Environmental Coalition Research Articles

Social equity in international environmental agreements

The aim of this paper is to investigate the problem of designing and building International Environmental Agreements (IEAs) taking into account some normative properties. We consider n asymmetric countries of the world, each one generating a quantity of pollutant emissions from the production of goods and services. We assume that individual emissions yield private benefits and negative externalities affecting all countries. To determine its own level of pollution, each state conducts a cost-benefit analysis. The absence of a supranational entity imposing emissions reduction makes IEAs based on voluntary participation. Examining the standard static non-cooperative game-theoretical model of coalition formation, we discover that the resulting emissions allocations might not be equitable à la Foley. It means that there might exist at least one player preferring to implement some other agent’s strategic plan instead of to play her own strategy. With the goal of studying whether equity, at least among coalesced countries, may be a criterion leading to social improvement, we introduce a new optimization rule. We require that members of an environmental coalition have to solve the maximization problem subject to the constraint imposing that they do not envy each other. Analyzing the particular case of two-player games, we get that, when countries are, in a sense, not too different from each other, our new mechanism endogenously induces social equity. By imposing a suitable total emission cap, the same results extend to all those games where our and standard solutions coexist and are different.

The coalitional politics of the European Union Regulation on deforestation-free products

This paper analyses the belief- and interest-driven coalitional politics of the new European Union Regulation on deforestation-free products (EUDR) by applying the Advocacy Coalition Framework and Baptist & Bootlegger Theory. Our results first show how two PRO-Regulation Coalitions advocated for new European Union (EU) trade rules: key members of a Sustainable Development Coalition and an Environmental Coalition include key sustainability- and environmentally-oriented EU institutions, import-dependent EU Member States, non-governmental organisations, civil society groups, and some food and forest certifiers. Second, a PRO-EUDR Business Coalition – mainly composed of multinational business actors such as consumer goods companies and retailers, import-dependent European companies, some EU domestic producers from the agricultural sector, and their respective associations – joined the PRO-Coalitions in a strategic cross-coalitional PRO-Regulation Alliance to pursue business-oriented pro-regulatory interests. Third, the building of this Alliance facilitated political momentum for the EUDR's agenda-setting, drafting and adoption despite opposition from a weaker CONTRA-Regulation Coalition of status-quo-oriented policy advocates among some EU institutions, forest-rich EU Member States, agricultural certifiers, tropical producer country governmental authorities, as well as European and non-EU companies and their associations from the forest, agricultural and food sectors. Fourth, the EUDR's final legislative text is a compromise solution, institutionalising different core beliefs and interests of pro- and contra-regulatory state and non-state actors. Pro-change actors were more powerful in institutionalising their beliefs and interests.

The Environmental State: Nature and the Politics of Environmental Protection

Basic oppositions between economic growth and environmental protection are well understood by sociologists, but the state’s role in environmental protection and regulation is underspecified in sociological theory. We define the environmental state and theorize two structuring forces central to its provision of environmental welfare. First, culturally distinctive constructions of nature shape environmental politics and statecraft. State actions linked to charismatic “special” nature often win broad political support, whereas actions linked to less resonant “ordinary” nature do not. Second, historical legacies of developmentalism shape environmental coalitions. Arms of the environmental state that combine extractive pasts with newer regulatory responsibilities are better able to build broad support, whereas narrowly regulatory or developmental arms struggle to do so. We illustrate the relevance of each process for the politics of environmental regulation and of technoscientific expertise. Both processes help explain the varied efficacy of environmental states and set the stage for their comparative study.

The actors of the Swiss plastic system: An analysis of beliefs and interests

Technological innovation has led to many new challenges for contemporary democracies, including the emergence of new policy areas. The present study investigates the problem of macro- and micro-plastic pollution, which has lately been progressively receiving political attention. Nevertheless, little is known about how political actors interact in such technical and less politicized policy areas. Hence, the investigation focuses on the actors' belief systems and the coalitions of the Swiss plastic system based on a content analysis and twelve semi-structured interviews conducted with the main organisations. The analyses provides evidence for the emergence of three main coalitions: the environmental, the industrial, and the public coalition. According to the environmental coalition, measures should be taken at the beginning of the plastics’ life cycle; the industry coalition emphasises the benefits derived from recycling and voluntary agreements, whereas the public service coalition maintains that waste-to-energy plants still represent the most suitable solution. The findings offer important implications for both the scientific debate and practitioners. On the one hand, new insights are provided on the dynamics of a developing policy sub-system, through the lenses of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF); on the other hand, from a practical point of view, useful implications are discussed regarding the political acceptability of possible future measures on how to tackle plastic pollution in Switzerland.

