and economic freedom and equality in resource rights for poor black women, who are central to poverty eradication. While the new water policy and law provide an enabling framework for achieving these goals, implementation on the ground encounters both new opportunities and constraints. This is illustrated by several cases of establishing South Africa's new water management institutions: catchment management agencies and water user associations. The important nexus between state‐led democratization of water resources management and bottom‐up grassroots movements is also discussed. The article concludes that the Government's affirmative and targeted intervention is indispensable for redressing gender inequalities and eradicating poverty.     

Winners and losers from industry reforms in the developing world: experiences from the electricity and mining sectors

The reform of previously state-owned and operated industries in many Less Developed Countries (LDCs) provide contrary experiences to those in the developed world, which have generally had more equitable distributional impacts. The economic reform policies proposed by the so-called ‘Washington Consensus’ state that privatisation provides governments with opportunities to raise revenues through the sale of under-performing and indebted state industries, thereby reducing significant fiscal burdens, and, at the same time, facilitating influxes of foreign capital, skills and technology, with the aim of improving operations and a ‘trickle-down’ of benefits. However, experiences in many LDCs over the last 15–20 years suggest that reform has not solved the problem of chronic public-sector debt, and that poverty and socio-economic inequalities have increased during this period of ‘neo-liberal’ economics. This paper does not seek to challenge the policies themselves, but rather argues that the context in which reform has often taken place is of fundamental significance. The industry-centric policy advice provided by the IFIs typically causes a ‘lock-in’ of inequitably distributed ‘efficiency gains’, providing minimal, if any, benefits to impoverished groups. These arguments are made using case study analysis from the electricity and mining sectors.     

Addressing environmental inequalities in UK policy: An action research perspective

In the UK there has been a serious attempt under the current government to foster policy making which is evidence-based and therefore more likely to deliver its intended results. In this article we consider the types of evidence and evidence making that might be required to build effective policy for addressing environmental inequalities. We draw on our experiences of developing an action research approach to policy making in the Environment Agency over a two year period from July 2002 to August 2004. We conclude that an action research approach is well suited to policy making within this new but rapidly growing area of sustainable development policy and urge further exploration of such approaches as a means of better connecting the relevant research, policy making and practitioner communities.     

Using a worldview lens to examine complex policy issues: a historical review of bushfire management in the South West of Australia

The scale and intensity of bushfire activity in Australia is likely to increase as a result of climate change. Effective bushfire management policy measures are therefore essential to minimise the interrelated social, environmental and economic impacts of fire in the landscape. This paper presents a historical review of bushfire management in the South West of Australia (SW): a bushfire prone and biodiverse region. Using a worldview framework to analyse key policy documents and literature, the paper demonstrates that the evolution of complex policy sectors such as bushfire management, is influenced not only by scientific and technical developments but also as a result of changing worldviews. Adapting the Integrative Worldview Framework (IWF), seven worldview categories that dominated particular periods of history in Australia are presented. These worldview categories are then used to examine the evolution of bushfire management practice, policy and institutional arrangements relevant to the SW. The argument presented herein is that a better understanding of worldviews and how they influence complex and contentious policy fields such as bushfire management, is useful for policy analysis, reflexive practice and research. The paper suggests an integrative worldview approach, which enables opportunities for exchanges and constructive conflict between stakeholders and agencies with diverse worldviews, could contribute to creating more sustainable bushfire management. Finally, it is argued that opportunities for Indigenous and Western worldview exchanges in the bushfire management sector, through collaborative knowledge partnerships could assist the sector in both management practice and policy formulation.     

Moving up the waste hierarchy: Car boot sales,reuse exchange and the challenges of consumer culture to waste prevention

Moving up the waste hierarchy is a key priority for UK waste policy. Waste prevention requires policy interventions to promote reuse. The term ‘reuse exchange’ has been adopted by UK policy makers to describe a variety of second-hand trading outlets including car boot sales, charity shops and online exchange sites. As waste policy is based on tonnage diverted from disposal (or landfill), policy interventions to promote reuse exchange will be based on the weight of goods estimated to be flowing through these sites. This paper uses a combination of field survey data and scale-up estimation to quantify and characterise the weight of goods exchanged at car boot sales in England in 2012. This is estimated at 50–60 000 tonnes per annum. The paper emphasises that movement up the waste hierarchy brings waste policy into closer contact with household consumption practices. It draws on qualitative research to show that, for participants, car boot sales are not associated with waste prevention. Instead, car boot sales rely on stocks of surplus household goods and exemplify the culture of thrift, which enables more, not less, consumption. The paper shows the collision between the social values that inform thrift and the environmental values that underpin reuse; and it argues that the policy goal of enhanced recovery for reuse might best be achieved by working with consumer culture. Two ways of achieving this are suggested: interventions that make it easier for consumers to do the right thing, through promoting opportunities for the circulation of stocks of surplus goods, for example, through increasing the frequency of car boot sales; and interventions which recognise that car boot sales also generate waste, which could be recovered for reuse.     

