Although human-caused climate change is one of the greatest societal challenges of the 21st century, insights from social and environmental psychology remain underrepresented in the mitigation debate. This is surprising given that the collective potential for reducing national carbon emissions through changes in individual lifestyles and behaviours has clearly been demonstrated. Accordingly, this PhD thesis aims to provide a more systematic and detailed understanding of individual mitigation behaviour. It does so specifically by examining the social-psychological determinants of climate change risk perceptions, intentions and behaviours using a longitudinal UK national survey (N = 808, wave 1) and (N = 501, wave 2). In total, three separate analyses were conducted using the national survey data. In the first analysis (chapter 4), a social-psychological model of climate change risk perceptions is advanced. The model proposes that public risk perceptions of climate change are influenced by three key psychological dimensions, namely; (i) cognitive, (ii) experiential and (iii) socio-cultural factors. Results confirm the model’s validity and show that nearly 70% of the variance in risk perception can be explained by the model’s components. Main findings also provide empirical support for a distinction between personal and societal risk judgements and highlight important differences in their psychological antecedents. The second analysis(chapter 5) specifically investigates the interrelation between personal experience with extreme weather, affect and risk perception and situates their conceptual relationship within the cognition-emotion debate. Results provide strong support for a dual-process model, where risk perception and affect mutually influence each other in a stable feedback system. In the third analysis (chapter 6), a domain-context-behaviour (DCB) model is advanced. The purpose of the model is to causally conceptualize and systematically organize the social-psychological determinants of climate change mitigation behaviours. A key aspect of the DCB model is the notion that environmental values (i.e. the “domain”) and climate change cognitions, norms and emotions (i.e. the “context”) do not influence specific mitigation intentions and behaviours (e.g. energy conservation) directly. Rather, they influence a broad and general orienting intention to help reduce climate change. This general intention in turn activates and predicts specific mitigation intentions directly as well as indirectly via behaviour-specific determinants. Important differences emerge between high-impact and low-impact behavioural changes. Overall, results from this thesis have important implications for public policy, risk communication and behavioural change interventions.

This thesis is about economic transformation in Mexico City between 1980 and 2000. It explores the extent to which Mexico City’s economic restructuring process has been caused by trade liberalisation. The thesis assesses the extent to which industries located in Mexico City reacted to a reorientation in production focus, characterised by the shift from national to international markets. It analyses in detail the pace and geography of neo-liberal economic change, and its effects upon a specific location. It also evaluates the role played by global economic agents in gauging the forces influencing economic restructuring in Mexico, and particularly in Mexico City. At the core of this restructuring process is the change in regional industrial location patterns in Mexico, as well as the decline of manufacturing – with regard to production and employment – in Mexico City and its rise as a service centre. The thesis therefore engages with current debates on new economic geography on the one hand and globalisation on the other, focusing attention on the possible emergence of a group of “global” urban centres embedded in a broader network of cities in developed and developing countries alike, which connect global production circuits and coordinate global/regional markets. More concretely, the thesis focuses on the automotive and consumer electronics industries with the aim of understanding the causes and effects of economic events in terms of location decisions, particularly those made by transnational corporations. By placing the empirical processes of economic restructuring within the theoretical context of trade liberalisation and globalisation, I seek to make an original contribution to social science debates about the way industry reacts to economic signals and how global processes, despite taking place in specific locations, have wide-reaching effects upon social welfare, mainly though the transformation of local labour markets.

Learning is frequently regarded as facilitating factor for policy outcomes across multiple levels of governance. Learning however competes with alternative explanations such as bargaining, actor’s interests and organisational objectives. This thesis examines from an institutional perspective the link between individual learning of policymakers and learning among governmental institutions and analyses to what extent learning matters for the policy outcome. It finds that policy entrepreneurs play a key role in transferring learning to the organisational level and in achieving policy outcomes. The empirical focus is on learning in climate policy integration, which carries increasing importance for effective environmental governance as it can help create synergies for economic development and climate mitigation. The European Union is a frontrunner in integrating climate objectives into energy, transport and agriculture policy via regulatory instruments setting overall targets and conditioning financial resources upon compliance. This thesis uses qualitative methods to examine learning in the policymaking aspects of climate policy integration at the examples of the Renewable Energy Directive, its controversial biofuels component and the greening measures in the Common Agricultural Policy. This research makes several original contributions to the agency aspects of environmental governance: the meta-theoretical framework on learning allows a more nuanced analysis of what learning aspects occur in governance such as knowledge- and experience-based learning versus changes in different types of underlying beliefs. It also allows determining the extent to which a policy outcome results from learning or alternative explanations. This contribution clarifies the under-researched link between the learning individual, changes in beliefs and the factors hindering learning from being transferred to the organisational level where policy decisions are made. Policy outcomes resulted predominantly from policy entrepreneurs using previously acquired knowledge and experience to achieve a policy outcome aligned with their pre-formed deeper beliefs and policy objectives. Overall, the thesis provides a fresh perspective on the relevance of learning in the policymaking process and of bureaucrats as policy entrepreneurs.

