Local Commons and Democratic Environmental Governance

Local Commons and Democratic Environmental Governance
Author: Takeshi Murota
Publisher: UN
Total Pages: 446
Release: 2013
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

The rising tide of globalization poses a direct threat to the viability of small communities worldwide. Such communities, however, are our greatest hope for sustainable environmental governance, as they possess unparalleled ability to directly manage common-pool resources. Providing a much needed antidote in this age of globalization, this volume advances the idea of collaborative governance as an integration of open and closed commons. Taking into consideration the dimension of conflict resolution, it studies examples of governance structures in various countries around the world to develop a new type of democracy towards multilevel environmental governance that involves the public, private, and commons spheres. With contributions from researchers in a wide variety of disciplines, this volume demonstrates through institutional and empirical analyses the essential role of local commons in providing an axis of resistance to increasing environmental devastation and social inequality towards creating a sustainable future for local communities as well as society at large.

Benefit-sharing in Environmental Governance

Benefit-sharing in Environmental Governance
Author: Louisa Parks
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2019-11-20
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0429582277

Taking a bottom-up perspective, this book explores local framings of a wide range of issues related to benefit-sharing, a growing concept in global environmental governance. Benefit-sharing in Environmental Governance draws on original case studies from South Africa, Namibia, Greece, Argentina, and Malaysia to shed light on what benefit-sharing looks like from the local viewpoint. These local-level case studies move away from the idea of benefit-sharing as defined by a single international organization or treaty. Rather, they reflect different situations where benefit-sharing has been considered, including agriculture, access to land and plants, wildlife management, and extractives industries. Common themes in the experiences of local communities form the basis for an exploration of spaces for local voices at the international level in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), often argued to be the most open arena to non-state actors, and therefore vital to how local voices may be included at the global level. The book analyzes the decisions of the CBD parties to produce an in-depth reflection on how this arena builds and delimits spaces for the expression of local community themes, and paths for local community participation including community protocols. The book then situates the bottom-up findings in the wider debate about global civil society and deliberative democracy in environmental governance. This interdisciplinary book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental politics, environmental law, political ecology and global governance, as well as practitioners and policymakers involved in multilateral environmental agreements.

The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory

The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory
Author: Teena Gabrielson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 726
Release: 2016-01-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 019150842X

Set at the intersection of political theory and environmental politics, yet with broad engagement across the environmental social sciences and humanities, The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory, defines, illustrates, and challenges the field of environmental political theory (EPT). Featuring contributions from distinguished political scientists working in this field, this volume addresses canonical theorists and contemporary environmental problems with a diversity of theoretical approaches. The initial volume focuses on EPT as a field of inquiry, engaging both traditions of political thought and the academy. In the second section, the handbook explores conceptualizations of nature and the environment, as well as the nature of political subjects, communities, and boundaries within our environments. A third section addresses the values that motivate environmental theorists--including justice, responsibility, rights, limits, and flourishing--and the potential conflicts that can emerge within, between, and against these ideals. The final section examines the primary structures that constrain or enable the achievement of environmental ends, as well as theorizations of environmental movements, citizenship, and the potential for on-going environmental action and change.

Governing the Commons

Governing the Commons
Author: Elinor Ostrom
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2015-09-23
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1107569788

Tackles one of the most enduring and contentious issues of positive political economy: common pool resource management.

Sustainability Transformations Across Societies

Sustainability Transformations Across Societies
Author: Björn-Ola Linnér
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2019-10-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1108487475

A comparison of how societal actors in different geographical, political and cultural contexts understand agents and drivers of sustainability transformations.

Comparative Environmental Politics

Comparative Environmental Politics
Author: Paul F. Steinberg
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 441
Release: 2012
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0262195852

Combining the theoretical tools of comparative politics with the substantive concerns of environmental policy, experts explore responses to environmental problems across nations and political systems.

The Drama of the Commons

The Drama of the Commons
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 533
Release: 2002-02-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0309169984

The "tragedy of the commons" is a central concept in human ecology and the study of the environment. It has had tremendous value for stimulating research, but it only describes the reality of human-environment interactions in special situations. Research over the past thirty years has helped clarify how human motivations, rules governing access to resources, the structure of social organizations, and the resource systems themselves interact to determine whether or not the many dramas of the commons end happily. In this book, leaders in the field review the evidence from several disciplines and many lines of research and present a state-of-the-art assessment. They summarize lessons learned and identify the major challenges facing any system of governance for resource management. They also highlight the major challenges for the next decade: making knowledge development more systematic; understanding institutions dynamically; considering a broader range of resources (such as global and technological commons); and taking into account the effects of social and historical context. This book will be a valuable and accessible introduction to the field for students and a resource for advanced researchers.

From Biocultural Homogenization to Biocultural Conservation

From Biocultural Homogenization to Biocultural Conservation
Author: Ricardo Rozzi
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 477
Release: 2019-02-18
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3319995138

To assess the social processes of globalization that are changing the way in which we co-inhabit the world today, this book invites the reader to essay the diversity of worldviews, with the diversity of ways to sustainably co-inhabit the planet. With a biocultural perspective that highlights planetary ecological and cultural heterogeneity, this book examines three interrelated themes: (1) biocultural homogenization, a global, but little perceived, driver of biological and cultural diversity loss that frequently entail social and environmental injustices; (2) biocultural ethics that considers –ontologically and axiologically– the complex interrelationships between habits, habitats, and co-inhabitants that shape their identity and well-being; (3) biocultural conservation that seeks social and ecological well-being through the conservation of biological and cultural diversity and their interrelationships.