From climate change to environmental justice?

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Table of contents

Introduction. Is there something "left" to say about climate change?

1. Peter Barnes Towards a fair climate policy

4. Dan Smith Adapting to the threats of climate change

9. Bill McKibben Out of the safety zone

12. Philip Sarre Environmental justice requires economic reform

15. Stephanie Posthumus Framing French eco-difference: A brief overview

18. Michail Fragkias Connecting global environmental change to environmental justice:

The critical role of cities and good urban governance

22. Ed Wall Watershed urbanism

27. Carme Melo Escrihuela Towards an urban ecological citizenship

31. Nathan Young A return to the commons?

Why the environment (still) matters in democratic theory

34. Dimitrios Zachariadis Social media and environmental activism

About Re-public

Re-Public is an online journal focusing on innovative developments in contemporary political theory and practice.

We aspire to participate in the process of re-imagining democracy, broadly conceived as referring to the multitude of practices that shape everyday life.

Our contributors will not attempt to impose their arguments, but to provide original, creativeviews on issues they have either experienced or researched on. They are academics, journalists, artists, authors, politicians, and active citizens coming from almost the entire politicalspectrum. Some contributions, like the editorial, will be written collaboratively with the help ofwiki software.

Editorial board of Re-public:

Thodoros Karounos [email protected]

Paulina Lampsa [email protected]

Managing editor: Pavlos Hatzopoulos [email protected]

Web developer: Giorgos Karamanolis [email protected]

Translations:

Karina Lampsa [email protected]

Sofia Michalaki [email protected]

Art design: Fotini Kapiri [email protected]

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introductionIs there something "left" to say about climate change?

When the politics of climate change is brought once again on the table, an understandable

reaction would be that this is yet another Ðperhaps the- topical issue where 'too much is said

and relatively little done'. It is then admittedly rather difficult to hold that a collection of essays

has something to add in the debate. The globalization of environmental issues, including climate

change, is today part of the mainstream political agenda. A seeming consensus has been reached

by most progressive forces that the environmental crisis is primarily a political problem that

requires solutions global in scope and their implementation at transnational, national and local

levels. And yet, what seems to be lacking is the effectiveness of these solutions, or at least

the fear is that current solutions fall short of the problem, that we are not currently doing any-

thing near enough about global warming.

We will refrain, however, from entering the debate on the conclusiveness or the inconclusive-

ness of the scientific evidence about global warming. We will refrain from entering the debate

on the impacts of current climate policies or of the impacts of the lack of action. Instead, the

starting point of this special issue is that even is someone simply points to the problem of a

potential climate catastrophe s/he needs to raise the question of global justice. What we have

tried in this special issue is to pose questions that treat climate change as primarily a social

problem; we have sought to explore the interconnections between environmental protection and

social justice:

. What are, or might become, the points of convergence between developed and

developing countries in the politics of climate change?. How can environmental politics become connected to the fight against global

poverty? . Are ecological movements and environmental education currently lacking in dealing with

problems of social equality?. Is "green marketing" beneficial to both the environment and to the democratisation of

markets?. To what extent, does social justice entail the promotion of new, more decentralised

models of energy production and distribution?

The questions are by no means novel, but we think that they should inform any progressive

thinking for addressing climate change. Their articulation seems straightforward, but the point is

whether 'there is something "left" to say' about them.

From climate change to environmental justice?

A special issue of online journal Re-public

All the contents of the ÒFrom climate change to environmental justiceÓ special issue arelicensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Greece License. To view acopy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/gr/; or, (b) send aletter to Creative Commons, 171 2nd Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105,USA.

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1Peter Barnes - Towards a fair climate policy

If we don’t understand a problem, it’sunlikely we’ll be able to fix it. So letÕsbegin by asking, with regard to the climatecrisis, what is the problem we need to fix?

Often in public policy, the problem we needto fix isn’t immediately obvious. Sometimes we see symptoms without seeingthe underlying problem. Other times we seepart of the problem but not the whole. On

the surface, climate change appears to be an environmental problem, or perhaps a technolog-ical one. But deeper down, it’s a result of two economic and political failures.

The first of these is a market failure. Humans are dumping ever-rising quantities of greenhousegases into the atmosphere because there are no limits or prices for doing so. There are, however, huge costs - costs that are shifted to future generations. When people don’t pay thefull cost of what they’re doing, but instead transfer costs to others, economists call this “a Ômarket failure.”Õ Nicholas Stern, former chief economist at the World Bank, has said that climate change isÒthe “biggest market failure the world has ever seen.”Ó

The second cause of global warming is misplaced government priorities. Because polluting corporations are powerful and future generations don’t vote, our governments not only allowscarbon emissions to grow, but subsidizes them in numerous ways. Thus, despite all we knowtoday about climate change, about two-thirds of US federal energy subsidies currently go, forexample, to fossil fuels.

It’s important to recognize that these twin failures permeate our entire economy. They’re notproblems of the electricity sector, the automobile sector or the building sector; they’re problems of all sectors and must be treated at that level. They distort the behavior of all individuals and businesses. No matter how ‘responsible’Õany of us may be, our separate actionscan’t overcome what these twin failures make most of us do most of the time. What’s requiredare fixes for both system failures. We need to limit and pay for atmospheric pollution, and weneed to shift government’s attention from dirty fuels to clean alternatives. If we don’t do bothof those things, we won’t stop climate change.

Many economists (and others) from awide range of political viewpoints arecoming to support the idea of cap-and-dividend or tax-and-rebate as the mostsensible way to address climatechange. It’s important to note that thetwo approaches (cap or tax) are func-tionally equivalent. Both policies areintended (1) to raise the price of thecarbon emissions that cause globalwarming, thereby discouraging thoseemissions and encouraging alternatives,and (2) to do so in a way that doesnot place the burden of adjustment dis-proportionately on the poor.

Towards a creative synthesis

The obvious ambiguity of the question comes out stronger after our initial call for papers.

Although most of the initial questions that we have posed remain open, what has emerged is

the need to connect approaches, ideas, and actions. What has emerged is a common

understanding that we connect to our world in dynamic and unpredictable ways. In order to

address climate change, we, not only need to be methodical and pragmatic, we should open

our minds to comprehend new patterns and pursuit novel proposals.

The complexity of social/environmental challenges can be seen as an opportunity to move freely

between different problems, situations and vested behaviours. This agility creates instances

(proposals for solutions) and moves towards their re-shaping and their re-introduction. Let's not

dream about new social relationships, let's contribute with a creative, unexpected synthesis of

concepts and actions. Let's attempt to incorporate the challenges of the wider commons and

open movement(s) in the new socialist agendas.

What is "left" to say about climate change does not then necessarily resemble a roadmap

consisting of principles and proposed actions. It might become, instead, a call for

experimentation, an experimentation that is critical towards contemporary structures of

production and distribution.

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3trillion dollars - will flow straight from our pockets to the shareholders of polluting companies.If rewarding polluters is the wrong way to go, the right way is to make them pay. That requiresa well-designed system.

Taxes vs. caps

Economists agree that, one way or another, we must raise the price of dumping carbon intothe atmosphere. The debate is about how to do that. A carbon tax is one way. Initially, fuelcompanies would pay the tax and government would get the revenue. But fuel companies wouldpass the tax on to consumers, so in the end, a carbon tax is like a sales tax on necessities.As such, it’s a regressive tax that is, the lower your income, the bigger the bite a carbon taxtakes.

A carbon cap is an indirect way to charge for dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.It puts a physical limit - a cap - on the supply of fossil fuels or the quantity of carbon dioxide emissions. To implement the cap, the government issues a gradually declining number of permits. As the supply of permits declines, the price of carbon rises. Since this price is ultimately paid by consumers, a carbon cap is as regressive as a carbon tax.

How much will a carbon tax or cap cost the average household? According to the CongressionalBudget Office, when the cap is 15 percent below the current level of emissions, the averageU.S. household will pay $1,160 a year in higher energy prices. As the cap goes down fromthere, the cost to households goes up. A tax that achieves the same reductions would cost asmuch. That’s no small burden to be adding to the already tight budgets of American families -it will pinch not just the poor, but the entire middle class. And it could dampen consumer buying power just when the U.S. economy needs a boost.

Fortunately, there’s a way to offset this hit on household incomes - it’s what economists call “revenue recycling.”Ó The idea is to return to house-holds, in aggregate, the extra money they’llpay when carbon prices go up. Some households will pay more in higher prices than they getback, while others will pay less, but overall, house-hold incomes will be maintained. Most econ-omists agree that revenue recycling in some form is a good idea. Among political figures, Al Gore has come out squarely for it. ”We need to put a price on carbon,” Gore said in hisNobel acceptance speech, with a tax that is rebated back to the people progressively.ÓHispreferred recycling method is to refund a portion of workers’ payroll taxes.1

A better way to recycle carbon revenue is to do what Alaska does with proceeds from itsoil leases - pay equal dividends to all residents.2 This would cover everyone who pays high-er energy prices, not just wage earners who pay payroll taxes. Refunding only to those whopay payroll taxes would leave out retired people, young people, stay-at-home parents, workers in the informal economy, and half the poorest people in America. By returning highercarbon prices to all Americans equally, we’d have a system in which everyone pays to pollute, but conservers come out ahead. People who drive big cars and heat large homes wouldpay more in higher energy prices than people who ride buses and live in small apartments.Since all would get the same amount back, conservers would gain and guzzlers would lose.Green behavior would be rewarded while polluting behavior is penalized.

In short, a cap-and-dividend system would be the simplest, fairest and most effective way tosolve the climate crisis - and the most politically popular way as well.

[1] Al Gore, “Nobel Lecture”, delivered in Oslo on 10 December 2007.[2] See Peter Barnes, Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons (San Fransisco: Berrett-KoehlerPublishers, 2006) chap. 5.

2What makes good climate policy?

Policies are attempts by government to solve problems. They can be evaluated on three grounds:

1. How effectively do they solve the problem? 2. Whose interests do they serve?3. What principles do they advance?

Some policies are little more than hot air. They are efforts by politicians to look good without offending their backers. Many tackle only part of a problem. They may achieve smallgains, but they don’t address the core problem, which continues to get worse.

Other policies are giveaways to private interests. Typically, they’re cloaked in public interestlanguage, but their effect is to enrich a few corporations. Lobbyists work hard to get policieslike these. A few policies genuinely solve big problems, serve the interests of ordinary people,and advance important principles such as fairness. These are the policies citizens should actively support. Social Security, for example, solves the problem of old age poverty in a waythat’s fair to all. That same standard should apply to climate policy.

What’s fair?

Fairness is one of the most important principles a climate solution should embody. But whatexactly is it? There are many dimensions to fairness. For example, there’s interspecies fairness:are we humans being fair to other species? There’s international fairness: are we in America,who have emitted more greenhouse gases than any other country, being fair to the rest of theworld? There’s inter-generational fairness: are those living today being fair to their children andgrandchildren? And there’s intra-generational fairness: if a policy enriches a small minority, whileplacing burdens on everyone else, is such a policy fair to our fellow citizens?

The key test for interspecies, international and intergenerational fairness is: will this policy reduceemissions fast enough to prevent planetary catastrophe? If not, we have to try harder. The keytest for intra-generational fairness is: does this policy equitably share the burdens and gains ofcurbing climate change? During World War II, the draft applied equally to all males, andrationing meant the same shares for everyone. Fairness wasn’t an afterthought; it was built intoour policies from the outset.

Who will pay for climate stability?

Every public policy has winners and losers. Sometimes it’s obvious who those are, but moreoften, it takes some digging to understand how the money flows. The typical way special interests get money from government is through subsidies and tax breaks. In those cases, alltaxpayers pay, and favored companies gain. Subsidies and tax breaks are very much on thetable in climate policy debates. But the climate crisis presents several other ways for businesses to enrich themselves at public expense, and citizens must watch carefully.

For example, one proposal to cap carbon emissions would give polluting companies free emission permits worth billions of dollars. Other proposals would create a loosely regulatedsystem of carbon offsets that would help traders profit, but add little public benefit.The big economic question in climate policy is whether polluters should pay or be paid. If carbon permits are given free to historical polluters, energy prices will rise and we’ll all paymore to whoever gets the permits. That wealth transfer - which over time could exceed a re-pub


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570% by 2030. The increase of urban population is partly caused by reproduction in the cities,but also by rural depopulation. One third of the worldÕs urban population currently lives inslums, and in those slums, they very often have very little or no access to clean water andsanitation, let alone things like education and healthcare, law and order, and personal securityand safety.

These slums covering large areas of some of the mega cities in the world are becoming no-go areas as far as law and order are concerned and are turning into self-ruled little enclaves,ruled by gangs. Obviously it’s very hard, almost impossible, to involve those areas and thepeople who live in them in programmes of adaptation to the threats of climate change. If youlook at cities like Karachi or Mumbai, although these places are facing environmental risks, itis very hard to educate and engage local populations so that they respond to those risks.

Maria Kampouri: In many cases, western civil society organisations operating in developing countries are often perceived by local populations as remnants of the colonial period. Do youagree with this assessment and do you consider it as an important problem in relation to climate change policy in developing countries?

Dan Smith: I would like to distinguish various different components of this set of problems andissues, which you are raising. One of them is the potentially constructive role of civil society.I think it is true that if countries can develop a strong civil society then their capacity for development, for good governance, for freedom and liberties and also amongst other things foradaptation to climate change all increase and I think there are good empirical reasons for saying so. The second point concerns homogenisation. It is wrong and even destructive to thinkthat civil society should look the same in every country and I think there are cases where theprojection of the European or of the slightly different North American model of civil societyonto developing countries has been inappropriate and unhelpful. Third, I think that civil societyshould already get credit for putting the issue of climate change on the global agenda. Politicianswere not prepared to address these issues if civil society had not pushed forward the argument that it was urgent to designi a sound climate policy.

Climate change and global warming are issues that outlast the life of a government. These areproblems that will continue to haunt us for another century - what is achieved during the lifeof a US administration or of an EU presidency is relatively limited. This is not the kind of issuethat fits the shape of contemporary western political thinking. But scientists, some journalists andnon-governmental organizations have really pushed the awareness of this issue forward andhave said no, this is something that has got to be dealt with. Nonetheless, when the governments take it on and start to deal with it, the various ways they come up with forapproaching the issue are top-down and involve as little change as possible.

