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In the face of increase global environmental phenomena such as global warming, social, political and knowledge structures are being reformulated in order to better accommodate these events into governance frameworks. For Ulrich Beck, increased risk has created a World Risk Society which is defined by a state of 'reflexive' modernity (RM) where the central tenets of modernity are re-examined and current developmental patterns are drawn into question. In political and social discourse increased risk has created the need to achieve a sustainable development (SD). In light of criticisms that Beck makes broad and unsubstantiated theoretical assertions, this thesis examines the proposition that the discursive rise of the concept of SD in political and social governance structures is evidence of a reflexive modernity. The above proposition is examined at both the global and the local scales accessing the dimensions of politics, and sub politics outlined by Beck. At the global scale, discursive representations of sustainable development were examined within the United Nations during the 57th United Nations General Assembly. At the local sub political level a partnership governance structure is examined which was designed to enhance sustainable lifestyles. Findings suggest that whilst a significant relationship does exist between SD and RM, this relationship alters considerably from the global to the local scales of analysis. Further, the process of exploring this relationship provides important insights into the way that SD is being articulated in broad governance structures.

In response to a growing popular concern for 'sustainability', Green Computing has emerged as a new `sustainability' discourse in which researchers explore solutions to reduce the environmental impact of computing technologies themselves, as well as solutions to reduce the environmental impact of other activities and behaviours through the development of new technologies. Despite good intentions and enthusiasm for the cause, there is little evidence of Green Computing having had significant or long-term impacts, and indeed, as one potential indicator, even combined with all of the efforts of many other disciplines, the exponential curve of growth in carbon emissions continues unabated. This dissertation aims to understand the reasons why Green Computing may have had a limited impact to date, and explore alternative approaches to `sustainability' that may enable greater impact by computing. To begin, key assumptions underpinning Green Computing discourse are exposed in order to contextualise it within the broader debate surrounding an agenda for 'sustainability' - the term itself, while gaining significant traction in popular culture, is deeply contested. It is shown that the discursive characteristics of Green Computing, along with its specific appropriation of the term `sustainability', reinforce a set of values that ultimately undermine its solutions and limit its impact. An alternative discourse is proposed that avoids reinforcement of problematic values, and a radically different conception of 'sustainability', and the role that computing may play in contributing to a 'sustainable' future, is proposed in a new discourse, namely Cyber-Sustainability. To illustrate the difference in solutions that might emerge from Cyber-Sustainability, an initial set of propositional solutions are presented in the form of patterns, which are offered here as an invitation for others to join in the further elaboration of these patterns towards a comprehensive pattern language.

Within this thesis, I investigate how progress towards a socially sustainable steady state economy could be measured at the national scale. Following a review of four possible approaches, I suggest that separate biophysical and social indicators represent the best approach, but that a unifying conceptual framework is required to choose appropriate indicators and interpret the relationships between them. I propose a framework based on ends and means, and a set of bio- physical and social indicators within this framework. The biophysical indicators are derived from Herman Daly's definition of a steady state economy, and measure the major stocks and flows in the economy-environment system. The social indicators are based on the stated goals of the degrowth moment, and measure the functioning of the socio-economic system, and how effectively it delivers human well-being. I use these indicators to measure how close -180 countries are to the idea of a steady state economy over a ten-year time period (1997-2007), and explore whether there is any relationship between a country's proximity to such an economy and its overall social performance. I find that the majority of countries ~ the world are biophysical growth economies, although a small number of countries achieve biophysical stability over the analysis period (e.g. Denmark, France, Japan, Poland, Romania, and the United States). In general, I find that countries with stable stocks and flows perform better on social indicators than countries with either growing or de growing stocks and flows. However, I also find that social performance is higher in countries with greater per capita resource use. Taken together, these findings suggest that while a biophysically stable economy may be socially sustainable, the level of resource use required for a "good life" may be too high to extend to all people on the planet without surpassing ecological limits.

