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roles of central, regional and local levels of government, and of members
of the public, should be in this collaborative system and how relations
between them should be structured to ensure that they contribute
collectively to reaching overarching goals.
4.4 The state ' s role in ecological governance
Proposals for the devolution of authority have been closely associated
with a critique of the role of nation states in addressing environmental
problems, and with arguments either that they lack the strength in a
globalised world to address the causes of harm to ecosystems or that they
represent active obstacles to the realisation of sustainability. Doubts over
the ability of states to bring about an improvement in ecological con-
ditions is evidenced by the sheer range of prescriptions that have been
advanced in green political thought as to how sustainable development
might be achieved despite their perceived weaknesses, or even without
their involvement. 27 Critics point to the failure of states to halt ecological
degradation as evidence that environmental concerns would better be
dealt with at higher or lower political levels. 28 States are also seen as
institutions that are too bound up with the mechanisms of global capital-
ism (both as participants in and upholders of the international
nancial
system) for them to take action that would undermine its hegemony. 29
Others have recognised, although the deterioration of the global
environment has happened, as it were, on their watch, that the involve-
ment of states with reforming economic and social models remains
essential if ecological challenges are to be met. Green political theorists
who have explored possibilities for reforming current political structures
rather than discarding them argue that the state alone possesses the
authority, the legitimacy, the resources, and the powers of coordination
and redistribution to initiate a transformation of the magnitude which
the implementation of ecologically oriented policies would require, to
impose associated environmental and resource constraints, and to man-
age the potential consequences of change where these may result in
27 L. J. Lundqvist,
'
A Green Fist in a Velvet Glove: The Ecological State and Sustainable
Development
'
(2001) 10 Environmental Values, 456.
28 Christoff,
'
Green Governance and the Green State
'
, pp. 290
-
4.
29 M. Kenny and J. Meadowcroft,
in M. Kenny and J. Meadowcroft (eds)
Planning Sustainability (London: Routledge, 1999),p.2;WestonandBollier,
'
Introduction
'
'
Green
Governance
'
,pp.3
-
4, 20
-
3.
 
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