How to Green: Institutional Influence in Three US Cities

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 303-322 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenna A. Lamphere ◽  
Jon Shefner
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Environmental Degradation ◽  
Green Economy ◽  
Little Rock ◽  
Core Set ◽  
Institutional Influence ◽  
Green Economies ◽  
Institutional Actors ◽  
Us Cities

The green economy holds the potential for addressing key dilemmas of sustainability by mitigating environmental degradation while reviving working and middle-class occupations. In effect, the green economy is a redevelopment practice that requires shifts in values and norms. We build on development scholars and others in our examination of institutions to determine the central roles played in fomenting vibrant green economies in three US cities: Chicago, IL, Little Rock, AR, and Knoxville, TN. Findings suggest that although a sustainable green economy requires inputs from a similar and core set of institutional actors, the role each plays is diverse, differing by case. Additionally, green economy development requires coordinated planning within and across institutions. Planning is often the most difficult strategy, as actors often have different values and goals, but without it, green economy development is unlikely.

scholarly journals Building a green economy of low carbon: the Greek post-crisis experience of photovoltaics and financial 'green grabbing'

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoi Christina Siamanta
Keyword(s):  
Green Energy ◽  
Green Economy ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Renewable Energy Resources ◽  
Green Growth ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Complex Interplay ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
Green Economies

Abstract Under the global rhetoric of 'the green economy' Renewable Energy Resources (RES) projects have proliferated across the world. This article examines the growth of photovoltaic projects in post-crisis Greece, grounded in a green energy discourse. The aim is to provide insights into how green economies are built and what new appropriations they (might) entail. It is based on a Foucauldian oriented discourse analysis, in depth semi-structured interviews and review of a variety of other sources. The article argues that justificatory discourses for green growth implicated in 'green grabbing' involve the complex interplay of neoliberal and disciplinary 'environmentalities.' These seek to construct 'green economy' entrepreneurs and compliant subjects. A relatively undocumented and understudied aspect of green grabs is the appropriation of public and private financial resources for photovoltaic projects, with significant negative impacts on livelihoods. In Greece, this has resulted in the accumulation of capital by a few large RES companies, as well as significant impacts on the livelihoods of domestic and small business electricity consumers and small/medium photovoltaic investors through debt. Key words: Greece, green economy, photovoltaics, green grabbing, environmentality, Foucault, green energy

scholarly journals Green Complexity, Economic Fitness, and Environmental Degradation: Evidence from U.S. State-Level Data

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
İbrahim Tuğrul Çınar ◽  
İlhan Korkmaz ◽  
Muhammet Yunus Şişman
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Degradation ◽  
Environmental Quality ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
National Level ◽  
State Level ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Green Economy ◽  
The Us ◽  
Green Production ◽  
Significant Negative Impact

Abstract Green production is one of the major debates as environmental degradation poses threats globally. The paper attempts to explore the relationship between green economy and environmental quality by using Economic Fitness approach. We develop a Green Complexity Index (GCI) dataset consists of 290 traded green-labeled products for the US States between 2002 and 2018. We analyze the environmental performance of green production using the GCI data at the sub-national level. Findings indicate that exporting more complex green products has insignificant effects on local (i.e., Sulfur dioxide, Particulate Matter 10) and global polluters such as Carbon dioxide (CO2), even accounting for per capita income. Yet, overall economic complexity has a significant negative impact on the emission levels implying that sophisticated production significantly improves environmental quality in the US. The insignificant impact of GCI on environmental degradation suggests that green product classifications should incorporate the production and end-use stages of goods to limit the adverse environmental effects of green-labeled products. The study, therefore, provides policy implications for green industrial policies.JEL codes: O18, Q56, R11

Promoting the Green Economy in Morocco: Analysis of the contextual specificities

elni Review ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 30-38
Author(s):  
Fatima Arib
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Degradation ◽  
Green Economy ◽  
Limited Impact ◽  
The Past ◽  
Contextual Features

Over the past decades, the protection of the environment has become one of the major challenges that Morocco has committed to. The limited impact of the socio-economic programs, coupled with significant environmental degradation, require a shift in policy and priorities to a green and inclusive economy that can contribute to the reduction of poverty and unemployment, and the unwinding of territorial imbalances. This paper aims to analyse the main contextual features of the green economy in Morocco. The main aspects that mark the socio-economic, environmental and regulatory contexts are thus drawn up. The paper concludes by highlighting the importance of the progress made by Morocco and the challenges it needs to overcome.