There is a growing consensus that the current energy system we rely on is fundamentally unsustainable and that it will have to be transformed if we are to continue to satisfy our energy needs in the future. At present we have a poor understanding of the role that the development and implementation of innovative business models, designed to satisfy our energy needs in a sustainable manner, could play in facilitating a transition to a sustainable energy system. To improve this understanding, this thesis develops an analytical framework that integrates co-evolutionary and business model theories, and applies this framework to analyse the case of the Energy Service Company (ESCo) business model and the wider UK energy system. The thesis begins by presenting the core characteristics of the ESCo business model and its key variants; its strengths and weaknesses; and the factors that have constrained and enabled the uptake of this sustainable business model. It then examines the coevolutionary relationship the ESCo model shares with the UK energy system to explain not only why the model has struggled to gain traction, compared to the incumbent Energy Utility company (EUCo) model, but also the role the ESCo model could play in a transition to a sustainable UK energy system. In light of the empirical investigation, the research finds that the development and adoption of the ESCo business model could play a valuable role in facilitating transitions to sustainable energy systems. However, it is likely to struggle to gain traction due to ESCos’ poor fitness with the prevailing selection environment, which can in part be attributed to the causal influence of the unsustainable, incumbent EUCo model. Conversely, worsening ecosystem crises, the introduction of supportive regulation and positive feedbacks associated with the adoption of this model by new and incumbent system actors could help the ESCo model to proliferate and thus, have an important influence on the transition to a sustainable energy system

Water and energy sectors encompass large infrastructural systems, face increased scarcities and have been argued to have locked-in structures. Questions of how technological breakthroughs occur and how the underlying policies and institutional structures change are therefore important for responding to socioeconomic pressures and to improve environmental sustainability. This thesis aims to re-theorise the interplay of technology, policies and discourses within sociotechnical regimes and to examine the merits of these relations from an intersectoral perspective. This dissertation combines insights from the literature on science and technology studies, policy dynamics and policy integration and uses the integrated approach to examine parallel and interrelated dynamics in the Israeli water and energy regimes, making use of the interpretative policy analysis methodology and a range of qualitative methods. The dissertation makes three analytical contributions. Firstly, the dissertation highlights how the power of technology in shaping and transforming policy regimes has been underestimated in the current literature about policy dynamics. The dissertation exemplifies this by the case of desalination technology which had the capacity to transform the Israeli water sector. I suggest that technological breakthroughs that rendered seawater desalination economically feasible, undermined long-lasting hydro-ideological support for agriculture, introduced new ideas about water abundance, and engendered changes in paradigms, institutional structures and constellation of actors. Desalination technology contributed to this shift by destabilizing the existing structure through re-framing and dis-placing important issues, such as environmental externalities, economic costs and hard political choices, to other policy sectors and levels of governance as well as reallocated them between politicians, bureaucrats and water professionals. Secondly, the dissertation argues that the focus of the sociotechnical transitions literature has been on structural changes with predefined objectives and suggests that a more fluid and agency-based ideas about discourses - as presented by discursive institutionalism - can provide contrast and complement. The dissertation exemplifies the usefulness of this cross-fertilisation by analysing the rise of four technological alternatives to current Israel's coal-based energy regime. I suggest that the regime is shifting away from the traditional scarcity discourse towards a new discourse on energy abundance. The new energy abundance discourse was created by policy networks, who promote natural gas, oil shale, nuclear energy and solar energy as energy alternatives although their mainstreaming still faces formidable uncertainties and various constraints. The findings also support the premise that a change from constructed scarcity of energy resources to their abundance potentially reconstructs socio-technical transitions, future pathways or technological trajectories and institutional arrangements at large. Thirdly, the dissertation examines how sectoral transitions may be coupled and technological regimes may co-evolve. The dissertation demonstrates that while transition management literature examines how long-term structural changes could be directed toward greater sustainability, it has, however, mostly taken a sectoral approach which neglects the potential interdependencies between sociotechnical changes and policy dynamics in different sectors. The thesis examines the water-energy nexus in Israel and suggests that transitions of the water and energy sectors in Israel are physically, spatially and financially coupled. Yet, inter-sectoral institutional structures, management apparatus and niche-induced innovations were found to be lacking integrative capacities, driven by an inherent strategy of supply- side management and around the unaltered, implicit, core belief in the need to secure independent and ultimately unlimited sources of water and energy. In practice, integrated transitions management could therefore play a crucial role in re-orienting trajectories in the water and energy sectors, re-designing transition arenas and articulating transition pathways. This could encourage technology-mediated policy realignments on the basis of more comprehensive and longer-term problem solving rather than on the opportunities technologies offer for problem avoidance or postponement. Further policy recommendations highlight the merits and pitfalls of greater cohesion in the policy arena, including the effectiveness of procedural tools such as the regulatory impact assessment.

