The SAGE Handbook of Nature

Terry Marsden, Terry Marsden, Author

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781446298572
• eBook ISBN: 9781526421975
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Environmental Science

The SAGE Handbook of Nature offers an ambitious retrospective and prospective overview of the field that aims to position Nature, the environment and natural processes, at the heart of interdisciplinary social sciences.

The three volumes are divided into the following parts:

 

INTRODUCTION TO THE HANDBOOK

NATURAL AND SOCIO-NATURAL VULNERABILITIES: INTERWEAVING THE NATURAL & SOCIAL SCIENCES

SPACING NATURES: SUSTAINABLE PLACE MAKING AND ADAPTATION

COUPLED AND (DE-COUPLED) SOCIO-ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS

RISK AND THE ENVIRONMENT: SOCIAL THEORIES, PUBLIC UNDERSTANDINGS, & THE SCIENCE-POLICY INTERFACE

HUNGRY AND THIRSTY CITIES AND THEIR REGIONS

CRITICAL CONSUMERISM AND ITS MANUFACTURED NATURES

GENDERED NATURES AND ECO-FEMINISM

REPRODUCTIVE NATURES: PLANTS, ANIMALS AND PEOPLE

NATURE, CLASS AND SOCIAL INEQUALITY

BIO-SENSITIVITY & THE ECOLOGIES OF HEALTH

THE RESOURCE NEXUS AND ITS RELEVANCE

SUSTAINABLE URBAN COMMUNITIES

RURAL NATURES AND THEIR CO-PRODUCTION 

This handbook is a key critical research resource for researchers and practitioners across the social sciences and their contributions to related disciplines associated with the fast developing interdisciplinary field of sustainability science.

Part I Sustainability and Governance: Some Starting Points

1 Introduction to Part One: Sustainability and Governance: Some Starting Points

Terry Marsden

The onset of sustainability debates started in the 1970s. This introductory part collects together seven chapters, which explore the ‘age of sustainability’ and its paradigms from different theoretical and disciplinary standpoints. The first four chapters take different, but related, approaches, all of which are now relevant to the development of the social science contribution to sustainability science. They deal with systems perspectives (Farioli et al.); developments from the perspectives of environmental philosophy and ethics (Attfield); the role of social science perspectives in nature–society transitions (Andersson and Sjöblom); and tourism and nature in an era of sustainability (Gill). One pivotal theme of all four of these ‘starter’ chapters is the centrality of governance as a necessary vehicle for enacting transitions towards sustainability. This centrality of governance to sustainable transitions is thus taken up in a more focused way in the final three chapters of this part, which all come from a more central and environmental political science perspective on the subject: governability and institutional complexity (Sjöblom and Andersson); nature governance (Mehmood); and finally institutional design and adaptive governance of natural resources (Thiel and Mukhtarov).

Francesca Farioli, Sergio Barile, Marialuisa Saviano and Francesca Iandolo see it as an urgent priority for the planet to understand and to activate a transition towards sustainability. This is seen as a complete and radical transformation in world views, customs institutions and behaviours. Their key opening question is: why is it that so much knowledge and publicity about sustainability at so many levels has led to so little action? In attempting to provide an answer, they importantly analyse the barriers and challenges that prevent an effective transition towards sustainability. This is intended as an open-ended process of social learning, in which a new balance is continually being sought between multiple and interdependent social, economic and environmental challenges and goals. The chapter describes the achievement of sustainability as harmonic interactions derived from the integrated action of different agents, represented by the dimensions of what is called the ‘triple helix'. This is conceptualised originally by Henry Etzkowitz and revised and adapted by the authors. The expanded analytical framework used for describing the dynamic interactions between science, policy and society is represented by the dynamic ‘blades’ of the reinterpreted triple helix model, which, in turn provides avenues and pathways for the necessary and required changes. The triple helix marries the commonly recognised three interconnected sustainability spheres of environment (set of available resources), with the economy (set of solution processes) and society (set of rules and instructions), with what are seen as the necessary agents needed to make this model dynamically progressive; these are the collaborations between universities (science), industry (commerce) and government (political institutions). It is argued that it is through actively linking these agents that sustainable solutions can start to be enacted. In the concluding part of the chapter the authors take the example of climate change and apply their triple helix model, arguing that central to the impacts upon European governments to adopt targets for reducing emissions, and developing more constructive renewable energy targets, have been the explicit collaborations in the triple helix. This led to the development of the Paris Agreement in December 2015 at the COP 21. The approach here is integrative and adopts a systems perspective, linking the triple helix model to the ‘triple bottom line model', built upon the concept of consonance – an active condition of compatibility and/or complementarity between interacting entities. This overcomes, or at least reduces, a major barrier in delivering sustainability goals – that of dealing not only with contested framings, but also the overall levels of complexity of the issues. This is a challenge for conventional governance approaches, as we shall see in subsequent chapters in this part, and the implication of this work is that governments need to collaborate in a more enlightened and innovative way with both business and universities.

