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- Info
Environmental policy: The quest for sustainable development
| Author: |
Blowers, Andrew |
| Date: |
1993 |
| Periodical: |
Urban Studies |
| Abstract: |
Environmental policy, touching as it does on almost every aspect of social life, raises an almost impossibly wide agenda for investigation and action. In this review, I shall take as my theme the quest for sustainable development, a speculative focus suitable for the last decade of the second millennium. My emphasis will be on contemporary political conflicts over the environment and the prospects for change. Environmental policy transcends conventional political boundaries and therefore I shall concentrate primarily on the broader international context which increasingly sets the parameters for policy-making at subsidiary national and regional levels. In particular, I shall focus on the political processes that have defined and shaped the environmental agenda over the past five years. As I see it they are: (1) The process of uneven development, particularly between North and South which has focused attention on development and the need to prepare policies that incorporate environment and development as complementary, not conflicting, goals. (2) The role of scientific evidence in defining the scale of problems, the grounds for conflict and the scope for solutions in environmental policymaking. (3) The growing political importance of transboundary and global environmental impacts which have intensified conflicts of interest between states but have also stimulated processes of globalization, the development of transnational political processes that challenge the nation-state. In the first main part of the review, I shall discuss each of these in turn. In the second part, I shall examine the challenge posed by sustainable development to sovereignty and the market and the importance of equity in the development of policy. |
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