"ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, The"

Fernando, Jude L.

doi: 10.1177/0002716203258283pmid: N/A

Regardless of the state of theory and practice in sustain-able development, there is no doubt that an ethical/moral imperative exists to address socioeconomic inequality and degradation of the environment. To realize the goals of sustainable development, it must be liberated from its embeddedness in the ideology and institutional parameters of capitalism. This calls for a departure from the current reformist character of development theory and the practice and articulation of an alternative vision of political economy, as well as a politically strong commitment to realizing it. This endeavor should be global in scope: not in an attempt to create a homogeneous world order but rather to prevent social diversity from being reconfigured and disciplined according to the imperatives of capital. The state must play a pivotal role if social transformative efforts are to bear fruit and break through the impasse capitalism has imposed on realizing the goals of sustainable development.

Agyeman, Julian; Evans, Tom

doi: 10.1177/0002716203256565pmid: N/A

Two concepts that provide new directions for public policy, environmental justice and sustainability, are both highly contested. Each has tremendous potential to effect long-lasting change. Despite the historically different origins of these two concepts and their attendant movements, there exists an area of theoretical compatibility between them. This conceptual overlap is a critical nexus for a broad social movement to create livable, sustainable communities for all people in the future. The goal of this articleis to illustrate the nexus in the United States. The authors do this by presenting a range of local or regionally based practical models in five areas of common concern to both environmental justice and sustainability: land use planning, solid waste, toxic chemical use, residential energy use, and transportation. These models address both environmental justice principles while working toward greater sustainability in urbanized areas.

Fernando, Jude L.

doi: 10.1177/0002716203258374pmid: N/A

Indigenous knowledge (IK), experienced in development, is a product of a set of institutions often external to where they are located. The results of the use of IK in sustainable development are another example of capitalism's capacity to configure development according to its own imperatives. Rather than being an instrument of sustainable development, IK has become a means through which the diversity of knowledge systems and the embedded cultures in which they exist are disciplined and managed according to capital's need to expand. The collaborative role played by the nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in this process is obscured by their use of the seductive language of empowerment of marginalized social groups. NGOs' interventions run counter to the interests of the people they claim to serve. The challenge to work towards an alternative institutional environment that could liberate the use of IK from being determined by the ideology and institutions of capitalism.

Satterthwaite, David

doi: 10.1177/0002716203257095pmid: N/A

This article suggests that there is little evidence of urban poverty being a significant contributor to environmental degradation but strong evidence that urban environmental hazards are major contributors to urban poverty. The article considers the link between poverty and different categories of environmental hazards (biological pathogens, chemical pollutants, and physical hazards). It then considers the links between poverty and high use of nonrenewable resources, degradation of renewable resources such as soil and fresh water, and high levels of biodegradable and nonbiodegradable waste generation. This shows how environmental degradation is more associated with the consumption patterns of middle-and upper-income groups and the failure of governments to implement effective environmental policies than with urban poverty. The article also highlights how good governance is at the core of poverty reduction and how meeting the environmental health needs of poorer groups need not imply greater environmental degradation.

Glassman, Jim; Sneddon, Chris

doi: 10.1177/0002716203257075pmid: N/A

This article examines the concept of urban sustainability within the context of two case studies from Thailand. The Thai state, under the auspices of its development planning agencies, identified the secondary cities of Chiang Mai and Khon Kaen as growth poles in the 1970s. As such, both cities were perceived as engines of regional development in their respective regions of North and Northeast Thailand. The authors critically examine how the strategies of decentralization of industrial growth and development of secondary urban centers, ostensibly to alleviate congestion and pollution in Bangkok, have been deployed in the context of urban primacy and uneven development in Thailand. They argue that these policies have helped induce some growth in the secondary cities in question but that in doing so, they have induced new problems of sustainability in the secondary cities and their surrounding rural areas without alleviating problems of sustainability in Bangkok.

Morello, Jorge; Matteucci, Silvia Diana; Rodríguez, Andrea

doi: 10.1177/0002716203256901pmid: N/A

This article describes the conflict between rural and urban development in the Pampa Ondulada (Rolling Pampas), the ecological region in which the city of Buenos Aires is located, which is one of the world's richest and most productive agricultural areas. It describes the ecological changes brought by urban growth in periurban and rural areas between 1869 and 1991. It also includes an analysis of the social and economical changes during the past decade (1991-2001) and their effect on ecological services. The article ends with a discussion of the lack of planning over the expansion process of the urban agglomeration, including the so-called suburbia settlements of the middle and upper classes and the speculative pricing of land in advance of its development.

Glasmeier, Amy K.; Farrigan, Tracey L.

doi: 10.1177/0002716203257072pmid: N/A

Appalachia is considered one of the nation's poorest areas. Many communities live in isolation. The material use of the natural landscape has affected citizens' views of the viability of and potential for sustainable resource practices. In many resource dependent communities, land is externally owned and controlled. Despite living and working in areas with enormous natural resource wealth, residents have only limited access to these resources. Recognizing the inability of conventional practice to resolve many of the development problems confronting communities in distress, a series of new policy initiatives are focusing on building sustainable community capacity from the ground up. Can notions of sustainability be used as a means of redistributing power and access to natural resources, or does the peculiar fate of a region, tied to massive natural resource extraction, eliminate such potential?

Batterbury, Simon

doi: 10.1177/0002716203256903pmid: N/A

A key element of sustainable development in cities is the implementation of more effective, less polluting, and equitable transportation policy. This article examines the role of activist organizations promoting transport alternatives in London, Britain's capital city and its largest metropolitan area. Major national, citywide, and local policy changes have permitted citizens' groups to work more actively with progressive elements in government planning, breaking down citizen-expert divides. In West London, the most congested sector of the metropolis, an environmentally based social network, the Ealing Cycling Campaign, promotes cycling as a sustain-able transport alternative. Its strategies require active cooperation with the local state rather than radical opposition to it, raising questions about the oppositional stance more commonly found among urban social movements. Environmental citizenship needs to be founded on social realities and conduced in mainstream political systems if it is to be effective in complex urban environments.

Kelly, Philip F.

doi: 10.1177/0002716203256729pmid: N/A

Land ownership has long been a source and outcome of political power in the Philippines. This article shows how in the 1990s land and politics continued to be closely entwined, but the disposal of agricultural land for urban uses, rather than its ownership, was sought by the powerful. By examining the process of land use conversion in Manila's extended metropolitan region, two dimensions of the politics of land are examined: policy choices relating to the uses of land that reflect a particular set of developmental priorities and the facilitation of conversion through the use of political power relations to circumvent regulations. These points are made at three interconnected scales: the national scale of policy formulation, the local scale of policy implementation and regulation, and the personal scale of everyday power relations in rural areas. The article draws on fieldwork in the rapidly urbanizing province of Cavite, south of Manila.

Hartwick, Elaine; Peet, Richard

doi: 10.1177/0002716203256721pmid: N/A

Political pressures exerted by environmental movements have forced governments otherwise committed to neoliberal policies to find reconciliatory policy positions between two contradictory political imperatives—economic growth and environmental protection. This article explores some ideological means of reconciliation, as with notions of sustainable development, which appear to bridge the impassable divide, and some of the institutional means for dealing with contradiction, as with the displacement of political power upward, away from elected national governments and toward international agreements and nonelected global governance institutions. Through these two strategic maneuvers, the authors argue, environmental concern has been ideologically and institutionally incorporated into the global neoliberal hegemony of the late twentieth century. The global capitalist economy can grow, if not with clear environmental conscience, then with one effectively assuaged. This process of neoliberal deflection is illustrated using the case of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the World Trade Organization.