Perhaps lying behind such quests for integrated governance thinking and action with regard to sustainability, are the more deep-rooted values, ethics and ontologies which also need attention. Robin Attfield sees the need to integrate and develop a more practical environmental politics with sustainable development goals and their essential normative nature. He sees environmental philosophy – the study of the concepts and principles relating to human interactions with nature – as indeed an applied and practical discipline in the age of sustainability. He reviews the history, scope and development of environmental philosophy and ethics, before then outlining the scope for development and prospects for future research. Here we tackle a key interdisciplinary issue in sustainability science: the question of value and obligations, incorporating how aspects of eco-feminist perspectives (taken up further in Part VIII by Susan Buckingham) is raised, as are the variants in shallow and deep ecological movements, and its links to relational ethics in environmental relations. Here he also contextualises the notion of intrinsic value. Environmental ethics are a basis for developing from utilitarian notions of intrinsic value, especially when the question of ‘future generations’ is brought into perspective. Once this is accepted, Attfield argues it cannot simply be restricted to humans. As we see in Miele's part specifically (Part IX), future generations of non-human species also need incorporating into these relational ethics. This then has a bearing upon the role of generic normative principles (not least the principles of justice) that we adopt in, for instance, environmental aesthetics. Here the role of science in transmitting aesthetic value (taken up in Gill's chapter relating to sustainable tourism) is combined with that of emotion and stewardship.

The onset of global concern for sustainability of the planet represents for Attfield a rich extension and development of environmental ethics. This is taken up in the last sections of the chapter, where he argues for this field to be integrated into the broader field of sustainability science. The Paris Agreement of December 2015 may indeed in itself become a key focus for ethical analysis and debate, as will new technologies of nanotechnology and the computer/digital modelling of ecosystems.

Moreover, preserving and indeed restoring the conditions for the continuation of human life on the planet have now become the new ethical issue, as have the responsibilities for the rest of the biosphere, taking into account the considerable irreversibilities that are now set in train; this could not have been incorporated by the early philosophers, such as Kant. Research on more practical solutions cannot, he argues, be limited and allowed to depend on the resolution of the traditional debates between anthropocentrists, sentientists, bio-centrists and eco-centrists. A more practical and pluralistic approach is needed, which places explicit emphasis on normatively taking on today's responsibilities for future generations of humans and non-humans more seriously in global policymaking as well as in philosophical thought.

Andersson and Sjöblom's first contribution to this part looks directly at the role of the social sciences (as defined as environmental, rural and increasingly interdisciplinary) in the evolutionary development of welfare state governance systems. This review and analysis is rooted in the Scandinavian, and especially Finnish experience, whereby, it is argued, and with some justification, that the bio-region is in a deep process of sustainable transition in the twenty-first century. The authors do not restrict themselves to a recent historical account of the relationships between social and ecological thinking and changing governance structure. Rather, and especially in the second part of the chapter, they try to project the current features of the society and the social sciences into the future, reflecting on what sorts of sustainability potential there may be. This is, more broadly, also an account of the late-twentieth-century modernisation project (which lasted from the 1950s to the 1970s, and then in later forms in the latter decades of the twentieth century). The more neo-liberalising and volatile period especially since 2008 is also analysed. They conclude that a new society–nature deal or contract between the state and society is now taking hold. The Scandinavian bio-region shares many common environmental traits. The countries cover the largest landmass in Europe, much beyond the polar circle. Finland and Sweden are dominated by coniferous forest, and related traditional rural industries, whilst Norway is more mountainous. All are sparsely populated countries, yet with very advanced urban centres (such as Helsinki, Stockholm, Oslo and Copenhagen).

