Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, more widely known as ‘Rio+20’, was a significant global political event, but it left many important questions relating to the future of sustainability governance unanswered. This paper introduces a theme issue on “Governing sustainability: Rio+20 and the road beyond”. It is organized around three themes which are addressed at greater detail in the different papers: (i) the current status of governance for sustainability in the aftermath of Rio+20; (ii) whether or not sustainable development still has political and institutional relevance; and (iii) institutional and political opportunities and obstacles for governing sustainability in the future. The paper argues that both sustainability governance and the sustainable development concept are under growing pressure amid a perceived failure to deliver change, but identifies three opportunities to advance sustainability: (i) by reframing the way in which problems of unsustainability are described and approached; (ii) via the formulation of effective sustainable development goals; and (iii) by identifying novel ways to open up the sustainable development debate to more actors and interests.

The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) was mandated to focus on: (i) institutional frameworks for sustainable development and (ii) the green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradiation. Analyzing the UNSCD from a historical perspective, we address three questions. First, what is the role of UN conferences on environment and development? Second, how were the UNCSD debates and outcomes connected to over forty years of environment and development cooperation? Third, how may the UNCSD shape ongoing efforts to forward the sustainable development agenda? We begin by summarizing the main arguments of supporters and critics of UN conferences. Next, we examines two sets of institutional frameworks issues: (a) institutional creation and reforms and (b) institutional complexity and participation. This is followed by an examination of two kinds of green economy issues: (1) state-centered economic debates and (2) human-development-focused debates. In the final section we examine opportunities and limitations for making progress on sustainable development. We argue that the UNCSD did little to advance institutional reforms, but that the initiative to formulate Sustainable Development Goals has the potential to significantly influence the sustainable development agenda.

This paper considers engagement with sustainable development in the rich industrialized countries since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, focusing particularly on environmental limits. It argues that while the idea of ‘limits’ is in one sense ubiquitous, contemporary societies are only beginning to come to terms with its implications. The discussion considers different understandings of environmental limits, explores the example of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change, reflects on fruitful ways to approach environmental limits, and references recent ‘green growth’ and ‘green economy’ initiatives associated with Rio+20. It suggests that normative judgments are essential to give social and political meaning to environmental limits, and notes the importance of defining the positive social goods that are to be secured through the recognition of such limits. The paper particularly emphasizes the importance of securing absolute reductions in critical environmental loadings, because this is the side of the issue which tends to be obscured when sustainable development is reduced to a ‘quality-of-life’ agenda and severed from concerns with global equity.

The idea of a group of developing countries with shared characteristics, challenges, and needs, distinct from those of developed countries, has been central to sustainable development discourse and policy for decades. However, in the years since the original Rio conference it has become increasingly apparent that it is difficult to sustain this notion of a single developing world. Within the context of unfolding diversity, a central claim of the present paper is that lumping all countries together under the expansive category of ‘developing’ risks obfuscating the complex challenges, solutions, and fragmented geopolitics of sustainable development. Instead, it is necessary to use the terms developing country, countries, or world far more selectively, mindful that they may conceal just about as much as they reveal. In the paper I proceed to consider a number of alternative national, subnational, and transnational spatial categorisations which might be deployed to better describe and/or analyse the evolving nature, effective governance, and politics of sustainable development challenges across space.

The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (or Rio+20) was conceived at a time of great concern for the health of the world economy. In this atmosphere ‘green economy’ was chosen as one of two central themes for the conference, building on a burgeoning body of literature on the green economy and growth. This research examines the relationship and influence between the double crisis and the rise of ‘greening’ as part of the solution. The aim is to understand what defines and distinguishes the proposals contained in twenty-four sources on the green economy (including policy documents by international agencies and think tanks, and research papers), and what is the meaning and implication of the rising greening agenda for sustainable development as it enters the 21st century. Through a systematic qualitative analysis of textual material, three categories of discourse that can illuminate the meaning and implication of greening are identified: ‘almost business as usual’, ‘greening’, and ‘all change’. An analysis of their relationship with Dryzek's classification of environmental discourse leads to the identification of three interrelated patterns: (1) scarcity and limits, (2) means and ends, and (3) reductionism and unity—which deepen our understanding of the tensions between emerging propositions. The patterns help explain the meaning and implications of greening for sustainable development, revealing an economisation and polarisation of discourses, the persisting weak interpretation of sustainable development, and a tension between the fixing or shifting of dominant socioeconomic paradigms that underpin its conceptualisation.

