Geoscience Reference
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to the nation can be met, and the ability to act upon outcomes of strategic
planning processes if satisfactory solutions to these issues are to be
found, requires that higher governmental levels should be involved
with coordinating and, where necessary, directing action for their effec-
tive resolution.
It is clear from these concerns that the distribution of signi
cant levels
of authority to localised units would undermine rather than enhance our
ability to act against problems that are endemic in society, and whose
direct consequences are inextricably linked to socioeconomic forces
operating at much broader scales than the local.
23
They also, through
highlighting weaknesses with devolutionary arguments, point to two
issues that we should focus on if we are to design an effective system of
ecological governance.
The
rst is that ecological problems are rooted in the cumulative
impacts of the political economies of places and the stresses that they
place on ecosystems in order to maintain their own functionality.
24
In
particular, they derive from the insatiable appetite for energy and resour-
ces of conurbations and industrial centres.
25
Accordingly, a sensible
starting point would be to explore, working as far as possible through
existing structures of governance, how the demands that places make on
the natural world might be reduced and how their practices, where these
are unsustainable, might be altered.
26
Thesecondisthatlinkagesshould
be created between local, regional and central governmental levels that
would allow them to cooperate in identifying the least ecologically
harmful means by which the needs of places might be satis
ed. This is
an objective which could only be achieved by local and regional bodies
and individuals with knowledge of places working with the state to
develop a national spatial overview of the different options available
for meeting demands. An effective system of ecological governance
would therefore be one in which different levels of government and
non-governmental actors interact to develop solutions that are capable
of advancing its objectives. I consider in the following sections what the
23
Owens and Cowell,
'
Land and Limits
'
, 1st edn, p. 149.
24
Lipschutz,
'
Bioregionalism
'
,p.110.
25
W. Rees,
in M. Kenny and
J. Meadowcroft (eds) Planning Sustainability (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 107;
S. M. Wheeler,
'
Scale, Complexity and the Conundrum of Sustainability
'
'
Regions, Megaregions and Sustainability
'
(2009) 43 Regional Studies,
6.
26
Rees,
864
-
'
Complexity and the Conundrum
'
,p.122.