Maria Kampouri: The reason why I’m asking is that I know people working for environmentalNGOs in Africa, for example, claiming that civil society should emerge from a country itselfand it is very difficult for foreigners often to understand the way local societies work. Carbontrading, the way it is practiced in Africa is a good example.É

Dan Smith: This type of criticism is absolutely correct. There are some international NGOs,which operate as if they were part of the civil society of the Democratic Republic of Congo,or Liberia, or Tanzania and that’s artificial and itÕs fake, but that does not mean to say thatinternational NGOs are incapable of doing anything good. They can be of great help. But youhave to understand that when you’re involved in this kind of activity that everything depends

4Dan Smith - Adapting to the threats of climate change

Maria Kampouri: Considering that the occurrence of sudden and often violent climate changethrough geological time has been well documented, why are we so concerned about the changeswe see today?

Dan Smith: Well, the way that we live, whether we realise it or not in our highly urbanisedsocieties, is very dependent on the climate and the natural environment. Even minor changes,like increases of gas emissions or of average temperatures can have a really big effect onour lives.

In Australia, for example, there have been droughts for several years coupled with the recentfrightening forest fires, of which of course Greece has also got experience. But maybe themore serious problem in Australia is that rice growing has been reduced by 98%. Now if we’rewondering why there is a food crisis going on at the moment and prices are rising and thereare starting to be riots where people are unable to afford their food, drought is one of thereasons. There is every reason, in other words, to be concerned today about climate change.

Maria Kampouri: How do the processes of overpopulation and urbanisation compromise ourability to adapt to these climatic changes that we face today?

Dan Smith: The worldÕs population has been increasing in dramatic speed as I think everybodyknows. In the 1820s the world population was about 1 billion and it reached three billion in1960. Today, it has surpassed the 6 billion mark and it may go on to reach 9 billion by themiddle of the 21st century. In historical perspective this is just a staggering increase. At thesame time, we have obviously cultivated more land, we have improved our farming techniques,we have much better food storage and distribution than we ever did and, yet, there is still thequestion as to whether we can really be so efficient and so creative that the planet can bearthe burden of all of these people.

On the one hand, I donÕt think that the case is proven that the planet is overpopulated. Onthe other hand, it is clear that, for example, problems in relation to the production and con-sumption of food and energy are made more intense because of the increase of the globalworld population.

You have also mentioned urbanisation. About 50% of the world population lives in cities at themoment and on current projections this number will perhaps reach somewhere in the vicinity of

Climate change is upon us and its physical effects have started to unfold. In thisinterview, Dan Smith talks about the social and human consequences that are likelyto ensue - particularly the risks of conflict and instability. He argues that adaptationto climate change is only going to work if it is closely related to development andalso becomes an integral part of any peace process.

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7carbon emissions made over the previous century. If we reduce carbon emissions now and doit seriously, then in about 3 or 4 decades time we should start to see the benefits of ouractions.

For developing countries in particular, weÕve got to be concerned about what happens in theintervening 35 to 40 years between now and when reduced carbon emissions are to be felt.During that time developing countries will be facing (according to what projections suggest) moredroughts in dryer places, more flooding in others, shifts in disease patterns, food shortages,possibly mass migrations, and increased risk of conflict. Simply relying on carbon trading toresolve this complex set of issues is completely off the mark, completely off target. What’sneeded is to work with developing countries to help them to adapt so that they can face theconsequences of climate change, so that if floods happen, they would be more prepared toaddress their consequences, for example. Obviously, their ability to face these challenges willbe increased if they have more economic capacity and so the reform of the world trading

system is actually a part of a fair and a just response to climate change.

Maria Kampouri: So in cases where states are extremely vulnerable to conflict, how can theyparticipate in the global climate change agenda?

Dan Smith: In our “A Climate of Conflict“ report we have shown that climate change, interacting with weaknesses in the political, economical and social infrastructures of countriescreates a serious risk of armed conflict in about 46 countries and a risk for serious political instability in other 56 countries. This assessment is based on a projection spanning the next10 to 15 years. We believe that food insecurity will be a major trigger for these developments; where food insecurity arises, then mass migration is likely to follow, that beinganother potential trigger for conflict. Most of the migration movements we are looking at concern poor countries.1 They consist of either internal migration flows or of movements of

people from a poor state to its neighbouring countries, rather than movements from the poor

to the rich world.

I think that what can be done starts with the recognition of the issue and of the different shapethat the issue takes in different parts of the world. Mitigating the output of greenhouse gasesis absolutely essential, but what we have to recognise is that itÕs not enough and that untilthe good effects of that are felt we need adaptation. Rich countries, like Britain and theNetherlands, for example, are already busy adapting to the effects of climate change and theyare able to do so because they are well organised, well governed and rich. But countries likeBangladesh are unable to so, or are able to do so to a much lesser extent. And they needto be brought into an international system of assistance to develop the knowledge and theunderstanding in identifying exactly what threats they face. For example, in Bangladesh, theincreased risk clearly has to do both with the cyclones and with the Ganges-Brahmaputra riversystem. In the Philippines, one issue is that the pattern of typhoons is changing. They are particularly vulnerable to the weather coming from the sea, because of the approximately 7,000islands that the Philippine comprises. In other parts of the world it has more to do with drought,or it may have to do with shifting disease patterns..ÉWe ought to be systematically studyingwhat the particular needs of each country are, identifying them and responding to them. Butthat can’t be done on a centralised basis, by university researchers in North America andEurope. ItÕs got to be done on the basis of building up the capacity in developing countriesto be studying, analysing, understanding and responding to these issues. It’s a really big task.No one who talks about this pretends that it’s either easy to achieve, quick or cheap. Wehave to take the first step on this road and we have to take it very soon.

[1] Dan Smith and Janani Vivekananda, A Climate of Conflict: The Links Between Climate Change, Peace and War(London: International Alert, 2006).

6on the organizations with which youÕre partner and that you are there in a role to supportand help them and not to lead them.

To go back to the question of carbon trading now: carbon trading has been proposed as asort of painless and profitable technical solution to the problem of climate change and the evidence at the moment is that it is not working. There’s evidence that actually, the clean development mechanism (CDM), which is the main carbon trading instrument worldwide is functioning effectively but dishonestly, according to some recent reports. But even if it were tobe functioning in an honest way it is still really hard to see how this could make a fundamen-tal difference. What carbon trading is about is relocating where the carbon emissions are made.What we need are some of the dramatic reductions that some of the environmental NGOshave talked about; reducing carbon emissions by more than 50% within the next 30 years. Inorder to achieve such a goal you would have to move on very quickly and the sad thing isthat no government is doing so.

Maria Kampouri: The road from Kyoto to Bali shows a trend toward more conservative policy measures. Do you agree with this and why do you think this is so?

Dan Smith: I think itÕs a little bit mixed at the moment. One of the significant reasons for thesedevelopments is the desperate attempt to get the US engaged. It is really hard to exaggerate,but I think that the current US administration has been a disaster for international efforts toaddress climate change. If Al Gore had been elected in 2000, I think we would have had abetter implementation of the Kyoto levels and a more thorough and concise debate about post-Kyoto, which would have set more ambitious targets. I’m not saying that everything wouldhave been paradise.É

At the same time, it has to be said, that if you look at the political discourse in Europe andin several other countries, you start seeing governments and policy-makers beginning to takeseriously the degree to which things should change. What they haven’t figured out is how toactually implement that change. That’s very difficult and I think that it’s wrong to just sit on thesidelines and just sayÔoh the government is getting it wrong, because this is actually also aboutpeople. Climate change and environmental issues pose a thread that connects all the way fromthe very highest international level to the individual going and shopping in the super market.What choices are you making? Are you using plastic bags? Do you think about carbon emissions in your everyday life? Do you drive cars when it is unnecessary? We are all goingto have to accept and welcome, embrace, and enjoy changes in our patterns of behaviour,because if we carry on with the kind of wild consumerism that weÕve had for the past 30years, then weÕre not going to reduce carbon emissions and all of the nightmare scenarios ofclimate change scientists will come true.

Maria Kampouri: When it comes to carbon trading, how can we still talk about it when thereis still the third world debt holding those countries under the power of developed nations? Can the abolition of the third world debt be really the brake to independent development ofthese countries?

Dan Smith: Yes I think it still can. I mean there have been huge steps forward. But nonetheless, for some countries in particular, the debt repayments are still higher than theycan manage. There is another issue, here, that needs to be highlighted, which is that carbontrading, if it works, will do whatÕs called Ômitigation of carbon emissions. The fact is, however, that the environmental system moves very slowly, so effects of climate change, whichare unfolding now and will keep on unfolding in the next three decades are determined by re-pub


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9Bill McKibben - Out of the safety zone

The shorthand answer to that (and the onenumber you need to know to understandthe 21st century) is: 350, as in 350 partsper million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We've just launched an international campaign, 350.org, that badlyneeds everyone’s help to make that case.1

The longer answer goes like this. Twentyyears ago, when we started worrying aboutwhat we then called the greenhouse effect,we had only the crudest notion of howmuch carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was

too much. The biggest debates were about whether global warming was real, and whether ornot it had already begun. It didn't take too long - half a decade for the IntergovernmentalPanel on Climate Change to say yes to both. But the subtler questions. How immediate a prob-lem is this? Where do the thresholds lie? - were much harder.

Early on, scientists contented themselves with calculating what would happen if carbon dioxidelevels in the atmosphere doubled from their pre-industrial levels of 275 parts per million. It wasa large enough increment to model with the computers then at hand. And so we all talkedabout what bad things would happen at 550 parts per million until it became, by default, thekind of psychological red line - a red line that soon showed up on various government charts.I can remember writing an outraged op-ed piece for The New York Times in the mid-1990swhen some Clinton administration plan foresaw overshooting 550 - it had for no especiallygood reason become the target.

But in the last few years it became apparent that the earth was more finely balanced thanwe'd imagined. So far we've increased the planet's temperature barely a degree Fahrenheit,which 20 years ago we would have said would have just gotten us to the threshold of notice-able global warming - everyone then guessed that the big effects would still be a few decadesdown the road. But what do you know? One degree was enough to yield major effects inhydrological cycles, in the progress of the seasons, in the spread of mosquitoes, in the rapidmelt of glaciers. Which is why, over the last few years, some of the big environmental groupsand some European governments began talking about a new, lower target of atmospheric CO2:450 parts per million, which scientists guessed roughly equated to a global temperature increaseof two degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

But again, the data for this threshold was scant - it was also psychological, a way of saying,

[1] See http://350.org/.

8Maria Kampouri: Could you give us an example showing how climate change has been a contributing factor to peacebuilding, let’s say a case study, you might be familiar with. Or isthat something we can expect to see in the future?

Dan Smith: There is no case of that. Our argument in the ‘A Climate of Conflict’ report is thatwhat is needed for societies, as they come out of conflict is very closely related to what isneeded for societies to adapt to the threats of climate change. Technically, they may look dif-ferent, but the social processes that underlie them and the basic idea of getting people to par-ticipate whether in a peacebuilding process or in a process of adapting to climate are verysimilar. We, therefore, argue that peace-building and adaptation to climate change could gohand in hand. A society which would be able to respond to the threat of climate change wouldbe a society much more able to build a much more resilient peace for itself. So it is a visionrather than something I can give you a concrete example of.

We have to understand that our approach towards development and indeed towards peace-building needs to change and to take adaptation to climate change on board. At the same time,adaptation to climate change is only going to work if it is closely related to development andalso becomes an integral part of any peace process. These things go hand in hand, they aresingle threads woven into the same fabric.

As the Bush administration starts topass from the scene and the con-tenders to succeed him speak with rea-sonable seriousness about carbon, thequestion for environmentalists is goingto change from: "Are we doing any-thing about global warming?" to "Arewe doing anything near enough aboutglobal warming?" Both of those arepolitical questions Ñ but the second oneis also a scientific query, for theanswer to it depends on knowing howmuch we need to do.

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11burn our planet's coal, and whether we're going to develop the exotic sources of petroleum,

like tar sands and oil shale. If we do, then we'll never get back to 350. If we don't - if we

stop building new coal-fired plants now and begin closing the ones we have - then the planet may retain enough carbon-cycling ability to pull us back below the line. It's like havinghigh cholesterol - if you radically change your diet, it will fall. But you've got to do it beforeyou, um, die.

There's only one possible way to make change on that scale: an all-out World War II styleeffort to convert our economy away from carbon and towards well, towards conservation,towards buses and bikes, towards wind and sun. We might even have to consider currentlyfar-fetched schemes to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere (at the very least, we'd need to spendbig to see if they're a real possibility). We'd need to do it with a truly aggressive price oncarbon (which, to keep from impoverishing everyone, you'd need to rebate back to individualsthrough some scheme like the increasingly crucial Sky Trust proposed by Peter Barnes).3 Wecouldn't have a nice, seamless transition; we'd need a Saul-on-the-Damascus-road conversion,where the scales fell from our eyes and we set to work.

And that would be the easy part. We'd then need to figure out how to finance the same transition in the developing world. The Chinese still have a low standard of living, most ofthem. They're not going to forego heat and light; they're going to need something like a global Marshall Plan-equivalent to help them develop without burning their coal. Massive transfer of technology would be required which means, in truth, pretty massive transfer ofresources. Which just maybe is not what the American voter is ready for right now.

Is any of this realistic? That's the right question, because it forces us to think about the meaning of reality.

So far, the method has been to ask what's going to work economically and politically and thenwork from there - that is to say, the "reality" of what you can persuade senators, or Fortune500 companies, or taxpayers to support has set the tempo. And that is one important definition of reality - in a democracy, in fact, it's usually the most crucial one.

But in this case physics and chemistry increasingly impose a reality of their own. We find ourselves out of the safety zone in which human civilization has developed and flourished, asafety zone limited by the automatic reaction of the planet's climate system to an increase inthe amount of solar radiation trapped in our atmosphere. That is, almost literally, a higher reality. If we've got a chance, the science now has to drive the politics - not the other wayround.

In a very real sense, it's a contest between human nature and nature to see which will blinkfirst. Physics and chemistry don't bluff and they don't bargain - they just are. If there's a wayout of this box, therefore, it's up to us.

[3] See Peter Barnes, Who Owns the Sky? Our Common Assets and the Future of Capitalism (Washington, DC:Island Press, 2003)

10"We need to do more, and quicker." And it remained, just, within the realm of the possible: atthe moment, the planet's atmosphere contains 385 parts per million CO2, and if you run thenumbers just right you can imagine stepping on the brakes hard enough that you just graze450.

