L. Anders Sandberg

Reaping Nature's Dividends: The Neoliberalization and Gentrification of Nature on the Oak Ridges Moraine

In this article, we follow the position that neoliberalism is not a state but a process of political, social, and economic development. We explore the neoliberalization of nature in the exurban region of a rapidly expanding metropolitan conurbation, the Greater Toronto Area in Ontario, Canada. Since 2001, the Oak Ridges Moraine legislation has been in place to halt urban sprawl and conserve the nature of a regionally significant landform. Our analysis suggests that the Oak Ridges Moraine legislation is consistent with neoliberalization but that the process needs to be seen in the context of half a century of rural and exurban gentrification. Longstanding class privilege is perpetuated through the aegis of legislation to preserve nature and protect the countryside. The legislation aestheticizes the Moraine as a unique landform, complements private-based conservation efforts, and voluntary policy initiatives, as well as marketizes the Moraine as a desirous place where wealthy residents reap natures dividends. This analysis confirms the usefulness of neoliberalism as a concept, but suggests that it needs to be explored through a historically and place-based informed perspective. The case study also sheds light on natures role in state action, and the rallying and shaping of a regional nature to support state power.

Environmental gentrification in a post-industrial landscape: the case of the Limhamn quarry, Malmö, Sweden

The paper uses the lens of environmental gentrification and post-industrial landscapes to explore a limestone quarry converted into a nature reserve, the Limhamn quarry, Kalkbrottet, in Malmö, Sweden. The research is based on field investigations, a review of the primary material, and interviews of key actors. The findings suggest that the quarry has been subjected to processes of environmental gentrification threatening to make the quarry into a gated ecology. City ecologists, drawing on national traditions in support of common green space, working with a spontaneously appearing unique flora and fauna, have countered the environmental gentrification process by seeking nature protection status of and public access to the quarry. The paper suggests that by more fully integrating the history of industrial work, rogue subjects who now frequent the quarry illegally, and new immigrants who may find a familiar physical landscape in the quarry, the site could become meeting place for “others” and force against environmental gentrification.

Building bioregional citizenship: the case of the Oak Ridges Moraine, Ontario, Canada

In the last 20 years, the Oak Ridges Moraine in Torontos metropolitan region has changed from a scarcely mentioned landscape feature into an environmental icon for residents and environmentalists and a conservation object for the provincial government. In efforts to save the Moraine from urban sprawl, the concepts of bioregion and bioregionalism have been invoked to create a suburban/exurban defence of non-human nature and to promote an ethic of place. We identify three dominant currents of bioregionalism: ecocentrism (a concern for the intrinsic value of non-human nature), scientific managerialism (focused on the setting aside of natural areas), and socio-environmental considerations (centring on environmental justice). We note that invocations of ecocentrism and science are NIMBYist or shallow, and references to environmental justice issues are absent. We conclude that a concept of bioregional citizenship that sees beyond a physically defined bioregion recognises the emotional ties people feel beyond their immediate living space, and includes environmental justice as a useful concept to advance the bioregionalist agenda.

The Politics of Sewerage: Contested Narratives on Growth, Science, and Nature

Relevant actors in environmental resources disputes base their positions on specific assumptions about growth, science, and nature, and construct narratives to support these positions. The contest over the extension of a sewerage system in Ontario, Canada, illustrates this point. A productivist narrative sees sewers as necessary to meet the competitiveness of the city region and a growing demand for housing. It assumes that science can accommodate local resilient ecologies and human bodies. A nature conservation narrative, by contrast, embraces a conception of no or slow growth, locally integrated water management, and vulnerable ecologies and human bodies. It is, however, compromised by a NIMBY bias, an aesthetic focus on nature, and a continued endorsement of regional growth. We conclude that narratives on growth, science, and nature are not given, but socially produced, historically contingent, strategically deployed, internally compromised, embedded in specific power relations, and open to contestation and challenge.

Reading the urban landscape: the case of a campus tour at York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

This paper presents a campus tour assignment in a first-year undergraduate environmental studies course at York University, Toronto, Canada. As a pedagogical tool, the assignment enables students to interrogate the dominant narratives of a university’s immediate physical spaces and to apply broader theoretical and practical concepts to their meanings and understandings. An exploration of three sites on the tour is offered as illustrations: a storm water pond, a woodlot, and a native species garden. Complicating the histories of these sites provides entry points for a variety of conversations and debates in reference to environmental sustainability, social justice, and civic engagement. The main objective of the campus tour is to prompt students to move beyond description to analysis and to raise questions about campus features by making connections to historical choices, policy alternatives and self-reflexivity. Many of the ideas presented could be modified for use on other campuses and could invite a larger discursive discussion on social and sustainability issues.

Formulating standards for sustainable forest management in Canada

Over the past decade, but particularly in the years since Rio, many initiatives have surfaced in the name of sustainable forest management (SFM). There is now a growing literature recognizing new techniques in timber labelling and the certification of sustainable management systems. However, they have not yet been located adequately in wider political contexts, such as the new (non-governmental) approaches to regulatory compliance or the new corporate response to the western environmental movement. This article examines a leading SFM framework in Canada, known as the Z808 initiative. Co-ordinated by the Canadian Standards Association (CSA), it advances a system of standards pertaining to sustainable forest management. As a politically-driven process to translate the concepts and practices of sustainable resource management into a concrete form, the CSA experience is very revealing. The article reviews the origins and the parameters of the Z808 system. This is followed by a commentary and critique of the system, centred on four dimensions: the pivotal role of the management system approach, the treatment of sustainability as a conceptual goal, the enclosure of the public interest, and the underlying convergence of business and state interests within this third-party certification approach. In the case of Z808, the most crucial political choices have been made already, and the operational logic of the system can be clearly discerned.

Good Work, Productivity and Sustainability in Canadian Forestry

The study of forest work allows connections to be drawn between good work, productivity and environmental sustainability. The development of good forest work has generally followed the classic path, entailing higher wages, shorter working hours and less strenuous work; but it has also resulted in growing unemployment, labour market segmentation, flexibilization and environmental degradation. Full cost accounting, all-age forest management, valueadded production, community tenures and eco-certification provide a basis for alternative good work and productivity measures. We suggest that forest workers, both in their capacity as workers and residents of forest-industry based communities, constitute potential agents who can embrace and support such alternatives.

Post-industrial urban greenspace: justice, quality of life and environmental aesthetics in rapidly changing urban environments

One of the most fascinating features of urban post-industrial ecologies is the opportunity they present for novel assemblage. As the social, cultural, economic and political merge in expired, disused and/or abandoned industrial infrastructure, they reconstitute into new successional forms and processes. This is a remarkable interface through which urban nature is formed. It most often evolves rapidly, thanks to human neglect and disregard, through spontaneous, uncultivated progression into new socio-ecologies, and then frequently becomes the subject of “rediscovery” and redevelopment. The new greenspaces that are produced, whether unintended or by design, are also a critical interface for the enactment of environmental justice and injustice. This special issue of Local Environment was inspired by 3 sessions of the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers (AAG) in 2012, in New York City, where 14 presentations focused on the ecological formations and politics of post-industrial urban space. These were rich sessions that identified emerging dynamics and perspectives on post-industrial greenspace in a global context, focusing on both distributive and procedural environmental justice concerns. “Rediscovery” of urban space presents ample challenge to advancing justice concerns. But the AAG sessions also revealed that when former industrial spaces turn green, they not only induce outstanding and often unexpected ecological prospects, but can also function as frontiers for community rights to secure a self-determined quality of life.