The historical analysis points to the considerable influence of leading and domestic social science scholars and thinkers during the recent periods covered in the chapter. Strong and redistributive regional and rural policies were developed as advocated by scholars, including land reform for small family farms. Here, and echoing Farioli et al.'s systems and ‘triple helix’ thinking in Chapter 2, strong links were established early on in the modernisation phase between scholars and politics (between universities and government bodies), even if the former were often highly critical bedfellows. This led eventually, during the later 1960s and 1970s to what had been known as the ‘rural welfare state'. This involved a distributed and democratised system of spatial governance, not least around school education and gender policies. Environmentalisation began thereon and developed amidst this distributed framework; and it combined with the European integration of policies in many governance spheres.

The global economic crisis of 2008 and the ensuing demise of Finland's flagship mobile phone icon Nokia, created much negative feedback to the liberal democratic progress that had been made in earlier periods. This had created more (unsustainable) political short-termism, not least in the region's comprehensive transport and welfare systems. Nevertheless, it has also led to a more urgent and innovative policy approach to the futurity of the ‘bio-economy’ (particularly in Finland and Sweden), as a major strategic and macroeconomic sector for a more sustainable future. Currently the authors see ‘societal steering’ as central for the further development of sustainability. This places the social sciences, they argue, in a central position regarding the future governance and regulation of complex economic systems – indeed, an application of post-normal science. Social scientists have the potential to become the new guides or intellectual ‘sherpas’ to lead more collaborative and democratised sustainability governance. Farioli et al.'s triple helix models become a real application in modern Scandinavia, whereby sustainability and its emphasis upon the post-carbon bio-economy as a central part of the future macro and bio-regional economy become attractive and accommodated as part of national innovation thinking and policy.

We have seen in the Introduction to the Handbook that a not insignificant dimension of the changing position of nature over the past three centuries has concerned debates about its aesthetic qualities. That is, its continued and indeed changing potential to generate ‘hospitality'. Today nature-based tourism, and indeed what is increasingly called sustainable tourism, is now ‘big business', and a major means by which ever-increasing proportions of the population come into contact with nature and its knowledges. Alison Gill traces the growth of the tourist–nature relationship during the era of sustainability, especially since the early 1990s. Following the publications of leading scientific journals in the field, research and scholarship on nature-based tourism has shifted from a focus upon terminologies, taxonomies and impact studies to viewing the tourism–nature experience through new conceptual and theoretical lenses associated with cultural and critical turns in the more interdisciplinary social sciences. This is focusing upon the experiential processes of nature: embodiment and performativity; critical engagements with political economy and political ecology; and dealing with global environmental change.

Overall, the introduction of the ‘sustainability paradigm’ in the late 1980s in tourism research has been an influential agent in now framing the evolutionary path of the nature–tourism interface, especially from the perspective of both academic and policy domains. As indicated by Robin Attfield in his chapter, ethical underpinnings of sustainability are also embedded into the very identification and promotion of nature as a tourism commodity – especially in the expanding form of eco-tourism, with its ambitious mandate to promote conservation (for future generations); to assist the livelihoods of indigenous and local communities; and also to educate tourists on environmental values. Today, despite rapidly increasing urbanisation and cosmopolitanism, the global irony is that increasing swathes of the population have the appetite and the mobilised means to experience the ecological, and the exotic. This varies culturally and regionally; for instance, the Chinese ‘tourist gaze’ is anthropomorphic, with elements of nature given human characteristics, and linked directly to the establishment of national parks with high levels of built and commercial infrastructure designed for mass tourism. This suggests the need for tourist researchers to become more engaged in policy and governance questions (such as those relevant in the Sustainable Development Goals). So far though, most work has tended to avoid the ‘triple helix’ challenge promoted by Farioli and her colleagues.

