6th Global Conference
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Monday 2nd July - Thursday 5th
July 2007
Mansfield College, Oxford
Session 4: Law, Politics and Environmental Policy
Chair: Rasmus Karlson
Customary Law and Community Based Conservation of
Marine Areas in the South Pacific
Erika
Techera
Centre for Environmental Law, Division of Law, Macquarie
University, Australia
Sustainable development goals of social, economic and environmental improvement can be easily identified, but appropriate methods to resolve the often conflicting issues remain elusive. The achievement of triple bottom line goals is problematic the world over, but particularly keenly felt in small island states with large indigenous populations and strong customary laws and practices. Top down legal approaches have been imposed with limited success and it has now been recognised that bottom up, community based, participatory mechanisms are preferable. The Locally Managed Marine Area (LMMA) Network is an example of a successful initiative involving communities in the protection of their local marine environment through the implementation of community based adaptive management techniques. The LMMA Network has been remarkably successful in the Fiji Islands where the knowledge, traditional practices and customary laws of its indigenous population have been utilised to achieve positive outcomes. LMMA implementation in Fiji has led to increased marine biodiversity and a corresponding reduction of poverty in areas where rural livelihoods depend on marine resources. Equally important, the LMMA process has improved community solidarity. The experience of the LMMAs may offer best practice guidance to many other countries facing similar challenges.
Cape Wind: A Case Study in the Politics of Technology
Choice
John
C. Berg
Government Department, Suffolk University, USA and
Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
Cape
Wind is a proposed commercial venture to generate electricity from 130
wind turbines mounted in a small area of Nantucket Sound. The project
is generally supported by the environmentalist movement. However, its
opponents have also based their case on environmental values, arguing
that it would desecrate a beautiful area of great natural beauty. Proponents
argue that it is no longer possible to preserve nature through inaction;
if we are to slow climate change due to greenhouse gas emissions, nature
must be altered in order to be saved.
The controversy is being settled through elite conflict, between the
corporate entrepreneur behind Cape Wind on one hand, and several millionaire
residents of the South Shore of Cape Cod on the other, with little voice
for the concerned public.
This paper describes the conflict to date,
and attempts to show how it might be handled better through a more participatory
process, and through an orientation toward problem solving, rather than
conflict.
Environmental Policy in Bosnia
and Herzegovina: Post–socialism
Development and Local Governance
Vanesa
Castán Broto and Claudia
Carter
Social and Economic Research Group, Forest Research, Alice Holt Lodge, Farnham, Surrey, UK
The development of new environmental policies in transition countries is commonly regarded as one of the positive results of the democratisation process in Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs). Former Marxist-inspired regimes in CEECs are often portrayed as having had little regard for environmental conservation. Multiple opinions resonate with such assumptions when describing the industrial pollution affecting numerous cities in Bosnia and Herzegovina such as Zenica, Srnica and Tuzla. From the late 1990s international efforts, particularly by the European Union, have fostered the development and adoption of new environmental laws more suited to the new democratic landscape. However, in the years since the first environmental laws in Bosnia and Herzegovina were drafted the environmental pollution has improved little and local discontent evident. The paper develops a case study in Tuzla, affected by pollution from an industrial complex including TEP, a coal-fired power plant that supplies 58% of the total electricity in the country. Qualitative research has been carried out to understand the local and institutional perspectives on the environment. Local residents have voiced the violation of their rights by the industrial pollution, and local and regional governments continue facing many difficulties to implement and enforce environmental policies. Inadequate governance structures, lack of control and resources and rampant corruption affect the implementation of environmental policies. This paper explains how current environmental policies impact (or rather, fail to impact) on the everyday lives of local citizens. We attend to how local citizens’ concerns about environmental governance are voiced in their discourses on the environment, and their demand for effective policies that increase transparency, information and accountability for assessing and allowing technological and industrial development. The paper shows how the perceived lack of interest from the local authorities and industry together with the growing inequalities in living and health conditions reinforce nostalgia feelings of the former socialist regime.