Suchergebnisse

1. Understanding knowledge brokerage for urban sustainability / Marko Joas and Kate Theobald -- 2. Approaches to monitoring sustainable urban development in Europe / Sam Gronholm and Maria Berrini -- 3. Local governments for sustainability and the use of tools -- David Mcguinness -- 4. Explorative application of monitoring tools / Sam Gronholm -- 5. Urban ecosystem Europe : measuring environmental urban sustainability / Lorenzo Bono -- 6. Requirements for a resilient local process for sustainable development / Sam Gronholm -- 7. Building on experience : learning from end users of tools / Cristina Garzillo, Ania Rok and Isabel Fernandez de la Fuente -- 8. Knowledge brokerage in action in European cities : five case studies in focus / David Mcguinness -- 9. Shaping practice and research together for local sustainability / Cristina Garzillo and Stefan Kuhn.

Representative democracy is often seen as a stable institutional system insusceptible to change. However, the preferences of the broad public are changing and representative, group based democracy has lost importance. This development made it necessary to change established ways of decision making and to introduce participatory democratic innovations. Many national and sub-national governments followed this route and implemented various kinds of participatory innovations, i.e. the inclusion of citizens into processes of political will-formation and decisionmaking. The authors analyse and evaluate the various effects of these innovations in Europe, providing a bigger picture of the benefits and disadvantages different democratic innovations can result in.

�This is a very welcome volume, and it will reach a large audience and readership among those involved in these issues from a truly multidisciplinary perspective; in essence, a much needed book!� Erik Bonsdorff, professor of marine biology at �bo Akademi University, Finland �This timely volume provides a thorough account of how the highly advanced industrial societies seek to govern and manage the Baltic Sea. The way they proceed, and the degree to which they succeed, provide valuable lessons for riparian states seeking to avoid tragedies of their commons.� Lennart J. Lundqvist, professor of environmental policy and administration, University of Gothenburg, Sweden How is a natural common pool resource such as a sea, which is shared by several countries, best governed? The potential for international conflict is immense, as each country may have different agendas with regard to issues such as exploitation and environmental protection. This book uses a case study of the Baltic Sea Region to examine this complex problem. The sea itself has been highly vulnerable to pollution and recently the bordering nations have begun to change their mode of cooperation to tackle this issue by establishing several new forums to manage the sea. Administrative and political structures developed in the region are reviewed and shown to provide a model that could be applied to other seas and natural resource systems elsewhere in the world.

La 'modernización ecológica' como concepto y teoría ha versado sobre los cambios experimentados a escala nacional como consecuencia del desarrollo industrial y económico. Sin embargo, el papel de la gobernanza también se está configurando progresivamente como uno de los rasgos distintivos del proceso de modernización. La gobernanza local, en la que están implicados los ciudadanos, los grupos de partícipes y las más pequeñas unidades productivas tras un objetivo común de desarrollo sostenible, desempeña un papel crucial en la segunda fase de la modernización ecológica. Muchas de estas actividades se organizan en Europa al amparo de la Agenda 21 Local. Las administraciones locales europeas han sido las primeras en encarar el nuevo desafío y en responder activamente en muy distintos puntos de toda Europa. El material empírico procede de la explotación de la base de datos del proyecto de investigación DISCUS. ; Ecological modernisation as a theoretical construction has mainly dealt with changes on a national level and in connection with industrial and economic development. However, the role of local government has also increasingly become one feature of interest within the modernisation process. Local level governance plays a crucial role especially concerning the second phase of modernisation , that of involving inhabitants, stakeholder groups and smaller production units towards a common goal of sustainable development. Many of these activities in Europe are conducted under the organisational headline of Local Agenda 21. European local governments have been in the forefront of taking up the new challenge. In this paper we will show how local governments in different parts of Europe have responded to this task. The empirical material will be based on our large dataset collected within DISCUS research project.

First published in 1999, this volume features 13 contributors with expertise in social science and environmental research who have brought together comparative 12 articles which study the connection between humanity and nature, focusing on comparisons between the Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. They are among the most homogeneous and hence most comparable societies in Europe. The articles reflect the need for environmental and political change recognised by social scientists and political scientists across the Nordic countries, with an emphasis on ecological modernisation. They first consider conceptions of the environment, before comparing both between and within these countries. The traditions and institutions presented in the volume reflect the comprehensiveness of the approaches used within the field in the Nordic countries.