Politics and the Environment in Eastern Europe

Politics and the Environment in Eastern Europe
Author: Eszter Krasznai Kovacs
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2021-07-28
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1800641354

Europe remains divided between east and west, with differences caused and worsened by uneven economic and political development. Amid these divisions, the environment has become a key battleground. The condition and sustainability of environmental resources are interlinked with systems of governance and power, from local to EU levels. Key challenges in the eastern European region today include increasingly authoritarian forms of government that threaten the operations and very existence of civil society groups; the importation of locally-contested conservation and environmental programmes that were designed elsewhere; and a resurgence in cultural nationalism that prescribes and normalises exclusionary nation-building myths. This volume draws together essays by early-career academic researchers from across eastern Europe. Engaging with the critical tools of political ecology, its contributors provide a hitherto overlooked perspective on the current fate and reception of ‘environmentalism’ in the region. It asks how emergent forms of environmentalism have been received, how these movements and perspectives have redefined landscapes, and what the subtler effects of new regulatory regimes on communities and environment-dependent livelihoods have been. Arranged in three sections, with case studies from Czechia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Serbia, this collection develops anthropological views on the processes and consequences of the politicisation of the environment. It is valuable reading for human geographers, social and cultural historians, political ecologists, social movement and government scholars, political scientists, and specialists on Europe and European Union politics.

Transnational Politics of the Environment

Transnational Politics of the Environment
Author: Liliana B. Andonova
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2003-11-21
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780262261418

A study of the effect of EU membership on Central and Eastern European environmental policy and the interplay of political incentives and industry behavior that determines policy In Transnational Politics of the Environment, Liliana Andonova examines the effect of the Europen Union (EU) on the environmental policies of Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, and Poland. Compliance with EU environmental regulations is especially onerous for Central and Eastern European countries because of the costs involved and the legacy of pollution from communist-era industries. But Andonova argues that EU integration has a positive impact on environmental policies in these countries by exerting a strong influence on the environmental interests of regulated industries. With her empirical study of chemical safety and air pollution policies from 1990 to 2000, she shows that export-competitive industries such as the chemical industry that would benefit from economic integration have an incentive to adopt EU norms. By contrast, industries such as electric utilities that primarily serve the domestic market remain opposed to EU environmental standards and must be prodded by their own governments to implement environmental-protection measures. These differences in domestic interests greatly influence the course of reforms and the adoption of EU standards. Transnational Politics of the Environment challenges the current focus on intergovernmental cooperation between East and West by highlighting the roles of industries, transnational norms, and domestic institutions in promoting change in environmental regulation. It offers a generalizable framework for understanding the politics of environmental regulation in emerging market economies, and helps bridge the divide between the study of domestic and international environmental politics.

Environmental Politics in the Middle East

Environmental Politics in the Middle East
Author: Harry Verhoeven
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2018
Genre: History
ISBN: 0190916680

Offers a critical and realistic reassessment of the threats posed to the environment in the Middle East, and what can be done about them.

A New Ecological Order

A New Ecological Order
Author: Ştefan Dorondel
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2022-05-03
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0822988844

The rise of industrial capitalism in the nineteenth century forged a new ecological order in North American and Western European states, radically transforming the environment through science and technology in the name of human progress. Far less known are the dramatic environmental changes experienced by Eastern Europe, in many ways a terra incognita for environmental historians and anthropologists. A New Ecological Order explores, from a historical and ethnographic perspective, the role of state planners, bureaucrats, and experts—engineers, agricultural engineers, geographers, biologists, foresters, and architects—as agents of change in the natural world of Eastern Europe from 1870 to the early twenty-first century. Contributors consider territories engulfed by empires, from the Habsburg to the Ottoman to tsarist Russia; territories belonging to disintegrating empires; and countries in the Balkan Peninsula, Central and Eastern Europe, and Eurasia. Together, they follow a rhetoric of “correcting nature,” a desire to exploit the natural environment and put its resources to work for the sake of developing the economies and infrastructures of modern states. They reveal an eagerness among newly established nation-states, after centuries of imperial economic and political impositions, to import scientific knowledge and new technologies from Western Europe that would aid in their economic development, and how those imports and ideas about nature ultimately shaped local projects and policies.