Towards a More Participative Definition of Food Justice

This paper argues that the definition of food justice must be defined in more participatory terms. Current accounts of food justice tend to emphasize distributional inequalities. However, there is broad recognition that these distributional inequalities are the result of participative inequalities and that the participation of marginalized groups in advocacy plays an important role in creating just food systems. In addition, thinking of food justice in more participative terms also suggests a more well-rounded and comprehensive approach to dealing with inequalities within the food system. One manner in which the concept of food justice can be redefined to better capture the importance of participative justice is by considering what is required for informed consent.     

Looking through the postdisaster policy window

Policy windows are transitory opportunities during which the likelihood of adopting new policy or legislative proposals is greater than usual. Accepted wisdom has held that natural disasters serve as focusing events that generate policy windows in their wake. This paper highlights the need for a more circumscribed understanding of when and where policy windows occur based on the experiences of three US regional planning organizations: a hand-picked commission of community leaders, a council of governments, and a special-purpose substate organization. The first operated in the San Francisco Bay Area of California following the Loma Prieta earthquake (October 1989), and the other two in South Carolina's Atlantic coastal plain after Hurricane Hugo (September 1989). The analysis concludes that natural disasters did not transform the agenda or mission of these entities. Policy windows were neither automatic outcomes of focusing events nor did they ensure the adoption of pertinent policy within the organizations investigated. Several conditions are minimally necessary for using policy windows to bring about hazard mitigation: comprehensive institutional conceptualization of hazards management, institutional strength and flexibility, and well-placed, effective policy entrepreneurs.     

Mind the gap: institutional considerations for gender-inclusive climate change policy in Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper positions climate change against the backdrop of gender, premised on the understanding that neither climate change impacts nor responses are gender neutral, therefore institutions need to respond accordingly. Institutions play a central role in facilitating policy effects and forming major nodes of interaction as well as determining the accentuation of risk. Drawing on examples from different parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, the paper seeks to elucidate why women should be placed at the heart of climate change interventions. Establishing the appropriate connections between gender and climate change will enhance the opportunities for problem-solving and can increase the efficiency and effectiveness of policy-making. The gendered aspects of climate change and environmental relations are analysed by using an African feminist approach as the theoretical framework to expand and expound upon this position. This paper also investigates institutional matters pertaining to the management of environmental resources and highlights some of the constraints that need to be overcome in order to ensure the inclusion and empowerment of women in the management of these resources. It concludes by calling for a thorough understanding of the gender-based power relations in the agendas and activities of environmental governance institutions at all levels in society.     

Implementing gender policy in the water and sanitation sector

Using a case study approach, this article examines how the gender aspects of policy are implemented. It presents examples of gender policy implemented by different types of organizations, with particular emphasis on the water and sanitation sector. Implementing agencies include a UN agency, developing country governments, bilateral donors, and local and international NGOs. Observations from project implementation in the water and sanitation sector reveal the degree of effectiveness of the gender policies applied. Cases were chosen to provide interesting examples, rather than illustrate lessons that can be generalized. Much more research is needed before that can be done. The article also addresses project implementation strategy considerations, including how policies and implementation address women's needs, whether gender issues are treated separately or mainstreamed, and what factors are linked to successful implementation. Problems of coordination between different project implementation aspects/agents are endemic in the water and sanitation sector. Thus physical installation work is typically completed by engineers, while NGOs mostly deal with social aspects of projects, and the two groups often do not communicate effectively.     

The call of different wilds: the importance of definition and perception in protecting and managing Scottish wild landscapes

Concepts of wild land have recreational, ecological and cultural dimensions, and place varying emphasis on physical landscape attributes and the perceptions of users. In Scotland, national and NGO policies show reasonable consistency in interpreting and defining ‘wild land’, emphasising the (perception of) lack of current human influence as a key criterion. This research used semi-structured interviews with key individuals and a questionnaire survey of land managers to evaluate concepts and perceptions of wild land in Scotland. Recognising that the conceptual and spatial definition of wild land is a key issue, a new typology is proposed. Weaknesses in the policy framework, as well as key potential threats to, and opportunities associated with, wild landscapes are identified. Management initiatives are fitted to the typology and divided into four management themes. Key recommendations are: (i) that national policy for wild landscapes needs to incorporate criteria, which recognise the multiple values deriving from such areas; and (ii) that future research should combine user group preferences with physical attribute information in determining what constitutes wild landscapes.     

