Greening Governance

This innovative book is one of the first to conduct a systematic comprehensive analysis of the ideals and practices of the evolving green state. It draws on elements of political theory, feminist theory, post-structuralism, governance and institutional theory to conceptualise the green state and advances thinking on how to understand its emergence in the context of climate and sustainability transitions. Focusing on the state as an actor in environmental, climate and sustainability politics, the book explores different principles guiding the emergence of the green state and examines the performance of states and institutional responses to the sustainable and climate transitions in the European and Nordic context in particular. The book’s unique focus on the Nordic countries underlines the important to learn from Nordics, which are perceived to be in the forefront of climate and sustainability governance as well as historically strong welfare states. With chapter contributions from leading international scholars in political science, sociology, economics, energy and environmental systems and climate policy studies, this book will be of great value to postgraduate students and researchers working on sustainability transitions, environmental politics and governance, and those with an area studies focus on the Nordic countries.

"After twenty years of sustainable building policies, the issue of environmental impact of buildings and urban environments remains. Policy makers still have difficulties addressing the ambiguous, contested and dynamic goals encapsulated in the term 'sustainable development'. How to decide between using zinc or PVC gutters, when knowledge and valuation of environmental risks of both keep changing? How can we accommodate urban growth, now that compact cities turn out to be urban heat islands?" "Greening governance identifies how policy makers can deal with these contested questions. The book draws on policy network theories that consider stakeholder interaction, negotiation and learning as conditions for policy success. By understanding these conditions from an evolutionary viewpoint it provides a new perspective for governance. The concepts of generative variety, selective retention and regeneration will help policy makers to prioritize and select contested alternatives while also focusing on more long term and ambitious policy goals. The book is of interest to policy makers and scientists concerned with both the practical and theoretical issues of sustainable built environments." --Book Jacket.

This policy guidance outlines a number of steps to be considered when building capacity for greening national development planning, national budgetary processes and key economic sector strategies.

This book addresses the increasingly urgent question: How can governments be made more accountable for the quality of their environmental stewardship? It explores: Enhanced national State of the Environment reporting and integration of environmental outcomes in key national indicators. Mainstreaming environmental goals, targets, and risks by integrating them in fiscal policy and the annual budget—a government’s most important policy instrument. Promoting sustainability by progressively exposing and eliminating harmful tax and expenditure policies, putting a price on pollution, and providing environmental public goods. Civil society environmental monitoring. The book combines in-depth assessment of the latest climate/green budgeting literature and country practices with discussion of how to implement green fiscal policies. The framework is deliberately ambitious given the severity, scale, and urgency of climate change and biodiversity loss. The book will be of interest to ministry of finance, budget, and planning officials, to environment sector agencies, oversight institutions, international organizations, civil society organizations, and to academics and students in the fields of environmental studies, development studies, economics, public finance, and public policy.

City greening has been heralded for contributing to environmental governance and critiqued for exacerbating displacement and inequality.? Bringing these two disparate analyses into conversation, this book offers a comparative understanding of how tensions between growth, environmental protection, and social equity are playing out in practice. Examining Chicago, USA, Birmingham, UK, and Vancouver, Canada, McKendry argues that city greening efforts were closely connected to processes of post-industrial branding in the neoliberal economy. While this brought some benefits, concerns about the unequal distribution of these benefits and greening’s limited environmental impact challenged its legitimacy. In response, city leaders have moved toward initiatives that strive to better address environmental effectiveness and social equity while still spurring growth. Through an analysis that highlights how different varieties of liberal environmentalism are manifested in each case, this book illustrates that cities, though constrained by inconsistent political will and broader political and economic contexts, are making contributions to more effective, socially just environmental governance. Both critical and hopeful, McKendry’s work will interest scholars of city greening, environmental governance, and comparative urban politics.

On a world scale, the implicit deal between corporation and community is undergoing a revolution in the period 1990–2000. For the first time, corporate boardrooms are having to confront the environmental challenge not as a peripheral issue around "public relations", but as a core issue of credibility with its customers. As trust in big business has declined, consumer willingness to alter buying behaviour to register disapproval has accelerated. As a result, boardrooms in the largest companies are having to redraw their strategic procedures regarding the environment. This book aims to advance the general understanding of corporate environmental governance as an issue capable of separate and detailed analysis. It aims to provide not an overview, but a series of test cores into the generally unexamined issues surrounding the changing ethos of corporate action and environmental investment. To date, the "business and environment" strategic conversation has reached only a minute proportion of a global audience. Over the next twenty years, this dialogue will transform business into the 21st century. Moreover, it will become internalised into a way of working within Corporate Culture. Greening the Boardroom explores through case studies and surveys some of the changes in this process, in Europe as well as in Asia and North America. Suitable for readers in general management, business, government and academia, this book is an important contribution to the corporate environmental debate by the author of The Environmental Audit and Business Strategy: A Total Quality Approach.

This volume examines how urban stakeholders in China – particularly city governments and social actors – tackle China’s urban environmental crisis. The volume’s case studies speak to important interdisciplinary themes such as new tools and instruments of urban green governance, climate change and urban carbon consumption, green justice, digital governance, public participation, social media, social movements, and popular protest. It lays out a unique theoretical framework for examining and discussing urban green governance. The case studies are based on extensive fieldwork that examines governance failures, challenges, and innovations from across China, including the largest cities. They show that numerous policies, experiments, and reforms have been put in place in China – mostly on a pragmatic basis, but also as a result of both strategic policy design, civil participation, and protest. The book highlights how China’s urban governments bring together diverse programmatic building blocks and instruments, from China and elsewhere. Written by experts and researchers from different disciplines at leading universities in China and the Nordic countries in Europe, this volume will be of interest to researchers and students who are interested in Chinese politics, especially urban politics, governance issues, and social movements. Both students and teachers will find the theoretical perspectives and case studies useful in their coursework.The unique green governance perspective makes this a work that is empirically and theoretically interesting for those working with urban political and environmental studies and urbanization worldwide.

This policy guidance outlines a number of steps to be considered when building capacity for greening national development planning, national budgetary processes and key economic sector strategies.