The local was institutionalised as a key scale for environmental action at the Earth Summit, and remains salient in discourse, policy, and action. However, given both real changes and geographical insights into the politics of scale in the past twenty years, we suggest it is time to (re)consider this focus. We assess local sustainability through the lens of scalar politics, arguing for the need to consider what challenges particular scale frames foreground and which they silence. We focus on three changes which have occurred in the last twenty years—the growing salience of the Global South, shifts from environmentalism to sustainability, and new governance patterns—and reflect on the significance of these changes for local sustainability. We suggest the local frame occludes questions of international responsibility and justice, and that the changes since Rio require that we reconsider the scalar frame of local sustainability. We conclude by questioning who benefits from the local frame, and when, where, and for whom a focus on local sustainability may be relevant and ethical.

The ability of innovation—both technical and social—to stretch and redefine ‘limits to growth’ was recognised at Stockholm in 1972, and has been a key feature in debates through to Rio+20 in 2012. Compared with previous major moments of global reflection about human and planetary futures—Stockholm, Rio in 1992, Johannesburg in 2002—we now have a better understanding of how innovation interacts with social, technological, and ecological systems to contribute to transitions at multiple levels. What can this improved understanding offer in terms of governance approaches that might enhance the interaction between local initiatives and global sustainability objectives post-Rio+20? The global political agenda over the last two decades has largely focused on creating economic and regulatory incentives to drive more sustainable industrial development patterns within and between nation-states—resulting most notably in the Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. At the other end of the spectrum, ‘Local Agenda 21’, launched at the first Rio summit, envisaged a community-led response to sustainable development challenges locally. This paper discusses the successes and challenges of globally linked local action through a number of illustrative examples, reflecting on how these have contributed to Rio 1992's original objectives. In doing so, we will draw upon innovation studies and development studies to highlight three key issues in a hybrid politics of innovation for sustainability that links global and local: first, the direction in which innovation and development proceed; second, the distribution of the costs, benefits, and risks associated with such changes; third, the diversity of approaches and forms of innovation that contribute to global transitions to sustainability. Drawing on this analysis, we will also reflect on Rio+20, including the extent to which hybrid innovation politics is already emerging, whether this was reflected in the formal Rio+20 outcomes, and what this suggests for the future of international sustainable development summits.

Although reducing levels and impacts of contemporary consumption and production has been a pivotal socioenvironmental goal for decades, global resource use continues to grow rapidly, particularly across the Asia-Pacific region. Responses such as the ‘10 Year Framework of Programmes on Consumption and Production Patterns’ (10YFP)—an outcome of the 2012 Rio+20 Summit—suggest that nothing short of highly coordinated and multilevel concerted efforts are required to begin to address such trends. However, some commentators fear that the 10YFP will default to ‘weak’ forms of sustainable consumption intervention, focusing on efficiency and technological innovation. By contrast, many are calling for ‘strong’ interventions such as those expounded by the degrowth movement. With this paper I examine both these weak and strong approaches to sustainable consumption, and argue that—although this dichotomy describes two divergent streams of thought and practice—there are conceptual and practice-based spaces where they intersect. Along with a much-needed expansion of the geographical scope of current research and practice, I thus argue that these spaces present one way forward for work in this field.

The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, held in June 2012 in Rio de Janeiro, was probably the largest event in a long series of megasummits on environmental protection and sustainable development. Roughly 44 000 participants descended on Rio de Janeiro to take part in ten days of preparatory committee meetings, informal consultations, side events, and the actual conference. Yet despite this unprecedented high attendance by participants from governments and civil society, the outcome of the conference is less than many had hoped for. In this paper I review the outcomes of the 2012 Rio conference in detail, with a special focus on its contributions towards the reform of the institutional framework for sustainable development. Following this review, I discuss the way ahead and options for structural reform to restrengthen earth system governance.

University—industry collaboration in research projects has received little attention in studies on the performance of universities in bringing knowledge to market. This situation holds also true for the differences between regions and for understanding the hampering factors in collaboration, including regional ones. To fill this gap, in this paper I attempt to characterize the outcomes of technology projects—in terms of market introduction, continuation, stagnation, and failure—and to identify the barriers, particularly regional ones. I also propose an extended use of a tool that facilitates and accelerates market introduction—that is, living labs. The study draws on a database of 370 technology projects covering two different regions in the Netherlands and on in-depth data of 51 of such projects in a limited number of technologies.

In England spatial planning has been critiqued as being part of a postpolitical project which seeks to suppress the contested nature of policy and determining applications. A key aspect of this critique is that consensus overrides territoriality as the interface between local, bounded politics is underplayed in favour of the relational nature of place. In this reading local planners may be seen as caught between their professional understanding of, and commitment to, relational space and the bounded nature of local politics that informs their political masters at the local level. However, drawing on experience of policy development in Islington, London, it is argued that planners can themselves employ a bounded discourse of place, independently of local political demands. The Coalition government's localism agenda extends the premise of spatial planning—promoting the local and/or place but giving primacy to accommodating externally driven change; this paper explores the implications for planning practice.