David Gibbs

Ecological modernisation, regional economic development and regional development agencies

Abstract Despite widespread recognition that human impacts are having a detrimental impact upon the environment and the incorporation of sustainable development into policy at a variety of spatial scales, the actual implementation of sustainability remains problematic. By contrast with the rather vague and all-encompassing concept of sustainable development, some authors have argued that ecological modernization is a much more rigorous approach which focuses upon reconciling the tensions between economic development and ecological crisis to form a new model of development for capitalist economies. As an approach it is specifically put forward as one which can provide both a theoretical and a practical guide to an appropriate response. In this paper the potential contribution of ecological modernization as both theory and guide to pragmatic action are explored by reference to the development of regional policy and regional development agencies (RDAs) in the English regions. It would appear that although the practical implications of ecological modernisation have been partially incorporated into regional policy, these have been progressively watered down in the move from policy formulation to implementation. Ecological modernisation may have more to offer as a theoretical approach where it allows us to think about these problems of policy implementation. The paper concludes with a critique of ecological modernisation as a perspective on the environmental problematic.

Governance and regulation in local environmental policy: the utility of a regime approach

Abstract In the study of environmental policy and sustainable urban development there has been an increasing emphasis upon notions of ‘the local’ as a key site of intervention. However, the rationale for this is rarely stated in policy terms and has barely been addressed from a theoretical perspective. In correcting what amounts to significant lacunae in the analysis of local environmental policy, we suggest that, in terms of both policy and discourse, ‘the environment’ is undergoing a process of governance rescaling within the state. Although this rescaling process can be understood as integral to the problem of social regulation in after-Fordism, it clearly also has important implications for the governance of local economies and the local form of environmental policy. Although the rescaling of environmental policy appears to be predominantly downwards (i.e. a process of localization), ‘the environment’ has become a particular object of regulation and focus of struggle at a variety of spatial scales. In order to understand the uneven development of local environmental policy making and sustainable development, it is necessary to examine the immediate, local contexts of governance and social regulation. Drawing upon work in political economy, we suggest that a ‘reconstructed urban regime theory’ approach offers a means of conceptualizing the form of local environmental policy and economic governance; at the same time it can make the necessary connections to regulatory processes operating at a variety of spatial scales.

Trust and Networking in Inter-firm Relations: the Case of Eco-industrial Development

Abstract Despite much rhetoric concerning the implementation of sustainable development within local and regional economic development strategies, very few concrete examples exist of projects that combine economic, social and environmental aims. However, recently, a number of developments have occurred, based around ideas drawn from industrial ecology. These ecoindustrial parks seek to reduce environmental impacts, while at the same time improving business competitiveness and creating jobs. Eco-industrial parks rely upon creating networks of material and by-product flows between participating firms. However, it is frequently assumed that the trust and cooperation between firms that this involves will arise automatically. In this paper it is argued that a much more nuanced approach is needed, drawing upon work in economic geography and regional economics on trust, networking and untraded interdependencies.

Industrial ecology and eco‐industrial development: A potential paradigm for local and regional development?

Gibbs, D., Deutz, P. and Proctor, A. (2005) Industrial ecology and eco‐industrial development: a potential paradigm for local and regional development?, Regional Studies 39 , 171–183. Increasingly, concepts such as sustainable development and ecological modernization have entered into local and regional economic policies and strategies. However, integrating environmental and economic aims has proved difficult, despite arguments that sustainability enables ‘win‐win‐win’ solutions. Eco‐industrial development is a recent policy initiative that attempts to integrate economic, social and environmental aims in a concrete form. Derived from concepts of industrial ecology, eco‐industrial developments seek to increase business competitiveness, reduce waste and pollution, create jobs, and improve working conditions. While these initiatives are said to offer a new basis for local and regional development, there has been little critical evaluation of eco‐industrial development.

Prospects for an Environmental Economic Geography: Linking Ecological Modernization and Regulationist Approaches

Abstract Although the “new”economic geography has explored links between the subdiscipline’s traditional areas of study and cultural, institutional, and political realms, environmental issues remain comparatively underresearched within the subdiscipline. This article contends not only that the environment is of key importance to economic geography, but also that economic geographers can make an important contribution to environmental debates, through providing not just a better analysis and theoretical understanding, but also better policy proscription. Rather than claim new intellectual territory, the intention is to suggest potential creative opportunities for linking economic geography’s strengths with those insights from other theoretical perspectives. In particular, this article focuses upon linking insights from ecological modernization theory, developed by environmental sociologists, with regulationist approaches.