But here's the problem. Last fall, the Arctic melted. Not a little, like it's been melting since the1970s. But a measured-in-areas-the-size-of-Texas lot, way more than we'd ever seen before. Itscared scientists, who were increasingly wary anyway, because the more they come to understand about the paleoclimatic record, the more it seems that small changes in radiativeforcings have been enough to trigger awful changes in the past.

If we are at 385 parts per million, and everything is melting, what does that tell you? Whatit tells you is: This is not a future problem. We're already past the line, out of the safe zone.We need to be scrambling like offside linemen to get back where we belong before the whistle blows. And the line we need to return to, if we hope to avoid wrenching disruptionsfrom global warming, is 350 parts per million.

It took, as it has so often in the greenhouse story, the leadership of NASA's James Hansen toreally set the stakes in perspective. Speaking last December to the American Geophysical Union,Hansen, head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, outlined several areas where we ranthe risk of crossing horrible tipping points, a risk that increased each year we stayed above350.2 They included the melt of Arctic sea ice, the melt of the great ice sheets over Greenlandand the west Antarctic, the shift in climate zones wrecking prime agricultural areas, the drying-up of crucial water supplies as alpine glaciers melt in the tropics, and the acidification of theoceans as CO2 accumulates there.

Perhaps the most important, in the short run (though it's like picking which terminal illness you'dmost want to contract) is the prospect of rapid melt on the ice sheets of Greenland and theWest Antarctic. We used to think these ice sheets were stable on a time-scale of centuries,because how do you even start to melt a mile and a half of ice? I mean, it's inertia defined.But it turns out that nature may have a method. As temperatures warm, snow at the very topof that ice sheet is turning to water, and that water in turn is finding its way through cracksand fissures to the base of the ice sheets where it can grease the skids for their slide intothe ocean.

Meanwhile, rising and warming seas can eat away at the glaciers along the sea's edge, whichserve as corks in the bottle for the inland ice sheets. Add it all up badly enough, and there'sat least the possibility - or so Hansen testified recently in federal court under oath - for fivemeters of sea level rise this century. Which is another way of saying the end of civilizationas we know it, since there's not enough money on earth to defend our coastal cities or thefertile plains near the sea - the places where the world mostly, you know, lives - from thatkind of rise.

So that's the science. And from it must now flow the politics. Forget the plans we've laid sofar, which see us slowly easing up on the use of coal, and ratcheting up the use of renew-ables, mostly by gradual shifts in the price of carbon. That might get us to 550, and it mightpossibly even get us somewhere near 450. But 350 - well, that means in essence that wehave to leave most of the carbon underground that's now there.

The price of oil is so high - and the dependence so deep - that it's likely going to mostly get

pumped; the real question, according to Hansen's calculations, is whether we're also going to

[2] James E. Hansen, “Communicating Dangers and Opportunities in Global Warming”, speech AmericanGeophysical Union, San Francisco, December 2006.

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13growing amounts of scarce resources to maintain external creditworthiness reflects priorities fewdemocratically elected governments are likely to be able to tolerate for long”.3 It also notedthat development in rich countries had used too many resources and created many environmen-tal problems.

The Commission contrasted two approaches to environmental policy, with theÔ’standard agenda’dealing with effects and symptoms, but their approach concentrating on the sources of problems.4 Their prescription was radical, since it prioritised the poor through the focus on needsin their definition of sustainable development as “development which meets the needs of thepresent without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”5 Theirfinal chapter on implementation emphasised national policies and institutions, regional and global organisations, especially in the UN system, and included scientific communities and ngos.There was little emphasis on the private sector, though Ôincreased cooperation with industryÕand the need toÔstimulate private investment were included. Had these proposals been made in1972, most would have seemed perfectly reasonable, and might well have been adopted, butby the late 1980s they were at odds with neoliberal orthodoxy.

Consequently, as Bernstein has shown in a meticulously evidenced and argued book, theBrundtland analysis was subverted by a different way of resolving contradictions between environment and economic development.6 Work done by bodies like OECD’s EnvironmentDirectorate, the US Project 88 and even UNCTAD suggested that free markets could deal withenvironment and development problems if market failure were remedied. To do this, all resourcesneeded to be privately owned so that polluters would be responsible for the externalities theyproduce. States would have to ensure removal of market distorting subsidies and tariffs. By thetime the UN Conference on Environment and Development met at Rio in 1992, free marketswere widely seen as compatible with, even necessary to, environmental protection, as indicated in para 8.31(c) of Agenda 21- “To include, wherever appropriate, the use of marketprinciples in the framing of economic instruments and policies to pursue sustainable development”.Ó In this way, the Rio conference not only stripped sustainable development of itsradicalism, but produced even more pressure for privatisation and marketisation, though in practice it proved impossible to privatise all resources or require all polluters to pay.

Over the next 16 years, the results of using neoliberal principles to run the global economybecame clearly visible. Freer trade has benefited the wealthy, transnational corporations andhigh income country consumers, about 10 ’emerging markets’, mostly Asian countries with highrates of saving and ‘developmental states’, and oil exporters, though not other mineral exporters,who suffer from theÔ’resource curse’.

The global financial system concentrates capital into offshore financial centres and high incomecountries and drains it from low income countries, through capital flight and via transfer pricemanipulation, starving them of capital for investment and slowing their development.7 Net flowsof finance have been volatile, contributing to more frequent and larger financial crises, with catastrophic effects on Russia and Argentina, and serious setbacks in some of the fast grow-ing Asian economies in the 1990’s. Open capital markets undermine democracy, as governmentsbecome reluctant to intervene in markets for social or environmental purposes, and any thatconsider doing so are pressured by the IMF and financial markets.

[3] Ibid., p. 75.[4] Ibid., p. 310.[5] Ibid., p. 43.[6] See Steven Bernstein, The compromise of liberal environmentalism (New York: Columbia UP, 2001).[7] See Philip Sarre, ”Understanding the geography of international finance” Geography Compass 1 no. 5 (2007):1076-1096.

12Philip Sarre - Environmental justice requires economic reform

Whatever the consensus among progressives, little headway will be made towards social orenvironmental justice unless we can restore democratic regulation of markets. This will requirereversing thirty years of political and economic change and will face implacable hostility fromthose who believe in, or have gained from, the current form of economic governance. To beginto do so, we need to understand how today’s orthodoxy was able to defeat its predecessor;how it overcame the most significant international effort to tackle environmental and development problems and how it has itself become vulnerable.

From 1944 to 1971, the Bretton Woods regime combined promotion of free trade with maintenance of stable exchange rates through controls on capital movement. The period sawthe fastest economic growth in history, experienced in second and third world countries as wellas in the first. In developed countries, democratic pressure prompted governments to intervenein the economy to foster full employment and social welfare, delivering high living standardsand reducing inequality. However, in the 1970s, rising oil prices and high government spending triggered inflation and economic crises. An early casualty was the Bretton Woods regime itself,since in 1971 the US broke the link of the dollar to gold and ended the period of fixedexchange rates.

The nature of the new orthodoxy became clear in the 1980s, when the Thatcher and Reagangovernments led the implementation of what are now calledÔneoliberal policies.1 They attributed the problems of the 1970s to state intervention and claimed that the solution lay infree market policy. They cut budgets and taxes, restricted union activity, deregulated markets,crucially including capital markets, and privatised state and municipal enterprises, including utilities. Their lead was followed by many governments, some through choice, others becausethe IMF and World Bank required these kinds of change by countries seeking their assistance.This new regime had direct effects on both environment and inequality, since the increasedemphasis on competition and profit made management increasingly reluctant to pay more thanthe minimum for raw materials, labour, pollution control and tax.

A crucial challenge came after 1983, when the UN set up the World Commission on Environmentand Development, chaired by the former prime minister of Norway, Gro Brundtland. Its reportdiagnosed a series of interlocking crises of environment and development and stated that”inequality is the planet’s main environmentalÕproblem; it is also its main developmentÕ problem”.2 It was critical of the effects of the international economy:Ò”to require relatively poorcountries to simultaneously curb their living standards, accept growing poverty, and export

[1] See David Harvey, A brief history of neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).[2] SSee World Commission on Environment and Development, Report of the World Commission on Environmentand Development: Our Common Future (Oxford: Oxford Universaity Press, 1987), p. 6.

Environmental change and global poverty are caused by the way the world economyworks, which depends on the way it is governed. The limited success of internationalpolicy initiatives in pursuit of environmental protection and/or social justice resultsfrom the prioritisation of economic objectives, increasingly seen within aÔfree marketÕframework.

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15Stephanie Posthumus - Framing French eco-difference: A brief overview

To begin, it is important to note the ambiguity of the word "environnement" as used in France.While originally meaning any enclosed space ("enceinte"), the word was reintroduced into theFrench language in the 1960's as a translation of the English word "environment" to refer moreprecisely to the group of elements that make up the natural and social conditions in whichhuman beings evolve.2 Yet the word is not accepted unanimously; Michel Serres, for one, critiques the human centredness of such a term, refusing the Anglophone concept as well asthe North American environmentalism associated with it.3 According to Kerry Whiteside, Frenchpolitical ecology distinguishes itself from Anglophone environmentalism because it refuses to centre (bio-centric, eco-centric, or anthropocentric) a new human ethics of care for nature.4 Inshort, nature and the human are seen as ultimately, always and necessarily intertwined.

A recent restructuring of the French ministries transformed the "Ministère de l'Écologie et duDèveloppement durable" (2002) (formerly, the "Ministère de l'Environnement" (1971)) into the"Ministère de l'Écologie, de l'Énergie, du Dèveloppement durable et de l'Aménagement du territoire" (2007). What may seem to be a simple evolution of the political scene is, I wouldargue, a "gallicization" of an environmental movement imported from North-America. While theFrench initially tried to follow the North American example, founding their first national park in1963 (Yellowstone National Park was founded in 1872), their current political policies reflect thehistory of maintaining natural spaces in France, where issues of ecology and environment arebound up with questions of culture, property and economic planning.

An essential element of this history is the role of human perspective in re(con)figuring naturalspaces. Following the protection of historical monuments in France (1887), similar laws wereinstituted to protect - not unsettled, wilderness regions as in the U.S.A. - but rather landscapesas natural monuments. Under the influence of landscape artists and writers, these laws aimedat restoring the beauty of a particular vista that often included human elements.5 As Larrèreexplains, the French were concerned with preserving cultural heritage ("patrimoine") for futuregenerations (forests, coastal areas but also farmed fields, village squares).6 Nature was and

[1] Michel Serres, Le retour au contrat naturel (Paris: BNF, 2000).[2] Robert Delort and François Walter. Histoire de l’environnement européen (Paris: PUF, 2001).[3] Michel Serres, Hominescence (Paris: Le Pommier, 2001).[4] Kerry Whiteside, Divided Natures. French Contributions to Political Thought (Cambridge/London: MIT Press, 2002).[5] Jean Viard, Le tiers espace. Essai sur la nature (Paris: M�ridiens Klincksieck, 1990).

14Since the late 1990s, government commitment to neoliberal economic governance has blockeda number of progressive initiatives. Progress in meeting the Millennium Development Goals hasbeen slow. The Johannesburg Conference confirmed that environmental aspirations set atStockholm and Rio have progressed slowly. In spite of increasing realisation that the consequences of climate change could be severe, progress since Kyoto has been slow, even negative.

It has also become clear that neoliberalism is not even an effective way to run the economy.Global economic growth has been slower 1973-2003 than under Bretton Woods 1950-73 (3.17%pa vs 4.9%) and much more uneven between countries and continents8, as well as within countries.9 IMF researchers have concluded that capital market liberalization is neither necessarynor sufficient to generate rapid economic growth.10 UNDP offer training packs in national financial management which argue that neoliberalism has definitively failed to promote develop-ment, and recommend economic policies which intervene to promote institutional developmentand investment in people.11

Even the IMF and World Bank have amended policy to accept that there are multiple routesto development, target poverty and encourage ‘country ownership’ of economic policy, in whichthe building of institutions and good governance are now identified as positive, though itÕs notclear how much their behaviour has changed.

The latest failure of neoliberalism provides an opportunity to challenge it in its Anglo-Americanheartland, since the most recent instability is at the heart of the system rather than in distantcountries. The sub-prime crisis, caused by imprudent, perhaps fraudulent, lending and securitisa-tion by financial institutions, has triggered the credit crunch, bank losses and failures requiringrescues by both central banks and sovereign wealth funds. To make matters worse, with otherinvestments unattractive, speculative investors have moved into natural resource futures, helpingto drive up oil and food prices and hurting people everywhere.

The opportunity and justification now exist for people and politicians to demand an end toneoliberal policies at national and international levels and to restore to states and internation-al organisations the freedom to develop policies to promote social and environmental justice. Itwill not be easy, since powerful interests gain from neoliberalism and some of its maxims areentrenched in constitutions and treaties. But unless we do it, climate change, inequality and injustice will accelerate.

[8] See Angus Maddison, Contours of the world economy 1-2030 AD (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).[9] See Joseph Stiglitz Making globalisation work: next steps to global justice (London: Allen Lane/ Penguin,2006).[10] See Eswar S. Prasad et al, Effects of financial globalization on developing countries: some empirical evidence(IMF: IMF Working paper, 2003).[11] See Gerald Epstein and Ilene Grabel, Financial Policy Training Manual No 3 (UNDP International Policy CentreBrasilia Brazil, 2007).

In Le Retour au contrat naturel (2000), French philosopher Michel Serres asserts thatthe Earth, a global object since we have been able to observe it remotely fromspace, has progressively become a global political subject, entering into internationaldiscussions because of such phenomena as climate change and ozone holes thatdemand action on an international scale.1 Without denying the significance of Serres'sinterpretation of the Earth as global subject nor the relevance of his concept of thenatural contract, I want to explore some of the cultural differences that influence theway in which a group dialogues with the Earth. In this article, I will concentrate onFrench perceptions, understandings and discussions of the environment.

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17The obvious question remains: Why? Where does such difference come from? Is it a result ofgeographical distinctions, France being the Old World, settled long before the discovery of theNew World? Or is it a matter of linguistic differences as the well-known and yet much disput-ed Sapir-Whorf hypothesis might suggest? Or is it rather a question of philosophical traditionsthat have shaped different nationalist identities, France being the defender of universalist, human-ist values and North America the embracer of less traditional forms of thought?

