Environmental Social Sciences Research Articles

Ambidexterity, Puzzlement, Confusion and a Community of Faith? A Response to My Friends

This short paper is a response to the four personal and affectionate, if not quite eulogistic, essays that accompany this volume. These essays from David Owen, Lee Parker, Richard Laughlin and Jane Broadbent offer a range of themes about my work, about CSEAR and about social and environmental accounting which I seek to pick up and develop here. The essay is both by way of a personal reflection stimulated by the comments made and a reflection on the ‘success’ (or otherwise) of both social and environmental accounting and social science research more generally. The paper concludes with some speculative suggestions for how the social and environmental accounting community might look to the future.

Envisioning the political ecology of mitigation in a microelectronic disaster setting

This article draws on ethnographic data to explore lived experiences and narratives of mitigation unfolding in a toxic waste site in Endicott, New York, the birthplace of International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) and the location of a contentious U.S. EPA Superfund Site. It introduces the political ecology of mitigation concept and showcases how this critical approach to toxics repair can inform contemporary environmental social science discussions of environmental contamination and risk society. Envisioning the political ecology of mitigation, it is argued, calls for an ethnographic approach cognizant of politics of knowledge and expertise that invoke competing visions of mitigation in general and the efficacy of mitigation technologies and science in particular. Mitigation decisions are political and not simply scientific decisions. The political ecology of mitigation explored here pays close attention to the practices and processes through which toxics mitigation is wielded and negotiated. It shows how such practices and processes may inform contemporary perspectives on toxic neoliberal environments and ecologies.Key words: political ecology, toxics mitigation, IBM, neoliberalism, ethnography

Are we counting what counts? A closer look at environmental concern, pro-environmental behaviour, and carbon footprint

Three parallel lines of inquiry regarding individuals' support for the environment have developed within the environmental social sciences. These include individuals' concern for the environment, research on private sphere pro-environmental behaviour (PEB), i.e. household actions seeking to improve the environment (e.g. buying better light bulbs), and more recently, ecological and carbon footprints. Researchers have noted that the correlates of this third form of support for the environment are not necessarily the same as the predictors of the first two forms. Using Canadian survey data, this study examines the relationships among, and predictors of, all three forms. Evidence that there is not a link between private sphere PEB and household carbon footprints, and that measures of socio-economic status (education and income) have different effects on different types of support for the environment, invites a discussion of whether environmental social scientists are really counting what counts.

Introduction to “Environmental Justice”

Justice issues have been prominent in the environmental debate since its beginning in the second half of the twentieth century. This is not surprising, because environmental crises highlight our conceptions of justice, challenging us to consider their adequacy as well as their implications. Does current justice theory accurately describe the issues raised by environmental threats, especially about the justice for future generations? What are the implications of perceptions of justice or injustice for responses to environmental problems, up to and including social protest? For the most part, environmental social sciences have not been at the forefront of these debates, despite some very important contributions. The goal of the present issue is, therefore, to bring together researchers in the field of environmental psychology and justice research and to provide a forum for current research in the field of environmental justice. This introduction gives a short overview of past, present, and emerging findings and questions.

Re-Framing Environmental Social Science Research for Sustainable Water Management in a Changing Climate

AbstractThis paper considers aspects of environmental social science research in the UK and explores an obvious bias towards the development of instruments to manage demand as an adaptation to climate change, and consequently the predominance of interest in the customer from a demand-side perspective. In the case of water, this has resulted in an inappropriate mixing of individualist research methods designed to measure public perceptions of risk and water-based practices, with mass consumption data that cannot be specifically linked to the individual. This mixing has a tendency to reinforce a long-standing blame culture that drives interest in the development of behaviour change initiatives while the relatively unchallenged hydraulic mission to provide safe drinking water and sanitation progresses. With this in mind this paper reviews examples of water use research from California, Australia, and the UK and highlights the more effective routes to understanding water customers and developing behaviour change initiatives that utilise stages of change models and grounded techniques incorporating qualitative and quantitative data from individual sources. A secondary aim is to argue for re-framing the relations between various actors in a changing climate to allow the development of new policy approaches, learning, and openness, from industry, regulators, and customers, based on new theories from the field.