Gill suggests that this is a potentially rich avenue to pursue, given the recent connections made with political ecology and the debates on global environmental change. Gill's conclusion is very apt in this regard as she argues for the need to reframe a more critical sustainable tourism to reflect the turbulence, uncertainty and conflict of the twenty-first century, accommodating socio-ecological systems thinking (see Baker, Part IV) and transdisciplinary engagements (Introduction). Multi-level governance and scalar integration are also key aspects of linking sustainable tourism research to the policy realm.

In the final three contributions, the key and distinctive political question of ‘natural governance’ is addressed in the context of the paradigm of sustainability. Stefan Sjöblom and Kjell Andersson (‘Governance Mechanisms as Promoters of Governability: A Political Science Perspective on Institutional Complexity') take on a major question here of the capacity to govern for sustainability given its overall systemic complexity. This, they argue, is a question of ‘governability', or the overall capacity for governance of any society entity or system. This issue of the governability of complex policy fields is not unique to sustainability, but it certainly holds a strong and distinctive challenge for governance systems. Having reviewed the drivers for institutional complexity, they develop new conceptual models of governability and complexity, which incorporate the temporal and scalar dimensions and their contextual sensitivities and institutional designs. After an extensive review of the literature here, the authors argue that governability and adaptive capacities in complex institutional contexts are essentially a matter of knowledge utilisation, learning and experimentation, as well as an orientation towards long-term (and one might add future) generations. This is especially the case in the fields of environmental management, natural resource governance, and regional and spatial development policy. Here government bodies face the challenge of fulfilling their normal and conventional administrative and policy functions at the same time as strengthening the collaborative and facilitating capacities in increasingly emergent (sustainability) policy fields. The environmental governance research agenda thus needs to include more work on the tensions between the bureaucratic and collaborative ideals; how to maintain strategic connectivity between policy sectors and administrative levels in order to secure consistent policy design and effective implementation; and how to most effectively improve the capacities of government agencies for facilitating micro-implementation through collaborative settings. This is essentially an evolutionary process rather than a one-off event; and new comparative and, indeed, longitudinal studies are needed to assess the processes of building such governance capacities over time and space.

Abid Mehmood, in ‘Nature Governance: A Multimodal View', introduces the concept of ‘nature governance’ as an approach broader than the ‘management of natural resources'. It also considers a multimodal view to incorporate the more active and flexible approaches to policymaking, deliberations and delivery mechanisms. The chapter explores Gill's concerns about levels and multi-scalar features of governance, largely by looking at the growth of global policy milestones, developed since the 1980s. Through this analysis of global nature governance he develops a comparative apparatus for examining multimodal governance approaches, which incorporates not only scalar concerns but also the differences between markets, hierarchies, networks and social processes (common solidarities). This approach is then applied to the recent formulation of the global UN Sustainable Development Goals. The multimodal perspective holds value in incorporating the sociopolitical will and coordination between all the relevant actors and institutions, both horizontally and vertically; it thus avoids top-down, more ‘calibrative’ approaches. This implies the need to integrate social innovations into adaptive governance systems.

In recent decades adaptive governance has been seen as a vehicle for improving the governability of institutions during a period of more unpredictable and uncertain dynamics in socio-ecological systems (SES) (see also Baker, Part IV). The final chapter in the part, by Andreas Thiel and Farhad Mukhtarov (‘The Possibility of Objective and Subjective Institutional Design for Adaptive Governance of Natural Resource Governance: How Do We Cater for Context and Agency?'), takes a critical but constructive assessment of adaptive governance. After reviewing the links between adaptive governance and SES, the authors argue that a central structural feature of adaptive governance, indeed a necessary condition for it, is ‘polycentric governance'. This involves actively joining up, for design purposes, many centres of decision-making which are formally independent of one another. They then go on to provide a conceptual framework for developing polycentricity such that it is embedded in the promotion of more sustainable socio-ecological systems. This, in turn, involves normative theory associated with meta-norms, the market and the judicial sphere, and the political and constitutional spheres. Taking the comparative cases of polycentric water governance in China and Europe as cases, they attempt to apply these frameworks.