Tentative answers to these questions have already been put forward. Philosopher CatherineLarrère suggests that there has been no real development of environmental philosophy in Francebecause environment is seen as being a scientific/technical problem. Rather than inspiring a newethics, ecological issues are reduced to the realm of “common sense” and “reasonable/rationalaction”.13 Sociologist Jean Viard develops the hypothesis that Catholic and Protestant lines divideFrance and North America and that nature preservation is a distinctly Protestant affair.14 BothLarr�re and Viard recognize the severe limitations of their hypothesis as their explanations coveronly one aspect (ideological and sociological respectively) of a multidimensional, ever-changingphenomenon.

Rather than attempting a more complete explanation of French eco-difference (which wouldrequire an interdisciplinary team of scholars), I will extend the question further to include theproblem of globalization. Have the differences explained earlier in this article become lessprominent because of global economic, political and social forces? Or have they become morepronounced as national identities are forced into frequent close contact?

An interesting case in point is that of Josè Bovè who first attracted international media attentionin 1999 because of his leading role in the taking down of a local McDonald’s. At first, Bovèappears to incarnate the typical, distinct French spirit of resistance in order to retain local identity. Yet Bovè is a world-wide traveller who attempts to bring together different local agricultures in their fight against the use of genetically modified organisms. Examining more closely Bovè’s identity, one discovers that his techniques of resistance when demonstratingagainst American neo-liberal globalization are based on Henry David Thoreau’s model of civildisobedience. (Bovè has written, with journalist Gilles Luneau, a book entitled Pour la désobéissance civique, that draws from Thoreau’s On Civil Disobedience.) This is not a clear-cut case of French vs. American, nor of antiglobalization vs. pro-globalization, but instead anillustration of the complex forces that play into the formation and transformation of French eco-difference. (One last note: Bovè is an important figure of alter-mondialisation,Óa movement orig-inating in France, regrouping various leftist positions, and pushing for more democratic, moreecological, less economic forms of globalization.)

So what does the future hold for French eco-difference? As Guillaume Sainteny notes, the GreenParty (“les Verts”) has all but disappeared from the political scene in France.15 But this dis-appearance does not mean that the French have no concern for environmental issues. Instead,a general greening of both right and left parties has been taking place in France as concernfor the natural world is integrated into general social policies and programs. Such integrationreinforces the idea that humans are part of nature, both products and producers, just as natureis part of the human. But what is the nature of such an integration, merely political or alsoethical? Can it bring about the type of change needed on an individual, social and nationallevel to establish a more sustainable way of life?

[13] Larrère, “Éthique de l’environnement”, p. 75[14] Viard, Le tiers espace.[15] Guillame Sainteny, L’introuvable écologisme francais? (Paris: PUF, 2000).

16continues to be framed in terms of landscape and cultural heritage in France. (See, for ex., thework of theoretical "paysagistes" Augustin Berque and Alain Roger who insist, sometimes fiercely, that what the French must work to (re)create is "landscape," not "environment").7

What this means for environmental ethics is that there is no specific branch of philosophy thatoperates under the title ÒenvironmentalÓin France.8 Yet there are many philosophers whose workis explicitly ecological: Fèlix Guattari, Bruno Latour, Catherine and Raphaël Larrère, and MichelSerres, to name a few. Bridging the gap between French eco-philosophy and North Americanenvironmental philosophy, Catherine Larrère upholds many aspects of Aldo Leopold’s land ethics,yet she includes both the biological and the cultural in her ethics of diversity. On what mayseem a very different note, Bruno Latour argues for a more technicized, more humanized, morecared-for nature. Yet his cry for an engaged use of technology to better care for nature echoesin many respects Larrère’s appeal to the “bon usage” (good/wise use) of nature9 and Serres’snatural contract as a way of re-equilibrating humanity’s relationship to the world.

So what to make of the virulent critiques of green politics and philosophy by French thinkerssuch as Jean Baudrillard, Gèrard Bramoullè and Luc Ferry? Their attacks seem to be an interesting form of misidentification (and oversimplification but I’ll leave that for a much longerarticle). Baudrillard, Bramoullè and Ferry all mistake French ecophilosophies for a deep ecologya la North American that views humans as superfluous on the road to restoring nature to it’s“original”Óstate.10 The strong reaction of these three French thinkers to any sort of ”greening”clearly demonstrates how deeply humanism is engrained in the French psyche. In a negativeway, they too demonstrate French ecodifference that resists exclusion or extraction of the humanfrom a view of the world.

It is this principle of human integratedness that may explain the curious lack of interest in ecocritical approaches on the part of French literary scholars and theorists. While ecocriticism,the study of cultural representations of nature from an ecological point of view, has becomean important alternative theory in North America, it has gone almost unnoticed in France. Onemight first suppose that ecocriticism is so rooted in North American views of the environmentthat it is unable to cross national boundaries. And yet there are now groups of ecocriticalscholars in Europe (Germany in particular), India, Japan and Korea. So why has France remainedan exception?

In one of ecocriticism’s founding theoretical texts, Lawrence Buell advocates for a new literaryrealism that pushes ecological representations of the natural world as the central focus of literary writing.11 Such an enterprise may seem misguided to French literary theorists steeped inthe tradition of “le nouveau roman” andÒ“l’ère du soupcon”Óand so highly suspect of any literary theory claiming to reestablish a transparent, simple connection between the world in thetext and the world outside of it. In fact, the few French literary scholars working on Americannature writing insist on its rhetorical and narrative aspects, as if to remind the reader that language remains an irreducible construct.12 The French reading of American nature writing is another reflection of this eco-cultural difference that retains the human frame when consideringrelationships to the world.

[6] Catherine Larrère and Raphaël Larrère. Du bon usage de la nature. Pour une philosophie de l’environnement(Paris: Alto/Aubier, 1997).[7] Augustin Berque, “Paysage, milieu, histoire”, in Cinq propositions pour une th�orie du paysage, ed. AugustinBerque (Paris: Champ Vallon, 1994), 11-29 and Alain Roger, Court traité du paysage (Paris: Gallimard/nrf, 1997).[8] Catherine Larrère,Ò”Ethique de l’environnement”, Multitudes 24.1 (2006): 75-84[9] Bruno Latour, ‘It’s development, stupid!’ or “How to Modernize Modernization?” EspacesTemps.net 29/05/2008.[10] Jean Baudrillard, “L'�cologie mal�fique.” L'illusion de la fin (Paris: Galil�e, 1992), 115-128; Gérard Bramoullé, Lapeste verte (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1991); and Luc Ferry, Le nouvel ordre écologique: l’arbre, l’animal et l’homme(Paris: Grasset, 1992).[11] Lawrence Buell, The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture(Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1995).[12] Michel Granger and Tom Pughe, “Introduction.” Special Issue: “Écrire la nature.” Revue française d’étudesaméricaines 106.4 (2005): 3-7.

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19ty, anthropogenic climate change affects disproportionately the poor across different scales -regions, nations, cities and neighborhoods. While clearly climate change effects result in bothwinners and losers, the nations and cities that have been the largest emitters of GHGs forthe last 100 years will not be the ones that experience the bulk of the negative effects ofclimate change. TheÒ”goods” and ”bads”Óof anthropogenic climate change are not distributed uniformly across populations the developed and developing world. Poor nations and populations have a reduced or nonexistent adaptive capacity that would help them protectthemselves from the effects of climate change and thus face increased levels of vulnerability.At the same time, poor and marginalized urban residents worldwide often do not have astrong voice in the political arena with a resulting weak representation in national and sub-national policymaking.

Discussions over global environmental change occasionally overlook the global shift from ruralto urban living that has been a defining global trend of the last 100 years. Cities havebecome important entities in the world’s social, economic, cultural, political, and environmentalspheres. The most recent United Nations World Urbanization Prospects report pinpoints thathalf of the worldÕs population now lives in cities compared to 30% fifty years ago and 10%one hundred years ago.2 Importantly, most of the future world population growth up to2030 is projected to occur in the rapidly growing cities of poor African and Asian nations(around 80% of the total) as well as in Latin America. Africa and Asia today are urbanizingmore quickly and at a larger volume respectively than the rest of the world’s regions. Whilewe expect an increasing number of megacities, cities with population of over 10 million peo-ple, they are expected to contain approximately the same proportion of the world’s urban population around 15%; the majority of future urbanites will live in rapidly growing medium-sized or small developing-world cities, subject to many present-day urban pathologies.

Not only will urban areas of primarily medium-size absorb the majority of future urbangrowth but the majority of the new urban residents are expected to be poor. Poverty isincreasingly becoming an urban phenomenon. While slums already constitute about 41% ofurban living form in the developing world. urban growth in certain regions will come aboutwith the formation of new slums. The actual effect of climate change on poor and vulnerableurban residents will depend on multiple stressors and a confluence of factors such as thelevel of economic development of a city and its nation, the pace of demographic change,various ecosystem factors, urban spatial structure and function, and the wider institutional setting.

Today it is clear though that urbanization is occurring faster and at larger volumes in locations that are at lower stages of economic development and face rapid demographicchanges. City systems will continue to disproportionately affect ecologically-fragile areas andcontribute to the loss of agricultural land compared to other systems. Urban growth isexpected in coastal and arid ecosystems, particularly sensitive to the effects of climatechange. Sprawling urban development is projected as a dominant trend but this could bereversed by the recent hike in the price of oil. Urbanization hotspots lack functions such asdurable housing, access to improved water, key resources and sanitation while being over-crowded, with high levels of unemployment and social exclusion. Institutional settings in suchhotspots are weak, lacking the rule of law, accountability and faced with rampant corruption.All the above factors, operating in concert with climate change impacts createÒstress bundlesÓthat increase the probability of dangerous climate change.

Urban areas have begun to be considered a central element in the responses to climate

[2] UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, World Urbanization Prospects: The 2003 Revision (New York:UN, 2004).

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18Michail Fragkias - Connecting global environmental change toenvironmental justice: The critical role of cities and good urbangovernance

Climate change, and more generally, global environmental change (GEC) - the set of bio-physical transformations of land, oceans and atmosphere, driven by an interwoven system ofhuman and natural processes - has been extensively documented and is today acknowledgedas reality from an overwhelming majority of scientists. These global changes can be experienced globally through the alteration of the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans (such aschanges in the composition of the atmosphere, stratospheric ozone concentrations, ultravioletinput and climate) or can occur locally but so extensively that they constitute a globalchange (such as land use change, loss of biological diversity, biological invasions andchanges in atmospheric chemistry).

Climate change is currently at the forefront of GEC realities. Through the efforts of communities such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its 2007 4thAssessment Report, we know that the increase in globally averaged temperatures is undis-putable and that since the mid-20th century is very likely (90-99% chance) that most of theincrease is anthropogenic.1 Other than the general increase of temperatures, sea level andfrequency of natural catastrophes and levels of economic losses, the collection of availableconservative climate change models show that it is very likely that hot extremes, warm spellsand heat waves, will continue to become more frequent over most land areas; that heavyprecipitation events will become more frequent over most areas; that it is likely that the areaaffected by droughts will increase; and that future tropical cyclones will become moreintense, with larger peak wind speeds and heavier precipitation but uncertain change of totalnumber.

These scientific predictions have huge significance for human security, safety and health in thenear-, medium- and long-term future as the impacts of climate change manifest themselves indistinct localities. While international pressure mounts for fast action towards establishedgreenhouse gas (GHG) emissions targets, populations with threatened livelihoods due to irreversible climate change and its expected shorter-term effects have to start consideringadaptation options. As is the case with the majority of environmental problems facing humani-

[1] Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007 (Geneva:IPCC, 2007).

Urban areas of primarily medium-size are not only expected to absorb the majorityof future urban growth but the majority of the new urban residents are expected tobe poor. The actual effect of climate change on poor and vulnerable urban residentswill depend on multiple stressors and a confluence of factors such as the level ofeconomic development of a city and its nation, the pace of demographic change,various ecosystem factors, urban spatial structure and function, and the wider institutional setting.

21adequate public services to their citizens (capacity), raising and managing sufficient revenue(financial), coping with the variation, fragmentation and inequity within cities (diversity), dealing with rising urban violence and crime (security); dealing with increasing complexity in managingthe jurisdictional mosaic as cities grow in population and extent (authority), sharing responsibility and coordinating for the empowerment and linking of actors in different levelsof government, (responsibility sharing and coordination), offering wide participation in strategiz-ing for understanding and consensus building and motivating actions and efforts for progressassessment (participatory governance) and networks for communications and capacity-buildingamong practitioners and stakeholders (network building). Past and current projects of theInternational Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change suggest payingattention to the problems of fit/match, scale and interplay of (political) institutions as theyinteract with the Earth System as well as the dimensions of architecture, agency, adaptive-ness, accountability, access and allocation at the urban scale of Earth System governance; theResilience Alliance group promotes the idea of participatory urban governance using adaptiveand resilience-building management approaches favoring flexible, open to learning, managementthat can build resilience and avoiding rigidities that could result in the breakdown of socioeconomic systems.

Finally, modern political economy - at the heart of interdisciplinary social science - suggeststhat the idea of good governance requires a balanced view of government a governmentthat operates under the market failure correction framework but that also addresses government failures - systematic reasons why government may fail to serve its citizens ideally. Good urban governance has the prerequisite of a thorough awareness of the nexusof relationships and opportunities for strategic interaction between all actors and stakeholdersexisting in the sphere of urban and environmental policy. Today, more than ever, it is criticalthat we place special attention on the institutional interface of the major anthropogenic globalchanges of the last 150 years characterized by their unprecedented rapid pace.

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20change during the last few years due to a combination of factors of opportunity and risk.As the rapid urban transition to 4 billion urban inhabitants worldwide will occur (three-quarters of the population) by 2030, particularly in poor countries, the fact that 80% ofGHG emissions already originate in cities comes sharply into focus. On a positive note,cities are (or can be) places of economic growth and social well-being, important nodes fortoday's globalization, the nexus of production, commerce and gateways to the world's economy. They are also potentially efficient users of infrastructure and resources due toeconomies of scale, promoters of more efficient urban forms and functions, and prime spacesfor intervention to change production and consumption patterns to reduce their adverseeffects on GEC and promote renewable sources of energy. Local action in metropolitanareas has global effects. Due to the increased density of populations in urban agglo-merations, effects of climate change such as natural disasters, health crises, disruptions insocial life and the economy are felt strongly for substantial subsets of national populations.

