Community resistance and the role of justice in shale gas development in the United Kingdom

Global energy policies embracing a transition to unconventional oil and gas development are hallmarks of many developed nations. Among these, the United Kingdom has framed the development of shale gas as one means to transition from high-carbon fossil-fuel consumption to low-carbon alternatives. Yet the introduction of this industry and recent legislation associated with it have not been without controversy. Communities throughout the United Kingdom are engaged in sustained debates concerning climate change, health, the scale of extraction footprints, securitisation, and governance. Places such as Kirby Misperton, the focus of this article, are representative of many villages where questions abound about the role of justice at all stages and scales of governmental decision-making. Using a legal geographic lens, this article examines narratives among local residents who are actively resisting the arrival of unconventional gas. I consider how the relationships between and among energy transition, policy, and justice have been interpreted by communities and argue for inequity and risk to be addressed in more transparent ways. I contend that highlighting counter-narratives remains essential if powerful arguments by governments and others are to be negated. Fundamentally, true justice can only prevail when all stakeholders are considered legitimate and their opinions valid.     

Coming Through a City Near You: The Transport of Hazardous Wastes

Current figures (compiled in 1995) indicate that hazardous waste transporters (19,567 in number) ship approximately 16 million tons of hazardous waste annually in the United States (United States Environmental Protection Agency, 1995). While some state and local governments have enacted hazardous waste transport regulations for the protection of their citizens, the federal government has had primacy in initiating and setting the course of hazardous waste transport regulation. As a result, the predominant perspective on hazardous waste transport has been technical in orientation. This paper identifies and discusses how this technical perspective and the social perspective differ and what the consequences are for government policies and actions regarding hazardous waste transport.     

Scale frames and counter-scale frames: constructing the problem of environmental injustice

The concept of environmental injustice raises difficult questions about on how best to measure and address environmental inequities across space, and environmental justice politics are permeated by considerable debate over the nature and spatial extent of both problem and possible solutions. This paper theorizes the politics of environmental justice as a politics of scale in order to explore how environmental justice activists respond to the scalar ambiguity inherent in the political concept of environmental justice. With a case study of a controversy over a proposed polyvinylchloride production facility in rural Convent, Louisiana, I develop the concept of scale frames and counter-scale frames as strategic discursive representations of a social grievance that do the work of naming, blaming, and claiming, with meaningful reference to particular geographic scales. The significance of scale is expressed alternatively within these frames as an analytical spatial category, as scales of regulation, as territorial framework(s) for cultural legitimacy, and as a means of inclusion, exclusion and legitimation.     

Benevolent and Benign? Using Environmental Justice to Investigate Waste‐related Impacts of Ecotourism in Destination Communities

Abstract:  We contribute to the diversification of environmental justice (EJ) by using it to frame ecotourism-related solid waste management problems. Ecotourism is a service industry portrayed as benevolent (providing benefits), and benign (reducing negative impacts). We propose four characteristics shared by ecotourism-based communities in the Global South and communities struggling with more conventional EJ conflicts. We apply these characteristics to the solid waste crisis in Tortuguero, Costa Rica, a renowned ecotourism destination. First, we show that, despite their general absences from the EJ literature, service industries such as tourism and hospitality can create environmental injustices that disproportionately impact certain types of communities. Second, we highlight the roles of location and socio-economic marginality in siting ecotourism development, in complicating related environmental impact management, and in limiting local abilities to respond to environmental management shortcomings. Third, we provide an example of opportunities to introduce EJ concepts and theory into the study of tourism.     

All Hazardous Waste Politics is Local: Grass-roots Advocacy and Public Participation in siting and Cleanup Decisions

The combined effects of federalism and interest group pluralism pose particularly difficult problems for hazardous waste siting and cleanup decisions. Most national environmental groups have only limited involvement in local hazardous waste politics, while local grass-roots advocates have very different interests and sometimes are pitted against one another. Both the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy recently have begun to use site-specific citizen advisory boards at cleanup sites. This approach appears to improve communications at some sites, but does not address the issues of "not in my back yard" politics and alleged inequitable exposure to hazardous wastes.     

