Environmental Justice (EJ) is the name of both a concept and a social movement that originated in the United States (US) in the early 1980s. Broadly, EJ describes attempts to ameliorate and rectify an intimate relationship between environmental and social inequality, where environmental ills are disproportionately suffered by certain members of society, usually the marginalised and the poor. EJ is shown to be a discourse that is capable of possessing both democratic and political potential, however, in its various manifestations, this potential is frequently not realised. This study engages in recent critiques of the nature of politics itself and the argument that the current context has become post-political, exploring the emergence of the concept of EJ and nature of environmental injustice (EiJ) within this context in England. To do this, this research examines the emergence and development of EJ in English civil society through the account of key actors, and the Non-Government Organisation of Friends of the Earth (FoE) in particular, and investigates a case study of a mobilisation against a stereotypical instance of EiJ. The concept of EJ is seen to emerge at an elite civil society level around the turn of the millennium, most noticeably with FoE, where in a discourse coalition, a version of EJ was produced that aimed to overcome a technocratic deficit within sustainable development. At the grassroots level, however, EJ discourses and the explicit EJ frame has little presence, and a number of barriers relating to both the nature of the organisations trying to push the concept, and the nature of the EiJs themselves are explored. The analysis of the case study provides valuable insight into the types of discourses that are present in an EiJ mobilisation against an incinerator and the way in which these discourses play out in a post-political context.

This thesis employs the by-production approach to modelling pollution generating technologies to investigate production and environmental efficiencies, design consumption increasing and emission non-increasing input policy reforms, and derive a measure of marginal abatement costs in the case of China. The second chapter introduces by-production approach to modelling the pollution generating technologies. It decomposes a general pollution generating technology as classical intended production technology and nature’s residual-generation mechanism. In this chapter, some production and environmental efficiency indexes will be extended and applied under by-production approach to study China’s regional technical efficiency incorporated emission generation. According to our estimation results, some reasons analysis and policy implementation suggestions are given. The third chapter co-authored with Professor Sushama Murty proposes a model that gives a key role to the energy sector, and gives a theoretical characterisation for the existence of feasible, consumption-increasing, and emission-non increasing input policy reforms at the status-quo of a national or a sub-national economic unit. A methodology is developed to empirically test for the existence of such efficiency-improving reforms. Formulae to compute the optimal efficiency-increasing reform and a measure of marginal abatement cost (MAC) based on local policy reforms using data available at the status-quo are derived. The fourth chapter co-authored with Professor Sushama Murty implements the methodology developed in the third chapter to test the existence and to study the structure of efficiency-improving reforms using data on thirty provinces in China. A new class of limitational variable elasticity of substitution (LVES) production functions for specifying technologies of the energy-using and energy-generating sectors is introduced and two such production functions are estimated along with the conventional Cobb Douglas and CES production functions. MACs and the optimal efficiency-improving reforms are found to be sensitive to the choice of the production functions employed. There is a huge variation in MACs across provinces. The optimal efficiency-improving reform encourages a substitution from coal-fired electricity generation to gas-fired electricity and renewable energy generation for all provinces. The fifth chapter reviews China’s regional variations in electricity generation, primary energy usage, and forest cover. To better understand the China’s carbon emission control policies, we also briefly introduce the carbon emission scheme implementation. Based on these information, we incorporate the efficiency-improving reforms and MACs estimated in the fourth chapter to analyse the direction of input resources reallocation and give further recommendations for each province.

The challenge of climate change necessitates searching for solutions beyond those offered by natural science and economics. It requires critically examining the whole way of life and associated values and needs that drive the practices responsible for the damage to our planet's ecosystem. This research argues that there lies within the Critical Theory of Marcuse and ecological social theory such a challenge to dominant social practices, patterns of consumption, and needs. Thus, this thesis sets out the contribution that Marcuse makes to existing ecological theory through an examination his conceptualisation of nature and his theory of need, and, in so doing, explores the contribution a Marcusian approach can make to the empirical study of attempts to create more sustainable ways of life. A Marcusian theoretical framework is applied to an exploration of the relationships between social institutions and the needs and desires which issue from, or are accommodated by them by, adopting an ethnographic methodological approach to explore how individuals' understand and satisfy their needs and desires within the alternative social contexts constituted by green intentional communities; the aim being to evaluate the extent to which living in such communities allows for the redefinition of needs in a greener, more sustainable direction. The argument is made that intentional communities constitute \ spaces of and for difference - that the social, material and ideological institutions of communities enable the interpretation and satisfaction of needs and desires in ecologically sensitive ways. Thus, in choosing to live in intentional communities, individuals place themselves in circumstances which demand the restructuring of the satisfaction of their needs and desires, and in doing so, create a situation in which they can live and be differently.