This research examines the usefulness of applying theoretical principles from the Sociology of Translation and Actor Network Theory to the scenario of biodiversity planning in Oxfordshire between the early nineteen nineties and 2001. It develops a model derived from a social constructionist approach to considering Nature, and seeks to apply it to empirical data on the development of Oxfordshire's Local Biodiversity Action Plan. The data is considered in relation to the four poles of the model which are the 'scientific knowledge or technical' pole; the 'institutional' pole; the 'production of practices' pole and the 'nature protected' pole. The idea that is applied is that scientific knowledge that is generated for a purpose becomes the accepted wisdom and consequently is institutionalized. From this acceptance of the importance of scientific or technical authority, practices will then be generated (for example, land or water management strategies) and these then protect particular elements of nature; essentially what society, and more specifically, the actors involved with problematising the issue deem as being elements that are important to preserve. Also, there is a time and space dimension built into the model since the author builds on the ideas of actor-network theorists who argue that a network is not a flat shape but that actors may act at a distance (e.g. global actor) but still be linked into a localized network. Similarly, actors may be incorporated from different times but may be held into place within a given network because their views or actions are part of a stable agreement (e. g. text/intermediary object) that has encapsulated a number of different actors. The actor-networks presented in this thesis are heterogeneous in nature in that they incorporate elements of nature and the human world as different actors represent the views of others. The research explores stable and unstable networks that are founded within consensual approaches through partnership working between many different types of organisation.

Mass movement, fluvial erosion, sediment transport and earthworks - induced instability, often pose major problems for highway design and construction in mountain terrain. This thesis examines the contribution that geomorphological techniques can make to the evaluation of these hazards for highway design purposes in the Lower Himalaya. A review of the consequences of geomorphological hazards to highway stability is illustrated by reference to selected mountain roads in India and Nepal. The design, stability and construction costs of these roads are discussed in respect to their status or function in the road network and, more particularly, the severity of hazards and terrain conditions they encounter. Techniques of hazard and terrain assessment for highway design purposes are examined and tested in the remainder of the thesis. Techniques of medium-scale (1: 10 000-1: 50 000) landslide hazard mapping and large-scale (greater than 1: 10 000) geomorphological ground survey are discussed and tested in the Dharan-Dhankuta area of Nepal, in terms of their ability to provide useful information for alignment design, road stabilization and protection works. The contribution of geomorphological ground survey to highway design is critically assessed by reference to the Dharan-Dhankuta road, and its stability following a high magnitude storm in 1984. A proforma method for assessing flooding, erosion and sediment hazards in small mountain channels is developed. Discharge data for the 1984 storm are derived from these proformas and used to test a number of selected ungauged catchment equations, and to develop empirical relationships between peak discharge and catchment variables for purposes of high magnitude runoff prediction from small catchments. In addition, low-cost, low technology methods for monitoring discharge, slope erosion, sediment transport and mass movement are tested in terms of their ability to provide meaningful data in the short-term for design purposes. Finally, optimum strategies of hazard and terrain assessment for highway design are proposed. The potential for further application of geomorphological techniques and expertise to mountain highway design is discussed.

