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World Affairs Online
Sustainability as global attractor: the greening of the 2008 Beijing Olympics
In: Global networks: a journal of transnational affairs, Volume 10, Issue 4, p. 510-528
ISSN: 1471-0374
AbstractIf one interprets sustainability as an attractor, it means that across time and place notions and ideas of sustainability structure, order and pattern institutions and practices. One can effectively explore the idea that sustainability is turning into a global attractor through mega events. As high profile and very visible happenings that attract worldwide attention, it is difficult to ignore common and widely shared norms on sustainability in the route towards such events. In investigating the 2008 Beijing Olympics I conclude that sustainability norms indeed restructured and patterned this global mega event. Moreover, these sustainability norms are crystallized, institutionalized and fixed in material and social structures, and thus will likely have some permanency.
The Future of Transparency: Power, Pitfalls and Promises
In: Global environmental politics, Volume 10, Issue 3, p. 132-143
ISSN: 1536-0091
The growing attention to transparency is not an accidental and fashionable wave, soon to be replaced by another timely topic in environmental governance. Transparency is here to stay and to further develop in environmental politics, as it piggy-backs on a number of wider social developments. In assessing the achievements of transparency to date, this article concludes that it has on balance been positive for democracy. But this overall positive past assessment does not automatically extend into the future, as new challenges (and thus new research agendas) lie ahead. The growing importance attached to transparency in environmental politics ensures that it becomes a central object of power struggles, with uncertain outcomes in terms of democracy as well as environmental effects. Markets and states seek to capture transparency arrangements for their own goals, which may not necessarily be in line with assumed normative linkages between transparency, democracy and participation.
The future of transparency: power, pitfalls and promises
In: Global environmental politics, Volume 10, Issue 3, p. 132-143
ISSN: 1526-3800
World Affairs Online
Environmental authorities and biofuel controversies
In: Environmental politics, Volume 19, Issue 1, p. 61-79
ISSN: 1743-8934
Boundless Biofuels? Between Environmental Sustainability and Vulnerability
In: Sociologia ruralis, Volume 47, Issue 4, p. 297-315
ISSN: 1467-9523
AbstractBiofuels currently appear to be one of the major controversies in the agriculture/environment nexus, not unlike genetically modified organisms. While some countries (such as Brazil) have for quite some time supported successful large‐scale programmes to improve the production and consumption of biofuels, policy‐makers and research institutions in most developed and developing countries have only recently turned their attention to biofuels. Threat of climate change, new markets for agricultural output, reduced dependencies on OPEC countries and high fossil fuel prices are driving this development. But opposition to biofuels is growing, pointing at the various vulnerabilities – not in the least for developing countries – that come along with large‐scale 'energy' plantations. Against this background this article analyses the sustainability and vulnerability of biofuels, from the perspective of a sociology of networks and flows. Current biofuel developments should be understood in terms of the emergence of a global integrated biofuel network, where environmental sustainabilities are more easily accommodated than vulnerabilities for marginal and peripheral groups and countries, irrespective of what policy‐makers and biofuel advocates tell us.
Environmental Governance in the Information Age: The Emergence of Informational Governance
In: Environment and planning. C, Government and policy, Volume 24, Issue 4, p. 497-514
ISSN: 1472-3425
Castells's influential work on the Information Age has hardly impacted on the environmental social sciences; and where it has, it has been mainly in terms of intrusions of global flows and networks in fragile environments. This paper explores to what extent and how environmental governance is changing under the conditions of the Information Age. On the waves of information and communication technologies and globalisation processes, a new informational mode of environmental governance—or informational governance—is emerging, in which environmental information gains transformative powers. Information generation, processing, transmission, and use become fundamental (re)sources of power and transformation in environmental reform. As illustrated by several examples, the conventional powers of (state) authority in environmental protection are partly replaced by informational resources, flows, and processes in new governance arrangements and networks. These new modes of informational governance not only point at innovative means of environmental reform, but also pose a series of more critical questions related to new power constellations, (information) access and democracy, and structural uncertainties following multiple knowledges. Hence, a new research agenda emerges for the environmental social sciences.
Environment and Modernity in Transitional China: Frontiers of Ecological Modernization
In: Development and change, Volume 37, Issue 1, p. 29-56
ISSN: 1467-7660
Joint Environmental Policymaking in Europe: Between Deregulation and Political Modernization
In: Society and natural resources, Volume 16, Issue 4, p. 335-348
ISSN: 1521-0723
Ecological Modernization and the Global Economy
In: Global environmental politics, Volume 2, Issue 2, p. 92-115
ISSN: 1536-0091
This paper explores what an ecological modernization perspective has to offer in an era marked by globalization. Globalization processes and dynamics are mostly seen as detrimental to the environment. The point that an ecological modernization perspective puts on the research agenda is that, although global capitalism has not been beaten and continues to show its devastating environmental effects in all corners of the world, we are moving beyond the era of a global treadmill of production that only further degrades the environment. More or less powerful, reflexive, countervailing powers are beginning to move towards environmental reform. And these powers are no longer limited to a small environmental movement that only reacts to the constant undermining of society's sustenance base. In analyzing these countervailing forces, the paper also explores the consequences of globalization processes for ecological modernization ideas and perspectives.
Ecological Modernization and the Global Economy
In: Global Environmental Politics, Volume 2, Issue 2, p. 92-115
This paper explores what an ecological modernization perspective has to offer in an era marked by globalization. Globalization processes & dynamics are mostly seen as detrimental to the environment. The point that an ecological modernization perspective puts on the research agenda is that, although global capitalism has not been beaten & continues to show its devastating environmental effects in all corners of the world, we are moving beyond the era of a global treadmill of production that only further degrades the environment. More or less powerful, reflexive, countervailing powers are beginning to move toward environmental reform. And these powers are no longer limited to a small environmental movement that only reacts to the constant undermining of society's sustenance base. In analyzing these countervailing forces, the paper also explores the consequences of globalization processes for ecological modernization ideas & perspectives. 1 Table, 66 References. Adapted from the source document.
Ecological modernisation and institutional reflexivity: Environmental reform in the late modern age
In: Environmental politics, Volume 5, Issue 2, p. 302-323
ISSN: 1743-8934