Thesis (B.A.)--Haverford College, Dept. of Religion, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.B.S.)--Multnomah Biblical Seminary, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 75-79).

Thesis (Ph. D.) Individualized in Human Ecology--University of Maine, 2001. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 359-375).

This study looks at the role that liberal economic norms are playing in international environmental negotiations on hazardous chemicals (including wastes), and the implications of these norms for the protection of the environment and human health from the thousands of chemicals on the market. The key trait of liberal economic norms in relation to global environmental governance is their assumption that the liberalisation of trade and finance and economic growth are both consistent with and necessary for environmental protection. From this assumption follows, for instance, the idea that states should adopt the "least-trade restrictive" measures required to protect the environment and human health. I argue that liberal economic norms are "hegemonic," in a Gramscian sense, in chemicals-related international environmental negotiations. This means that a wide range of actors, including those that do not necessarily accept the liberal economic perspective, are upholding liberal economic norms in their statements and proposals if not out of conviction then out of a perceived need to be realistic or persuasive. The most important implication of liberal economic hegemony is that it is widely assumed that human health and the environment can be effectively protected from the negative effects of hazardous chemicals even though the volume of chemicals and chemical-containing products being consumed is increasing at a spectacular rate. The issue of growing consumption of chemicals is therefore consistently framed as a problem of quality (hazardousness) rather than quantity. To understand consumption in this narrow sense is problematic, however, because there is considerable scientific uncertainty concerning the environmental and health effects of most of the chemicals on the market and because chemicals that pose minimal risks to the environment and human health might be very hazardous when they are being manufactured or upon becoming waste. In order to address the problem of hazardous chemicals effectively, it is necessary to challenge the hegemony of liberal economic norms in international environmental negotiations. This can be done, I conclude, by deepening a number of fissures in the hegemony of the liberal economic perspective that can be detected in the context of chemicals-related instruments.

This paper is an exploration of how the foundations of the land use planning system in Britain originally rooted in altruist reform and in bettering society has evolved within the context of the modern environmental agenda. This paper examines how the planning system has been changing and what further change may be required in order to cope with current environmental challenges, particularly in dealing with societal adaptation to climate change.

This paper is an exploration of how the foundations of the land use planning system in Britain originally rooted in altruist reform and in bettering society has evolved within the context of the modern environmental agenda. This paper examines how the planning system has been changing and what further change may be required in order to cope with current environmental challenges, particularly in dealing with societal adaptation to climate change.

This qualitatively-oriented thesis explores, describes, and interprets the emergence of Quebec's environmental movement, placing it in its proper historical and socio-political setting. The environmental movement was one of the myriad of new social movements that arose in the 1960s and '70's in western nations. Although it transcended national boundaries, development of environmental movements in Europe and North America differed, just as they did at more regional levels, depending on cultural distinctions, the structures of opportunity, and the amount of available resources, among other things. With its Quiet Revolution, Quebec society gained a new pluralism, secularism, and liberalism that gave the rising middle class and the large proportion of educated youth a greater say in decisions and fostered the development of public interest groups, such as environmental groups. These were aided by government grants that became available after the October Crisis in 1970. Between 1970 and 1980, environmentalism in Quebec became a legitimate societal concern as various associations and individuals began working separately and together on urban air and water pollution problems, recycling projects, and transportation and energy issues, among others. The impetus to act on behalf of the province's environment was due in part to the severity and distribution of pollution problems and to the moral and ideological convictions of group leaders and core members of environmental groups. Informal social and communication networks, such as the counterculture, the antinuclear movement, and health-food coops provided the burgeoning environmental movement with ideologies, members, and solidarity. Unlike its parallel in the United States, Quebec's movement had few historical or ideological links with efforts to preserve wilderness and it developed social- rather than nature-protection principles. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

This thesis comprises two sections. The first proposes a discursive analysis of forty journalistic reports written by Louis-Gilles Francoeur and published in 2005 in Le Devoir daily newspaper. Its author aimed to demonstrate that Francoeur promotes a conservationist progressive view of the relation that man should maintain with its natural environment, an ideological position favouring flora and fauna's conservation as well as their wise and sustainable management. The studied texts will, at first, be placed in their socio-historical context, among the emergence of a wider discourse: the environmental discourse in the Western civilization, in Quebec and in the medias. The reports' discursive strategies shall then be explored. The second part of this thesis presents the author's own creative writing, a play intitled Contes orduriers, which can be formally and thematically linked with the critical section of the present study.

The restricted approach to peace in theories of international relations (peace as the absence of war or state survival) is not conducive to the long-term alleviation of human suffering. This thesis uses the philosophy of ecology, with its holistic approach to "positive peace", as a means to critique the peace conceptions and prescriptions in the realist and liberal strands of IR theory. A review of ecological thought stresses the convergence of deep ecology and social ecology under a radical umbrella. Inspired from anarchist/naturalist philosophy, radical ecology seeks peace by defending an ethic of detachment and cooperation, a decentralized polis and economy, and a holistic epistemology: such prescriptions are shaped by a reading of nature emphasizing finiteness, wholeness, diversity, and long age. Realism is criticized for its ontology of conflict and aggression, its hierarchical view of nature, its elitist view of the polis, its endorsement of political and/or cultural homogeneity, and its materialism. Liberalism's emancipatory framework is likewise hampered by policies favoring homogeneity, materialism and "order"-through-technicity. In both cases, non-ecological (and peace-threatening) values are reinforced by positivism. The thesis concludes with a review of current challenges to IR theory, assessing their compatibility with ecological precepts. We argue that critiques from the WOMP, feminism, neomarxism, structurationism and postmodernism do play an important role in reconstructing the bases of a new "peace theory" in International Relations, but that an ecological approach can subsume such contributions under a distinctly coherent framework.

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