The bidirectional interactions between urban areas and climate change have fostered animpressive array of responses in urban areas during the last years - diverse international,regional, national, and local initiatives primarily created in large cities of industrialized countries focusing on climate change mitigation. For example, the Mayors Alliance for ClimateProtection in the U.S. created in 2001 with more than 700 city members of different sizeswas inspired in part as a reaction to the unwillingness of the U.S. Federal Government toratify the Kyoto Protocol. The C40 climate group of the world's largest cities, originally sponsored by the Mayor of London in 2005 with the participation of 18 cities, has expand-ed to more than 40 largest cities in the world.3 It is interesting to note that European citiesin contrast to U.S. ones emphasize a joint approach focusing on mitigation as well as adaptation. In the U.S., attention has centered in mitigation actions seeking to reduce theemission of greenhouse gases with little attention so far on adaptation at the local level.

Over the time period perceived relevant to global environmental change, and climate changeprocesses, responses to the phenomena can come about through three primary means: technology, institutional development and change as well as behavioral and belief changes.Although technological breakthroughs are very important (and cities play a significant role inthem as centers of technological innovation) institutional development within metropolitan areasdeserves increased attention - a clear sign of good urban governance.

Through globalization forces, democratization and economic development plans, the emergenceof decentralized governance has brought a greater emphasis on the role and abilities ofcities to self-govern which, at least in theory, allows for better informed social choice (suchas the establishment of public transportation, urban development densification, realistic growthexpectations and slum alleviation) and more effective and sustainable use of local resources(such as protecting ecosystem services and fragile lands). Effective urban governance is keyto urban-environmental sustainability given the complex interactions between urbanization andthe local, regional and global environment and at the heart of the comprehensive urban sustainability research agenda. Achieving good urban governance can further promote mitigation and adaptation actions but also create a push for economic development, address-ing climate change at a fundamental level.

Researchers have summarized challenges and visions on good urban governance crucial forthe design of sustainable urban futures. Institutions and organizations such as the U.S.National AcademiesÕ Panel on Population and Environment and the World Bank through itsWorld Development Report pinpoint factors such as a local government’s ability to provide

[3] See [http://www.c40cities.org/].

23large global populations with everything from baby carrots to microelectronics, always tryingto reduce costs without overloading the resource-supply systems. The potential of collapse is,however, increasingly evident in societies that are so dependent on imported resources.4 Theglobal economic decline of the 1970’s was a direct result of this dependency, as changingavailability of crude oil for a growing car and oil reliant North American society sent pricessoaring. The sustainability of cities clearly relies on the long-term management and control ofits resources, with water and food supplies being among the most important.

Settlements and environments

Human settlements have always considered aspects of the environment in which they arelocated. For thousands of years historic market towns have developed from the crossing oftrade routes, spa towns have emerged at natural springs, and other settlements have clustered around ports, bridges, hilltops, and estuaries. Since the twentieth century urban planners have been accused of undermining the relationship between cities and their environ-ment as technological advances in materials, transportation, and construction have allowednewly built forms to engineer the landscape. However, centuries ago, the Egyptians ignoredthe natural landscape to transport water hundreds of miles with innovative aqueducts, and theRomans also built linear military roads across the territories of Europe in defiance of existinglandform and geographic features. Since then, globalisation of markets, transportation, andknowledge has intensified this disconnection with the landscape, where contemporary cuisinenow reveals only the slightest relationships between farming and food consumption and architecture responds to a global aesthetic.

Signs of a resistance to this trend have been emerging in both contemporary and establishedfields. One direction comes from the environmental sustainability movement, with significantexamples in the zero carbon developments by Bill Dunster. In the first of these develop-ments, to reduce the energy in transporting building materials, a design code was establishedthat required materials to be sourced from within a 35-mile radius. This self-imposed restric-tion re-established a relationship between the materiality of the architecture and the localavailable resources. In Italy, the slow-food movement that came to prominence in the early1990’s has inspired both an appreciation of local food products and has led to wider ideassuch as the concept of Slowtopia.5 The trend-forecasting agency, The Future Laboratory, hasused the term Slowtopia to describe an emergence of slow travel, food, and culture basedon the quality of the experience. Local, they predict, is expected to define quality, whileenergy consumption and high food miles embody unnecessary exuberance.Is there a potential for these ideas to be developed in the discipline of urban planning? Could the examples of ZEDFactory be applied to a whole city or region where, rather thanusing an abstract radius of 35 miles, an environmental measure could direct the capacity ofthe landscape?

Settlements and water

Civilizations and their settlements have historically benefited from a close relationship withwater. From ancient Mesopotamia to contemporary metropolises such as Rotterdam, NewYork, Tokyo, and Shanghai, the proximity to water has been essential. From trade, defence,sanitation and drinking to religious and spiritual ceremonies, water in its many forms hasbeen at the centre of generations of human settlements. As these settlements have growninto large cities, the water has impacted both demographic changes and physical growth.Manhattan’s response to being constrained by its shoreline was to build into the sky. Across

[4] Jared Diamond. Collapse (London, UK: Penguin Books Ltd, 2006)[5] Martin Raymond. “Autumn 2007 Trend Dossier” The Future Laboratory (2007) 23-25

22Ed Wall - Watershed urbanism

The earth has always relied on a level of flux for regeneration and renewal of the environ-ment. However, until the Industrial Revolution, the earths’ ecosystems remained in balance, withno single species having the potential to affect the environment at a global scale. Beginningwith the burning of fossil fuels within an industrialised world, the effect that humankind hashad on the environment has accelerated and become more evident. It is only since theAmerican scientist, Charles David Keeling, began researching increasing carbon dioxide levelsin the environment 50 years ago that this effect has been recognised. A recent articledescribes how Keeling recognised the effect that industrialised urban areas were having atboth regional and global scales.1

Increasing emphasis has been placed on ecological footprints and resource-flow analysis tounderstand the quantities of resources used and the amount of waste produced by individualsettlements. This research has highlighted the disproportionate amount of resources used bycities and the network of global flows from across wider geographic regions. London alonehas been calculated to have an ecological footprint twice the size of the rest of the UK,with 81% of its food being imported from overseas.2 The City Limits report stated that “a35% reduction of [CO2] production by 2020 and an 80% reduction by 2050” would berequired if London was to achieve a predicted earthshareÓin 2050, or 1.44 gha (globalhectares) per capita.

Settlements and resources

Mercantile cities like London have always relied on their territories to supply them with theirresources. Without a supply of food, water, and building materials imported from the hinter-land, city life would not have survived and flourished. For this reason, the blockading ofcities has proved to be a highly effective method of warfare, as it separates the city fromits territories and starves the population of food, water, and other essential resources. Citieshave also evolved greatly in the last century, first through industrialisation and later throughprocesses of globalisation, and they have achieved greater efficiency in the sourcing, processing,3 and supply of their resources. Cities have extended their territories beyond theland that they own, or even govern, becoming increasingly dependent on national and international flows of trade. These increasingly efficient systems generate profits by supplying

[1] Helen Briggs, “50 years on: The Keeling Curve legacy”, December 2, 2007, [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7120770.stm]. [2] Oswald A Dodds MBE. “Executive Summary: The Main Findings of the Project, 2002”http://www.citylimitslondon.com (accessed on December 12th 2007)[3] Marco D'Eramo. The Pig and the Skyscraper: Chicago: A History of Our Future (New York, NY: Verso, 2003)

This paper outlines the potential that the watershed, as a landscape area defined bythe finite resource of water, has for providing such a framework for new urban settlements. In response to increasing water shortages, are there more creative solutions available than have been expressed before? The cost of moving wateracross the landscape will also be addressed through several contrasting exampleswhere cities and regions are challenged through insufficient water availability. Finally,I discuss the practice of ecological footprint calculations; a method which links ameasure of global hectares to human activities of consumption and waste.

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25It is with this premise that alternative urban-planning techniques could be developed to ensurethe sustainable supply of resources to both cities and their surrounding territories. If the basicneeds of a population are considered as water, food, and shelter, then planning new citiesaround locally sourcing these essentials could achieve a greater balance of resources for oururban regions. The amount of human activity that can be sustained by food and water available from within a particular watershed can be calculated through understanding the agricultural capacity of the watershed and the available water supply within the watershed.By combining this with ecological footprint data, resource flow analysis, and local geographicinformation such as the capacity of the land for human settlement, an optimum population anddensity can be determined for the watershed. By following this methodology, urban plannerscould gauge the maximum number of people that a specific watershed territory might sustainwith its own resources and could therefore provide guidance on the size of new cities,towns, and villages. With each new layer or application of this approach, urban and regionalplanners have the potential to understand how much activity could be supported by localwater, food, timber, minerals, open space, and other resources within the watershed territory.Like ecological footprint calculations, a strong understanding of the sustainability of a regioncould be determined; however, by using the watershed, rather than the intangible area of aglobal hectare, a greater accountability by each administrative region could be achieved.

This method demonstrates a potential for understanding the landscape in measurable territoriesthat can be analysed with regard to their self-sufficiency. The reason that water and foodare used as the guiding principles is because of the importance of these resources forhuman survival, because of the energy-intensive methods for transportation of water and foodacross the landscape, and because increasingly the delicate balance in which many cities currently find themselves in relation to their water and food resources is critical. The shortages of water that have occurred in recent decades will only heighten as global climatechange pushes temperatures higher. In Australia, the establishment of a Minister for ClimateChange and Water underscores the connection that many societies are making between climate change and their essential resources. The sourcing of local food and materials willalso become increasingly important as fuel prices rise.9

Controlling population growth within land areas appears extreme; however, it is not unprecedented. Both recent and ancient examples of population control have come aboutthrough attempts to balance available resources within a climate of growing demand. Whileinfanticide, as practiced by some ancient Greek cities, may not be widely acceptable, voluntary birth control is still promoted in most countries. The extent of immigration controlmay also change through successive administrations, although it is evident at national bordercrossings that some travelers may be restricted from entering. And even urban planning itselfimplies a population control in the extent of development control that it dictates, resulting incertain sizes of settlements with certain populations.

Potential applications

There is potential for measuring and guiding the use of other commodities in this way. Themanagement of waste, for example, could be seen as a responsibility for the landscape ofthe watershed rather than being shipped to remote locations. The scandals that haveemerged as waste has been transported across the globe are due only in part to NIMBY(Not In My Back Yard) attitudes and more to the lack of responsibility that we have historically taken for our waste. The LGA (Local Government Association) estimate that landfillsites in the UK will be at capacity within the next decade and suggest that alternative proposals are required.

[9] John James. “The End of Cheap Food”, The Economist, December 2006http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=10252015 (accessed on December 12, 2007)

24the Atlantic, huge dams in the Welsh valleys were financed by the distant city of Liverpoolin order to supply their growing mercantile population with drinking water. In California, manyrivers have been diverted and culverted to supply the population of Los Angeles; these engineering events are brilliantly narrated in Roman Polanski’s film, Chinatown, where murkyactivities of diverted water supplies, urban development, and suspicious suicides dominate.

Transporting potable water for these expanding towns has been expensive. Diverted rivers,aqueducts, canals, pumping stations, and often entire tankers of drinking water have beendeployed to prevent water shortages and stagnation of economic growth. The planning anddevelopment website, Planetizen, reports that the doubling of the Arizona population in thelast 25 years is straining the finite resources of the state:6 “Unchecked development threatensto overwhelm rural Arizona's limited water resources, leaving entire communities vulnerable toshortages and rivers at risk of running dry.”ÓIn Australia, some cities are proposing shippingwater from New Zealand and Tasmania. A company chaired by former Prime Minister BobHawke has been consulting the Tasmanian government about the feasibility of buying freshwater and transporting it to Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne in specially designedaquatankers.7 While this method is claimed to be cheaper in the short term than buildingnew dams and desalination plants, the long term sustainability of this is unclear. The precari-ous nature of importing large amounts of essential resources was clearly underscored when,in September 2000, the blockading of oil refineries in the UK brought the country to theverge of a national food crisis.8 Should other methodologies not be explored? Is there amore robust approach that can withstand changes in global politics, markets, and the environment?

Can our resources influence our urban planning in a more proactive manner?

Water and the watershed

One approach could be to use the watershed as an environmental measure that directs theplanning of new settlements. Watersheds, drainage basins, or water divides are some of thealternative approaches for describing a land area in which all rainwater that falls within itreaches the same destination of rivers and estuaries. The watershed is one of several environmental systems that geographers use to understand the relationship between the earthand water resources, and watersheds are unique in that they bring together a measurableterritory with a quantifiable and renewable resource. Aquifers, water tables, and watershedscan be measured for their size, their flows, their capacity for holding water, and theircapacity for supporting flora and fauna. Because a watershed contains a quantifiable amountof renewable water and is clearly expressed on the earth’s surface in the form of changingtopography, the watershed holds great potential as an urban-planning tool.

Watershed urbanism

Recent European and UK directives have recognised the impact that planning and land usehas on the quality and quantity of water within our river basins. In the UK, the WaterFramework Directive, which came into force in December 2000, looks to reduce the negativeimpact of planned and unplanned human activity on the resources within river basin areas.However, rather than just mitigating the effect of external factors on the watershed, there ispotential to propose a process that increases the influence of the watershed on planning.

[6] Brenda Meyer. “Rural Arizona At Risk For Water Shortage” 2005 http://www.planetizen.com/node/16674(accessed December 12, 2007)[7] Daryl Passmore. “Plan to Ship Water” October 14, 2006,http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,20581521-953,00.html (accessed on December 12, 2007)[8] Nick Assinder. “Blair flexes muscles over fuel protesters” November 2, 2007,http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/1004175.stm (accessed on December 12, 2007)

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27Carme Melo Escrihuela - Towards an urban ecological citizenship

When we think of the environment and nature, most people think first about issues related towildlife, natural resources, wilderness preservation and endangered species. It is commonlybelieved that those living in urban areas see nature as something alien to both themselves andthe city life, as something one has to look for outside the city limits as an antidote to stress,where one can find tranquillity and beauty. If there is any environment in the urban context, itis reduced to the existing green areas, such as city parks and gardens. Albeit that the city canbe seen as a cause of environmental problems, it is not usually seen as a source of their solu-tion. In fact, the green tendency toward ecocentrism has made cities sources of environmentaldisvalue for most ecological thought and ethics1. As a result, the urban environment, in so faras it has been humanly designed and constructed, tends to be underestimated by the greenmovements: can there be anything less natural, more artificial than the city? Perhaps, the keyquestion should be, indeed, whether such stated dualism between the human-made environmentor Culture - and the natural environmentÐor Nature - truly exists.