马来西亚华人与伊斯兰党关系——吉兰丹州个案分析

伊斯兰党是马来西亚主要反对党之一,1990年以来,该党在华人只占4.43%的吉兰丹州长期执政,进行伊斯兰教国实践,其伊斯兰化政策引起朝野争议。论文介绍了伊斯兰党在吉兰丹的伊斯兰化政策,分析了基于伊斯兰党的种族理念,吉兰丹政府的华人政策和吉兰丹华人对伊斯兰党及其州政府的态度,说明坚决支持和坚决反对伊斯兰党的华人是少数,中间派是多数。伊斯兰党在吉兰丹州的执政证明,他们公正、廉洁,能够善待华人,使外州华人不再像过去那样抗拒伊斯兰党。吉兰丹模式对马来西亚其他地方马来人和华人具有示范意义。     

A Green New Deal for all: The centrality of a worker and community-led just transition in the US

This paper argues that labour and community-led advocacy efforts towards a just transition are fundamental to delivering the promises of a Green New Deal (GND) and a just post-carbon world. To this end, an ambitious, far-reaching project was launched by the Labor Network for Sustainability, a non-governmental organization dedicated to bridging the labor and climate movements, in Spring 2020 called the “Just Transition Listening Project'' (JTLP). Over the course of several months, the JTLP interviewed over 100 individuals, including rank-and-file union members, union officials, environmental and climate justice advocates, and Indigenous and community advocates to understand what makes transition “just,” what opportunities exist for a broad coalition to advance a GND-style proposal, and to document the struggles facing working people and communities across the U.S. In doing so, we utilize the tools of political geography to examine the politics of spatiality, networks, and scale as well as the geographical and spatial dimensions of policy and political-economic institutions. We are particularly mindful of two spatial dynamics. First, that transition policies, particularly in a hegemonic country like the USA, have global implications. The industrial transition that took place from the 1970s to the 1990s, for example, bred nativism because it cast other countries as the cause of the problem. Second, critical geographers have pointed out that environmental justice (EJ) has been neoliberalized in the U.S. as a result of its operationalization, spatialization, and administration, starting with the Clinton Administration. Because JT is rising on the national and global agendas, we pay close attention to whether these dynamics that affected EJ are also operating with respect to JT, as well as how they can be contained. This research is particularly timely given the ongoing federal governmental efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19 and provide basic economic and social supports. The process of the JTLP parallels the goals of the GND--intersectional efforts rooted in community knowledge for the development of a people-led GND. This paper details the process of the JTLP and the prospects for intersectional, broad-based movements that are the only way a GND can be realized.     

Uncertainty, Risk, Trust, and Information: Public Perceptions of Environmental Issues and Willingness to Take Action

Environmental policymaking has remained an important issue in American public policy for many years. While many individuals have proenvironmental attitudes, they remain unwilling to take the actions necessary to achieve environmental goals. Many variables have been used to explain support for environmental policymaking. This study looks at the effect of uncertainty about environmental quality, perception of risk from environmental hazards, and trust in government and university scientists on willingness to take environmental action. The study examines the impact of these three variables on two environmental issues—tap water and nuclear power. The data were collected from a national sample of 400 individuals. This article presents the results of this research and examines the complex relationships among risks, trust, uncertainty, and willingness to take environmental action. The conclusions improve our understanding of environmental attitudes as well as have practical implications for policymakers who need to build public support for policies designed to improve the environment.     

Scale in motion? Rethinking scalar production and border externalization

This paper signals how border externalization can inform geographical debates about scale and in turn, foster research on how scale intersects with recent forms of border and migration control. It interrogates what scales are being produced and struggled over, pointing to the contingency of scalar work in border externalization, specifically through the EU Migration Routes Strategy. Debates on scale and changing borders are worked through to arrive at the notion of “itinerant scale”, in order to highlight a very distinct spatial imaginary and implementation of border work. Instead of sitting at the edges of nation-states, staying in designated places for long, or pushing through some sort of region imagined as a buffer or frontline, borders are envisioned and designed to be mobile devices and reiterated along shifting migratory routes. This complex scalar production unfolds through a mix of policies, cartographies, surveillance infrastructures and atypical institutional agreements, reaching and acting simultaneously at local, national and regional levels, aiming at the management and contention of suspicious bodies on the move.     

Environmental health and vulnerable populations in Canada: mapping an integrated equity‐focused research agenda

The uneven distribution of environmental hazards across space and in vulnerable populations reflects underlying societal inequities. Fragmented research has led to gaps in comprehensive understanding of and action on environmental health inequities in Canada and there is a need to gain a better picture of the research landscape in order to integrate future research. This paper provides an initial assessment of the state of the environmental health research field as specifically focused on vulnerable populations in Canada. We present a meta‐narrative literature review to identify under‐integrated areas of knowledge across disciplinary fields. Through systematic searching and categorization, we assess the abstracts of a total of 308 studies focused on the past 30 years of Canadian environmental health inequity research in order to describe temporal, geographical, contextual and epistemological patterns. The results reveal that there has been significant growth in Canadian research documenting the uneven distributions and impacts of environmental hazards across locations and populations since the 1990s, but its focus has been uneven. Notably, there is a lack of research aimed at integrating evidence‐based and policy‐relevant evaluation of environmental health inequities and how they are created and sustained. Areas for future research are recommended including more interdisciplinary, multimethod and preventive approaches to resolve the environmental burden placed on vulnerable populations and to promote environmental health equity.     

