The impacts of firms’ mobility on the environmental policy

Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - This paper investigates the impacts of firms’ mobility on the environmental policy. We focus on two issues. The first one is the relationship...     

The authority of rules in Chile’s contentious environmental politics

In 2010 Chilean legislators replaced a small environmental coordinating agency with an Environment Ministry, an autonomous Environmental Impact Assessment Agency, an enforcement agency, and specialized tribunals. Though ambitious, the reform failed to meet the stated objective of depoliticizing environmental decision-making. Instead, the reforms strengthened the authority of the central state, justified on the premise that decisions would now be based on ‘technical criteria’, meaning rules rather than politics. Comparing the creation (1990–1994) and reform (2009–2010) of Chile’s environmental institutions, it is demonstrated that a defining feature of Chilean political culture involves treating rules as if these were independent of the state. Chilean lawmakers use rules as science is used elsewhere: as an ‘objective’ voice separate from politics, that helps legitimate decisions. Appeals to the rules were used to increase the central state’s authority and exclude local representatives, concerned communities, and scientists from environmental decision-making.     

The greening of Christianity? A study of environmental attitudes over time

In contradistinction to the ideas of Lynn White and others who have long suggested that the Judeo-Christian tradition fosters a ‘dominion over nature’ ethos, a number of scholars have recently argued that there has been a ‘greening of Christianity’. Largely missing from this debate is strong evidence at the individual level as to whether Christians have in fact adopted deeper environmental concerns over time. This study provides such evidence through an examination of longitudinal data from Gallup’s annual surveys on the environment. The analysis reveals little evidence that Christians have expressed more environmental concern over time. In fact, across many measures, Christians tend to show less concern about the environment. This pattern holds across Catholic, Protestant and other Christian denominations and for differing levels of religiosity. These findings support a conclusion that there has not been a discernible ‘greening of Christianity’ among the American public.     

Hannah Arendt’s turn to the self and environmental responses to climate change paralysis

Environmentalists have struggled with how to mobilize people to act in the face of widespread and now inevitable consequences of climate change. Significant responses to this challenge, such as incentivizing individual Green choices in the market and avoiding the rhetoric of catastrophe, continue the philosophical and political trends, identified by Hannah Arendt, that contribute to world alienation and the decline of politics. Environmental thinkers are invited to use Arendt’s theories of the turn to the self and political action to think critically about contemporary strategies to address climate change.     

A radical public administration? Green radicalism and policy influence among local environmental officials in Sweden

Green radicalism among local environmental officials in Sweden is examined with the aims of theoretically elaborating on different dimensions of Green radicalism in the context of public administration, exploring the dimensionality of Green radicalism among officials, and examining the extent to which Green radicalism is associated with policy influence. Three types of Green radicalism are identified: Green ethics, Green institutional change, and Green activism. Survey data (N = 701) show that the three theoretical dimensions are present among officials, and that there is no negative association between radicalism and influence. It is primarily officials with Green activism beliefs who perceive themselves as able to influence policy. These findings suggest a need for more nuanced understanding of and further studies into the role of public administration in the quest for more radical Green reforms.     

‘Power with’ and ‘power to’ in environmental politics and the transition to sustainability

Scholars of environmental politics demand serious reform of international governance and institutions to protect planet Earth. There is therefore an urgent need to discuss what causes change and gridlock in environmental politics. Serious reform is inextricably tied up with questions of power. The diversity with which studies on environmental politics understand power is exposed through three ideal type concepts: power with (learning and cooperation), power to (resistance and empowerment) and power over (coercion and manipulation). So far, scholars have mainly used analysis of coercive power (over) to explain gridlock in environmental politics; also needed is explicit acknowledgement of coaction and individual agency that can enable transition to more sustainable societies.     

The environmental state as a model for the world? An analysis of policy repertoires in 37 countries

Scholars have proposed the analytical concept of the environmental state, a state where government actively addresses negative environmental externalities of economic activities. The mapping of environmental regulatory expansion in Western countries has been central in recent attempts to identify the environmental state empirically. Surprisingly little is known, however, when it comes to the environmental regulatory expansions in non-Western countries. Are there similar trends towards the emergence of environmental states in the non-West as well? From analysing data covering 25 policies in 37 countries, it appears that regulatory expansion has also occurred in the non-Western world, and the distinction between the West and the non-West has been reduced over time. There are non-Western countries among environmental pioneers, and there is some evidence for the trend of global convergence. Future research on environmental states should take into account emerging environmental states in the non-West.     

Can public engagement democratize environmental policymaking in a resource-dependent state? Comparative case studies from Alberta,Canada

What factors shape the democratic potential of public consultation in environmental policymaking? Here, the motivations, purposes, designs, and outcomes of recent public engagement on land use planning, climate change policy, and water resource management in Alberta, Canada are reviewed in order to show how the power dynamics of the political and economic context shape the democratic potential of public and stakeholder consultations, especially where dominant resource interests are at stake. At the same time, political leadership, interactions between civil society actors and key design elements are shown to be important to democratization.     

Does financial openness cause the intensification of environmental degradation? New evidence from Latin American and Caribbean countries

Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - The impact of financial openness on environmental degradation, mainly via carbon dioxide emissions, was investigated for a panel of 21 Latin American...     

A pipeline of tweets: environmental movements’ use of Twitter in response to the Keystone XL pipeline

Social movements often amalgamate otherwise diffuse public political interests. In recent years, social media use has allowed both groups and individuals to engage with political issues both online and offline. How do organizations use Twitter to mobilize networked publics? To what extent do groups promote both ‘connective action’ online and traditional activism offline? How do their strategies differ according to whether they seek to promote or combat the status quo? And how do they balance encouraging and reinforcing individualized expression through group messaging? The ways pro-Keystone XL pipeline and anti-Keystone XL groups differed in their Keystone-related action on Twitter from January 2010 until October 2014 are analyzed. Boolean searching and Natural Language processing are used to analyze more than three million tweets. The results demonstrate that the frames within Twitter conversations have significant implications for how communities understand, develop, and mobilize around environmental issues.     

What makes for good and bad neighbours? An emerging research agenda in the study of Chinese environmental politics

Tackling China’s grave environmental problems increasingly turns on questions of sub-national interjurisdictional relations. What are the conditions under which neighbouring localities cooperate in stewardship of the natural environment? What factors give rise to interjurisdictional conflict such as pollution spillovers? Through a combination of empirical and theoretical reflections, a research agenda to better understand these issues is outlined. First, China’s recent innovative approaches to the promotion of interjurisdictional cooperation are examined. An in-depth case study of interjurisdictional ecological protection ‘redline’ zones underscores the difficulties of inculcating environmental neighbourliness between local governments. Yet, a precise diagnosis of the problem remains elusive because too little is known about the underlying drivers of interjurisdictional relations in China. An analytical framework that draws insight from contemporary China studies and comparative environmental governance scholarship is offered for the study of interjurisdictional environmental relations in China.     

Effects of environmental regulation on firm entry and exit and China’s industrial productivity: a new perspective on the Porter Hypothesis

Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - This paper dissects the effects of environmental regulation on the productivity of pollution-intensive industries and by doing so offers a new...