Urban environmental activism

The importance of the urban context for green activity, even if such activity is inspired by abelief in the intrinsic value of nature cannot, however, be underestimated. What might help usto move beyond this loophole is the concept of ecological citizenship. This is a concept whichemphasizes the need to take personal and collective responsibility for the environment and forthe social injustices that both cause and arise from ecological problems. In spite of the prevailing doxa, urban spaces offer an appropriate setting for ecological citizenship practicesto be developed.

In dominant political theory, citizenship is conventionally conceived as a status which emanatesfrom membership of a given political space since the modern age, normally the nation-state.Citizenship status confers to the beholder a set of reciprocal rights and duties to be dischargedin the public sphere within the territorial state limits. Nevertheless, ecological citizenship focuses on duties performed both in the private and the public sphere and aimed to achievesustainability and justice2. Neither territory nor membership establishes ecological citizens’ political community; rather, this is produced by everyday activity. Although ecological citizenshipcould be promoted through legislation, formal education or corporate and state-sponsored initiatives, I will focus on ecological citizenship as activity performed by civil society.

One might think we have more chances to be ecological citizens in rural areas, where nature’spresence is felt closer, thus providing for more possibilities and incentives to care for the

[1] Andrew Light, ‘The Urban Blind Spot in Environmental Ethics’ Environmental Politics 10 (2001): 7-35.[2] Andrew Dobson, Citizenship and the Environment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

We cannot separate the city and its problems from the so-called natural environment.Taking responsibility for nature starts in our houses, in our neighbourhoods, in ourcities. That is not only an environmental activity; it is also, in the first place, a socialand political goal.

26The sourcing of local materials and resources from within our watershed areas could bringback local distinctiveness to our built environments. While shopping locally canÒ”discouragecar use, offer a more personal service and support the local community10,”Óusing local materials for building our cities could reduce the transportation impact, create a new localaesthetic, inspire new economies, and generate local skills. While the argument for stimulatinglocal economies contradicts many of the benefits gained by global corporations, the argumentfor distinctiveness in the design and composition of our cities is critical.11 The exporting ofgranite from China is clearly not sustainable for countries that already have available stoneresources. The use of local stone in Montana and Portuguese granite in Portugal would recreate a local identity such as that earned by the Scottish city of Aberdeen, when it wasnicknamed the Granite City for its abundance of granite buildings.

The watershed could even redefine national and political boundaries. In several countries,watershed districts, catchment boards, and river basin districts have been created to manageissues relating to watershed resources. At present, these exist as conservation and preservation bodies that promote the protection of the water in the watershed; however,there is clearly potential to develop these into more proactive entities that use their understanding of existing resources to provide greater planning guidance. Past legal feudsover water are expected to pale in comparison to future conflicts over water resources.Therefore, might a proactive planning approach that manages the growth of settlements inrelation to sustainable access to resources avert these so-called water wars?12

Future

This paper outlines a simple concept that combines the flows of available resources within adefinable space in order to understand the maximum settlement size that a watershed cansustain. If developed and calculated to include all resources needed for survival on the city,the watershed could become the equivalent of the city’s ecological footprint but would use atangible spatial type, resources, and accountability. Within this framework, movement ofresources and people could still occur between watersheds and countries, although only withthe knowledge that each global watershed was in balance. In the future, might London bedefined by the watershed of the Thames Valley rather than the ring-road of the M25 motorway? Or could New York State be defined by the extent of the Hudson Valley andrecognize its reliance on and responsibility to other states? Few landscape typologies aredirectly associated with an essential resource and for this reason the watershed holds aninteresting potential for understanding the relationship between human activity and a multi-scaled landscape.

[10] Rob Harrison. “Ten Shopping Tips for the Ethical Consumer” www.ethicalconsumer.org, Ten Shopping Tips forthe Ethical Consumer (accessed December 12, 2007)[11] Andrew Simms. “Clone Town Britain” , New Economics Foundation, June 6, 2005.http://www.neweconomics.org/gen/news_clonetownbritainresults.aspx (accessed December 12, 2007)[12] Adel Darwish. “Water Wars” http://www.mideastnews.com/WaterWars.htm (accessed December 12, 2007)

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29Reclaiming public spaces

In 2000, the estate agent’s designated by the Barcelona city council to carry on the restructuring of Ciutat Vella, a quarter in the city centre, expropriated several blocks of flatsfor a very low price and proceeded to demolish them. This was part of the local authoritiesÕurban development project to build car parks and flats in the area. The neighbours startedreferring to the space where the demolished buildings were previously asÒ”El Forat de laVergonya”, the Hole of Shame. At the end of the year 2001, a group of neighbours planteda Christmas tree in the middle of the Hole. With this action, they wanted to repeat once moretheir claims with regard to having more green areas and less car parks and new flats in theirneighbourhood. After one day, the tree was cut down. The neighbours planted another one,which was poisoned by someone. But they did not give up and planted a third one...É

A few months later a group of urban activists arrived in the quarter and squatted some of theempty buildings to prevent their demolition. These spaces started being used as social centres:neighbours met in order to discuss and channel their collective demands, activities such as bicycles and furniture repair workshops were organized, a series of social documentaries andthe provision of legal and work-related assistance for the numerous migrant people living in thequarter. The Hole, which was collectively transformed into a city vegetable garden, and all theinitiatives carried out around it, brought social cohesion to the neighbourhood. This is particularly relevant in terms of citizenship, a concept that has historically been exclusive. Stilltoday, not everyone within the city enjoys the full legal status of citizenship; migrant people,the poor, the homeless and the unemployed are excluded from most citizenship rights. The areawhere the Hole is located is inhabited by low-income communities and different groups suffer-ing various types of social and political exclusion: elderly people, young couples with precarious jobs, unemployed and migrants. This circumstance had been used by local authoritiesto deliberately keep on excluding such social collectives from participation in political processes and to make public opinion agree with the necessary restructuring of the city centre, at whatever cost. However, grassroots action in this context showed that citizenship issomething that has to go beyond economic and political bonds. The rights to take part in collective life and the designing of the common good have to take into account material andactual relationships between citizens themselves and with the space they inhabit. In this respect,being an ecological citizen in the city also requires rethinking urban relationships, especially inorder to include the socially and politically excluded.

The neighbourhood association “El Forat de la Vergonya” continues to condemn the absence ofparticipatory public policies, the lack of information citizens receive from the local government and the priority that the city council gives to the technicians’ reports over the neighboursÕwill.5 They have also pointed at the unequal distribution of environmental risks, byshowing how environmental and social injustices in the city affect the disadvantaged and thepoor disproportionately. These urban ecological citizens have been a source of inspiration forother neighbourhood groups in Catalonia and Spain, and a network of citizen-activists has beencreated to share information and experiences and to organize protest and participatory events.

Beyond and below urban spaces

I believe that such practices in the city context are a good place to start developing an urbanenvironmental culture which questions the dualisms between the city and the country, Nature andCulture. Nevertheless, it is important to mention here that urban ecological citizenship performance cannot be reduced to the city limits. Together with the city, there are other

[5] See “El Forat” at [http://www.nodo50.org/tortuga/article.php3?id_article=1639].

28environment. It is true that inhabitants of rural spaces have traditionally developed an environ-mental knowledge that, it can be argued, those raised in a metropolis lack. For instance, mosturban dwellers do not know what vegetables are in season, whereas people in rural areashave long depended on such type of knowledge in order to guarantee their own subsistence.However, the city provides a social dimension needed to explain environmental problems andto practice ecological citizenship activity. Everyday, while we keep on hearing messages of sustainability, competitiveness, and modernization of our cities, urban people encounter air pollution, small shops and availabity of local products disappearing, poverty, mountains of waste,social inequalities and privatization of basic services. What we can do as citizens in our dailyroutine is determined by the way the city we live in is organized. If public transport is inefficient and the sanitary infrastructure is inadequate, we will be inclined to drive to work andpay for private health care. In this context, being an urban ecological citizen means realizingthat all these problems are interrelated and connected to political and economic processes. Thisimplies that both individually and as a community we are creating unjust and unsustainable conditions of life. It is therefore our duty as citizens to accept such collective responsibility andtake action.

Reclaiming the streets

Ecological citizenship in the city framework is not, then, only about recycling, buying fair tradeproducts and joining an environmental organization to go on Sunday trips to observe nature.We cannot separate the city and its problems from the so-called natural environment. Takingresponsibility for nature starts in our houses, in our neighbourhoods, in our cities. That is notonly an environmental activity; it is also, in the first place, a social and political goal.

Urban ecological citizenship goes beyond a strictly environmental concern. It demands collectiveengagement in a transformative project. But what does this exactly mean? There are differentways for urban ecological citizens to embark on such cooperative adventure. Metropolitan ecological citizens could, for a start, Reclaim the Streets against the monopoly of the car, since“the car system steels the street from under us and sells it back for the price of petrol”.3Reclaim the Streets is a British direct action network for social and ecological revolution withno formal organizational structure. Under the banner Reclaim the Streets, more or less sponta-neous associations of people participate in demonstrations, parties and other related events todissolve the existing power in the streets. These anti-engine crusaders constitute an example ofwhat urban ecological citizenship is about, since their activity encompasses more than a tenacious defiance given the countless hazards that cars cause to human health and theenvironment. They are not only opposing cars as an isolated struggle, but “the political andeconomic forces which drive car culture”, that is, global capitalism and all social hierarchy thata capitalist economy inevitably generates and reproduces.4

Apart from the streets’ invasion by cars and the social problems arising from the car system,there are other major issues dramatically affecting contemporary life, both in urban and ruralareas. A very significant one is land speculation and development, a factor that is eroding thesocial fabric, carried on through the connivance of local authorities with the private buildingsector. In this context, ecological citizenship activity could focus on urban development and itsconnection with social and economic transformations affecting citizensÕlives and the urban environment.

[3] See the Reclaim the Streets website at [http://rts.gn.apc.org/prop04.htm].[4] Ibid., at [http://rts.gn.apc.org/prop07.htm].

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31Nathan Young - A return to the commons? Why the environment(still) matters in democratic theory

There is recently a renewed interest in the notion of the commons. Much of this interest isdriven by a desire to understand the social and political role of new technologies, such asthe Internet, that dramatically extend capacities for collective and individual action.Consequently, this literature tends to investigate questions of autonomy and self-governance,but also issues of privatization and state control in these domains.1 There is a strong sensein these writings that the electronic commons stand at the forefront of a re-articulationbetween private and public spheres - that we are in the midst of a great sorting outÕinterms of rights, particularly in terms of the dynamic between mechanisms of control (propertyrights, regulation, surveillance) and the rights of commonality, open-access, and self -governance.

The commons and environmental thought

However, these same themes and questions continue to play out with respect to thatÔ’older’commons, namely the environment. These parallels are not merely academic. The same questions of power, identity, autonomy, and democracy permeate both the environmental andelectronic commons. In this essay, I suggest that study of the electronic and environmentalcommons have much to gain from one another, as the ongoing (and heretofore mostlyindependent) debates within these spheres reflect very similar and fundamental questions aboutautonomy and governance in free societies.

The question ofÔ’the commons’ is an old one in environmental thought. Elinor Ostrom tracesthe modern debate about both the promise and the “tragedy” of the commons to Malthusand Hobbes, who articulated the dangers inherent in the collision of freedom and scarcity.2

These themes have been famously re-presented in Garrett Hardin’s article “The Tragedy ofthe Commons”, where he argues that the commons are inherently unsustainable in conditionsof freedom and open-access, as it is in individual users’ best interests to exploit the com-mons to the overall deterioration of common benefits.3

The duality of state policies

The core difference between the notions of the environmental and electronic commons is thatthe former assumes that scarcity is the rule, while the latter assumes that the commons aregreatly enhanced with ever greater participation and openness. In what ways, then, are theyrelevant to one another? My answer is two-fold. The first reason is that state and corporate

[1] See, for example, Jay G. Blumler and Stephen Coleman. 2001. "Realising Democracy Online: A Civic Commonsin Cyberspace." IPPR/Citizens Online Research Publication no. 2.[2] Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1990).[3] Garrett Hardin, ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, Science 162 (1968): 1243 - 1248

The re-emergence of the ideal of environmental commons after centuries of privatization and centralization is a highly significant development. It is important torecognize, however, that this movement often proceeds in conjunction with the consolidation of exclusive authority in other respects.

30relevant sites for political activity and participation, both below (the quarter, the house and theworkplace) and beyond (the region, the world) the urban space. Ecological problems are notonly local but cut across cities and states; they are trans-national problems, whether in theirroots or in their consequences. Thus, urban ecological citizenship demands more than a concernwith the city. It requires that we use the city structures as an organizational and epistemological framework to think and act globally.

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of enhancing global competitiveness, the provincial government has given up much of itsauthority over access rights. Importantly, devolution has occurred in two directions. On theone hand, the rights of corporate lessees have been enhanced, to the point where firms areallowed to trade access rights, to self-regulate on environmental issues, and to abandon territorial commitments (i.e., to process resources in the region of harvest). On the otherhand, senior governments have sought to mitigate the impact of these changes on resource-dependent communities by carving out new commons. Specifically, the provincial governmentaims to redistribute 20% of Crown lands to community groups and Aboriginal governments.These areas come under direct local control, with local groups (tellingly labelled “communitycorporations”) regulating access to the lease, as well as the sales of materials to local andextra-local processors. The system allows significant flexibility to the local corporations, withsome choosing to follow the model of larger firms and others choosing a more cooperativeroute.10

A new commons?

The movement towardsÔ’new’commons is occurring across many regions of the globe. It isimportant to recognize, however, that as with the BC case these often proceed in conjunction with the consolidation of exclusive authority in other respects. Other importantexamples of this tendency include the Bush administration’s significant expansion of communityforest programs on public lands in conjunction with radical reductions in environmental regulations of industry as a whole,11 as well as state efforts across North America, Europe,and Asia to encourage further capitalization in commercial fisheries at the same moment that governments pursue ‘cooperative management’.12

This tendency is important for new discussions of the ‘electronic commons’ and for democratictheory more generally. First, it is telling that even the most rigid regulatory frameworkschange and evolve with their political-economic context. The re-emergence of the ideal ofenvironmental commons after centuries of privatization and centralization is a highly significantdevelopment. Second, however, it is also important to recognize the strategic aspect of these“returns to the commons”, as it is increasingly common for governments to devolve to community and to corporate actors in the same moment to establish limited spaces for commons autonomy within the context of enhanced corporate rights to further enclose other(and larger) spaces. This, in my opinion, will be the next big front in the struggle over electronic commons to ensure that the open spaces are large and not sequestered, centraland not peripheral.

