This dissertation addresses the impact of principles of soft law on the development of international regimes for environmental protection. It focuses on three such principles that have attracted a certain degree of consensus in international environmental law and are therefore influential in international environmental regimes: namely, the principle of common but differentiated obligations; the principle of common heritage of mankind and its corollary, the principle of common concern of humankind; and the precautionary principle. The regimes analysed are the Antarctic regime, the regime for control of trade in endangered species, the regime for protection of the stratospheric ozone layer, and the emerging regime governing conservation and management of straddling fish stocks. It is argued that these principles influence normative development in international environmental regimes through processes of discourse in which participants, both state and non-state actors, seek to determine the rules by which their mutual relations will be governed and their common interests protected. Such discourse also connects the evolution of legal rules with a broader set of concerns relating to the interest of human communities in achieving a certain level of environmental protection. In this respect, the legal rules may be contemplated within a moral framework in which members of international society seek to determine what they ought to do with respect to global environmental protection.

This dissertation contains three papers that contribute to the theory of international trade, political economy, and trade and environmental protection. The first paper develops a model to examine the costs and benefits of trade in differentiated products. It focuses on how relative ability in exporting variety between two countries determines economic welfare in both countries. The results shed light on the question of why export-promotion programs in many countries aim not only to help their existing exporting firms export more, but also to help domestic firms become new exporting firms or enter new foreign markets. The paper also discusses the possibility of over-provision of export variety and raises some questions regarding the benefits of trade in differentiated products. The second paper suggests some coherent explanations for tariff reductions and substitution of non-tariff barriers for tariffs, taking into account both organized special interests and unorganized consumer interests. It focuses on how the presence of informed consumers affects the political equilibrium choice of trade policy - both the level of protection and the policy instrument. The paper identifies three effects that interact with each other as an incumbent government substitutes a NTB for a tariff and finds, among other things, that an increase in foreign competition will not cause the government to substitute NTBs for tariffs but a rise in the government's valuation of political contributions might. The third paper shows that small or financially constrained environmentalist groups can compete indirectly through changing public preferences over environmental quality, though they may be in a weak position relative to polluting industries in the direct competition for political influence. It is also shown, however, that in a small open economy where the output price is exogenously determined, the value of domestic persuasion falls and government environmental policies will be determined by direct political competition. Moreover, direct competition for political influence in the open economy becomes more intense because positions of different groups on environmental policy become more extreme. The analysis also shows that moving to free trade would increase a country's environmental protection as long as the median voter were not very 'green'.

My thesis examines the bioregional movement in North America; its vision, values, strategies and tools for community building and networking towards a more sustainable society. The interrelated problems of the over-consumption of natural resources, the dominant cultural construct of people as consumers, and the decline of human community provide the context for my research in radical planning. The goal of my inquiry into bioregionalism (which places cultural change at the center of its paradigm for societal transformation) is to reveal lessons for a "post-Marxist" theory of civil society. This latter theory proposes a dual strategy of horizontal communicative action among associations in civil society combined with strategic vertical campaigns to democratize both state and corporations. However, it offers no ecological or cultural critique of consumption. My thesis addresses this gap. A civil society theory that incorporated lessons about consumption and cultural transformation from bioregionalism might, in turn, have lessons about integrating horizontal and vertical strategies for bioregionalism which has not sufficiently theorized its political economic strategy. I use two concepts, "social capital" and "eco-social capital", to analyze bioregional experiences. Eco-social capital refers to social capital informed by an ethic of human kinship with the natural world. Using these concepts, I first show how ecological kinship corresponds with the conservative and respectful use of resources in aboriginal societies. My study of bioregional praxis shows that story telling, earth ceremonies, ecological restoration, etc. bond bioregional actors to each other and to the "community-of-all-beings" in particular places. Social and eco-social capital provides them with spiritual resources for dedicating lives to long-term societal transformation while eschewing commodity consumption. Bioregionalists' experiences and strategy support a diverse and democratic civil society which respects and cares for the natural world. An eco-centric civil society theory would strategize long-term generational transformation in both cultural and political economic terms. Bioregional horizontal community and networking would be complemented by strategic vertical campaigns to curb the power of both state and corporations over civil society, thus strengthening democracy and a sustainable strategy for greatly reduced consumption.