Environmental Social Sciences: Methods and Research Design

Review of Environmental Social Sciences: Methods and Research Design. Ismael Vaccaro, Eric Alden Smith, and Shankar Aswani, eds. 2010. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Pp. 396, 41 b/w illustrations, 20 tables. US$49.99 (paperback). ISBN 9780521125710.

Environmental Social Sciences: Methods and Research Design

Review of Environmental Social Sciences: Methods and Research Design. Ismael Vaccaro, Eric Alden Smith, and Shankar Aswani, eds. 2010. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Pp. 396, 41 b/w illustrations, 20 tables. US$49.99 (paperback). ISBN 9780521125710.

Environmental Social Science: Human-Environment Interactions and Sustainability

Environmental Social Science: Human-Environment Interactions and Sustainability

Environmental Social Sciences: Methods and Research Design edited by Ismael Vaccaro, Eric Alden Smith, Shankar Aswani

Environmental Social Sciences: Methods and Research Design edited by Ismael Vaccaro, Eric Alden Smith, Shankar Aswani

Comparing two approaches to land use/cover change modeling and their implications for the assessment of biodiversity loss in a deciduous tropical forest

Land use/cover change (LUCC) modeling is an important approach to evaluating global biodiversity loss and is the topic of a wide range of research in ecology, geography and environmental social science. This paper reports on development and assessment of maps of change potential produced by two spatially explicit models and applied to a Tropical Deciduous Forest in western Mexico. The first model, DINAMICA EGO, uses the weights of evidence method which generates a map of change potential based on a set of explanatory variables and past trends involving some degree of expert knowledge. The second model, Land Change Modeler (LCM), is based upon neural networks. Both models were assessed through Relative Operating Characteristic and Difference in Potential. At the per transition level, we obtained better results using DINAMICA. However, when the per transition susceptibilities are combined to compose an overall change potential map, the map generated using LCM is more accurate because neural networks outputs are able to express the simultaneous change potential to various land cover types more adequately than individual probabilities obtained through the weights of evidence method. An analysis of the change potential obtained from both models, compared with observed deforestation and selected biodiversity indices (species richness, rarity, and biological value) showed that the prospective LUCC maps tended to identify locations with higher biodiversity levels as the most threatened areas as opposed to areas that had actually undergone deforestation. Overall however, the approximate assessment of biodiversity given by both models was more accurate than a random model.

Green travellers? Exploring the spatial context of sustainable mobility styles

In developed nations a growing emphasis is being placed on the promotion of environmental behaviours amongst individuals, or ‘citizen-consumers’, as a means to reduce personal carbon emissions in the light of climate change. Within the UK, focus has tended towards the segmentation of consumers into ‘lifestyle groups’ and the subsequent development of so-called social marketing behaviour change strategies, promoted as a way to encourage environmental behaviours. In the context of travel and tourism research, this approach has been operationalised through the notion of ‘mobility styles’ as a way of understanding the motivations and barriers different groups of consumers face when making pro-environmental travel decisions. However, this paper argues that the issue of climate change presents a major challenge for those attempting to promote behavioural changes using a single ‘mobility styles’ approach because of the ways in which issues such as climate change transcends the spatial and motivational contexts for travel behaviours. Using data gathered as part of a UK–based project on sustainable travel, the paper will demonstrate the potential conflicts that emerge when exploring daily travel behaviour and travel for short-breaks and holidays using a single mobility styles approach. The paper will argue that the discord between daily and holiday travel raises important questions for adopting a single and asptatial mobility styles approach for promoting behaviour change. This in turn highlights the challenges faced by a wider community of both researchers and policy makers in the environmental social sciences who seek to use segmentation as the basis for understanding and promoting behavioural change.

Environmental social sciences: methods and research design

Review of Environmental Social Sciences: Methods and Research Design. Ismael Vaccaro, Eric Alden Smith, and Shankar Aswani, eds. 2010. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Pp. 396, 41 b/w illustrations, 20 tables. US$49.99 (paperback). ISBN 9780521125710.