Environment versus economy policy preferences: follow-up questions reveal substantial heterogeneity within the environmental coalition

Environment versus economy policy preferences: follow-up questions reveal substantial heterogeneity within the environmental coalition

Histories of Environmental Coalition Building in British Columbia

On 3 February 1989, leaders of the British Columbia labour movement, members of the environmental movement, and representatives from the Nuu-chah-nulth-aht Tribal Council (ntc) gathered to meet at Tin Wis, the ntc meeting space, in Tofino, BC, to discuss an alliance around environmental issues on the West Coast of Vancouver Island. This article takes this meeting, and subsequent alliance, as a way to explore the impact, potential, and contested meanings of alliances forged among workers, environmentalists, and First Nations in British Columbia in the late 20th century and beyond. In this way, the article examines from a historical perspective what sociologists have framed as the period of new social movements.

Regenerative Green Infrastructure Governance in Weak, Rebounding, and Wealthy Land Markets

Too often scholars valorize green infrastructure without critically examining the dynamic and multi-faceted ways that greening impacts urban environments. Cities are complex, evolving forces of their own, which grow and shrink according to time and place. Governance strategies in different economic conditions powerfully shape the impacts of specific green infrastructure installations. They determine the value, quality, quantity, and spatial arrangement of green infrastructure. However, most scholarship focuses on the psychological, social, economic, and environmental benefits of urban greening. Green infrastructure is overwhelmingly studied as apart from historical urban governance trajectories, and it largely fails to consider the role of greening within the process of urban regeneration. This disconnect constitutes a significant gap that constrains understanding of green infrastructure for regenerative cities, and it limits our ability to strategically deploy it in beneficial rather than harmful or irrelevant ways. In this article, I argue that green infrastructure lays fundamentally different roles in poor and wealthy parts of cities, and that these roles change as the overall rank and status of the cities change over time. These changing meanings cause city governments to treat green infrastructure as fundamentally different targets of management. These conclusions are based on an ethnography of the public policy processes surrounding urban greening in three cities with different land markets. In the strong land market, the emphasis is placed firmly on revenue-generating projects, and the major players are private firms in conjunction with city departments. Greening is conceived as a byproduct of large-scale development projects, and rarely apart from them. In the weak land market city, in contrast, the environmental and civic organizations play major roles, and they conceive of green infrastructure apart from development projects. Weak land markets seem to create the possibility for increased political participation of environmental actors and for the installation of green infrastructure for the primary purpose of community health and well-being. However, the increased strength of environmental civic coalitions appears negatively correlated with the city's economic capacity to fund greening projects without support from the business community. These dynamics suggest a counter-cyclical relationship between the political will for urban greening and the investment capacity to pay for it. The analysis of green infrastructure in different land markets demonstrates that green infrastructure is deeply embedded in the historical and geographical legacies of cities.

The coalitional politics of the European Union\u2019s environmental forest policy: Biodiversity conservation, timber legality, and climate protection

European forest policymaking is shaped by progressing European integration, yet with notable ideological divisions and diverging interests among countries. This paper focuses on the coalitional politics of key environmental forest issues: biodiversity conservation, timber legality, and climate protection policy. Combining the Advocacy Coalition Framework and the Shifting Coalition Theory, and informed by more than 186 key informant interviews and 73 policy documents spanning a 20-year timeframe, we examine the evolution of coalitional forest politics in Europe. We find that the basic line-up has remained stable: an environmental coalition supporting EU environmental forest policy integration and a forest sector coalition mostly opposing it. Still, strategic alliances across these coalitions have occurred for specific policy issues which have resulted in a gradual establishment of an EU environmental forest policy. We conclude with discussion of our findings and provide suggestions for further research.