This is a case study undertaken in White Rock, a postindustrial, oceanside town of 16,000 on Canada's southwest border. The participant-observation research was undertaken between 1989 and 1993 when the author was politically active in the community. Noting a challenge to an encrusted city council from a loosely affiliated group who soon became members or supporters of the "White Rock Residents' Association", the participant intervened to explore theories about the instability of post-industria1 society and the emancipatory power of new social movements. Believing that the environmentalist social movement could attract broad public appeal and was conducive to grassroots progressive politics, the participant utilized the power of environmental ideology by publically prioritizing environmental issues while seeking a council seat as a political newcomer in a town where local elections were often uncontested. Although unsuccessful and subject to countervailing gender politics, the author placed seventh on a ballot of 11 for six council positions, outperforming several long-term and influential residents of the community. Chapter One provides a brief, overview of the research project, with further methodological discussion in Appendix A. Chapter Two gives a comparative discussion of environmentalist and localist ideologies, suggesting how they pertain to the White Rock community. Chapter Three offers a profile of the community of White Rock as it undergoes certain changes while facing environmental problems. The final chapter considers changing political and power relations between local and senior governments as they respond to environmental regional problems. During the period of intervention, new political party provincial and federal governments were elected, and in White Rock a member of the White Rock Residents' Association became the city's provincial member of the legislative assembly, while an active Reform Party member became federal member of Parliament. As well, the Boundary Board of Health won a power battle with city council to eliminate swimming at White Rock's polluted west beach, demonstrating the newly won influence of the provincial government. In exploring and comparing environmentalist and localist politics, both the research and literature review indicate that environmentalist ideology and political practice can lead to a reformation of traditional localist politics, resulting in greater influence and prestige for environmental organizations.

The purpose of this thesis is to critically examine elements of public participation in environmental decision-making and to propose that public participation processes may be made more meaningful through the provision of comprehensive and flexible procedural mechanisms coupled with a true ability to affect the outcome of the process, rather than through simply granting more rights. Over the years, natural resources management has grown as a response to ecological concerns over the state and future of our environment. The law too, has developed to accommodate environmental concerns and define legal rights and procedures. Public participation becomes a vehicle for ensuring that affected interests are taken into account in environmental decision-making. In Chapter 1, the established and traditional means of involving the public in environmental decision-making such as litigation and public hearings are examined; however, they have been characterized as too restrictive, not only in terms of the parties who are included, but also the issues. Furthermore, agency administration of complex resource management issues has fuelled public discontent, as many groups understand it is an inherently political process and doubt its legitimacy. In exploring this phenomenon, this paper is first placed in a theoretical context, drawing upon ecological, legal, and ethical philosophies. However, it is also informed by the perspectives of local environmental groups and residents. The turn to other techniques, or Alternative Dispute Resolution, may seem a logical and appropriate evolution, suggesting ways for all affected parties to be involved. Chapter 2 reviews different forms of Alternative Dispute Resolution which provide some principles about the use of mediation and agreements to supplement the regulatory processes of resource management. It is important to consider the mediation process itself, the desire to remedy what is considered to be the failings of the traditional adversarial system, the psychological dynamics of the process, and the parameters for successful negotiations leading to implementation. Chapter 3 commences with an analysis of the legal context of public participation in British Columbia. It determines the discretionary authority of the administrative agencies, and the formal window of opportunity for public input, under the (federal) Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and the (provincial) British Columbia Environmental Assessment Act. This chapter also discusses an additional and interesting vehicle for public participation, although not yet implemented in British Columbia - the Environmental Bill of Rights. Chapter 4 provides a more concrete setting for the use of public participation processes, through the use of a case study - the British Columbia Transit Sky Train Extension Project. The "NIMBY", or "Not In My Backyard" scenario involved has the potential to facilitate negotiation; however, real inroads will be made through improving existing legal avenues of participation such as consultation. In fact, this key concern has been the sore point with respect to the Sky Train Project for many residents of Vancouver. In conclusion, the utility of public participation processes expressed in environmental legislation is reliant not only upon the ability of the law to be flexible enough to serve the various natural resource interests of all stakeholders, but also to be conducted in a manner that is inclusory and substantive.