The Politics of the Environment in Singapore? Lessons from a "Strange" Case

2001 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel P. S. Goh
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
Environmental Protection ◽  
Environmental Degradation ◽  
Environmental Politics ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Developmental States

AbstractSoutheast Asia has come under scholarly focus for the contradictions of rapid development and environmental protection, and the ensuing politics. Most give Singapore a miss because it is a "strange" case that does not fit into a region where affected local peoples, "middle class" activists and developmental states struggle over the exploitation of natural resources and environmental degradation. This paper claims that analysis of the "quiet" politics of environment in Singapore is instructive, and can correct the materialist bias evident in the understanding of Southeast Asian political economy/ecology. It argues that urban "middle class" environmental activism is a manifestation of resistance to enlarging systems of governance allied with capital. Environmentalism can be seen as a response against the encroachment of the system into the intimate living places of the lifeworld. This response is embedded within an international public sphere that enables environmental politics. These activists derive their motivation and political strength from public moral discursive actions. Environmentalism is a contemporary reflection of a fundamental sociological theme, the discontents' moral struggle for the good society, not necessarily reflecting parochial class interests.

scholarly journals POLA ADAPTASI MASYARAKAT PESISIR GENUK KOTA SEMARANG (Patterns of Community Adaptation to Environmental Degradation in Genuk Coastal Area, Semarang)

2014 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 245 ◽  
Author(s):  
S Sariffuddin ◽  
Arwan Putra Wijaya
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Management ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Environmental Degradation ◽  
Coastal Area ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Environmental Problems ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Policy Transformation ◽  
New Community ◽  
Class Community

Globalization brings many consequences for Indonesian urban development and the communities. Industrialization is one of them. Globalization also brings policy transformation affecting the community’s welfare and lifestyle. One of the indicators is that local values have started to fade. The similar condition also occurs in fishermen’s and fish farmers’ settlements in Semarang, which have transformed into industrial settlements in 1980s during the industrialization period. Land conversion occurred in a short time from ponds and rice fields into factories, warehouses, and new labor’s settlements. It did not take a long time for the community’s local values to transform into the new ones influenced by the welfare level of the new community. Based on the phenomena, this study aims to understand the lifestyle of the community and its influence in managing the housing environment with Genuk coastal area of Semarang City as a case. This research has three objectives: to understand the motivation to urbanization, to comprehend the neighborhoods’ conditions, and to comprehend the influence of community’s lifestyle towards the settlement condition. In achieving the objectives, the qualitative approach supported by some quantitative data is used.  The results show that there are three classes of the community influencing the environmental management. It is found that the people’s migration reasons had a big influence for the environmental management. In this case, the middle-class community is a key stakeholder to overcome the environmental problems. It becomes good initiator. On the contrary, the lower class has a less role in dealing with the environmental problems. It has even a big contribution on environmental degradation. Meanwhile, the upper class pays less attention to the environment. Only a little part of it, especially the local one, is willing to take part in the environmental management. The middle-class people consider that the problems arise due to the inappropriate planning. Unfortunately, they are not capable of dealing with the problems. On the contrary, the upper-class people consider that the issues arise from the lower class behavior that does not pay attention to the environment. As a consequence, the upper-class community is not willing to address the problems.

scholarly journals Primal-Dual Approach to Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis: A Demand and Supply Side Analyses of Environmental Degradation.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
gildas dohba dinga ◽  
DOBDINGA CLETUS FONCHAMNYO ◽  
ELVIS DZE ACHUO
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Environmental Degradation ◽  
Environmental Kuznets Curve ◽  
Correlation Effect ◽  
High Income ◽  
Green Economy ◽  
Kuznets Curve ◽  
Ekc Hypothesis ◽  
Primal Dual ◽  
Sustainable Economic Growth

Abstract Global warming and its unavoidable negatives effects on man and the environment have been a key if not the most important issue occupying policy makers in the world at large today. The much talked about green economy nowadays seeks to achieve sustainable economic growth and development without compromising environmental quality. The relationship between environmental degradation and economic growth is largely explained by the environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis. By employing the basic postulation of the baseline EKC framework, this study proposes and tests the existence of a dualistic approach of the EKC hypothesis. Geometry is used to illustrate the proposed dualistic model. Meanwhile, the novel dynamic common correlation effect econometric technique is employed to test the existence of the dualistic EKC within a panel of 109 countries from 1995 to 2016. The outcome from the estimated models shows that, in the global sample, the existence of the dualistic U-shape and N-shape EKC hypothesis is validated. When the sample is split into sub samples based on income levels, the U-shape EKC hypothesis is validated for lower income and high income economies meanwhile, the N-shape dualistic EKC is mostly associated with high income economies.

