Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space

The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, a multilateral environmental agreement, has successfully eliminated the use of most ozone-depleting chlorofluoro-carbons. As a result, a number of observers have pointed to the possibility of transferring successes—and even linking regulations—between the Montreal Protocol and Kyoto Protocol, the international but stalled climate-change agreement. We argue that there is need for caution on this issue. The Montreal and Kyoto protocols are the outcomes of vastly different political contexts, from public civil society approaches to what we call ‘the private turn’: the current loss of faith in state sovereignty, the rejection of multilateralism, and an embrace of private knowledge about economic damage over public knowledge about the protection of citizens and natural resources. From this broader perspective we show that the differences between the Montreal and Kyoto protocols are therefore more than ‘command-and-control’ versus ‘market-based’ solutions. These differences also reflect an even deeper divide over what ‘counts’ as knowledge in political decision-making processes. We illustrate these points through a case study of the current knowledge controversies around the phase-out of methyl bromide under the Montreal Protocol. We explain how the methyl bromide phase-out has stalled because the phase-out approach is incompatible with the current political regime, thus supporting the argument that neoliberal forms of governance cannot solve global environmental problems. This case, therefore, shows us that the challenges we face are more than atmospheric: to save the Earth we must create new ways to govern ourselves.

The carbon economy has emerged over the last decade as an important but controversial development in the harnessing of economics to address the challenge of climate change. In this paper we utilise the concepts of policy change and transition theorisations to analyse carbon commodification within the broader range of possible responses to the climate problem. We argue that the neoliberal, technocentric, and ecological modernisation values underpinning the carbon economy create serious obstacles for the incorporation of alternative or complementary transitional strategies, particularly those involving ecocentric changes, into mainstream policy. From this we contend that a more holistic approach to the conceptualisation of change processes is needed, and that transition theory provides a useful lens for identifying and assessing existing constraints and future possibilities.

I use ideas about the complexity of economic and sociotechnical relations, drawing especially on the work of John Law and Michel Callon, to consider domestic energy efficiency in a landscape in which governmental interventions attempt to reduce carbon emissions while also tackling fuel poverty. Policy responses to energy efficiency in the UK largely framed by ‘the market’ go on to perform the market in interventions such as the Energy Efficiency Commitment. The way that the Energy Efficiency Commitment has been designed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions while performing a welfare function and the multiple effects of calibrating it in such a way are explored in the paper. In particular, I suggest that attempts to order and govern energy networks struggle to contain the generative effects that stem from climate change and fuel poverty being hardwired to the same technical and social phenomena such as homes, energy technologies, and energy users.

In this paper we examine how theories of sustainable and ethical consumption help us to understand a new, rapidly expanding type of consumer product designed to mitigate climate change: carbon offsets. The voluntary carbon offset market grew by 200% between 2005 and 2006, and there are now over 150 retailers of voluntary carbon offsets worldwide. Our analysis concentrates on the production and consumption of carbon offsets, drawing on ideas from governmentality and political ecology about how narratives and technologies are used to create particular types of consumer subjectivities and shape consumer choice. We critically examine three narratives that offset producers are using to position carbon offsets and examine how these narratives are shaping circuits of carbon offset production and consumption. We assess the implications for the future governance of voluntary carbon offset markets and for the study of alternative consumption.

Global agreements have proliferated in the past ten years. One of these is the Kyoto Protocol, which contains provisions for emissions reductions by trading carbon through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The CDM is a market-based instrument that allows companies in Annex I countries to offset their greenhouse gas emissions through energy and tree offset projects in the global South. I set out to examine the governance challenges posed by the institutional design of carbon sequestration projects under the CDM. I examine three global narratives associated with the design of CDM forest projects, specifically North–South knowledge politics, green developmentalism, and community participation, and subsequently assess how these narratives match with local practices in two projects in Latin America. Findings suggest that governance problems are operating at multiple levels and that the rhetoric of global carbon actors often asserts these schemes in one light, while the rhetoric of those who are immediately involved locally may be different. I also stress the alarmist's discourse that blames local people for the problems of environmental change. The case studies illustrate the need for vertical communication and interaction and nested governance arrangements as well as horizontal arrangements. I conclude that the global framing of forests as offsets requires better integration of local relationships to forests and their management and more effective institutions at multiple levels to link the very local to the very large scale when dealing with carbon sequestration in the CDM.

In recent years ‘vulnerability assessment’ has gained a prominent position in the international climate-change policy arena. There are many social-scientific studies that examine various methods and approaches involved in assessing vulnerability. Rather than making another addition to this literature I examine how climate-change policies have been translated in Sri Lanka in order to identify vulnerable places and social groups by combining actor-network theory and the concept of ‘hazardscape’. In so doing I illustrate how concepts of climate-change vulnerability and hazards are, more often than not, translated in ways that fit within and reinforce existing official narratives of social and spatial disadvantage, rather than addressing new problems or dimensions that might emerge from the combined effects of changes in climate, economy, and society. I conclude by suggesting that the concept of ‘resilience’ needs to be highlighted within international climate-change policy because it offers smaller developing countries the possibility of going beyond mitigation and adaptation strategies and finding innovative ways of integrating traditional resource-use insights and approaches within Clean Development Mechanism projects.

