About
55
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Introduction
I am an environmental social scientist who conducts research on the political economy of the environment and the governance of sustainability transitions. My research addresses issues that cluster around the topics of power, authority, justice, values, knowledges, participation and governance. It frequently traverses the boundaries between environmental science, political science, and human geography.
Current institution
Additional affiliations
January 2017 - present
September 2015 - December 2016
Position
- Research Associate
Description
- From October 2015 I am working on a temporary assignment at the Department of Urban and Rural Development, SLU. The work will primarily involve research strategy development and research capacity building.
August 2012 - present
Publications
Publications (55)
With increasingly fragmented rangelands, restricted mobility and climatic stress, diversification has accelerated among East African pastoralists. Diversification is also promoted as a climate change adaptation strategy to reduce climatic exposure. Through a study of a Maasai communal land in southern Kenya, we analyze how pastoralists navigate cha...
In this commentary, we return to the interminable issue of effectiveness (after Cashmore, Gwilliam, Morgan, Cobb, & Bond, 2004) in addressing the question posed by the editors on how the Environmental Assessment (EA ) community might address persisting challenges and enhance effectiveness. The editors’ note that increasingly Strategic Environmental...
Although public participation has become an integrated part of planning practice, experience and documents literature still document difficulties in implementing participatory planning processes that provide arenas where citizens can truly influence planning. Based on a combination of institutional theory and action research methodology, this paper...
Cities, the world over, are increasingly recognised to be both a principal source of the environmental and social sustainability challenges facing contemporary society and a critical site for addressing these challenges. Socio-technical systems are at the heart of these challenges as they configure central aspects of urban life: from mobility and e...
Over recent decades it has been recognised that urban sustainability challenges are deeply embedded in urban systems such as mobility, water supply and sanitation, and energy. It has likewise been recognised that the governance of such systems is a fundamentally political enterprise as system design shapes both practices and the bio-physical flows...
The objective of this book has been to draw attention to knowledge production as a salient political component of the governance of urban sustainability transitions. Drawing on insights from the chapters presented in this book, we review the main characteristics of this knowledge politics perspective and the contribution our collective work makes t...
In this chapter, I explore two central dimensions of the conceptual terrain covered by the knowledge politics perspectives – politics and power – and their relationship with knowledge production and consumption. I start by introducing the encompassing definition of politics which underpins our analytical endeavours in this volume and examine how an...
International experiences with opposition to wind energy siting decisions: Lessons for environmental and social appraisal Abstract The planning of renewable energy infrastructure has proven highly controversial across many countries. We critically examine the lessons that can be learned from research investigating the causes of controversy over win...
The concept of sustainability transitions has become increasingly prominent in academic and policy discourses during recent decades, but the importance of the link between knowledge-producing epistemic practices and urban governance has been underappreciated in this discourse. Based on a case study of cycling in Copenhagen between 1900 and 2015, an...
Call for papers for a workshop on the Epistemic Politics of Urban Sustainability Transitions.
Considerable attention has been given to the effectiveness of environmental impact assessment (EIA) since the 1970s. Relatively few research studies, however, have approached EIA as an instrument of environmental governance, and have explored the mechanisms through which EIA influences the behaviour of actors involved in planning processes. Consequ...
In recent years, cities have been portrayed as important loci for transformations of large-scale systems. This paper contributes to scholarship on urban transitions by exploring why the boundaries, functions and challenges of large-scale systems typically are framed differently at the urban level of governance than at more aggregated (e.g., nationa...
The spectre of regulatory reform carried out in a range of Western countries has generated concern amongst parts of the environmental policy community. Quality and effectiveness are said to be at stake, but empirically there is a dearth of data on the relationship between provisions for quality control and the effects on quality and effectiveness....
Political power has received curiously limited attention within the vast literature on environmental governance. This article addresses this research lacuna by employing a particular perspective on power – governmentality – to examine the environment as a site for the contestation of power and authority. Our empirical focus is the ‘making up’ (afte...
Understanding spatial conceptions is critical to the analysis of local protest strategy formation. Spatialities provoke inquiry into the drivers that may prompt local actors to adhere to particular strategies, and the implications this has on forms of contestation and the way protest is organized. It is argued that local protest can ‘respatialize’...
