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.     

Free market ideology and deregulation in Colorado’s oil fields: Evidence for triple movement activism?

Unconventional oil and gas extraction (UOGE) has spurred an unprecedented boom in onshore production in the US. Despite a surge in related research, a void exists regarding inquiries into policy outcomes and perceptions. To address this, support for federal regulatory exemptions for UOGE is examined using survey data collected in 2015 from two Northern Colorado communities. Current regulatory exemptions for UOGE can be understood as components of broader societal processes of neoliberalization. Free market ideology increases public support for federal regulatory exemptions for UOGE. Perceived negative impacts do not necessarily drive people to support increased federal regulation. Utilizing neo-Polanyian theory, interaction between free market ideology and perceived negative impacts is explored. Free market ideology appears to moderate people’s views of regulation: increasing the effect of perceived negative impacts while simultaneously increasing support for deregulation. To conclude, the ways in which free market ideology might normalize the impacts of UOGE activity are discussed.     

Community gardening: cultivating subjectivities,space, and justice

Community gardens have been lauded for being inherently resistant to neoliberalism and criticised for underwriting it. To move beyond this either/or debate, we need to employ more focused lenses and specify both the processes of neoliberalisation at play and the outcomes they can produce. This paper explores the ways in which neoliberal processes of privatisation, state entrepreneurialism, and devolution intersect with community gardens, and the subjectivities that may be cultivated, the spaces that may be created and the types of justice that may be advanced as a result. It argues that certain characteristics and orientations of gardens are more conducive to resisting neoliberalism. These include the cultivation of producer, citizen, and activist subjectivities (over those of consumer, entrepreneur, and volunteer); the elevation of the use value of shared lived space (over a site’s potential exchange value) and the advancement of spatial justice through community access to non-privatised space; and food justice, through non-commodified means of obtaining food. Holding these ends in mind can help ensure that proponents of community gardening sow the seeds of the fruits they most wish to reap.     

Radical,reformist, and garden-variety neoliberal: coming to terms with urban agriculture's contradictions

For many activists and scholars, urban agriculture in the Global North has become synonymous with sustainable food systems, standing in opposition to the dominant industrial agri-food system. At the same time, critical social scientists increasingly argue that urban agriculture programmes, by filling the void left by the “rolling back” of the social safety net, underwrite neoliberalisation. I argue that such contradictions are central to urban agriculture. Drawing on existing literature and fieldwork in Oakland, CA, I explain how urban agriculture arises from a protective counter-movement, while at the same time entrenching the neoliberal organisation of contemporary urban political economies through its entanglement with multiple processes of neoliberalisation. By focusing on one function or the other, however, rather than understanding such contradictions as internal and inherent, we risk undermining urban agriculture's transformative potential. Coming to terms with its internal contradictions can help activists, policy-makers and practitioners better position urban agriculture within coordinated efforts for structural change, one of many means to an end rather than an end unto itself.     

From Rio to Johannesburg and Beyond: A long and winding road

This paper analyses the evolution of urban form in two North American metropolitan regions (Portland and Toronto) and asks how more sustainable regional form might come about in the future in these and other urban areas. In the past, dominant patterns of urban form have emerged in such regions at different historical periods. These morphological phases include mid 19th-century grids, streetcar suburb grids, garden suburbs, automobile suburbs and New Urbanist neighbourhoods (which have only recently made an appearance and may or may not become widespread). Judging by the performance of past types of urban morphology, five design values appear particularly important for more sustainable urban form in the future: compactness, contiguity, connectivity, diversity and ecological integration. Although these principles were not well supported by 20th-century development, contemporary movements such as the New Urbanism and Smart Growth re-emphasise them. The example of these two regions indicates that, in the absence of new technological, economic or geographical forces, public sector institutions and urban social movements represent the most likely means to bring about new, more sustainable types of urban form.     

Unpacking the politics of natural capital and economic metaphors in environmental policy discourse

Economic metaphors – including natural capital, natural assets, ecosystem services, and ecological debt – are becoming commonplace in environmental policy discourse. Proponents consider such terms provide a clearer idea of the ‘value’ of nature, and are useful for ensuring the environment is given due attention in decision making. Critical discourse analysis highlights the ideological work language does; the way in which we think, write, and talk about the environment has important implications for how it is governed. Consequently, the widespread use of economic metaphors is politically significant. This article discusses how metaphors have been analysed in environmental policy research, surveys the use of prominent economic metaphors in environmental policy, and considers the politics associated with such terms. The uptake of various economic metaphors represents a form of reverse discourse, varies in politically significant ways, and narrows the terms of environmental debate.     

Value reclamation from informal municipal solid waste management: green neoliberalism and inclusive development in Lagos,Nigeria

ABSTRACT

Lagos is undoubtedly the cultural capital and economic hub of the West African sub-region. The challenge of municipal solid waste management (MSWM) in the megacity has remained intractable due partly to the increasing rate of population growth. While solid waste policy reforms, investments, and management practices in Lagos are in the upswing in the formal economy, the role of the informal economy in engendering sub-regional material linkages and livelihoods remain unexplored. Adopting a multi-stakeholder approach and data from interviews, this study critically examines how value reclamation from informal MSWM advances green neoliberalism and inclusive development. It shows that while informal transboundary trade of recyclable materials in the West African sub-region have previously been left out of analyses of MSWM in Lagos, the informal economy of waste and new investments in MSWM have neoliberal underpinnings beyond the megacity scale. The paper concludes that integrating the informal economy in framing MSWM policy in the megacity offers scope for evolving an inclusive development strategy while also enabling sustainable MSWM in the post-2015 era.     

Disasters as an ideological strategy for governing neoliberal urban transformation in Turkey: insights from Izmir/Kadifekale

Since the turn of the twenty‐first century, Turkish cities have undergone large‐scale change through a process referred to as urban transformation, involving, notably, the demolition of inner‐city low‐income settlements. The official authorities and business circles have resorted to various forms of discourse to justify these projects, which have led to the deportation of a significant number of people to peripheral areas. The discourse of ‘natural disasters’, for example, suggests that urban transformation is necessary to protect people from some pending event. Probably the most effective application of this discourse has occurred in Izmir, where the risk posed by ‘landslides’ has played a critical role in the settlement demolitions conducted in the huge inner‐city neighbourhood of Kadifekale. By examining the case of Kadifekale, this paper provide some insights into how ‘natural disasters’ serve as a discourse with which to legitimise the neoliberal logic entrenched in the urban transformation process in Turkey.     

Environmental and cultural changes under Chilean neoliberalism: an ethnography of forestry and the Mapuche in Valle Elicura

Dominant development discourses often proclaim promises of economic prosperity and global inclusion, while actually disenfranchising local cultures in the Global South from their traditional environments. In Latin America, and specifically Chile, development manifests itself through neoliberal economic policies implemented in the late twentieth century, while simultaneously creating political economies ripe for foreign and corporate exploitation. Using a political ecology framework, this ethnography presents a case study of the correlation between the development of Chilean neoliberalism and the lifeways of Mapuche indigenous peoples in the town of Valle Elicura, Chile. The findings reveal that natural resource extraction and ecological devastation to local forests by large, international logging companies result in environmental, cultural, and environmental-cultural transformations for this community. The local people who more closely rely on their surrounding environments to regulate and inform their transportation networks, basic life needs, and religion, among other applications, are forced to compete for resources with foreign corporations focused on profit. However, it is this short-term focus that threatens extinction for the traditional lifeways of the Mapuche peoples and many other marginalised communities of facing the demands of development.