After decades of pushing for deregulation and regulatory reform in its Member States, has the European Union itself become a locus for policy dismantling – i.e. leading to a weakening of its policies? This thesis offers a first systematic study of policy dismantling at EU level. It focuses on environmental policies, an area in which EU action has repeatedly been criticised by politicians for harming competitiveness and not respecting national sovereignty. It combines for the first time insights from comparative politics studies of dismantling with EU governance literature, to offer a theoretical framework specially configured to explaining dismantling at EU level. It investigates which EU environmental policies have been targeted for policy dismantling, by whom, why and how, from the early 1990s to the end of the second Barroso Commission in 2014. It reveals how the EU has changed, from a driver of policy dismantling in its Member States to a locus of dismantling in its own right. Dismantling attempts (from the reduction of administrative burdens to the repatriation of competences) have been made by key EU actors – which for some, such as the European Commission, goes against the conventional wisdom in EU studies. These attempts have been justified in terms of criticisms of the EU’s legislative outputs – subsidiarity and proportionality – and of European integration itself. But they have not resulted in significant policy dismantling. Dismantling has been the least frequent outcome of legislative reform amongst the many pieces of legislation earmarked for dismantling. This pattern indicates the resilience – until now – of the EU’s “green state” (Klyza and Sousa, 2013), but dismantling attempts have markedly changed the way the EU legislates on environmental issues and further hindered policy expansion. This thesis contributes to the renaissance of dismantling studies in comparative politics by revealing how dismantling strategies and effects at EU level differ from the existing literature which focuses almost exclusively on nation states. Looking at the EU from a policy dismantling perspective, this thesis also questions foundational assumptions in EU studies – on what drives EU actors, on where the EU is headed. Finally it offers a different reading of the history of EU environmental policy, stressing the role that contestation in general, and dismantling in particular, have played in shaping the environmental acquis.

Incentive-based measures are increasingly being employed as a strong motive to encourage conservation yet the evidence that they are generating sustainable resource-use, improving rural livelihoods or aiding biodiversity protection remains inconclusive. To provide empirical evidence to this discourse, in this study the McDermott et al (2013) equity framework is used to explore how different benefit-sharing arrangements have shaped twenty-five years of Integrated Conservation and Development projects (ICDP) neighbouring the Mt. Elgon National Park, Uganda. Applying a self-reported, post-hoc, quasi-experimental design, a time-series of participatory mapping activities revealed that despite the willingness of targeted groups to adopt ‘green’ technologies (distributional equity), maintaining and up-scaling these activities remained limited at the landscape level. Social network analysis uncovered that limited knowledge, restricted access (contextual equity) and the lack of inclusion in decision-making (procedural equity) impeded this development. Tracking the Mt. Elgon Regional Eco-System Conservation Programme (MERECP) as a specific case study, the analyses then showed that wealthier members of society and the political elite were the principle beneficiaries of conservation inputs. In the cases where these institutionalised hierarchies were purposely sidestepped (a measure to ensure marginalised stakeholders gained funds), cases of conflict and resentment arose. Overall, communities that had loose, expansive conservation networks adopted the greatest number of simple technologies. Nevertheless, those that have built a high level of trust both amongst one another and with supporting organisations resulted in the most socially equitable and biologically efficient outcomes. Portraying a future rich in sustainable land-use practises, communities do aspire to protecting their natural resources. Whilst this may be a time-consuming, expensive process, building sound adaptive ‘co-management’ relationships that respect cultural norms, provide suitable alternatives and maximises local knowledge is the key to implementing incentive-based conservation measures across Mt. Elgon.

This thesis shows how advances in IT allow the development of Environmental Information System (EIS) applications contributing to the advancement of environmental science and management. The research presented elucidates and evaluates the applications for EIS within the environmental and natural resource sciences with specific reference to soils. In supporting environmental suitability and risk assessment, the following research objectives were met: 1. Derive and construct new datasets, facilitating the development of EIS applications 2. Using these and other datasets, develop and demonstrate the validity of specific spatial EIS applications within the context of sustainable soil resource management 3. Evaluate, develop and apply emergent technological principles such as the objectoriented paradigm to the development of such EIS applications The research shows that the EIS approach offers environmental researchers and practitioners powerful tools to facilitate the collection and preparation, representation, structure and management, manipulation and presentation of environmental data. Such data can be used to aid disciplinary and interdisciplinary scientific research, such as risk modelling, data quality control and longitudinal studies. Through the interaction of multi-disciplinary datasets and models, the EIS contributes to the development of a holistic, interdisciplinary understanding of pertinent and contemporary environmental issues. EIS applications are constrained by the availability and affordability of technology, as well as by the quality of the data, models and scientific research they are based upon. With the constantly improving capabilities and cost-performance of IT there should be a continual review of methodologies to maximise usage of available technology. A well-developed synergy between environmental science and IT is important and automatic adoption of the most recently emergent information technologies is not always to be recommended for EIS development. The choice of software tools utilised in EIS development must be based upon the requirements for integration with existing systems, reliability, adherence to industry standards, expenditure, staff training needs, experimentation and efficiency. The incorporation of a spatial element within the decision-making process extends a powerful visual dimension to the traditional approaches used to portray environmental systems. The research identifies the emergent 'object paradigm' as significant for EIS development, being effective for describing complex spatial environmental phenomena. An object-oriented approach facilitates the presentation of abstracted, packaged scientific information in a directly accessible form. The EIS offers a powerful strategic tool for supporting decision-making in environmental management. The EIS applications presented supported Soil Quality and Protection, Pollution Control and Impact Assessment, Water Resource and Catchment Management, Soil and Land Management and Environmental Risk Assessment.

