Geoscience Reference
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future that is fundamentally part of, rather than apart from, the realm of normal life
- and, consequently, to connect formal politics with everyday practice.
Geography's Contributions to Understanding
Environmental Governance
Each of the six problematics outlined in the previous section fi nds an expression in
geographical research on environmental governance (see fi gure 28.1). In the hands
of geographers, environmental governance has become a broad analytical frame-
work for addressing the institutional arrangements, spatial scales, organisational
structures and social actors involved in decision making around different environ-
ments and resources. The term can also imply an attentiveness to network geogra-
phies and spatial assemblages produced via fl ows of materials, both commodities
and uncommodifi ed wastes. In short, geographical work on environmental gover-
nance focuses on the institutional (re-)alignments of state, capital and civil society
actors in relation to the management of environments and resources, and the impli-
cations of these confi gurations for social and environmental outcomes. Although all
six problematics are expressed in recent geographical scholarship on environmental
governance, geographers have mobilised the language and concepts of environmen-
tal governance most extensively around two broad areas of inquiry: neoliberal
modes of environmental governance, and eco-governmentality. These are examined
in turn.
Neoliberal environmental governance
A central focus of work on environmental governance in geography has been the
effects of neoliberal policies for environmental conditions and the management of
environments and resources (Castree, 2008a,b; Himley, 2008). Neoliberalism is
characterised by an institutional realignment away from state-centric (public-sphere)
to market-based (private-sphere) forms of governance. As McCarthy and Prudham
(2004, p. 279) point out, neoliberalism '. . . entails the construction of new scales
('the global market'), shifting relationships between scale ('glocalisation', the alleged
hollowing out of the nation-state), and engagement with many scale-specifi c dynam-
ics, all of which take shape and become tangible in the context of particular cultural,
political and institutional settings'. In a broad sense, then, neoliberalism is an eco-
nomic and political project that seeks to liberalise trade (particularly international
trade), privatise state-controlled industries and services, and introduce market-
oriented management practices to the reduced public sector (Jessop, 2002). Politi-
cally, neoliberalism seeks to 'roll back' selectively certain state functions, particularly
the provision of social services and regulatory restraints on corporate practices. It
comes as no surprise then that the governance of nature and resources would also
be subject to neoliberal logic:
[E]nvironmental governance itself is increasingly oriented toward market-based, rather
than state-led, approaches: a prime example are emissions trading schemes as solutions
to pollution, such as those proposed for reducing greenhouse gases that contribute to
global warming. The rationale for this neoliberal turn in environmental governance is
that market mechanisms will harness the profi t motive to more innovative and effi cient
environmental solutions than those devised, implemented, and enforced by states.
(Mansfi eld, 2004a, p. 313).