In conclusion, it is argued that necessary and purposeful institutional change consists of both objective and subjective institutional design. Polycentric governance does not automatically emerge from formal rules, but from the confluence of structure and agency within contingent properties of socio-ecological systems. Adaptive governance and more purposeful institutional change in order to adapt to sustainability challenges is not an easy, but instead a daunting, process. The authors argue that more comparative research is needed into the processes that bring adaptive governance into being in different sociopolitical and socio-ecological contexts. Conceptualisations that e...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• International Advisory and Editorial Board
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Illustration List
• Notes on the Editor and Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction The Social Science of Nature: Nature's Passage and Pathways
• Part I Sustainability and Governance: Some Starting Points
• 1 Introduction to Part One: Sustainability and Governance: Some Starting Points
• 2 Re-Reading Sustainability through the Triple Helix Model in the Frame of a Systems Perspective
• 3 Environmental Philosophy and Environmental Ethics for Sustainability1
• 4 The Role of Social Science in Nature–Society Transitions
• 5 Understanding the Evolving Relationship between Tourism and Nature in an Era of Sustainability
• 6 Governance Mechanisms as Promoters of Governability: A Political Science Perspective on Institutional Complexity
• 7 Nature Governance: A Multimodal View
• 8 Purposeful Institutional Change for Adaptive Governance of Natural Resources: How to Cater for Context and Agency?
• Part II Natural and Socio-Natural Vulnerabilities: Interweaving the Natural and Social Sciences
• 9 Introduction to Part Two: Natural and Socio-natural Vulnerabilities: Interweaving the Natural and Social Sciences
• 10 Human Vulnerability and Resilience to Environmental Hazards
• 11 Epistemic Politics of Climate Change
• 12 A New Biopolitics of Environmental Health: Permeable Bodies and the Anthropocene
• 13 Nature, Critique, Ontology, and Decolonial Options: Problematising ‘The Political'
• Part III Spacing Natures: Sustainable Place–Making and Adaptation
• 14 Introduction to Part Three: Spacing Natures: Resourceful and Resilient Community Environmental Practice
• 15 Spacing Conservation Practice: Place-making, Social Learning, and Adaptive Landscape Governance in Natural Resource Management
• 16 Politics of Connectivity: The Relevance of Place-Based Approaches to Support Sustainable Development and the Governance of Nature and Landscape
• 17 Resilience of Resource Communities: Perspectives and Challenges
• 18 Sustainability, Justice, and the Problem of Scale: Place-making as a ‘Multi-scalar Fix’ in Urban Environmental Politics
• Part IV Coupled and (De-Coupled) Socio-Ecological Systems
• 19 Introduction to Part Four: Utilising a Coupled Social-Ecological Systems Approach for Place-Based Analysis
• 20 Resilience and Adaptation in Coupled Natural-Social Systems: A Place-Based Perspective
• 21 Coupled Social-Ecological Systems: Insights from Seagrass Meadows in the Turks and Caicos Islands
• 22 Ecological Localism – Re-coupling People, Place and Nature
• Part V Risk and the Environment: Social Theories, Public Understandings, & The Science-Policy Interface
• 23 Introduction to Part Five: Risk and Rationality: The ‘Frame Problem’ Revisited, from the Laboratory to the Public Sphere
• 24 Social Theories of Risk and the Environment1
• 25 Decision-Making about the Environment
• 26 Public Engagement with Risk and the Science–Policy Interface: A Perspective on Techno-Visionary Science and Innovation
• Part VI Hungry and Thirsty Cities and their Regions
• 27 Introduction to Part Six: Feeding Hungry and Thirsty Cities
• 28 Urban Food Governance in the Global North
• 29 Urban Food Security in Developing Countries: Policy Trajectories for Urban Africa
• 30 Conflicting Demands, Urban Dilemmas and Narrow Thinking about Water: Political Necessity and the Possibilities of Change