Environmental management from left to right – on ideology,policy-specific beliefs and pro-environmental policy support

Due to growing environmental challenges, the demand for effective management through pro-environmental policy measures is increasing. The effectiveness is, however, largely determined by the degree to which the policy measures are supported by the actors affected by them. A consistent finding in the literature is that ideology (or subjective positioning on the left–right dimension) affects environmental policy support, with left-leaning individuals being more pro-environmental. A major caveat with previous research is that it seldom makes a distinction between different kinds of policies. Therefore, we are concerned with investigating how different ideological positions affect attitudes towards different forms of environmental protection. Using unique survey data, we show that ideology is related to conceptions about the fairness and effectiveness of different policy tools, which in turn steer preferences. In that sense, this paper makes the discussion on the effects of ideological position on pro-environmental policy support more nuanced.     

SME environmental attitudes and participation in local‐scale voluntary initiatives: some practical applications

This paper briefly assesses the economic efficiency case for voluntary initiatives (VIs), discusses some limitations of this type of policy instrument and goes on to consider the role that local‐scale voluntary initiatives might play in assisting small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to embrace the issue of environmental performance improvement. The paper examines SME organizational management in relation to the likely effectiveness of their participation in voluntary environment programmes. An environmental attitudes survey carried out with 62 SMEs in East Anglia found that willingness to become involved in such initiatives does exist, but that a better presentation of opportunities for prospective small firms, together with a more tailored approach, will be necessary if VIs for SMEs are to become a more extensive feature of environmental policy making in the UK.     

Tradable planning permits versus auctioned tradable development rights: different trading agents,different policy outcomes

The tradable planning permit (TPP) policy seeks to limit the land take by development. It can be used in countries where development rights are vested by land-use planning to certain landowners only. TPPs are traded among public authorities. We introduce here a new policy, called the auctioned tradable development rights (ATDR) policy, which takes advantage of unvested rights of development and of trading among private actors. We compare the TPP, the ATDR policy and our baseline land-use planning model using a set of criteria. There are trade-offs within compared models. Both trading policies extend opportunities for land protection from development in exchange for higher transaction costs (highest in the ATDR policy). Trading policies seek also to recapture a part of development rent, decrease rent-seeking, and locate new development more effectively from the investors' perspective. However, trading among public authorities in the TPP model may hinder attaining these effects.     

Gender in integrated water management: an analysis of variation

Gender is an important variable in water use, policy, and intervention. This article explores this variation and its policy implications. Concepts are applied in several case studies to draw generic conclusions. Variation is related to the purpose of water use (consumptive or productive) and to the local, culture-specific patterns of the intra-household organization of consumption for family welfare (which includes domestic water provision) and income-generation (for which water is an input, especially in rural areas). For domestic water use, the intra-household sharing of unpaid domestic responsibilities is a key gender issue. Water for productive use, on the other hand, is embedded in the gendered organization of household economic activity, as elaborated for smallholder-irrigated agriculture. In female-managed and dual farming systems, where a high proportion of farm decision-makers are women, irrigation agencies need to better target their support. In male-managed farming systems, however, the majority of women lack their own farm enterprise in which water is an input. Women's access to land, markets and credits besides access to water, is at stake. To conclude, given the strong variation in water use along gender lines, gender analysis is indispensable for any concrete water policy and intervention.     

Climate change,natural hazards,and risk perception: the role of proximity and personal experience

Understanding public risk perception related to possible consequences of climate change is of paramount importance. Not only does risk perception have an important role in shaping climate policy, it is also central in generating support for initiatives for adaptation and mitigation. In order to influence public knowledge and opinion, there is a need to know more about why people have diverging attitudes and perceptions related to climate change and its possible consequences. By using representative survey data for Norway and multivariate analysis, the authors of this article show that differences in attitudes and perceptions are partially explained by factors such as gender, educational background, and people's political preferences. However, an important factor explaining people's perception of climate change and its possible consequences is their direct personal experience of damage caused by climate-related events such as flooding or landslide. Furthermore, the results show that personal experience of damage has the largest impact on the respondents' belief that there will be more natural-resource hazards locally than in Norway or globally. The results also show that merely living in a more exposed area but not having a personal experience of damage does not affect the respondents' concern towards climate change.     