Struggling with sustainability: weak and strong interpretations of sustainable development within local authority policy.

In recent years there has been a growing interest in sustainable development as a guiding principle to allow the integration of economic development and the environment within policy and strategy. At all levels of policymaking a major emphasis has been placed upon the local scale as the most appropriate for the delivery of such policies and initiatives, with a particular stress upon local authorities as the major delivery mechanism. Though it is often assumed that this integration is relatively unproblematic, this paper indicates that this is not the case. The paper draws upon research with urban local authorities in England and Wales, which reveals that there are varying interpretations of the environment within local authorities, reflecting environmental and economic development perspectives. In each case, however, these are effectively interpretations which tend towards the ‘weak’ end of a sustainability spectrum and it is suggested that such divergent interpretations of sustainability are hindering integrative activity and the potential for introducing ‘strong’ sustainability measures.

The New Urban Politics as a Politics of Carbon Control

The new urban politics (NUP) literature has helped to draw attention to a new generation of entrepreneurial urban regimes involved in the competition to attract investment to cities. Interurban competition often had negative environmental consequences for the urban living place. Yet knowledge of the environment was not very central to understanding the NUP. Entrepreneurial urban regimes today are struggling to deal with climate change and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon reduction strategies could have profound implications for interurban competition and the politics of urban development. This paper explores the rise of a distinctive low-carbon urban polity—carbon control—and examines its potential ramifications for a new environmental politics of urban development (NEPUD). The NEPUD signals the growing centrality of carbon control in discourses, strategies and struggles around urban development. Using examples from cities in the US and Europe, the paper examines how these new environmental policy considerations are being mainstreamed in urban development politics. Alongside competitiveness, the management of carbon emissions represents a new yet at the same time contestable mode of calculation in urban governance.

Integrating sustainable development and economic restructuring: a role for regulation theory?

Abstract Despite the growing importance of environmental issues within international and national economic policies, little attention has been paid to these issues in work on economic restructuring. However, the increasing adoption of the concept of sustainable development as a means to resolve conflict between the economy and the environment has major implications for the form and direction of economic restructuring. In this paper it is therefore argued that the growing adoption of sustainable development as a central guiding principle for economic development necessitates the incorporation of environmental issues into work on economic restructuring. The limited amount of existing work linking the environment with economic restructuring is criticized and it is suggested that there is considerable potential to use regulation theory to combine debates on economic restructuring and sustainable development.

Changing governance structures and the environment: economy–environment relations at the local and regional scales

Two substantive bodies of research have developed in recent years, both of which have a focus upon local and regional scales. First, there has been the development of work on changing forms of local and regional governance. This has drawn on a range of theoretical perspectives, including notions of institutional capacity, urban regime theory and neo-regulationalist accounts. Second, a body of research has developed into environmental policy and sustainable development, but this has largely been normative and undertheorized. While these two bodies of literature have developed separately, we believe there is merit in bringing the insights from each together. A focus on local environmental policy helps to broaden our understanding of local governance and problems of after-Fordist regulation. Such a project also helps to illuminate problems in implementing policy on the environment and sustainability. The examination of changing local and regional forms of governance allows us to identify new state spaces, which may provide opportunities for the strategic insertion of environmental objectives into economic development policies. This paper seeks to theorize such environment–economy relations and emerging multi-scalar forms of environmental governance, drawing upon case study research work in six UK local authority areas. Copyright

Unblocking the city? Growth pressures, collective provision, and the search for new spaces of governance in Greater Cambridge, England

A somewhat overlooked aspect of the geography of ‘after-Fordist’ regulation concerns the precise role of different branches of the state in managing tensions between local economic development and the collective provision of social and physical infrastructure. In the United Kingdom, the states reluctance to manage or spatially redistribute growth in the South East has resulted in localised pressures on housing markets, the land-use planning system, infrastructure, and the environment, intensifying struggles between progrowth and antigrowth factions in certain places. In this paper the authors examine conflicts arising from the rapid growth of new economic spaces in and around the Cambridge subregion and explore various attempts by different branches of the state and locally dependent factions of capital to overcome barriers to further growth within existing and proposed frameworks for territorial management. A key arena of conflict in this instance centres upon land-use planning and provision of infrastructure. The Cambridge ‘growth crisis’ raises a series of issues about the ability of interests claiming to represent nationally important city-regions to detach such places from their formative local and national modes of regulation.