Volunteer and staff participants in social movements: a comparison of two local coalitions

ABSTRACT This paper examines how volunteer and staff participants influence coalition functioning and outcomes. We compare two environmental coalitions in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: the Clean Rivers Campaign (CRC), which was supported by a general progressive movement community and led by organizational staff members, and Protect Our Parks (POP), an all-volunteer alliance that was part of a more specific anti-fracking movement community. While much research on social movement coalitions focuses on their formation, we show how coalition structure and types of participants affect the mobilization, longevity and goal achievement of our two cases. Both coalitions succeeded in mobilizing supporters for their campaigns, but the CRC enjoyed greater longevity and had a clearer impact on public policy. Paid staff and organizational members were better able to recruit new activists, maintain commitment and transform coalition goals, affecting longevity and goal achievement. This finding contributes to our understanding of the impacts of different types of structures and activists on coalition outcomes, suggesting that paid organizers do not necessarily limit the range of coalition tactics and goals.

Magnifying Focusing Events: Global Smoke Plumes and International Construal Connections in Newspaper Coverage of 2020 Wildfire Events

As climate policy focusing events, wildfires are distinct from hurricanes, floods, and tornados because they also result in the release of massive smoke plumes that contribute to the concentration of atmospheric carbon. However, unlike melting glaciers, wildfires may be easier to dismiss as individual acts of human error, spontaneous acts of mother nature, and/or necessary ecological processes of agricultural renewal. This paper presents a mixed-methods analysis of 150 international and domestic English language newspaper articles related to wildfire events occurring in Australia, Canada, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States during the year 2020. The analysis examines how news coverage of wildfire events might focus or diffuse attention to international climate policy and anthropogenic global warming. The quantitative findings provide evidence to suggest that 30% of wildfire coverage is attributed to climate change. However, qualitative analysis suggests that climate change is acknowledged as a blame frame that is often only inferentially attributed to anthropogenic origins. The mixed-methods analysis finds that only 6% of news coverage related wildfire events to emission contributions. The analysis of these exemplar articles suggests that the international travel of wildfire smoke may serve as a focusing event from which to emphasize wildfires as both a consequence of and contributor to, global warming. Findings indicate that environmental coalitions and scientific experts’ engagement with the press are integral to creating frames that link the increasing frequency, duration, and range of wildfire events to climate policy needs.

Environmental Policy in the Bolsonaro Government: The Response of Environmentalists in the Legislative Arena

This article analyzes the response of Brazil’s National Congress to the Bolsonaro government’s actions in respect of environmental policy, with an emphasis on the role of the active members of the Congressional Environmental Coalition and the civil society organizations that support it. Congress’s three spheres of activity encompass lawmaking, legislative oversight and the budget. The main decision-making processes related to these fields of activity are highlighted and analyzed using a qualitative approach. In general, there is evidence of an appropriate response by environmentalists, the results of which should not be underestimated, but which should have greater reach in view of the gravity of the destruction of environmental protection policy that has taken and continues to take place. The Bolsonaro government has presided over an attempted evisceration of environmental policies by changing non-statutory rules and cutting budgets, but Congress has put the brakes on nationally applicable laws and strengthened Congressional oversight.

A contested transition toward a coal-free future: Advocacy coalitions and coal policy in the Czech Republic

Coal phase-out is an integral part of the ongoing energy transition to a decarbonized economy. Any such process involves diverse actors that compete over the nature and pace of such transition. This research uses the Advocacy Coalition Framework to analyze the conditions of policy change within an adversarial subsystem. It focuses on the coal subsystem in the Czech Republic, a post-communist coal-dependent country with comparatively large economically recoverable reserves. Using data from an organizational survey, exploratory social network analysis techniques are applied to identify advocacy coalitions and deductive block-modeling is used to test hypotheses on the subsystem’s functioning. The focus is on: (1) fragmentation of decision-makers, (2) targeting of decision-makers, and (3) use of expert information. Two competing and ideologically distant coalitions were identified: the Industry Coalition and Environmental Coalition. The results further show high fragmentation among decision-makers, as indicated by their cross-coalition membership and the heterogeneity of their beliefs. The targeting of decision-makers is practiced by principal members of both coalitions, i.e. environmental non-governmental organizations and industry, but also by research organizations. Lastly, expert information exchange strongly overlaps with the identified coalitions and thus increases their cohesiveness. It is argued that such subsystem configuration limits the potential for policy change through negotiated agreement or policy learning. Policy brokers and policy venues are suggested as remedies to moderate the adversarial nature of the subsystem.