Citizenship, accountability and community: the limits of the CSR agenda

While the issue of the role of the private sector in development is very much on the agenda of donors and governments, mainstream Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) debates continue to neglect questions with regard to the accountability of companies to the communities in which they invest. Liberal notions of CSR place great emphasis on voluntary, partnership and market based approaches to tackling social and environmental problems and managing conflict. While the rise of voluntary standards and codes of conduct in the North and the growing popularity of various forms of 'civil regulation' has improved the responsiveness of corporations to social and environmental issues, there are doubts about their transferability or relevance in many southern settings. This is particularly so when viewed from the perspective of communities pursuing corporate accountability in the absence of donor, NGO or government pressure for company reform. It is in these 'majority world' settings that we encounter the limits of the liberal CSR agenda.
This article therefore explores the different tools that poorer communities have developed in order to construct mechanisms of corporate accountability. Recent work in India is drawn upon to ground the analysis, but reference is made to many other cases in different regions of the world and across a variety of sectors. It is suggested that many state-based, community-based and company-based factors determine the likely success of such initiatives. Power disparities and how to contest them emerge as key, however, and their neglect within mainstream CSR approaches undermines their ability to address issues of corporate accountability in situations characterized by sharp inequities in power. The emphasis here is on the process of promoting corporate accountability, and the relations of power that underpin these, rather than the achievement of more narrowly defined indicators of corporate performance.     

Indigenous Environmental Justice: Comparing the United States and Canada’s Legal Frameworks for Endangered Species Conservation

Canada and the United States are both committed to the protection of endangered species. This article examines how the legal frameworks created around the US Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the Canadian Species at Risk Act (SARA) intersect with Indigenous environmental justice (EJ). Specifically, the distribution of benefits and burdens is examined since critical habitat designations can limit activity on Native American and First Nation tribal lands. Legal documents and recent court cases also give insight into Indigenous inclusion and recognition in conservation approaches in North America. Overall, it is argued that Canada’s approach comes closer to EJ, but neither legal framework meets the criterion of genuine EJ for Native Americans and First Nations.     

A European Programme for Skills to Deliver Sustainable Communities: Recent Steps Towards Developing a Discourse

Arguments about the need to improve “skills for sustainable communities” have emerged recently in the context of debates around spatial and territorial polices for the EU. This debate has been driven by the UK government as part of its contribution to framing debates around what should follow on from the European Spatial Development Perspective. A programme to shape spatial policy discourse around a skills agenda within EU policy circles was mounted, with considerable UK government support, and this paper explores the success of this attempt, using concepts familiar within environmental policy discourse analysis. We suggest that the attempt met with some success, but achieved a lower level of policy influence than was hoped for, and the paper goes on to examine the reasons for this.     

Scale, Sovereignty, and Strategy in Environmental Governance

Close examination of the scalar politics of environmental organizations engaged in contesting the terms of neoliberal globalization highlights four limitations of current theorizations of scale in radical geography. First, this body of work has paid little attention to environmental NGOs and movements as important actors in scalar politics. This is not only an empirical gap, but a theoretical one: taking environmental actors and issues into account requires rethinking the ontologies and dynamics in scale theory. Second, recent attention to social reproduction in scale debates must be extended to the reproduction of environmental conditions. Third, sharp analytical distinctions between scalar structuration and the production of nature are untenable and reproduce a culture/nature dualism. Fourth, sharp distinctions between politics within or about established scales, versus politics among scales, are unstable and miss the precise strategies pursued in some politics of scale. These arguments are illustrated and explored via case material drawn from current struggles over efforts to define environmental governance as a form of regulatory expropriation in international trade agreements.     

Negotiating the Geographies of Cultural Difference in Local Communities: Two Examples from Suburban Melbourne

This paper explores the ways in which cultural difference is negotiated in local communities through the practices and actions of local individuals, groups and the policies of local government. Cultural difference is commonly managed through policies such as multiculturalism, and critiques of such policies tend to be either in terms of celebratory discourses of inclusiveness, or in negative terms which argue that such policies reiterate models of exclusivity and paternalism. The authors draw on current research in planning and cultural geography in order to explore the ways in which actual difference is negotiated at the local level through the institutional and civic spaces of local government. Two case studies for this discussion, the City of Greater Dandenong and Moreland City Council, demonstrate the importance of the physical body and its interactions with, and activities in, place to processes of local change and policy making.     

NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL POLICY AND ECONOMICALLY DISTRESSED COMMUNITIES

Industrial policy refers to deliberate government actions to affect the growth or decline of firms or industries for the sake of aggregate national prosperity and international competitiveness. This paper presents empirical evidence that policies designed to promote these objectives would be targeted differently from those designed to promote development of economically-distressed regions and communities. Facing multiple objectives, it is difficult for the public sector to pursue industrial growth directly as effectively as can private entrepreneurs. However, government aid to economically-distressed locales and dislocated workers and firms may indirectly support national industrial policy goals.     

When all seemed lost. A social network analysis of the waste-related environmental movement in Campania,Italy

The Italian region of Campania and its capital Naples have epitomized waste management failure in Europe since 2008 when international media covered extensively the waste crisis occurring there. In response to the crisis, the Italian national government took an authoritarian turn in waste policies and criminalized citizens' grievances and mobilizations against waste-facility siting in Campania. The state authorities' intervention gained popular consent and obscured the multifaceted and unjust geographies of waste management in the region. It was a serious blow for the waste-related justice movement in Campania. However, just when waste management seemed under control the movement re-emerged stronger and more effective than it had been prior to the 2008 crisis. Activists created a new counter narrative and liberated themselves from the constraints imposed by the repressive measures of the national government. They built a new frame around the unhealthy space, whose expansion, they maintained, was caused by the waste-related contamination. Yet the strength of the movement and its transformation following 2008 can only be fully understood when the structural property and the components of the EJ activists’ networks are also considered. We apply a Social Network Analysis to show how an effective environmental justice movement requires a cohesive and robust network as well as a comprehensive narrative. The waste-related movement in Campania went from being an archipelago of isolated clusters of organizations with a plural but fragmented claims (before 2008), to a tightly interconnected network supporting a unified political platform (after 2008). We link together the reframing of the movement around health issues with the reconfiguration of activist networks. We use the Campania case to show how environmental justice movements might overcome repression and criminalization and progress toward social justice and ecologically sound transformations.     

Industrial policies in a Marshallian-based multilevel perspective

Drawing on a multilevel framework of Marshallian external economies, we present a perspective on the foundations of enterprise policies across different levels of government. In so doing, we add complexity to the traditional approach to industrial districts, which often disregards the role of supra-local policies. The argument is based on the idea that the main task of policy-makers is not just to provide generic public goods for communities of people defined by administrative boundaries, but also to support the provision of public goods that strengthen the competitiveness and innovative capacity of social and productive systems functioning at various territorial scales, from that of compact centres of industry to the nation-state and beyond. We apply this multilevel framework to the interpretation of the Italian enterprise policies.     

(Re)imagining the idea of India: Contestations about Hindutva among the Indian American diaspora

This paper explores the motivations and actions of Indian Americans who actively oppose Hindutva, that is, a Hindu nationalist vision for India. Diaspora activists who advocate in favour of progressive values for India tend to be underreported in the media and underanalysed in scholarship. The following study addresses this gap. Based on public records, interviews with activist leaders, and participant-observation, the paper demonstrates how anti-Hindutva diaspora actors identify and leverage political opportunities in order to engage in moral signalling in local, national and global spaces. By shining a light on ongoing counternarratives to Hindutva, this study highlights contestations within Indian-origin communities and challenges monolithic portrayals of diaspora politics.     

Make good choices,kid: biopolitics of children's bodies and school lunch reform in Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution

In recent debates surrounding childhood nutrition and US school lunch reforms, the child's body serves as a contested battleground in a destructive politics of blame over obesity and diabetes. Scalar discourses of the body play a significant role in constructing food-related problems and their solutions. We illustrate our claims through a critical analysis of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution; a celebrated national television program centered on chef Oliver's attempts to address childhood nutrition through school lunch reform. Informed by Foucault's biopolitics, our analysis highlights how moralizing scalar discourses of the body frames nutrition as an individual problem of personal choice. Food politics, when played out at the scale of young bodies, masks class divisions, marginalities, and governmental policies that structure access to nutritious food in the US school lunch system. Increased attention to biopower, scalar politics, and the political economy of childhood nutrition in the space of US public schooling challenges naturalized ideologies of food choice that regulate and delimit change to the scale of the body.