Traditional theories of industrial restructuring assign the most explanatory weight of the structural change phenomenon to increasing pressures via globalization and falling trade barriers. This thesis offers a new model of thinking about industrial restructuring that includes multiple stressors. The thesis focuses on three main drivers of structural change: market pressures, environmental regulation and changes in land use and land pricing, using two case studies of leather and footwear industrial clusters in Mexico, located in the cities of León and Guadalajara. Evidence of multiple drivers of structural change is found in the dissertation. Furthermore, responses to restructuring drivers in León and Guadalajara are found to be substantially different. Firms in the leather and footwear cluster in León have implemented countervailing strategies such as price competition, government lobbying, and more recently, investment in socio-economic research (competitiveness) projects. However, firms in the leather and footwear cluster in Guadalajara focused on a specific, high-end target market. At the larger, urban scale, footwear and its allied industries in the city of León resisted change and have tried to remain in operation while the city of Guadalajara has focused on a diversification strategy, attracting new (arguably more technically advanced) industries. This thesis offers empirical and theoretical advances. Empirically, it applies a firm demographics approach to the study of industrial clusters under multiple stressors. This approach has not been previously used on Mexican data. Theoretically, it demonstrates that future analyses of industrial complexes’ structural change can be strengthened through the use of an integrated assessment framework investigating the effect of multiple stressors (market forces, land pricing, technical change, environmental regulations, and consumer preferences) on industrial restructuring.

This thesis concerns the cultural and scientific practices involved with turn-of-the-century struggles to conserve the Maine Woods. Conservation was underwritten by the powerful and productive fiction that an essential nature exists as something completely apart from the elaborately organized exhibitions by which it has been staged for our benefit. The absolute distinction between nature and culture is profoundly problematic but tremendously productive as well. Drawing on a variety of historical and theoretical sources, this thesis describes the various ways in which the essential nature of the Maine Woods was set up and represented as something demanding protection and conservation. The thesis is divided into three parts. Part I sets the stage for the historical discussions that follow by assessing debates in geography and environmental history about the social construction of knowledge and nature. Recent scholarship has been caught on the horns of a theoretical dilemma: while understanding of the present environmental crisis and its historical roots seems to demand recognition of the independent agency of nature, social theory suggests the impossibility of stepping outside the bounds of culture to represent an independent nature as it really is. Different responses to this dilemma are discussed. It is argued that environmental critique demands a more humble approach to truth, one sensitive to the meanings of its metaphors and the politics of its practices. Part II assesses the forest conservation movement. The objects of scientific forestry depended fundamentally upon the ways in which the forest was framed as an object of knowledge. Very different programs of action flowed from competing metaphorical definitions of the Maine Woods as a crop, a mine, or a kind of capital. The ascendency of technical and quantitative knowledge of the forest and its displacement of local understandings are described as are public policy disputes in Maine about the regulation of private property, the institution of publicly owned forest reserves, and the role of the state in forestry. Part in deals with the conservation of wildlife for sport. Flocking to the forest to hunt, wealthy sportsmen articulated a variety of sexual, class, and racial anxieties about the debilitating embrace of modern life. The transfomation of the Maine Woods into a vacationland for their manly recreation demanded the institution of game laws and the criminalization of traditional lifeways to save the game for sport. In these struggles, conservationists had to contend not only with local residents, who resisted this construction of the Maine Woods, but also with a variety of non-human actors, such as deer, predators, and pathogens, whose presence, though difficult to deny outright, was culturally framed and mediated in materially significant ways.