Mapping civil society: the ecology of actors in the Toronto region greenbelt

ABSTRACTCivil society’s potential as a force for solving complex societal problems – particularly those that require a challenge to the status quo – has provoked practical and theoretical interest, with its potential largely reliant on the perception that it is a ready if variable source of social capital resources. However, there are no guarantees that civil society will use its social capital for the greater good. Civil society encompasses a range of groups, some more inward-looking and oriented to private interests, and others more outward-looking and oriented to public interests. This divergent character of civil society was evident in the three campaigns for greenspace protection that eventually led to the creation of the Toronto region greenbelt, where civil society organisations (CSOs) from both growth and conservation camps contended for influence, each succeeding at different times. But over time (a time when state actors were increasingly in need of non-state partners to help solve complex governance problems), coalitions of environmental CSOs in the three campaigns – to protect the Niagara Escarpment, Oak Ridges Moraine and surrounding countryside – became more effective at influencing government to protect greenspace. A comparison of the coalitions using a framework based on key attributes of CSOs – missions and memberships – suggests that the environmental coalitions were more effective when they recruited more members with a diverse set of resources arising from both bonding and bridging social capital. In general, the more inclusive and public-interested the CSOs, the more effective the challenge to the status quo.

Imports of plastic waste will need advance approval

Countries exporting contaminated or mixed types of postconsumer plastic waste will need consent from importing countries before shipping the material, under an international deal struck May 10. The move is designed to help developing countries control imports of used plastic from industrialized nations. Developing countries have been flooded with shipments of plastic waste, which they have little infrastructure to handle, since China stopped accepting it in 2018. “Many developing countries will, for the first time, have information about plastic wastes entering their country and be empowered to refuse plastic waste dumping,” says Sara Brosché, science adviser to the environmental coalition IPEN (International Persistent Organic Pollutants Elimination Network). Governments meeting in Geneva adopted the new restriction under an international environmental treaty, the 1989 Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal. Environmental activists say the change will have the biggest impact on the US, which

Not a ‘Petro Metro’: challenging fossil fuel expansion

ABSTRACTIn this article, we draw on archival research, participant observation and content analysis to examine urban sustainability, networked infrastructures and environmental justice movements. We do this by focusing on proposal to develop Philadelphia into a natural gas energy hub. The proposal aimed to fully utilize fracking in the Marcellus Shale by privatizing the city’s gas utility (PGW) and expanding gas infrastructure such as petrochemical complexes and large gas transmission pipelines. The proposed development was enabled by federal and state-level legislation favorable to corporate interests, and by support for selling PGW by the Mayor of Philadelphia. Resistance by local- and national-scale environmental and climate justice coalitions and local labor unions soon drew the attention of Philadelphia City Council members, who refused to authorize the sale. This resistance put in motion several important developments that effectively blocked re-making Philadelphia into the next energy capitol. While it should be seen as just one chapter in an ongoing struggle against the complete utilization of fracking in the Marcellus Shale, this case illustrates the power of local resistance to block the flow of fracked gas through cities, and to push for less environmentally destructive economic expansion plans.

Environmental Coalitions and the Limits of Science

This article examines the origins, evolution, ideology, and political impact of an environmental coalition in the 1970s. Two wilderness activists in northwestern Ontario challenged established preservationist groups to shift their advocacy from public battles over management policy for individual parks, to design and promote a system of provincially-owned wilderness parks. To build public support and maximize their political clout, the two advocates persuaded five groups to form the Coalition For Wilderness (CFW) in 1973. Unfortunately CFW was mostly a two-man show. Constituent groups gave insufficient material support because of their diverse interests, economic woes, and the “free rider” problem. Nevertheless, CFW’s tactic of privately lobbying park planners within the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources had some political impact. It generated policy information and educated the public about the need for a wilderness park system, thereby supporting the parallel efforts of the bureaucrats. Ironically, the coalition’s scientific rationale for protecting wilderness limited its influence among planners and the wider advocacy community, both of whom regarded recreational and other reasons for wilderness protection as more politically defensible than science. This difficult episode taught the CFW leadership valuable lessons, enabling Ontario preservationists to build more successful coalitions in the 1980s and 1990s.

Finnish forest policy in the era of bioeconomy: A pathway to sustainability?