Sustainable consumption and production: Trends, challenges and options for the Asia-Pacific region

This paper highlights current trends in consumption and production patterns in Asian developing countries and emerging economies. It describes the main challenges and opportunities for Asian countries making the transition towards sustainable consumption and production patterns. The main challenge for Asian economies is to address the unsustainable consumption patterns of urban consumers, which entails a policy shift from the current focus on pollution and inefficient industrial production. In view of future consumption trends and the global convergence of consumption patterns, the characteristics of the emerging 'global consumer class' are examined, with particular focus on urban ecological footprints and carbon emissions. Furthermore, the difference between urban and rural consumption is discussed, together with opportunities for low-carbon urban development in the megacities of Asian developing countries. To conclude, the paper presents an overview of current policy measures taken in Asian countries to green economic development and realise sustainable consumption and production patterns.     

Assessment of the Enabling Rural Innovation (ERI) approach: Case studies from Malawi and Uganda

This paper presents lessons from applying an innovative action research approach for linking smallholder farmers to markets, in eastern and southern Africa. The Enabling Rural Innovation (ERI) approach aims to strengthen social organization and entrepreneurial capacity in rural communities. It focuses on fostering community‐based capacity for the inclusion of rural women and the poor in analyzing and accessing market opportunities. Using case studies from Malawi and Uganda the paper assesses the outcomes of ERI on rural communities with a focus on human capital, gender issues and investment in natural resource management. Results show that households are benefiting significantly from linkages to markets in terms of increasing household incomes, and accumulating assets. Skills in analyzing markets and in negotiating with traders have increased among smallholder farmers. The integration of gender in the approach has led to changes in gender decision making patterns at household and community level towards a more shared decision‐making process. The results however show a difference in skills between men and women, with women showing lower levels of skills acquisition. Farmer participatory research has increased investments in improved technologies such as fertilizer applications for soil fertility management.     

Gendered dimensions of climate change response in Swedish municipalities

This article elaborates on and discusses gendered dimensions of climate change response in Swedish municipalities. There are indications that attitudes and behaviour to the environment and climate change are gendered. This evidence together with our own work further indicates that gender awareness is most probably an important influence on how municipalities respond to climate change. The aim of this study was to investigate if and how gendered aspects of climate change response are integrated in the Swedish response to climate change. The potential causal relationships between a high level of awareness of the gendered aspects of climate change and the levels of climate change response were investigated. We asked whether there is a positive relationship between gender awareness and the quality of the communities' climate change policies and practice. Indications of such a relationship prompt a change in research priorities – paying more attention to gender – and in subsequent policy developments.     

Is Learning without teaching possible? The productive tension between network governance and reflexivity

ABSTRACT

Theories of reflexive governance are closely linked with the claim that more traditional modes of coordination have been replaced by networked structures, allowing reflexivity to emerge and reflexive learning to function as a steering mechanism in rapidly changing policy contexts. This paper explores this connection between reflexivity, governance, learning and networks in societal transitions, focusing particularly on the claim that networks will deliver reflexive learning. Using network theories from both policy networks and network governance and a case study of the Canadian agricultural biotechnology (agbiotech) policy network, it suggests that the kind of learning produced in networks will be a function of network structure. In particular, higher order reflexive learning will be compromised by the inevitability of the political struggle for nodality or central place in networks and the ensuing distribution of opportunities for bridging and bonding activities. Networks such as the Canadian agbiotech policy network that may promote learning but not necessarily reflexive learning are increasingly disadvantaged in contemporary policy settings.     

Shifts within ecological modernization in South Africa: Deliberation, innovation and institutional opportunities

Sustainable development is now widely accepted as a policy framework in planning and development both internationally and in South Africa. Within this framework, technocentric scientific approaches to environmental management, which are reflective of weak ecological modernization, have dominated environmental practice both in the developed and developing world. South Africa is a country in transition and as a result environmental law and policy have undergone significant reform. However, implementation and practice remains embedded within a weak ecological modernization approach. Through the lens of two case studies reflecting changing approaches and practices within state institutions, this paper explores the shifts taking place in the construction, adaptation and application of policy frameworks and tools used in the drive towards sustainability in South Africa. The research uses critical approaches to ecological modernization (Hajer, 1995; Christoff, 1996) and deliberative policy analysis (Hajer and Wagenaar, 2003; Hajer, 2003, 2003; Hajer, 2004) to explore these shifts. It suggests that the shift towards strong ecological modernization has taken place as a result of the adaptation of international practice to the South Africa context, the global acceptance of more integrated approaches, the opportunities for change that 'institutional ambiguity' and 'multi-signification' create, and pockets of innovation that have developed when intellectual actors shift the boundaries of environmental practice.