In a recent discussion of research priorities for palaeoecology, it was suggested that palaeoecological data can be applied and used to inform nature conservation practice. The present study exemplifies this approach. It was conducted on three degraded blanket mires in Yorkshire, UK, in collaboration with a field-based moorland restoration agency. High-resolution, multiproxy palaeoecological analyses on peat cores from Mossdale Moor, Oxenhope Moor and West Arkengarthdale reconstructed mid- to late-Holocene vegetation changes. Humification, pollen, plant macrofossil and charcoal analyses carried out throughout the peat profile at each site show marked changes in species composition and indicate their potential causes. Results suggest that human clearance in the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition may have initiated peat growth at Mossdale Moor, making this landscape ‘semi-natural’ in its origin. Further human-induced changes are identified at 1300 cal. years BP at Mossdale Moor, 2100 cal. BP at Oxenhope Moor and c. 3250 cal. BP at West Arkengarthdale, most likely deliberate clearance by fire. Increased anthropogenic activity is identified at each site since the industrial revolution where monocots and Eriophorum vaginatum increase, consistent with rises in charcoal at Mossdale Moor and West Arkengarthdale. These are interpreted as recent (<300 years) management practices using burning to encourage browse on the moor. Climatic deteriorations have also been identified, with wetter conditions at 5000 cal. BP and 4400 cal. BP at West Arkengarthdale and Oxenhope Moor, c. 2400 cal. BP at Mossdale Moor and West Arkengarthdale and the Little Ice Age at each site. It is intended that these long-term ecological histories of the sites, derived using palaeoecological techniques, will be used to inform conservation practice and can help set feasible targets for restoration and conservation.

Shelf seas are small in size (< 10% surface area of the oceans) but are highly productive, where up to 40% of oceanic carbon sequestration takes place. They also have great economic and social importance as they are widely used for fishing, waste disposal and fossil fuel extraction. Fishing resources are economically important and it is estimated that the UK industry is worth £800-1200 million. As a result there is a greater need to understand the dynamics of these systems. This study focuses on the Celtic and Irish Seas of the North West European Continental Shelf and assesses biological and biogeochemical processes across four distinct physical regions. A multidisciplinary approach has been employed to study biological communities across the shelf sea. In this study it has been observed that benthic, pelagic and particulate organic matter (POM) communities appear to adapt in response to different physical environments. Small scale adaptations of organisms were observed between regions of different water column structure. Hence, statistically significant differences in nitrogen isotope values for benthic suspension feeders indicate that these invertebrates are flexible in their feeding, depending on the environment and food availability. Changes in the pelagic community were also observed across the shelf sea. At the shelf break large typically oceanic zooplankton species and larvae were present coinciding with a change in phytoplankton community structure towards larger cells in surface waters when compared to the rest of the shelf sea. The structure of the water column, particularly with respect to mixing and turbulence seems to influence the lability of material sinking through the water column and in turn, the response of heterotrophic communities, which apparently follow the food resource. A change in hydrodynamic setting of a seasonally stratified water column, which led to the partial erosion of the subsurface chlorophyll max (SCM), enabled the impact of a storm-driven mixing event to be determined. The apparent loss of chlorophyll a from the SCM led to the material being redistributed vertically through the water column, as illustrated by the distributions of biological markers (lipids) through the water column before and after the storm. Zooplankton communities also showed evidence of vertical redistribution; prior to the wind event, 80% of the community was in the upper water column, whereas their distribution was even after the wind event. As a result, the storm apparently increased the complexity of the food web dynamic and this change drew more similarities to vertically mixed regions of the shelf than stratified regions.

Environmental change presents the greatest challenges to biodiversity conservation. From climate changes to land cover conversion and pollution effects, global biodiversity faces many threats. Though conservation actions have been put into place to halt the loss of biodiversity, recent studies suggest that conservation actions have largely failed to do this. Hence, understanding the links between species responses, environmental pressures and the role of species characteristics in conferring resilience to these environmental pressures would be fundamental to develop adequate conservation measures. This thesis focuses on a range of approaches to investigate the impacts of well-known environmental pressures on the passerine community in the UK to try to uncover mechanisms underpinning species responses to environmental change. Furthermore, considering that bird species are currently been used as biodiversity indicators, it would be of great use to identify new venues to measure and monitor species responses to environmental change that would help improve the current set of indicators. Examining multiple pressures within the same analytical framework was valuable for demonstrating that land cover and pollution drivers are of equivalent importance to climate in structuring bird communities at a broad scale in the UK. Both community and niche studies revealed that winter conditions and pollution were key in structuring passerine communities together with pollution at this broad scale. In terms of colonisation and extinction processes the spatial structure of the species occupancy appeared to have a dominant role in driving the observed dynamics as well as again, climate change in terms of warming winter temperatures. Throughout this thesis, the above mentioned ecological responses were linked to species ecological traits with the aim of gaining a greater understanding of the mechanisms underpinning species’ differential responses to environmental change and identifying those trait groups that may be most vulnerable or most valuable as indicators. A significant group of characteristics that consistently appeared to be linked to species resilience to observed environmental pressures (particularly climate change) was phenological traits. Species with earlier laying dates and/or longer laying periods were associated with increasing population trends, larger colonisation rates and smaller extinction rates. Also analysis of species niches in relation to environmental pressures not only revealed the dynamic nature of niche parameters, confirming niche evolution and niche tracking in some species but also confirmed their relationship with both species characteristics and current conservation categories. Finally this study reiterated the fact that relationships between species characteristics and environmental pressures involve complex interactions that significantly affect and transform species responses to environmental pressures. For example the interaction between migratory behaviour and phenological traits (i.e. earlier laying dates and longer laying periods) meant that migrant species were less likely to have declining populations or that warming winter temperatures were associated with increased colonisation for migrants or species with more annual broods were less likely to show extinction in cells with temperature increase. All these results not only confirm the suitability of birds and particularly passerine species as indicators of environmental use and their potential and importance as part of indices and monitoring programmes but also highlights the importance of updating the next generation of indicators with measurements that can take into account important species characteristics associated with resilience to environmental pressures (i.e. phenological traits).