Climate change and global warming have received heightened attention over the last few decades across different societies. As one of the biggest polluters of CO2e, companies can play an important role in tackling climate change and global warming. Despite such an important role, a limited numbers of studies have been conducted in the carbon accounting discipline. The major concern that this study addresses is whether voluntary carbon disclosure, and especially self-serving (symbolic) information, may actually hinder future improvements in corporate carbon performance. This study investigates this concern by proposing a model that investigates the interrelationships between carbon performance, carbon disclosure, carbon reputation and a firm‟s economic performance within a single inclusive model. Following previous studies suggesting that the relationship between corporate environmental behaviour and a firm‟s environmental reputation may vary across environmental sensitive and non-sensitive industries, and in line with the aim and objectives of this study, separate path analysis models have been run for carbon intensive and non-intensive industry sectors. Therefore, a comparative study was employed to understand the similarities and differences between these two different industry sectors. Based on the pooled cross-sectional time series data of 95 UK firms (40 carbon intensive companies and 55 non-intensive companies) over the period 2009 to 2014 and by employing a time sequence design, this study found that poor carbon performers disclose more carbon information in non-intensive industries. The results showed that corporate carbon performance is not reflected in corporate carbon reputation and, more interestingly, the worst performers in carbon non-intensive industries have a better carbon reputation. The results also showed that, unlike carbon non-intensive companies where only the quality of carbon disclosure improves carbon reputation, the quantity of such disclosure (irrespective of its quality) enhances the carbon reputation of the firms with greater carbon exposure (i.e. carbon intensive companies). No direct and indirect (through carbon reputation) relationship was found between carbon performance, as well as carbon disclosure and a firm‟s economic performance, plus carbon reputation as an intangible asset only improves economic performance of carbon intensive companies. Finally, the bootstrapping method indicated that carbon reputation fully mediates the impact of the quantity of carbon disclosure in carbon intensive companies on corporate economic performance. In other words, by disclosing more carbon information (irrespective of its quality), carbon intensive companies can improve their carbon reputation and subsequently enjoy better economic performance. This study has several implications for corporate managers, investors, media and policy makers. The results showed that carbon reputation appears to be an important factor in the decision making of investors who invest in carbon intensive companies. Since carbon reputation of these companies is not based on either real carbon performance or quality of carbon disclosure, investors need to be cautious when making a decision. The results also showed a certain degree of naivety on the part of the media in evaluating corporate carbon behaviour. Such investors and media behaviour can actually reduce management‟s incentive to improve their real carbon performance in the future. The results send a clear message to regulatory bodies whose current policy for voluntary carbon disclosure is not sufficient enough to address the heart of climate change and global warming. Finally, the results also send a massage to corporate managements that improving corporate carbon performance does not come out of shareholders' pockets.

Changes in both the biotic and abiotic environment influence individuals’ physiology, morphology and behaviour and influence key ecological rates underpinning population dynamics. Environmental change is ubiquitous in natural systems and is often multifaceted, as multiple aspects of the climate often change simultaneously and the abundance and traits of species in the community are constantly fluctuating. In this thesis, we study the ecological consequences of environmental changes. We identify fundamental factors complicating our understanding of population dynamics and develop analytical tools to reliably infer, from data, the impacts of environmental change on key biological processes. We present evidence that the impacts of environmental change on population dynamics can be modified by other concurrent environmental changes. Furthermore, the impacts on a focal species will likely be strongly dependent on how the performance of interacting species are affected. We then show that the addition of predators to an environment can cause prey to become more defended against predation, at a cost of reduced population growth. Such growth-defence trade-offs are expected to drive complex population dynamics. We demonstrate that our understanding of community dynamics can be improved by identifying how consumption rates vary with changes in morphological or behavioural traits. We identify feedbacks between species’ trait and abundance dynamics. We then provide evidence that environmental warming can modify the impacts of trait change on species interactions. We inferred that this likely resulted from a modified life history strategy or altered resources allocation to growth rather than defence. Finally, we use simulation studies to assess the reliability of current methods at inferring climate effects on the demography of wild populations. We demonstrate that commonly used approaches perform poorly and also identify a reliable modelling framework. The findings of this work provided quantitative insights into the impacts of environmental change on the processes driving species’ dynamics. It also highlights the role of combined environmental change, trait change and species interaction in complicating the prediction of population dynamics.