In this chapter we use governmentality as an analytical perspective to examine the types of values, beliefs and behaviours which are presupposed by particular institutional responses to climate change. We focus, in particular, on the role of guidance on climate change adaptation in conducting conduct in the federal state of California through a pro...
In this commentary on Morrison-Saunders et al.’s [Morrison-Saunders A, Pope J, Gunn JAE, Bond A, Retief F. 2014. Strengthening impact assessment: a call for integration and focus. Impact Assess Project Appraisal] position paper we focus on two main issues: their (1) call for unification and (2) assessment of the implications for impact assessment (I...
The aim of this paper is to sharpen the ways in which power dynamics can be analytically ‘seen’ in complex governance contexts where particular ways of governing, and their associated horizons of thought, shape and are in turn shaped by intricate interactions between actors. A theoretical approach is proposed, combining a governmentality perspectiv...
The significance of politics and power dynamics has long been recognised in environmental assessment (EA) research, but there has not been sustained attention to power, either theoretically or empirically. The aim of this special issue is to encourage the EA community to engage more consistently with the issue of power. The introduction represents...
Considerable empirical research has been conducted on why policy tools such as environmental assessment (EA) often appear to have ‘little effect’ (after Weiss) on policy decisions. This article revisits this debate but looks at a mediating factor that has received limited attention to-date in the context of EA — political power. Using a tripartite...
This professional practice report reflects upon lessons learned from piloting and evaluating an innovative approach to policy strategic environmental assessment (SEA) in developing countries. The primary analytical focuses of the approach are institutions and governance characteristics, plus it places strong emphasis on learning. The piloting provi...
This paper investigates the discursive construction of the substantive purposes of environmental assessment (EA). It addresses these purposes by exploring the complex and often multifaceted linkages between political factors and plural views of democracy, public participation, and the role of science that are embedded in environmental and sustainab...
Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) legislation was first adopted in Greece in 1979. In the intervening 23 years, competent authorities, practitioners, and developers have gained considerable experience in the practice of EIA. A previous research study conducted for the European Commission indicated, on the basis of the quality of Environmental I...
Environmental impact assessment (EIA) was formally introduced in Egypt in 1994. This short paper evaluates “how well” the EIA process is working in practice in Egypt, by reviewing the quality of 45 environmental impact statements (EISs) produced between 2000 and 2007 for a variety of project types. The Lee and Colley review package was used to asse...
This article sheds light on the dynamics of power in a contested field of action – environmental assessment (EA) – within which theorisation and analysis of power has been limited, and there has been little engagement with productive approaches to power. We use of a typology for analysing the production of social order to create a rich and complex...
Contributing author to this book which was published under the auspices of the World Bank.
The central role of impact assessment instruments globally in policy integration initiatives has been cemented in recent years. Associated with this trend, but also reflecting political emphasis on greater accountability in certain policy sectors and a renewed focus on economic competitiveness in Western countries, demand has increased for evidence...
The European Union (EU) has two potentially conflicting policy goals: the Lisbon Agenda and the Cardiff process which, respectively, aim to make the EU most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, and integrate the environment into all EU policies. This research uses two case studies of Operational Programmes drawing on EU str...
The global application of impact assessment instruments to achieve a variety of policy integration goals (e.g. the mainstreaming of environmental, gender or economic efficiency concerns) continues to proliferate. These instruments represent important components of contemporary political governance and hence are an important locus for applied resear...
Environmental assessment is an intriguing policy phenomenon: it is employed in an ever-increasing range of contexts the world-over, yet research indicates it rarely efficiently or effectively achieves its principal purpose of promoting sustainable development. Increasingly, practical limitations in the effectiveness of environmental assessment are...
It has long been suggested that environmental assessment has the potential to contribute to sustainable development through mechanisms above and beyond informing design and consent decisions, and while theories have been proposed to explain how this might occur, few have been subjected to rigorous empirical validation. This research advances the th...
The potential advantages of a decision-oriented theory of environmental assessment have long been recognised, but it is only in recent years that this topic has received concerted attention. This research advanced contemporary debate on environmental assessment through an empirically-informed evaluation of strategic theoretical and methodological i...
This study analysed 40 planning applications in the East of England to investigate the practice of translating paper recommendations in the environmental statement (ES) into legal conditions and obligations. A high proportion (50%) of suggested mitigation measures were not translated into planning conditions or obligations. However, a significant n...