33

[9] Cole Harris, Making Native Space: Colonialism, Resistance, and Reserves in British Columbia (Vancouver:University of British Columbia Press, 2002).[10] British Columbia Community Forest Association, The Community Forestry Guidebook (Kalso, BC: Forrex, 2004).[11] See James McCarthy, ‘Devolution in the woods: community forestry as hybrid neoliberalism’ Environment andPlanning A 37(2005): 995Ð1014.[12] Becky Mansfield, ‘Rules of Privatization: Contradictions in Neoliberal Regulation of North Pacific Fisheries’ Annalsof the Association of American Geographers 94 (2004): 565-584.

32responses to the ÔolderÕ issue of environmental commons have set the framework for currentresponses to the newerÕelectronic commons. For instance, ideas about ‘the tragedy of theenvironmental commons’Õhave long steered governments in two directions of profound significance for democratic theory and practice. First, it has been used as a justification forthe worldwide movement to privatize environment and resources. The notion of ‘private stewardship’ of the environment is etched upon contemporary notions of democracy as vasttracts of property and wealth have been set ‘off limits’ from (official) public contestation. Thesecond direction has involved the establishment of authoritarian, top-down, and hierarchical legal controls over access and usage of the commons, often despite the priorexistence of local systems to mediate these same concerns.4 As the burgeoning literature onthe electronic commons illustrates, these remain the two great narratives in ‘official’Õresponsesto commons old and new.5

The second reason that environmental and electronic commons are relevant to one anotherbecause both are currently in a state of flux. In this respect, scholars of the electronic commons should take note that the privatization-centralization paradigm that has anchoredWestern environmental governance for centuries appears to be shifting. Specifically, there iscurrently a significant movement underway to restore, in very selective and limited ways, thenotion of locally-regulated environmental commons. This movement is evident in increasinglycommon efforts in many countries to establish “cooperativeÓmanagement” of local fisheries,6 inthe notion of “community forestry” that has found particular purchase in North America andAsia,7 and in efforts to re-open lands as agricultural “commonage” in Australia and SouthAfrica.8 It is my argument, however, that while these developments are undoubtedly driven by commitments to the principles of the commons (such as autonomy and self-governance), theyare also couched in larger movements of globalization and neo-liberalism. I contend thatthese forces, with their attendant pressures for ‘efficiency’ in economy and governance, arerecasting the commons extending exclusionary authority in some respects while creating new‘islands’ of local autonomy in others.

The case of British Columbia

To illustrate, I use an example from my home country of Canada, specifically the province ofBritish Columbia (BC). The economy of BC has traditionally been resource-based with astrong emphasis on forestry, fisheries, and mining. Moreover, the BC case is relevantbecause the province continues to hold resource rightsÒin common (94% of BCÕs land-base isdesignated as “Crown lands”, meaning that ownership rests with the province). This arrange-ment has meant that BC’s Crown lands have traditionally been very tightly controlled by central authorities, who then lease access rights to private firms. Indeed, in extending this centralized control over these commons, the provincial government severely restricted accessrights of Aboriginal groups and other traditional users.9

Small but significant measures have recently been taken against this regime. On the pretext

[4] See David Ralph Matthews, Controlling common property: Regulating Canada's east coast fishery (Toronto:University of Toronto Press, 1993).[5] Lawrence Lessig, The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World (New York: Vintage,2002).[6] See Douglas Clyde Wilson et al., eds., The Fisheries Co-Management Experience: Accomplishments, Challenges,and Prospects (Netherlands: Kluwer, 2003). [7] See Mark Baker and Jonathan Kusel, Community Forestry in the United States: Learning from the Past, Craftingthe Future (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2003).[8] See Moenieba Isaacs and Mohamed Najma, ‘Co-Managing the Commons in the New South Africa’ paper presented at "Constituting the Commons: Crafting Sustainable Commons in the New Millenium", the 8th Conferenceof the International Association for the Study of Common Property, Bloomington, Indiana, USA, May 31-June 4,2000.

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35a. Even the warmest supporters of the GPS recording effort, some of whom had a direct relation with the scientific subject, faced great practical difficulties in contributing their own GPSdata. For me it was easier, because I replaced some exercise time with walking around theburnt areas, which, however, proved to be very difficult or impossible for others.Finally, it became clear to me that notwithstanding mine and othersÕgood intentions, a massivepractical outcome was very difficult to achieve, and the attempt could not yield useful results,not because there was no interest, but because the methods Tilaphos suggested could not befollowed by its public.

b. Discussions with Elias Tziritis of WWF and forest officials led promptly to the examinationof other data sources and the discoveryÓof the Government Gazette site (E.T.).4 The E.T. sitewas familiar to me from the past, but one discovers the real value of a tool only when hereally needs that tool. The reforestation coordinates published in the Government Gazette bythe national forest offices, although frequently incomplete, presented the answer for what couldbe a creative way for the friends of forest and visitors of Tilaphos to offer something produc-tive, without having the burden to walk through the burnt areas.The experience of Tilaphos- reforest shows, by the way, that all who participate actively, havealready had a personal interest in environmental issues before they discover Tilaphos. The motiveof those who participate in the project is their interest and their agony for the protection ofthe natural and forest resources. It is not coincidental that the majority of those who contributedata are friends or members of environmental groups or blogs.

Thanasis Priftis / Pavlos Hatzopoulos: What do you and what do the users of the datablogexpect from this project? How are entries organized and put on the map?

Dimitrios Zachariadis: The datablog is a online experiment on collectivity: “Online” because it presents itself, collects and spreads information exclusively through the web.Ò”Experiment”because the attempt has a start, a duration and an end (considering the finite amount of datain reforestation declarations), and it attempts to prove a hypothesis: everything that seems dif-ficult to be carried out by the state, is in reality much easier and can actually be realized bya bunch of volunteers at no cost. “On collectivity”Óbecause the data entry is collective and thedata belongs to all who need it unconditionally and without any limitation.

Our common objective is to disperse, through the Greek web, reliable public information regard-ing the loss of forest land, so that it becomes clear and substantiated with evidence, that thedecline of forests in this land is an everyday issue so close to us all. There is a need fordetailed and reliable raw data which can be utilized by scientists and, at the same time, bealso useful to citizens and journalists. The only thing the datablog does is to promote, usingmodern e-tools, existing information which is hidden in the Government Gazette. For this reason, we always include along with the information we publish the link of the specific issueof the Government Gazette that contains the information, so that all data can be cross-checkedby anyone who cares to.

I wouldn’t say that the data entries are somehow organized beforehand, even though sometimes there is certain direction of where it would be better to focus. For example, thequestionÒ“which comes first, the maps or the statistics?”Óhas not yet been answered. There areinstructions in three videos and one illustrated ‘how to’ and whoever wishes to, can freely usean online tool to make a data entry.

In an exceptional case of participation, that of Calliope Charkianaki, who spent a lot of personal time for the data entry and thus she acquired great experience, a more developed

[4] See [http://www.et.gr/].

34Dimitrios Zachariadis - Social media and environmental activism

Thanasis Priftis / Pavlos Hatzopoulos: How did you come up with the name “Tilaphos”? Is therea principal motive for the creator or the participants of Tilaphos-reforest?.1 Can you say afew things, about the citizensÕparticipation of in the project, either through their public or throughtheir personal contact with you?

Dimitrios Zachariadis: When something new is created, one has the wonderful opportunity toname it. The name “Τήλαφος”, in English “ti-la-phos” is the acronym forÒ“Time LapsePhotographs”. Tilaphos is the name of a minor open source application,2 which is part of abigger application for registering road problems and other data of public interest. The wordsounds so much like a Greek name that many in the TCL community (the language in whichthe application is being written) asked me what it meant in Greek. Well, in Greek it means“Telematic Presentation of Road Incidents”Ó(Τηλεµατική Απεικόνιση Οδικών Συµβάντων) til-ap-osÓ(Τηλ-απ-ος) whereÒ“π” is turned in to aÒ“φ”Ó(ph) because theÒοÓof the word “Οδικών” aspirates (in ancient Greek). Thus, with the new blog, a new name was created.

The issue of public information has been in the back of my mind for quite some years. It isthe deeper motive behind the creation of Tilaphos - reforest. Last summer’s fires pushed me tothe initial creation of Tilaphos and the recording of burnt areas through GPS.3 It was something like a personal way out of the sorrow for what was the forest near my house,which is now gone.

The reception that Tilaphos had with the recordings of the burnt areas using GPS was reallya surprise. I received lots of messages from people who found the attempt worthy, maybebecause it identified with their own need of a way out of the disorganization and the inactivity that characterizes the official state, which is incapable to channel the anxieties andthe needs of the people, who care about the environment, to creative actions.The interest of thousands of Greek visitors and the many messages of solidarity that Tilaphosreceived during the first 2-3 months were very important, especially since the blog avoided theangry but facile protest, which usually attracts concordant disappointed people and boosts thevisits, while in the long run, it may lead to pessimism and defeatism.At the same time I noted two new things:

[1] Blog’s address at [http://tilaphos-reforest.blogspot.com/][2] See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_lapse].[3] Blog’s address at [http://tilaphos.blogspot.com].

Collective blogs, Tilaphos and Tilaphos-reforest are two of the few cases in the Greekweb where it becomes obvious that the collective intelligence of the users might puta remedy to some of the lingering deficiencies of the central state. Dimitrios Zachariadis,the driving force behind the two projects, explains that their aim is to disperse, throughthe Greek web, reliable public information regarding the loss of forest land, so that itbecomes clear and substantiated with evidence, that the decline of forests in this landis an everyday issue so close to us all.

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37features in a blog, a “datablog”, which is kind of an innovation in the way we use blogs,although the word “datablog”Óis not new. Of course, such a technique can be used for anykind of information that can be structured in a formal way.

A major issue regarding data entry by untrained users is the correction of errors. Some typesof errors take as much time to correct as if entering new data, or even more, because theyneed careful inspection and they always require an out of “production line”, one-off procedure.Hope is to have as few errors as possible, in order to avoid the loss of time and the disappointment which comes with errors, something that is until now fulfilled.

One project objective, which we will start to implement now because we needed data in orderto begin, is to develop widgets that could be used in any web page for publishing datablog’sdata without having to visit our webpage. In this way, we hope to make it easier to diffusethe available reforestation information.

Thanasis Priftis / Pavlos Hatzopoulos: What does web. 2.0 mean for you? What kind of microformating applications could result from similar projects?

Dimitrios Zachariadis: The concept of web 2.0 is quite fluid, I think. For me, the view of theinventor of web, Tim Burners Lee, is very close to this new concept for the web, without, ofcourse, excluding numerous other paths that the human imagination could follow. Nevertheless,almost infinite text-based data already exist in the vastness of the web, taking into consideration the human capability of recovering it. What doesn’t exist in a satisfying degreeis a standardized form, a formal outline, which can describe the information’s structure in a waythat machines can automatically process it. This is what Tim Burners Lee calls the Semantic Web.

Most of the existing websites, and this naturally stands for Greece too, seem simply to followthe logic of printed paper with text and graphics. This does not facilitate the access of information that is found spread in millions of pages, because without the proper tools it isimpossible to be exploited.

According to Tim Burners Lee, as he puts it in his bookÒ”Weaving the Web”, the next stepfor the development of the web is the creation of search engines, whish would be able toadd some rational processing to a search, so that instead of looking for pages containing key-words, we could actually search for information answering general questions.5 In our reforestation case a question would be “Which municipality in Greece has the most illegal occupations per citizen per acre?”ÓA search engine in the Semantic Web would visit theTilaphos-reforest datablog and find there some answers using the existing data tagging.

Microformat technology plays such a role in providing a structure to the data to a satisfyingdegree: without altering the appearance of a webpage, just by changing the content of someHTML attributes, namely “class” andÒ“title”Óand following some coding conventions, it is possible to develop, in HTML, the structure that a browser needs in order to understand theinformation it is presenting.6 Currently there are a lot of microformat tools, and if I am notmistaken, future Firefox editions would offer natively the capability of exploiting them, a feature that presently exists with plugins like Operator, Tails Export etc. We can in just oneclick, for example, send directly to our mobile phone a complete address, including phone numbers, from a web page conformant to the microformats spec, without having to copy anything. We can view maps using information contained in pages without having to find andenter coordinates. Imagine all of the reforestation info that exists in the Government Gazette

[5] Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web(New York: Harper Collins, 2000).[6] See [http://www.et.gr/].[6] See [http://microformats.org/].

36administration tool was used, which is not available to others to prevent bulk errors, but whichhelps to reduce the time required for the entry of large number of data by creating a sortofÒ“production line”.

The participation of others to the data entry helped a lot in the debugging of the tools andthe improvement of the operation of the datablog, something priceless for a project like this.

Thanasis Priftis / Pavlos Hatzopoulos: How was the datablog implemented, technically speaking? How do you manage the administration and the issuing the collected data?

Dimitrios Zachariadis: With a lot of personal time and much less sleep!

The first thing regarding the technical implementation was to maintain zero cost. The need tokeep data available for a long time without having to pay the cost for the disk storage andthe server maintenance, the daily backups, etc. was the choosing factor. For reasons of theirown, certain big companies offer free storage, bandwidth and technical utilities that could beproperly exploited.

Secondly, we wanted the capability of dynamic data search using existing tools in order tomake it easier for the end user to use the data. This includes search engines, as they are oneof the main ways of finding pieces of information in the web. The search application of theGovernment Gazette was an example to avoid because, while it is helpful for retrieving issuesof the Gazette, it is not adequate for queries on reforestation areas, making it quite difficultand sometimes even impossible to recover that kind of data. Besides, the content of theGovernment Gazette’s issues is not accessible by the search engines.

Thirdly, we had to find/create the appropriate tools to utilize the data, so that the, possiblynon-expert, end user would be interested to search and study it without any mediators.

Fourthly, a very important requirement was to find a way to enter the data so that it wouldnot be hidden, but instead presented along with the contributorÕs name, allowing for immediate use of it, even though it might contain errors, rewarding in this way the contribution.This attribution of credit in every piece of data entered is a very important condition for the operation of Tilaphos.

Since finding of a sponsor provider was excluded for the moment, we exploited the option ofusing the free-hosting services offered by companies, mainly in the form of blogs. This had theadvantage that the news feed could operate like a web service, especially if it allowed parametric queries. Several options were examined and finally we chose Blogger, the platformprovided by Google, because: a) it allows javascript programming on the web pages, thus making programming of the tools easier, b) it has an open API for the news feed, which alsocomes in the form of JSON+script that allows any third party web page to use it withoutrestrictions, c) it has an total storage capacity that exceeds 7GB, d) it makes it possible toenter html tagged data in the comments to articles, which are visible publicly along with thecontributor’s name and are also available in the news feed.