Planning for adaptation to climate change is often considered to be more effective if grounded on a solid evidence base and recognisant of relevant climate projections. How these climate projections are communicated, perceived and used is thus a key part of the adaptation process. The process of creating communications and communication tools that are considered usable by the intended users and therefore considered to be effective decision support is impacted by a range of complex factors that need to be considered in conjunction with each other. The aim of this thesis is to examine the challenges for the communication, tailoring and use of climate projections for adaptation planning in Germany and the UK, both considered leaders on climate change adaptation, and suggest how cross-level insights from the individual, local and national scale can help to advance a more comprehensive understanding of the usability of communication tools for adaptation planning. This research adopts a multi-level perspective by exploring scientific uncertainty communication in national level adaptation strategies, usability of climate projections for local adaptation planning and comprehension and use of tailored information at the individual level. The thesis takes a mixed methods approach combining qualitative analysis from documentary and interview research with quantitative analysis using survey results. Climate projections are inherently uncertain and their communication is thus always linked to the challenge of communicating physical science uncertainty. Based on the development of a new uncertainty assessment framework for comparing approaches to the inclusion and communication of physical science uncertainty, marked differences between the National Adaptation Strategies (NAS) of ten European countries are found. Through the examination of the English and German NAS in particular, this thesis theorises that similar stages of development in adaptation policy planning can nevertheless result in differences in the handling and communication of physical science uncertainty. In addition, the results show that the wider socio-political context within which the NAS are framed affects the extent to which physical science uncertainties are communicated comprehensively. This socio-political and wider regulatory and legal context is also found to impact the demand for and use of climate projections for local adaptation planning in both England and Germany. Local planning in England has not only experienced a decline in use of climate projections, but the waning of the adaptation agenda more widely, amidst local government budget cuts and other adverse policy changes. In Germany, spatial planning makes substantial use of current climate information but the strictly regulated nature of planning prevents the use of climate projections, due to their inherent uncertainties. These findings highlight that the communication of climate projections is more effective at the local level when it is mindful of the wider context within which planning decisions are made, as this will impact the usability of provided tools and information. As the adaptation agenda within the local government planning context is often the predominant responsibility of only very few people within a given local authority, this thesis also empirically tests a number of different graph formats for the provision of climate projection information. The findings show that respondents appear to use the graph formats for their own planning decisions or for communicating with other staff within the council that they think they understand the best, rather than the ones they actually understand the best. There is no consistent association between users’ assessed comprehension and perceived comprehension, which highlights that effective information tailoring according to user needs, will require a more individualised approach and more systematic empirical testing. These findings highlight that audience specific targeted communication to support well-informed adaptation planning may be more challenging than previously thought. If the aim is to increase usability of climate projections through tailored communication, it is important to jointly consider the particular constraints or requirements of the wider socio-political and institutional context within which adaptation planning takes place as well as recognise the varying needs, demands and preferences of the individual adaptation practitioner. This research helps to provide key considerations for the provision and design of more usable tools for communicating climate change projections within their intended adaptation planning context.

The introduction of bioactive chemicals from pharmaceuticals and active ingredients in personal care products (hereafter ‘PPCPs’) may pose a threat to ecosystems and human health. With advances in monitoring and detection, Chinese scientists have established PPCPs as pervasive pollutants in water bodies. While the full effects of PPCPs are not yet fully understood, concern is growing about the implications of PPCPs in the environment. This research employed a combination of environmental, social, and economic data to better understand the ecological risks and policy options, as well as the general publics’ behavior, preferences and willingness to pay for measures aimed at preventing pollution by PPCPs in China. To achieve these aims, I conducted a structured review of the published scientific literature, took a series of qualitative interviews with Chinese scientists’ working in this field and finally collected original survey data from residents living in China. The first section of my thesis is based on the results from the structured review of the published scientific literature relating to PPCP pollution in China. This chapter provides the basis for understanding perceptions of risk among scientists and the public, and highlight what further research is needed. The second section describes the results from a series of semi-structured interviews with Chinese scientists and explores in depth their perspectives, opinions, and attitudes on current PPCP research and on future needs in the field. The third section is based on the analysis of results from a custom designed survey of Chinese residents. Results highlight that disposal of unwanted PPCPs in the trash is by far the most common disposal method and identifies significant heterogeneity in attitudes towards a proposed hypothetical disposal program. Finally the results from the contingent valuation experiment suggest a substantial willingness to pay for policy measures aimed at reducing PPCP pollution.