• 31 The Role of Small Urban Centres in Food Security and Rural Transformations
• Part VII Critical Consumerism and its Manufactured Natures
• 32 Introduction to Part Seven: Sustainability and Inequality: Reviewing Critical Issues in Understanding Consumer–Food Relationships in Global Modernity
• 33 Supermarkets, ‘the Consumer’ and Responsibilities for Sustainable Food
• 34 The Retail Sector and Sustainable Food Provision in Thailand
• 35 Consumers, Food Security, and Transformations in Food Retail in Vietnam
• 36 Accessing Sustainable Food: New Figurations of Food Provision in the Making?
• Part VIII Gendered Natures and Ecofeminism
• 37 Introduction to Part Eight: Gendered Nature and Ecofeminism
• 38 Across the Development Divide: A North–South Perspective on Environmental Democracy
• 39 Men at Work: Scientific and Technical Solutions to the ‘Problem’ of Nature
• 40 Refiguring Motherhood and Maternalism in Ecofeminism1
• 41 What do Women and Nature Have in Common: Affinity, Contingency or Material Relation?
• Part IX Productive Nature: Plants, Animals and People
• 42 Introduction to Part Nine: Making Nature Productive: Stories of Farmed and Wild Salmon, Cows’ Choice, Good Bugs, Earthworms and Gardening
• 43 Redistributing Labour in Automated Milking Systems and the More-Than-Human (Co)Production of Dairy Farming
• 44 Accumulating Goods: Valuing Practices in the Production of Insects for Crop Protection
• 45 Modes of Naturing: Or Stories of Salmon
• 46 Global Worming: Politics of Nature and Earth(Worm) Systems
• 47 Urban Community Gardening: Producing New Spaces of Social Nature in the City
• Part X Nature, Class and Social Inequality
• 48 Introduction to Part Ten: What Nature and Which Society? The Complexities of Nature–Society Relationships in the Anthropocene
• 49 The Role of Sacred Natural Sites in Conflict Resolution: Lessons from the Wonsho Sacred Forests of Sidama, Ethiopia
• 50 Social Equity in the Context of Forest Conservation: Insights from REDD+ Projects in Cambodia and Kenya
• 51 Non-Native Invasive Species: Nature, Society and the Management of Novel Nature in the Anthropocene
• 52 Community Places, Contested Spaces: A Political Ecology of Italian Sacred Natural Sites between Cooperation and Conflict
• 53 Marginalisation of Traditional Groups and the Degradation of Nature
• Part XI Bio-Sensitivity and the Ecologies of Health
• 54 Introduction to Part Eleven: Biosensitivity – an Integrative Approach to the Health of People and Planetary Systems
• 55 Adopting a Public Health Ecology Approach to a Key Food Security Issue: Apiary, Biodiversity and Conservation
• 56 Nature Contact and Human Health
• 57 Health, Population, Limits and the Decline of Nature
• 58 A Bio-Sensitive and Nutritious Food Source: The Kangaroo and Troubled Nature–Society Relations
• Part XII The Resource Nexus and its Relevance
• 59 Introduction to Part Twelve: The Resource Nexus and its Relevance
• 60 A Water Perspective on the Water–Energy–Food Nexus
• 61 Resources Nexus: The Importance for Asia and the Role of Institutions
• 62 Fertilizers: Food Security and the Resource Nexus
• 63 Industrial Symbiosis – a Bottom-Up Business Response to Nexus Challenges
• 64 Institutions and the Governance of the Resource Nexus: The Case of Nitrogen Fertilizers in China
• Part XIII Sustainable Urban Comunities
• 65 Introduction to Part Thirteen: Urban Natures: Sustainable Communities
• 66 Metabolism of Global Cities: London, Manchester, Chicago
• 67 A Tree Grows on West 22nd Street: Public Art, Nature, and the Transformation of Urban Communities
• 68 From Field to Table: Building a Cooperative Sustainable Food System in Balance with Nature
• 69 Nature as Threat and Opportunity in the Peri-Urban Fringe
• Part XIV Rural Natures and Their Co-Production
• 70 Introduction to Part Fourteen: Rural Natures and their Co-Production
• 71 Agroecology and the Restoration of Organic Metabolisms in Agrifood Systems
• 72 The Contested Nature of the Farmed Landscape
• 73 Rural Landscapes in Dispute: on Coproduction, Farming Styles and Resource Diversity in Western Mexico
• 74 Different Farming Strategies and the Shaping of Agricultural Landscapes1: The Case of the Netherlands
• Index