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Cette thèse a pour objectif d’examiner la place de l’environnement dans un système socio-économique national, celui du Brésil. La première partie de ce travail est théorique. Nous montrons que, contrairement à l’économie orthodoxe de l'environnement et à l’économie écologique, une approche régulationniste étendue permet d’offrir une lecture originale de la question environnementale qui prend en compte le contexte historique et social autour de la nature, et ce, en ajoutant au modèle régulationniste traditionnel une sixième forme institutionnelle dédiée à l’environnement : le Rapport Social à la Nature (RSN). La seconde partie de ce travail est empirique. À partir de ce cadre analytique régulationniste étendu, nous réalisons d’une part une analyse historique de la succession des régimes d’accumulation du Brésil de 1930 à 2013 au travers de l’étude conjointe des six formes institutionnelles, et d’autre part, une analyse synchronique de l’institutionnalisation du RSN dans l'État du Pará (État du Nord de l’Amazonie) dans le cadre d’une étude de cas portant sur les pratiques contemporaines de gestion du secteur forestier. Nos résultats sont triples. Premièrement, ils montrent l’utilité d’un cadre analytique régulationniste étendu en matière d’étude des questions environnementales. Deuxièmement, ils permettent de mettre en évidence la place de l’environnement au Brésil au moyen des complémentarités institutionnelles entre les six formes institutionnelles des régimes d’accumulation. Troisièmement, ils indiquent qu’un certain nombre de facteurs entravent l’actualisation des règles environnementales au Pará. / This thesis aims to examine the place of the environment in a national socio-economic system, the Brazilian one. The first part of the thesis is theoretical. We show that, contrary to the orthodox environmental economics and to the ecological economics, an extended regulationnist approach may offer an original perspective for questioning environmental issues that takes the historical and social context of nature into account, by adding to the standard regulationnist framework a sixth institutional form dedicated to the environment: the Social Relationship with Nature (SRN). The second part of the thesis is empirical. Through this extended regulationnist analytical framework, we first develop an historical analysis of the successive accumulation regimes in Brazil from 1930 to 2013 through the joint study of the six institutional forms. We also develop an analysis of the contemporary institutionalization process of the SRN in the state of Pará (North Amazon) by realizing a case study of the forest management practices. Our results are threefold. First, they show the utility of an extended regulationnist analytical framework for studying environmental issues. Second, they highlight the place of the environment in Brazil through the institutional complementarity that is established between the six institutional forms within the accumulation regimes. Third, they indicate that some factors impede the actualization of environmental rules in the state of Pará.

Le paradoxe des "services écosystémiques" est qu’ils tendent à devenir aujourd'hui un référentiel dominant en matière de conservation et de protection de la biodiversité, mais qu’ils restent, dans le même temps, une approche très controversée, notamment dans le champ de l’Economie Ecologique. Le présent travail de thèse vise à interroger le potentiel transformateur de l’approche par les services écosystémiques, vis-à-vis des dynamiques institutionnelles qui régissent les rapports entre la conservation et le développement. Pour ce faire, nous nous basons sur une étude de cas précise : celle du Parc Naturel Régional Scarpe-Escaut, dans le département du Nord. Nous y avons réalisé une expérience d’observation participante, dans le cadre d’un projet d’évaluation de services écosystémiques sur le territoire. Nous avons également conduit des entretiens semi-directifs avec un certain nombre de représentants du parc et étudié ses documents de gestion, à l’aide d’un logiciel d’analyse de données textuelles (Prospéro). Le cadre théorique mobilisé est celui de l’Economie des Conventions. L’apport de la thèse est de proposer de modéliser l’écologisme non pas sous la forme idéale de la cité, mais comme une critique du capitalisme, au sens de Boltanski et Chiapello (1999). Selon nous, les principales formes de critiques écologistes contemporaines sont la décroissance, le développement durable et la croissance verte et ces dernières s’appuient sur différentes formes de compromis entre plusieurs ordres de grandeur.Notre analyse nous amène à penser que la place des services écosystémiques, comme outils de justification au service du parc Scarpe-Escaut doit être relativisée. Ce qui donne du sens au projet de conservation et de développement porté par le parc est en effet la mobilisation d’un registre domestique, alors que les fondements normatifs des services écosystémiques reposent plutôt sur les cités marchande et par-projets. Les services écosystémiques peuvent ainsi être compris comme des dispositifs importants de la critique écologiste de la croissance verte, laquelle s’avère peu subversive vis-à-vis du capitalisme connexionniste. / The paradox of "ecosystem services" is that they tend to become today a dominant approach to conservation and biodiversity protection, while remaining at the same time very controversial, especially in the field of Ecological Economics. The thesis aims at questioning the transformative potential of the ecosystem services approach, regarding the institutional dynamics governing the relations between conservation and development. This research is built on a precise case study: the Scarpe-Escaut Regional Natural Park, in the north of France. In the park, we carried out a participative observation experience within an ecosystem services valuation project; we conducted semi-structured interviews and studied the park’s management documents using a text-based data analysis software (Prospéro). The theoretical perspective developed is conventionalist. This thesis points out that ecologism shouldn’t be modelled as an ideal "order of worth", but rather as a critique of capitalism, following Boltanski & Chiapello (1999). We show that the main contemporary forms of ecologist criticisms are degrowth, sustainable development and green growth, each of them relying on different forms of compromises between several "orders of worth". Our analysis leads us to think that the role of ecosystem services, as justification tools for the Scarpe-Escaut Park can be relativised. What gives meaning to the park’s conservation and development project is indeed the mobilisation of a domestic "order of worth", while the normative basis of ecosystem services appears to be related to the merchant and per-projects “orders of worth”. This makes of ecosystem services an important part of the green growth ecological criticism, the latter being poorly subversive towards connexionist capitalism.