Adding to the growing body of research examining neighbourhood effects in European contexts, this study investigates the associations between the educational achievement of Dutch youth and their neighbourhood conditions. We further consider whether these associations vary by student socioeconomic status (SES), gender, or nativity. Results from a multilevel analysis of 17 836 secondary school students living in 3085 neighbourhoods indicate significant relationships between several dimensions of the neighbourhood context and educational achievement. Student SES and nativity appear to moderate some of these effects. In particular, we find the negative effect of neighbourhood disadvantage to be almost entirely restricted to native youth. The achievement outcomes of students with higher levels of SES also appear to be less affected by neighbourhood affluence and disadvantage than those of lower-SES students. Our results suggest that the impact of neighbourhood conditions on certain groups of youth may be obscured in studies that measure average neighbourhood effects across all individuals. Future research which examines neighbourhood effects and mechanisms across subgroups of youth, and which examines the links between the neighbourhood, family, and school contexts, can help us to better determine the neighbourhood's role in youth education.

The relationship between the built environment, physical activity, and well-being is currently attracting concerted government attention in the UK which has been formalized through new sets of urban planning and design guidelines. In light of this, the author argues that the domains of intersection between the physical environment and governmental health and social agendas need further exploration. Furthermore, she asserts that urban geographers are theoretically and empirically well placed to undertake valuable and much needed research agendas within these domains. To explore these assertions, the author first sets out the recent turn to physical activity as an explicit policy concern. She then critically interrogates two recent sets of design guidelines, Active Design (Sport England) and the 2008 NICE guidance within the context of current UK policy thinking, before exploring the problematic nature of the instrumental readings of space they present. It is argued that this instrumental rationale may sanction the neglect of the intrinsic value and importance of active lives themselves to urban spaces, which, it is asserted, can have marked impacts on well-being. An appreciation of this opens up new geographical research agendas with respect to the built form, public health, and governance.

The advantages and disadvantages of public sector decentralization are widely discussed in economics and political science. Some authors argue that decentralization leads to an optimal provision of public services and promotes economic growth, while others emphasize the dangers of competition between subnational governments, especially those associated with interregional redistribution. Using cross-section and panel data for twenty-three OECD countries, from 1982 to 2000, this paper empirically studies the impact of fiscal decentralization on regional disparities. It is found that a higher degree of decentralization is associated with lower regional disparities. Hence, poor regions experience no disadvantages from decentralization and, instead, appear to benefit.

In debates about employment creation there is increasing concern about the quality as well as the quantity of jobs. The authors examine the regional distribution of workplace employment in the UK using the ‘quality of jobs’ framework. Findings reveal evidence of marked regional differences in average ‘job quality’, with the gap between regions growing over the decade from 1997, and the focus of high-quality job creation biased towards already advantaged regions. There is evidence of increased job polarisation across most UK regions. The analyses suggest an important role of the public sector in providing high-quality jobs, particularly outside London and the South East.

Whether people appreciate the importance of saving for the future, and whether they intend to do so, are not well understood. On the basis of a representative sample of UK residents, we show that the perceived importance of pension planning is positively correlated with respondents' risk tolerance, age, and income, and whether their spouses participate in employer-sponsored pension plans. Those less likely to believe planning for the future is important are younger, earn less, are women, and will rely upon others for their expected retirement welfare. It is also apparent that generic sources of information provided remotely or at the national scale for individual and household pension planning, preparedness, and knowledge of annuities do not stand comparison with the perceived value of intimate and specialist advisory relationships. The unit of retirement planning is typically the household; it rarely functions at the region and national scales. To understand these findings better we frame their interpretation with reference to recent behavioural research that emphasises people's limited cognitive and social resources and the use of heuristics such as salience in setting priorities. Our findings have important implications for the scope and significance of the relational turn in economic geography.

Under a new nationalist leadership, the Scottish Government has recently increased its renewable energy targets but rejected a controversial large windfarm proposal on the Isle of Lewis. This paper explores the nature of support and opposition to windfarm developments on Lewis. In doing so, we build on recent literature which has promoted a discursive approach to wind energy debates, to enable a more explanatory, rather than descriptive, analysis. A novel combination of Q methodology and more conventional qualitative work is deployed to identify and elaborate five distinct discourses on the Lewis Wind proposal. Each displays a different rationality and set of priorities on the economy, landscape, and environment, and ultimately represents a different vision of development in the Western Isles. The paper explores the challenges that such a clash of values presents to the planning process and reflects upon what can be learnt about deliberative planning from this case.