Energy Cultures

Energy Cultures
Author: Michael C. LaBelle
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2020-11-28
Genre:
ISBN: 9781788975759

This thought-provoking book explores the concept of energy cultures as a means of understanding social and political relations and how energy injustices are created. Using Eastern Europe as an example, it examines the radical transition occurring as the region leaves behind the legacy of the Soviet Union, and the effects of the resulting power struggle between the energy cultures of Russia and the European Union.In this timely study, Michael Carnegie LaBelle applies an energy justice framework to an analysis of different national energy cultures, exposing both the domestic and international power relations that influence geopolitics in Eastern Europe. He assesses the entire energy value-chain in the region in this context, providing a radical critique of power dynamics within the energy system with the aim of fostering a just energy transition. Scholars interested in energy justice, conflict, policy and culture from across disciplines including law, politics, public policy, sociology and geography will find this book a fascinating read. It will also be useful to scholars of international relations and geopolitics for its analysis of the impact of EU energy policy on the countries examined, as well as of the relationship between the EU and Russia.

Nature and the Iron Curtain

Nature and the Iron Curtain
Author: Astrid Kirchhof
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2019-06-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0822986485

In Nature and the Iron Curtain, the authors contrast communist and capitalist countries with respect to their environmental politics in the context of the Cold War. Its chapters draw from archives across Europe and the U.S. to present new perspectives on the origins and evolution of modern environmentalism on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The book explores similarities and differences among several nations with different economies and political systems, and highlights connections between environmental movements in Eastern and Western Europe.

Restoring Cursed Earth

Restoring Cursed Earth
Author: Matthew R. Auer
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2004
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780742529151

Among the most costly and complicated chapters in the former Eastern bloc countries' transitions to democracy is the clean up and restoration of the environment. Even as Communist-era environmental problems fade in significance-such as pollution from heavy industry-new threats have emerged. Restoring Cursed Earth considers how rule making, sanctions, incentives, and programs shape environmental protection efforts, and whether and to what extent these emerging policy structures are promoting environmental well-being for citizens in Russia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, and Estonia.

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.

Environmental Transitions

Environmental Transitions
Author: Petr Pavlínek
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2002-09-26
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1134715587

Environmental Transitions is a detailed and comprehensive account of the environmental changes in Central and Eastern Europe, both under state socialism and during the period of transition to capitalism. The change in politics in the late 1980s and early 1990s allowed an opportunity for a rapid environmental clean up, in an area once considered one of the most environmentally devastated regions on earth. The book illustrates how transformations after 1989 have brought major environmental improvements, as well as new environmental problems. It shows how environmental policy, economic change and popular support for environmental movements, have specific and changing geographies associated with them. Environmental Transitions addresses a large number of topics, including the historical geographical analysis of the environmental change, health impacts of environmental degradation, the role of environmental issues during the anti-communist revolutions, legislative reform and the effects of transition on environmental quality after 1989. Environmental Transitions contains detailed case studies from the region, which illustrate the complexity of environmental issues and their intimate relationship with political and economic realities. It gives theoretically informed ideas for understanding environmental change in the context of the political economy of state socialism and post-communist transformations, drawing on a wide body of literature from West, Central and Eastern Europe.

Capitalism and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe

Capitalism and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe
Author: Grzegorz Ekiert
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 394
Release: 2003-09-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521529853

This volume presents a shared effort to apply a general historical-institutionalist approach to the problem of assessing institutional change in the wake of communism's collapse in Europe. It brings together a number of leading senior and junior scholars with outstanding reputations as specialists in postcommunism and comparative politics to address central theoretical and empirical issues involved in the study of postcommunism. The authors address such questions as how historical 'legacies' of the communist regime be defined, how their impact can be measured in methodologically rigorous ways, and how the effects of temporal and spatial context can be taken into account in empirical research on the region. Taken as a whole, the volume makes an important contribution to the growing literature by utilizing the comparative historical method to study key problems of world politics.