L’objet de cette thèse est de proposer un modèle de développement durable – option de l’économie verte - dont le but est de concilier développement économique et préservation de l’environnement car le véritable progrès doit être à la fois durable et inclusif conciliant entre un développement qui répond aux besoins fondamentaux des êtres humains tout en préservant l’écosystème. Il s’agit donc de donner une orientation renouvelée aux politiques économiques et environnementales dans la tradition du développement durable. Avant de proposer une configuration de l’économie verte pour le Maroc qui devrait être appréhendée dans une perspective plus large intégrant de façon équilibrée, outre les dimensions environnementale et économique, la dimension sociale, nous répondons en première partie à la question suivante : L’économie verte permet-elle de cheminer vers un développement durable ? La deuxième partie traite de la possibilité du choix de l’option de l’économie verte, en mettant l’accent sur l’expérience marocaine en termes de stratégies pouvant conduire à l’adoption l’option de l’économie verte et présente un diagnostic de la durabilité du modèle de développement du Maroc et identifie ses fragilités structurelles. Nous proposons dans la troisième partie, des indicateurs nationaux de l’économie verte et régionaux qui seront perfectionnés à mesure que de nouvelles données deviennent disponibles accompagnés de la stratégie régionale du tourisme durable. Cette thèse constitue la première initiative à l’échelle nationale de construction d'indicateurs de suivi de l’économie verte. Elle montre le rôle de « l’économie verte » en tant que solution possible pour faire face à l’ensemble des problématiques soulevées dans la Stratégie Nationale du Développement Durable en proposant des indicateurs de suivi au niveau national et régional. / The purpose of this thesis is to propose a model of sustainable development - option of the green economy - which aims to reconcile economic development and environmental conservation as real progress must be both sustainable and inclusive balancing between development that meets the basic needs of human beings while preserving the ecosystem. It is therefore to give renewed direction to economic and environmental policies in the tradition of sustainable development. Before proposing a configuration of the green economy for Morocco which should be understood in a broader perspective incorporating a balanced way, in addition to the environmental and economic dimensions, the social dimension, we answer the first part the following question: The green economy allows it to move towards sustainable development? The second part deals with the possibility of choosing the option of the green economy, focusing on the Moroccan experience in terms of strategies that may lead to the adoption option of the green economy and presents a diagnostic sustainability of Morocco's development model and identify its structural weaknesses. We propose in the third part, national indicators of the green economy which will be refined and regional as new data become available together with the regional strategy for sustainable tourism. This thesis is the first initiative on a national scale construction of monitoring indicators of the green economy. It shows the role of "green economy" as a possible solution to address all the issues raised in the National Strategy for Sustainable Development by proposing monitoring indicators at national and regional level.