In the context of a deepening environmental crisis, there are growing calls for a planning framework informed by environmental ethics. In response, I locate this research in the ecocentric discourse and argue the need to challenge both ecological destruction and patriarchy. I raise feminist concerns about the marginalization of women from the processes by which we come to understand and respond to environmental concerns, and adopt a feminist methodology, qualitative methods, and a case study strategy to explore the subjective dimension of women's environmental activism in the context of growing concerns about the forests of Clayoquot Sound, British Columbia. The purpose of this research is to identify: (a) the critical insights that these women bring to their activism; (b) the patriarchal barriers they face in the course of their activism; and (c) the implications of the research findings for an action-oriented ecofeminism and ethics-based planning for sustainability. In-depth interviews were conducted with 20 women and their feedback (transcripts, workshop, draft research findings) incorporated into the final report. The research findings confirm that these women have critical insights to offer and that patriarchal barriers frustrate but do not totally constrain their activism. These women offer insight into the complex set of values and structures that protect the status quo, and the forest industry in particular, expose patriarchal structures and values that constrain their activism and protect the interests of a male-dominated industry, and suggest a normative foundation for sustainability that takes seriously the well-being of human and nonhuman nature, male and female. In analysing these findings, I argue for an action-based ecofeminism that moves beyond ideal notions of the ecological self, promotes a public ethic of care, challenges both constructs and structures, and critically supports the emergence of women's insights and contributions from the economic, political, and cultural margins. Furthermore, I argue that these women's insights and experiences have significant substantive and procedural implications for planning. I propose an ethics-based planning framework committed to the ecological and social integrity of 'place' and to the well-being of all who live there—human and nonhuman, male and female. In challenging the status quo, this ethics-based planning involves struggles with both external structures and internally held values. In doing so, it links the political to the personal and contributes to both structural and personal transformation.

Aplinkosauga – viena iš aktualiausių pastarųjų metų temų. Darbe analizuojamas aplinkos apsaugos politikos formavimas ir įgyvendinimas Lietuvoje, ES nuostatų derinimas su Lietuvos aplinkos apsauga, nagrinėjama aplinkos apsaugos teisinė sistema ir įstaigos, kurios įgyvendina ir modeliuoja aplinkosaugos politiką, visuomenės svarba sprendimų priėmime ir politikos įgyvendinime. Kadangi Lietuvoje visuomenės dalyvavimo sprendimų priėmimo ir įgyvendinimo tradicijos yra menkos, svarbu išsiaiskinti visuomenės požiūrį į aplinkosauginius klausimus. Darbo tikslas – įvertinti gyventojų informuotumą aplinkos apsaugos klausimais, bei ištirti jų nuostatas aplinkos politikos formavimo, įgyvendinimo ir visuomenės dalyvavimo sprendimų priėmimo klausimais. Atlikta anketinė apklausa, skirta išsiaiškinti visuomenės informavimą ir įvertinti žinias apie aplinkos apsaugos valdymo politiką, parodė, kad daugiausiai informacijos apie aplinkos apsaugą gaunama iš interneto (45 %), iš televizijos ir radijo (23 %), periodinės spaudos (14 %). Kad visuomenei informacijos apie aplinkos apsaugą nepakanka mano net 64 % apklaustieji. Respondentai svarbiausia aplinkosaugos problema įvardijo – atliekų rūšiavimą (43 %), didžioji dalis apklaustųjų (71 %), vienu iš efektyviausiu aplinkos apsaugos problemų sprendimų būdų įvardijo mokesčių ir baudų didinimą aplinkos teršėjams. Didžioji dalis gyventojų (32 %), kaip svarbiausią politikos įgyvendinimo trukdį įvardijo – visuomenės abejingumą, 41 % atsakiusiųjų... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Environmental protection - one of the most pressing topics in recent years. The paper analyzes the environmental policy-making and implementation in Lithuania, with regard to EU environemntal policy; environmental legal framework and institutions as well the main actors in environemtnal policy implementation. Attention to the public participation in environmental policy decision-making and implementation is paid. Public awareness problem and pasiveness is persistent in Lithuania, therefore public attitudes towards environmental policy formulation and implementation are of importance. The aim of the work - to assess residents' awareness of environmental issues, and to investigate their attitudes towards environmental policy making, implementation and public participation in decision-making. Conducted a survey reveal, that most of the environmental information is obtained from the Internet (45%), from television and radio (23%), periodicals (14%). 64% respondents state that information to the public about the environment is not suficient. As the most important environmental problem respondents identified – waste sorting (43%). The majority of respondents (71%) think, that one of the most efficient solution to environment problems is to increase fees and fines for polluters. The majority of the population interviewed (32%) as a key obstacle to implementation of the environmnetal policy named the indifference of society, 41% of respondents say that the environmental... [to full text]

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