Cities in the suburbs: heterogeneous communities on the US urban fringe, 1920–60

Urban History ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Borchert
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Population Size ◽  
Central City ◽  
Professional Services ◽  
Urban Fringe ◽  
Diverse Populations ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Political Independence ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Cities

While the scholarly literature largely ignores issues of suburban population size, density and heterogeneity, during the 1920s a number of large, densely-settled, heterogeneous suburbs emerged on the fringe of the largest US cities. The article identifies forty-one of these potential ‘city suburbs’ which are defined as communities having minimum thresholds of 25,000 population and residential densities of 6,000 per square mile. City suburbs may have claimed nearly 25 per cent of the suburban populations of the nation's ten largest metropolitan districts. Drawing largely on data for midwestern cities, city suburbs are further identified through their diverse populations by class, ethnicity and race; varied housing stocks and economic activities including retailing, professional services and manufacturing; and political independence from their central city. Nearly equally divided between residential and industrial suburbs, the former, including Oak Park, Illinois, ‘fit’ traditional middle-class suburban descriptions while neighbouring Cicero represented workingclass, industrial communities.

scholarly journals Political ecology, variegated green economies, and the foreclosure of alternative sustainabilities

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Connor Joseph Cavanagh ◽  
Tor Arve Benjaminsen
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Vulnerable Populations ◽  
Special Section ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Green Economy ◽  
Green Growth ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
The Past ◽  
Green Economies

Abstract Over the past two decades, political ecologists have provided extensive critiques of the privatization, commodification, and marketization of nature, including of the new forms of accumulation and appropriation that these might facilitate under the more recent guise of green growth and the green economy. These critiques have often demonstrated that such approaches can retain deleterious implications for certain vulnerable populations across the developing world and beyond. With few exceptions, however, political ecologists have paid decidedly less attention to expounding upon alternative initiatives for pursuing both sustainability and socio-environmental justice. Accordingly, the contributions to this Special Section engage the concept of the green economy explicitly as a terrain of struggle, one inevitably conditioned by the variegated forms that actually-existing 'green economy' strategies ultimately take in specific historical and geographical conjunctures. In doing so, they highlight the ways in which there is likewise not one but many potential sustainabilities for pursuing human and non-human well-being in the ostensibly nascent Anthropocene, each of which reflects alternative – and, potentially, more progressive – constellations of social, political, and economic relations. Yet they also foreground diverse efforts to pre-empt or to foreclose upon these alternatives, highlighting an implicit politics of precisely whose conception of sustainability is deemed to be possible or desirable in any given time and place. In exploring such struggles over alternative sustainabilities and the 'ecologies of hope' that they implicitly offer, then, this introduction first reviews the current frontiers of these debates, before illuminating how the contributions to this issue both intersect with and build upon them. Key words: Green economy; political ecology; political economy; alternative sustainabilities

Tracing Sustainability Transformations and Drivers of Green Economy Approaches in the Global South

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Lederer ◽  
Linda Wallbott ◽  
Steffen Bauer
Keyword(s):  
National Level ◽  
Global South ◽  
The State ◽  
Green Economy ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Green Economies ◽  
Business As Usual

This article provides the introduction to a special issue on Green Economies in the Global South, that sheds light on the causes, complexities, consequences, and different practices of state engagement regarding national-level transitions from business as usual toward integrated economic, ecological, and social policies. Empirically, the special issue comprises four additional papers that open the black box of the state with a focus on state-society relations and the management of trade-offs in the fields of energy and land use politics in developing countries. This introduction guides these country cases with an analytical outline that builds on two specific sets of research questions: (a) Which change agents do have an impact on national politics, and why? What is the particular role of the state in developing and implementing Green Economy policies? (b) Which trade-offs and tensions occur between and within the economic, ecological, and social dimensions of a Green Economy approach? How are they addressed, by whom, and with which consequences?

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