Suchergebnisse

This article explores problems surrounding the implementation of European Union (EU) environmental policy within Member States. It focuses on harmonization and flexibility within the implementation process, from both a free‐trade and an environmental perspective. The context is the Packaging Waste Directive, legislation requiring Member States to establish packaging waste recycling systems. The directive has encouraged Member States to employ economic instruments in the implementation process, a strategy which has led to the development of various national packaging waste systems. As a result, differences between the British and German approaches to environmental policy have become apparent, despite the adoption by both of systems based on economic instruments. The two national models are contrasted and the extent to which flexible implementation has produced harmonized legislative standards, threats to free trade, and improved environmental quality are reviewed. The article proposes that where relatively peripheral conflicts between the operation of the single market and environmental policy objectives occur, genuine environmental protection measures should not automatically be impeded by free‐trade technicalities.

Why, despite two decades of climate policy, have affluent democracies made so little progress in cutting greenhouse gas emissions? We know that there are ways of doing this that are both practical and affordable. It is politics that is the problem. Stringent climate policies may lead companies to redirect investment elsewhere, or lead voters to retaliate at the ballot box. There are many political obstacles to stronger action. What can be done? Based on an analysis of the logic of policy making, plus observation of recent developments in climate politics, this book identifies a broad range of political strategies that are available to governments that wish to take more effective action against climate change while avoiding serious political damage. Separate chapters deal with strategies relating to unilateral action, persuasion, political exchange, and changing the terms of political exchange. This is the first book-length study of political strategy and climate change and will be of interest not only to policymakers but also to experts and activists looking to formulate politically realistic policy proposals, and scholars and students of politics and environmental studies.

The green economy is a highly complex construct in terms of its attempts to integrate economic, environmental, and social concerns, the wide range of actors involved, its material outcomes, and the forms of governance needed to regulate processes of economic greening. As such, it poses new empirical and theoretical challenges for social science research on socioenvironmental futures. This paper has two main aims. The first is to survey the emergent features and functional domains of the green economy. The second is to consider theoretical tools that might be used to analyse the drivers and processes shaping the green economy. Focusing on literature on sociotechnical transitions, ecological modernisation, the 'green' cultural economy, and postpolitical governance, we argue that understanding the functional and spatial heterogeneity of the green economy necessitates a multitheoretical approach. We then explore how combining branches of research on socioenvironmental governance can lead to theoretically and ontologically richer insights into the drivers, practices, and power relations within the green economy. In so doing, we respond to calls for socioeconomic research on environmental change which is neither just empirical nor bound to one theoretical outlook to the detriment of understanding the complexity of socioenvironmental governance and human–nature relations.