This article analyses Finland's forest policy from the perspective of the Pathways to Sustainability approach. The historical roots and political dynamics between key actor coalitions, as well as their key concerns around sustainability in forest policy are first outlined. After this contextualisation, we identify the current dominant pathway by analysing recent official policy documents (2010–2015) that focus on the future challenges for Finnish forestry. Additionally, we analyse the implementation of the pathway through the revision of the Forest Act (2011−2013). Our analysis shows that the dominant pathway to sustainability in Finnish forest policy aims at reconciling the different dimensions of sustainability by producing “more of everything”. Yet there are underlying conflicts and priorities between different goals within this pathway, which are not openly addressed. The dominant pathway has co-aligned with the global bioeconomy meta-discourse that has contributed to the re-legitimisation of policy goals from previous industrial forestry eras. Prioritisation of production over ecological concerns are, however, challenged by the environmental coalition and in conflict with the views of the general public that has become more conscious about conservation, biodiversity and recreation. This resulted in intense struggles during the revision of the Forest Act, however with the production goals persisting over conservation. Our analysis concludes that the dominant pathway aims to safeguard increased timber production, and the studied period saw a political shift back towards more hierarchical policymaking that promotes a productivist forest policy under the guise of a “forest bioeconomy”.

The Links Among Contested Knowledge, Beliefs, and Learning in European Climate Governance: From Consensus to Conflict in Reforming Biofuels Policy

The close link between scientific knowledge, learning, and beliefs is particularly relevant in environmental policymaking and the interaction of environmental with economic development‐focused policies. This article contributes to a more refined understanding of the links among scientific knowledge, belief changes, and the move from a collaborative to an adversarial policy subsystem within the Advocacy Coalition Framework. It analyzes the process of drafting and negotiating the biofuels aspects of the European Renewable Energy Directive, which was dominated by political disagreements between two advocacy coalitions. Their initial agreement on increasing the share of renewable energies in transport turned into conflict after new scientific evidence emerged on the negative environmental and climate change impacts of crop‐based biofuels. The environmental coalition changed its empirical policy beliefs to reflect normative policy beliefs on environmental protection. This change in empirical policy beliefs uncovered a pre‐existing conflict with the normative policy beliefs of the economic development‐focused coalition. As a consequence, the collaborative policy subsystem shifted to an adversarial policy subsystem.

International influences in the revision of Finnish Forest Act

ABSTRACTMajor revisions of the Finnish Forest Act were carried out in 1994–1996 and 2010–2013. The need for revision emerged from societal changes and changes in the forest sector’s operational environment that related to the globalisation of markets and influences of international policies. This study analysed the influences of global and European Union forest and environmental policies on the revision of the Forest Act by combining advocacy coalition framework with the four pathways of influence framework introduced by Bernstein and Cashore. The results show that the three identified advocacy coalitions, namely Forestry administration, Private forestry and Environmental coalition remained rather stable over the two revision processes from 1990s to 2010s. The importance of the different pathways of international influence differed between the coalitions. Private forestry and Forestry administration coalitions, which represented forestry paradigm, stressed market-related arguments, whereas Environmental coalition representing environmental paradigm mainly referred to international legally binding rules and non-legally binding initiatives. The argumentation of the actors indicated that international rules and international norms and discourse were regarded to be as equally important.

Stakeholder coalitions in forest politics: revision of Finnish Forest Act

The Finnish Forest Act was revised in 2010–2013. The need for revision emerged from societal changes manifested through the changing objectives of private forest owners, increasing and diversifying demands for forest goods and services and increasing number of stakeholders, as well as the changes in the forest sector operational environment that relate to the globalisation of markets and influences of international policies. Advocacy Coalition Framework guided this study to identify and describe the belief structures and coordination of advocacy coalitions in the Finnish forest sector in the context of the revision of the Forest Act. Three coalitions were identified on the basis of policy core beliefs and coordination between actors: Forestry coalition and Administrative coalition derive their normative beliefs from the forest paradigm, whereas Environmental coalition derives its beliefs from the environmental paradigm. The differences deriving from the two different paradigms have led to polarised coordination patterns between rival coalitions, minimal communication channels between opponents and a long-term disagreement about major questions in the subsystem. Interestingly, the government seems to have a divided representation in forest policy, since Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, and Ministry of Environment contribute via different coalitions. In the future, the success of Finnish forest sector depends on how well it is able to combine different preconditions deriving from these two paradigms.