Citizens, consumers and sustainability: (Re)Framing environmental practice in an age of climate change

Recent moves by national and local policy makers have sought to encourage individuals to engage in a wide range of pro-environmental practices to address both discrete environmental problems and major, global challenges such as climate change. The major framing device for these developments is the notion of ‘citizen–consumers’, which positions individual ecological responsibilities alongside consumer choice logics in a Neo-liberal socio-economic framework. In the environmental social sciences, there have been recent moves to interpret the citizen–consumer through adopting a social practices approach, which advances the notion that in understanding environmental commitments, a deeper appreciation of underlying norms, values, identity politics and consumption is required to uncover the complex processes that lead to environmental practices in specific contexts. This paper argues that whilst these approaches have considerable utility in tracing the normalisation of established and discrete environmental practices in particular contexts, the issue of climate change represents an independent and over-arching discursive conflict between new and embedded practices that challenges the ability of citizen–consumers to act as agents for change. Accordingly, the data presented in this paper suggest that climate change can be seen as an unsettling and dynamic issue that generates discursive conflict in its own right around fundamental issues of knowledge, responsibility, scale and place. The paper therefore argues that a new and more critical perspective is required within environmental social science to understand (conflicting) discourses of sustainable living between the ‘passive’ normalisation of conventional environmental practice and the ‘contested’ ambiguities of climate change.

Political Economy, Ecological Modernization, and Energy Use: A Panel Analysis of State‐Level Energy Use in the United States, 1960–1990

The present study will examine energy consumption from two competing perspectives within environmental social science: political economy and ecological modernization. These frameworks will be evaluated with a fixed‐effects panel analysis of state‐level energy use between the years 1960 and 1990, based on data for 50 states plus Washington, DC, from the Energy Information Administration’s State Energy Data System. The results from the panel analysis show that the increase in total energy use between 1960 and 1990 depended on both increasing economic growth and urbanization, even after controlling for population size, industrialization, and inflation‐adjusted energy prices. The results challenge the claims of ecological modernization theory and support a political economic approach to the study of changes in energy use. In the conclusion, the study’s findings will be framed within the context of the early twenty‐first‐century economic and ecological crises. In light of efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, this study can also further advance the renewable energy debate by reminding us of the social drivers of energy use.

Theories of practices: Agency, technology, and culture: Exploring the relevance of practice theories for the governance of sustainable consumption practices in the new world-order

Within the environmental social sciences, theories of practices are used by an increasing number of authors to analyze the greening of consumption in the new, global order of reflexive modernity. The use of practices as key methodological units for research and governance is suggested as a way to avoid the pitfalls of the individualist and systemic paradigms that dominated the field of sustainable consumption studies for some decades. With the help of practice theory, environmental governance can be renewed in three particular ways: First, the role and responsibilities (not) to be assigned to individual citizen-consumers in environmental change can be specified. Secondly, objects, technologies and infrastructures can be recognized for their crucial contribution to climate governance without lapsing into technological determinism. Third, the cultural framing of sustainability can be enriched by looking into the forms of excitement generated in shared practices of sustainable consumption. We conclude by discussing the need to investigate the globalization of practices from a post-national perspective in both science and policy.