In Egypt, as in most developing countries, highly technical plans are drawn up, but nobody puts them into practice. They always end up gathering dust on the shelves of national agencies or local government without being utilised to make improvements to local economic or environmental well-being. The main flaws in the current plan-making process are centred on central government’s monopoly in decision-making; fragmentation between government agencies leading to multiple and often conflicting spatial plans for the same location; and an absence of effective negotiation mechanisms between various stakeholders. These problems can be clearly demonstrated with reference to ecotourism planning. Such plans are being developed in highly sensitive regions, both environmentally and culturally, and there is a wide spectrum of stakeholders who are affected and influenced by any ecotourism development. Ecotourism development planning is a complex issue to the extent that it is beyond the capacity of any one stakeholder acting alone to resolve. These arguments are circular and very unlikely to be solved without effective collaboration between relevant stakeholders; such collaboration may avoid the costs of resolving long-running conflicts and improve the implementation rate of plans. The most appropriate starting point for this is focusing on the planning process by ensuring that development plans properly reflect stakeholder interests and deal with their conflicts through face-to-face dialogue. Therefore, the main aim of this thesis was ″To design a practical framework for operationalising a collaborative planning approach in regional planning using ecotourism development as a case study″. A case study approach was adopted to examine whether the formulated conceptual framework could be applied in practice. Evidence from the case studies was drawn from a critical documentary review of three Egyptian ecotourism planning initiatives, combined with observation and semi-structured interviews with 67 ecotourism experts and stakeholders. Gaps in operationalising stakeholder engagement in the current planning processes as well as the barriers which have hindered the efficiency of stakeholder participation were identified from this evaluation. The final part of this thesis attempted to provide a number of recommendations to fill in these gaps and mitigate the barriers. The most important contribution was that of developing a practical framework for collaborative ecotourism planning that could be used to enhance stakeholder engagement during the planning process, for regional development in general and ecotourism in particular. This framework attempted to provide a methodology and guidelines on the operationalisation of stakeholder engagement during the planning process, designed to increase the likely success of plan implementation.

This research explores the use of spatial concepts in sub-national land-use planning and economic development policy, and in the governance of these, by examining the application of policy from local, regional, national and European levels of government over the course of three decades. The research seeks to investigate how, and to what extent, spatial concepts have entered sub-national planning and development policy in order to better understand the ways in which policy has been able to account for the increased spatial complexity of contemporary social and economic life. The prospects of cities and regions have been dramatically altered by increasing economic globalisation, leading to a shift in understandings of urban and regional growth towards models and explanations that incorporate spatial concepts. These global scale changes are affecting patterns of economic and social activity in cities and regions in such a way as to alter the roles of, and relationships between, territories and places. Policy-makers thus face challenges relating to the nature of economic development interventions under shifting interpretations of distance, the problem of coordinating different policy areas towards shared territorial aims and the difficulty of managing spatial development processes that transcend administrative boundaries. Using as a case study region the North West of England, the thesis addresses these concerns by exploration of the roles played by a range of organisations lodged at a number of governmental scales and of the strategies used by these towards the achievement of planning and development aims. The thesis concludes that the integration of spatial concepts into the planning and development of the case study region is a process strongly mediated by political and other institutional agencies active there. The nature of spatial development policy is subject to the negotiated processes of the governance arena and the form taken by spatial strategies reflects the interaction of contemporary strategies with inherited and existing plans, strategies and spatial visions. It is suggested that the extent to which spatial development policy can address the spatial complexity of economic and social life in contemporary regions may be dependent upon the ability of policy-makers to engage in innovative and expedient solutions to spatial problems that span administrative boundaries and policy remits.