This study analysed 40 planning applications in the East of England to investigate the practice of translating paper recommendations in the environmental statement (ES) into legal conditions and obligations. A high proportion (50%) of suggested mitigation measures were not translated into planning conditions or obligations. However, a significant n...
An analysis of studies of the outcomes of environmental impact assessment (EIA) indicates that its role in consent and design decisions is limited, due primarily to passive integration with the decision processes it is intended to inform. How much EIA helps sustainable development is largely unknown, but it is hypothesised that it is more than is t...
Although air pollution indoors has been a problem for a long time, because of indoor heating in poorly ventilated interiors, significant scientific study is really a product of the late 20$^{\rm th}$ C. Increased time spent indoors and the regulatory problems of these seemingly private and familiar spaces have confronted legislators with considerab...
Increasing emphasis has been placed in recent years on development of the theory of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), primarily as a consequence of increasing recognition that the theoretical basis of ‘state-of-the-art’ EIA is inadequately developed and detailed. This study reviews consideration given in the research literature to the role of...
Considerable research has been undertaken on the quality of Environmental Impact Statements as an indicator, albeit superficial, of the effectiveness of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) practices. Yet there remains a paucity of empirical data on practices at the more detailed level (e.g., for the consideration of certain environmental componen...
After more than 20 years of experience with environmental impact assessment (EIA), the government of the People's Republic of China is set to introduce a new EIA Law, in September 2003, in which strategic environmental assessment (SEA) complements the current project-oriented EIA process. In general, the new law does not attempt to modify the exist...
Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) legislation was first adopted in Greece in 1979. In the intervening 23 years, competent authorities, practitioners, and developers have gained considerable experience in the practice of EIA. A previous research study conducted for the European Commission indicated, on the basis of the quality of Environmental I...
Questions
Questions (4)
Having sufficient quality capacity within a given jurisdiction is clearly important to ensure SEA can be delivered effectively and there is a broad trend internationally within environmental assessment toward formally regulating the capacity of key actors. Internationally, certification schemes have been introduced for EIA practitioners in a number of jurisdictions. It is our experience, however, that national certification schemes have often proven problematic in practice. In comparison, there is some evidence to suggest that the more market-driven accreditation processes operating in the UK have had some positive effects. So does regulation work? And what types of regulation work?
There are a number of important questions for research and practice on capacity for effective SEA concerning who to prioritise for capacity development in a world of limited resources, what capacities are needed to perform the various roles involved in SEA, and on the sequencing of capacity development support. One of the most immediate questions in the design of capacity development programmes is often whose capacity should be developed? This raises a series of further question about what type of and how much training is needed by different groups and where the boundaries should be drawn for SEA capacity development
Practically, capacity development programmes often focus on, firstly, in-depth training of national trainers and, secondly, more superficial training of a large cohort of national actors. This appears to be a reasonable approach to take, but there is limited empirical evidence on the benefits and limitations of different approaches. So how do we decide how to prioritise?
There are a series of fundamental questions concerning capacity and capacity development for SEA that, given the limited amount they have received from environmental assessment academics, are undertheorised. These range from questions about the meaning of capacity, to assumptions about the links between capacity and effectiveness. The development of more detailed conceptualisations of capacity for SEA is a fundamental starting point in advancing scholarly discussions and in addressing some of the more practical questions surrounding their operationalisation. Hence, we ask how do we, or should we, conceptualise capacity? Linked to this, if as UNDP (UNDP 2009) argue capacity is the “means to plan and achieve”, capacity development necessarily necessarily takes place within the context of questions about what is to be achieved (the purpose of SEA). We ask how do we understand the substantive purpose of SEA currently? And given the range of valid interpretations of its purpose(s), could the Sustainable Development Goals constitute a pragmatic definition of effectiveness?
What are the seminal contributions (articles, books/ book chapters, reports, etc.), for you, in the field of environmental assessment?
I'm interested in garnering opinions on what, in your opinion, are the contributions that have most influenced your thinking. If you would like to join the discussion please name the contribution and explain what makes it a 'seminal contribution' for you. Please do not nominate work that you have contributed to. Let others do this!
Disclosure: I am asking this question in part because I am contemplating a book project that explores some of the most important discussions and contributions to this field over the last 50 years.