Environmental social science: human-environment interactions and sustainability

Preface. 1. The Challenge of Human-Environment Interactions Research. The Evolution of Social Ecological Systems. Characterization of Contemporary Global Environmental Changes. History of the Development of the Human Dimensions Agenda. Characteristics of the Research on the Human Dimensions. The Way Forward: Integrative Science. 2. Theories and Concepts from the Social Sciences. Population, Technology and Central Place Theories . Population and Environment Theories. Agency and History. Decision-theoretic Approaches. Political Economy and Political Ecology. Cultural Ecology. 3. Theories and Concepts from the Biological Sciences. Evolution by Natural Selection. Species respond individualistically, not as communities, to environmental change. Interactions with other species help determine if a particular species will persist in a particular place (Niche and Neutral Theories). Top-down vs. bottom-up control in ecosystems. Succession. Island Biogeography. Equilibrium/non-equilibrium theories of competition, coexistence, community composition Biodiversity and ecosystem processes/services. The Ecosystem Concept in Biology and the Social Sciences. 4. Spatially-Explicit Approaches. Remote Sensing and GIS. A Case Study using GIS/ Remote Sensing to study Amazonian Deforestation. Urban-rural spatial dynamics. Modeling and GIS. 5. Multi-Scale and Multi-temporal Analysis. An approach to multi-disciplinary, multi-scale research. Scale. Local level of analysis. Regional Level of Analysis. Global Level of Analysis. Future Directions. 6. Bio-complexity in Ecological Systems. Spatially-explicit Processes in Ecological and Social Systems. Agent-Based Modeling of Complex Systems. Hierarchical Modeling. Conclusions. 7. Environmental Decision-Making. Institutional Analysis. Individual Behavior and Environmental Decisions. Decisions and Social Context. Conclusions. 8. Towards Sustainability Science. Sustainability Science Research Priorities. Scales of Sustainability. Cities and Sustainability Science. Climate Change and Sustainability. Conclusions. Bibliography.

Strengthening Causal Inference through Qualitative Analysis of Regression Residuals: Explaining Forest Governance in the Indian Himalaya

This paper contributes to fertile debates in environmental social sciences on the uses of and potential synergies between qualitative and quantitative analytical approaches for theory development and validation. Relying on extensive fieldwork on local forest governance in India, and using a dataset on 205 forest commons, we propose a methodological innovation for combining qualitative and quantitative analyses to improve causal inference. Specifically, we demonstrate that qualitative knowledge of cases that are the least well predicted by quantitative modeling can strengthen causal inference by helping check for possible omitted variables, measurement errors, nonlinearities in posited relationships, and possible interaction effects, and thereby lead to analytical improvements in the quantitative analysis. In the process, the paper also presents a contextually informed and theoretically engaged empirical analysis of forest governance in north India, showing in particular the importance of institutional and historical factors in influencing commons outcomes.

Does Environmental Economics Produce Aeroplanes Without Engines? On the Need for an Environmental Social Science

In this paper we first critically review conventional environmental economics. We conclude that the standard theory offers too narrow a perspective for many real world problems and that many theories are not empirically tested. Consequently, environmental economics is at risk of producing aeroplanes without engines. Next, we welcome and discuss some recent trends, particularly the rapid developments of behavioural and new institutional economics as well as the increased interest in empirical analysis. Yet, we conclude that more ‘logical duels’ between competing theories, more interaction between theory and empirics, and more integration between the social sciences are needed to achieve a better understanding of real world environmental problems and the development of adequate policy handles. Finally, we present an outline of steps towards the development of an environmental social science and briefly present the papers that make up this special issue as important building stones of such a discipline.

The environmental efficiency of well-being: A cross-national analysis

Recent research has conceptualized sustainability as the environmental efficiency of well-being (EWEB). This concept takes into account the benefits societies are able to produce from their demands on the environment. Research along these lines indicates that countries vary widely in the efficiency with which they transform the Earth’s resources into well-being. Here, we take up this finding as a puzzle to be explained. We construct a new measure of EWEB using the ecological footprint per capita (a measure of environmental consumption) and average life satisfaction (a measure of subjective well-being). We draw hypotheses from political economy, modernization, and sustainable consumption theories in the environmental social sciences. Using full information maximum likelihood estimation, we test the effects of climate, political, economic, and social factors on EWEB with a sample of 105 countries. Key findings include a negative quadratic effect of economic development on EWEB, a negative effect of income inequality, and a positive effect of social capital.

A systems view of climate change

The challenge of climate change is an outstanding example of a systems problem. Engineers have an essential, and so far under-recognised, role in responding to the climate challenge, alongside many other disciplines in environmental science, economics, social sciences and politics. In this paper, we identify a number of the distinctive systems characteristics of climate change, from an engineering perspective. These relate to issues of spatial and temporal scale, uncertainty and interdisciplinarity. The challenge of implementing transitions to a sustainable future system state is discussed.