We have therefore a blog, whose contents consist of structured raw data and not arbitrarywritten news, the entry of which is made by the users with tools written in javascript, whichprovides the capability of presenting the data in the form of maps or spreadsheets etc, or provides it through a web service in the form of a news feed. I named this combination of re-pub


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39otherwise it cannot be considered open and free.

The first question that needs to be answered is whether one wants information to circulate inthe web and for what kind of usage. If the answer isÒ“yes”, then there are three ways toserve it: for humans readers, for machines or for both at the same time. Most of the westerncountries have answered the aforementioned question with aÒ“yes” and a lot of information hasbeen put into the public domain.7 As a result, numerous web services have been created aswell as web standards, so that public data would be usable by machines, or by intermediateservices and end users. People and organizations, who are interested in using such data, pro-duce better results both quantitatively and qualitatively, while other people are better informedfor what is going on. The provision for free access to public information can be found in theGreek Constitution, Article 5A (Right to information), where the right of every citizen to partic-ipate in the Information Society is explicitly stated. Therefore, theoretically, the Greek state hasanswered the question with an unconditional “yes”.

Recently, I searched for some data from the National Statistical Service of Greece. The NationalStatistical Service of Greece has been collecting a plethora of reliable data about the Greeksociety and state (down to the detail of small settlements) over many decades and offers itwithout restrictions, stating at the organization’s presentation that foreseen data users areÒ“thebusiness world, scientists, analysts and citizens.” Most of this data is in the form of PDF documents, while there are also some in XLS format. Such a reliable source of informationshould follow a strict standard form in order to avoid errors and double entries (or omissions)of information and disambiguate the codes used. There are examples of double entries andomissions in the National Statistical Service of Greece data, even in the XLS files, which indicate, as far as I can tell, hand-written interventions into the final documents.

As far as I know, the state administration and many public organizations (e.g. universities) produce a significant number of quality raw data. Until now, the unresolved problem is thatthere is no data release policy. A confirmation of the lack of such data release policy can befound in the texts that some of these organizations post to their web pages as their objectives. There is rarely, if at all, any mention about providing reliable data to professionalsand citizens, unlike the case of the National Statistical Service that was mentioned above. TheMinistry of Environment, Physical Planning and Public Works is, unfortunately, a negative example, even though it’s the ministry of works and engineers. The Intellectual PropertyOrganization is another sad example: it addresses the Greek citizens only in English.

Thanasis Priftis / Pavlos Hatzopoulos: Finally, what does public information mean? How diffi-cult is, let’s say, for the Hellenic Mapping and Cadastral Organization to implement theCadastral Register through a convenient flexible schema? Would such a suggestion be utopian?

Dimitrios Zachariadis: The slogan “The public information belongs to the people”, that is Tilaphos’heading, is a tautology. Public is something that by definition belongs to the citizens.Nevertheless, in Greece, the slogan is still an unfulfilled requirement because public informationproduced on taxpayer’s money remains in the drawers of civil servants, as if it were theirproperty.

Every piece of information, which is not defined as private is in essence public: almost everything that can be physically accessed by the public belongs to the public sphere: roads,sidewalks, city block limits, field, river, forest and shoreline borders. Public is every piece ofinformation collected with public money which does not break the restrictions of Article 9, 9A

[7] See James Boyle, The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind (New Haven: yale University Press,2008).

38marked using microformat specs and how easy the recovery of the data contained would be.

The Tilaphos-reforest datablog works exactly like this: it tags the data entered by the user fromthe Government Gazette, so that when it is pasted to the datablog as a comment, it has theright format for the presentation tools to recognize the information, while at the same time itpresents the data in a form that the end user can read easily. Due to the limitations of HTMLcode allowed by Google, the data/comments tagging is similar to microformats but not thesame. It needs one more step to make it absolutely compatible. The data conversion to thisfinal form using the microformatsÕ“adr” andÒ“hCalendar” specifications will start soon.

One can apply the microformat specifications today in every page he is allowed access of theHTML code. New specifications can also be created by following the microformat principles,for data that is not covered by the ones that are available. Names, addresses, calendars andevents are commonly used for such applications of microformats. Every page containing suchpieces of information can be coded easily in conformance with the microformat specifications,offering visitors the value of the already existing semantic web tools.

There exists also, of course, the social side of web 2.0, the social media, which offers plethora of communication possibilities and the means for forming social and interest group networks; they are enjoying tremendous popularity in the web. I do not have any doubts aboutthe social role that the social media play, but I have serious reservations whether this freedomof speech or expression constitutes a form of “e-democracy.” Although the freedom of expression is extremely important, it is not the only virtue in a democracy. The social mediacan balance to a certain extent the deficit in voicing citizensÕopinions, a deficit that exists incontemporary western representative democracies, without, of course, filling the institutional gap:what is essential is to voice opinions in a political agora, so that informed citizens will beable to take part in the political decision making. In reality, without participation in the political decision making, the freedom of expression seems to be an empty word, politicallyspeaking, more of a dispel of dissidence or a mere protest, without however yieldingsignificant gains in the political level, at least until now.

With these views in mind, Tilaphos-reforest seeks to consolidate the participation in the blogto a useful practical result.

Thanasis Priftis / Pavlos Hatzopoulos: When is an information considered open (licensing, inter-net web service)? What’s your experience from the domestic and the international public administration regarding data collection?

Dimitrios Zachariadis: Information written on paper is practically closed information nowadays.Can anyone imagine a graduate forestry student, wanting to write a paper about the declineof forest land in Greece and having to enter one by one all the data published in theGovernment Gazette issues? He will simply never write that paper because he will chooseanother subject. The state may reply, turning a blind eye, that this information is open andfreely accessible, although, in reality, it is almost closed, since it cannot be easily exploitedusing existing means, considering the current mode of producing content and knowledge. Imaginewhat would have existed from Tilaphos-reforest, hadnÕt the Government Gazette offered thepossibility of viewing its issues on the web, just as it was the case a few years ago: therewould only exist 10 entries on burnt areas recorded with a GPS, rather than the 1830 entriesof declarations of reforestation, created within a month. In a few words, it is not sufficient thatthe information be published somewhere; it should also not cost an arm and a leg to use it, re-pub


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41sector organizations. I doubt that you will find anyone offering even the trashiest piece of information freely to the Greek citizens. A policy for open data access is necessary to allowthe Greek society to reach a higher level in its ability to produce reliable content and knowledge. The improved quality and quantity of content and knowledge gradually elevates thelevel of all social processes that take place in a society and increase the citizensÕ trust in theinstitutions and the people who govern them.

Nevertheless, the argument that such a proposal is utopian rather presupposes the acceptanceof the outdated idea about a state-of-experts and citizens-subjects, which has already reachedthe limits of its ability to produce results and now seems to be faltering between disasters withwhich the state-of-experts cannot cope, like last summerÕs fires or the water contamination withtoxics, and the indifference and cynicism of the citizens-subjects.

40and 19 of the Greek Constitution for the protection of personal data and the privacy of communications. Namely, research, intellectual or artistic creations ordered, paid by the state orendowed to the state which also owns the intellectual rights, statistical data and electoral results,are all public property. Public is every piece of information published in the issues of theGovernment Gazette, as is the obligatory information which must be written on public docu-ments (addresses, postal codes, the state borders, county and municipality borders etc.) or/ andis defined by state laws.

The Hellenic Mapping and Cadastral Organization, for example, has collected topographical andcadastral data of Greece either directly by their own means, financed by the state through theministry of Environment, Physical Planning and Public Work’s budget and that for the publicinvestments or by charging license fees, or indirectly by other public organizations, which areobliged by law to provide them to the Organization. Nevertheless, the Hellenic Mapping andCadastral Organization does not provide ANY data free of charge, not even the municipalitiesÕborders of the new national Kapodistrias project. These cost the outrageous amount of 1450e- while their copyright statement makes their use in the web illegal. Of course, I am not refer-ring to the whole Cadastral Register, which might involve issues of personal data regardingproperty, but to elementary territorial data of the country’s administrative structure.

The realization of a policy of openness for such pieces of information in the web does notface any technical difficulties, since the technology involved is already mature and mostly freeto use in the form of open source software. If the Hellenic Mapping and Cadastral Organizationallowed free use of this kind of information, I am pretty sure many would be interested in providing it through the web. Tilaphos could be one of them, using the technical specificationsbased on the microformats principles.

The results of the current shortsighted policy can be observed by anyone who navigates theweb for the aforementioned administrative regions or for other territorial data of Greece. Theonly available data comes from American universities and are country or prefecture borders,many decades old, of unsuitable accuracy and of no practical use for anyone who lives inGreece. There are also other international sources operating on a participatory base,geonames.org for example, which offer a great number of point data, for Greece too, througha web service, but you cannot find an official Greek free topographical data source, not evena university. It’s quite noticeable that even the National Statistical Service of Greece, whichgenerally releases statistical data into the public domain, does not provide any of the topographical data it collects for free.

If one envies the progress of other western countries or of companies which operate there,one should pay attention to the conditions which nourished and sustain them. Many maps usedby Google, Yahoo or Microsoft, for example, are based on satellite images provided freelyby NASA. One can read the following remarkable for its frugality and comprehensiveness statement, under the photographs published in the web and coming from American public organizations (here from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Organization - NOAA): “This imageis in the public domain because it contains materials that originally came from the U.S. NationalOceanic and Atmospheric Administration, taken or made during the course of an employee’sofficial duties.”8ÓI do not think that further explanations are necessary.

A policy of open access to public information in Greece is not utopian, because the currentstate of affairs here lags far behind what happens abroad. Count the number of web services, which the Greek state operates along with the universities and all the greater public

[8] See [http://www.noaa.gov/].

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authors Peter Barnes

Peter Barnes is an entrepreneur and writer who has founded and led several successful companies. At presenthe is a senior fellow at the Tomales Bay Institute in Point Reyes Station, CA. In 1976 he co-founded a worker-owned solar energy company in San Francisco, and in 1983 he co-founded Working Assets MoneyFund. He subsequently served as president of Working Assets Long Distance. In 1995 he was named SociallyResponsible Entrepreneur of the Year for Northern California. His previous books include Who Owns the Sky?Our Common Assets and the Future of Capitalism and Capitalism 3.0 His articles have appeared in TheEconomist, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Christian ScienceMonitor, The American Prospect, the Utne Reader, Yes!, Resurgence, and elsewhere.

Carme Melo Escrihuela

Carme Melo Escrihuela is a research fellow at the School of Politics, International Relations and Philosophy,Keele University, UK. She is completing a PhD thesis in the field of Green Political Thought, on issues of citizenship, civil society and ecology. She graduated in Law at the Universitat de Valencia, where she comesfrom.

Michail Fragkias

Michail Fragkias is the Executive Officer of the IHDP Urbanization and Global Environmental Change projecthoused by the Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University. He received his Ph.D in Economicsfrom Clark University in 2004. Michail was a postdoctoral scholar at the Center for Environmental Scienceand Policy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University and has publishedurban land use change, urban growth modeling, urban spatial structure and its interactions with the environment.

Bill McKibben

Bill McKibben is an American environmentalist and writer who frequently writes about global warming, alternative energy, and the risks associated with human genetic engineering. Beginning in the summer of 2006,he led the organization of the largest demonstrations against global warming in American history. He has published several books on environmental politics, including Hope, Human and Wild and Deep Economy: theWealth of Communities and the Durable Future. Bill is a frequent contributor to various magazines includingThe New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Orion Magazine, Mother Jones, The New York Reviewof Books, Granta, Rolling Stone, and Outside.

Stephanie Posthumus

Stephanie Posthumus teaches 19th and 20th Century French Literature at McMaster University, Hamilton,Ontario, Canada. She is currently constructing a French "écocritique" on the theoretical basis of political ecologists' work Bruno Latour, Edgar Morin and Michel Serres. She has most recently published articles inDalhousie French Studies on the intersection of structuralism and ecologism in French author Michel Tournier'swork and in Culture and the State on the subject of dialogues taking place between ecology and technology.

of edition Philip Sarre

Philip Sarre is Senior Lecturer in Geography at the Open University in the UK, and has been head ofdepartment for a total of 7 years. He has written on a variety of topics in Geography and EnvironmentalStudies, both in Open University teaching texts (most recently jointly editing ÔA World in the MakingÕ withDoreen Massey and Nigel Clark) and in research publications (highlights including ÔHuman Geography Today,with Doreen Massey and John Allen). His recent research, joint with Dr. Petr Jehlicka, was on the values andstrategies of Czech and Slovak environmental nongovernmental organisations and has produced articles inEnvironmental Politics and Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers.

Dan Smith

Dan Smith has been the Secretary General of International Alert since December 2003 and is a member ofthe Advisory Group for the UN Peacebuilding Fund. Having served as Associate Director (1988-91) and thenDirector (1991-3) of the Transnational Institute, Amsterdam, Dan Smith took up the Directorship of theInternational Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO) in 1993. He is the author/co-author of ten books and editor/co-editor of six on peace and conflict issues, including The State of the Middle East: An atlas of conflict and resolution (2006). He has produced over 100 journal articles and chapters in anthologies, as wellas several reports including the pathbreaking A Climate of Conflict (2007) on the links between climatechange, peace and war. Dan Smith was awarded the OBE in 2002.

Ed Wall

Ed Wall is a senior lecturer in Landscape Architecture at Kingston University, London, Ed is trained in urbandesign and landscape and he was working for the EDAW design firm on the master plan for GovernorsIsland in New York. He has served as visiting critic on Urban Design Masters at Columbia University and forLandscape Architecture Masters at the City College of New York and has exhibited several design competition entries at the Van Alen Institute in New York.

Nathan Young

Nathan Young is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Ottawa. His research focusses onissues of social and economic development in rural and resource-dependent communities and regions, with particular attention to entrepreneurship. He is also engaged in several research projects looking at issues ofenvironment and governance in coastal regions of British Columbia.

Dimitrios Zachariadis

Dimitrios Zachariadis is an electrical engineer (University of Missuri-Rolla) with a postgraduate degree in computer science (City University of NY). He was the director of telemetric and telecommunications operationsduring the construction of the natural gas pipeline in Greece and a technical advisor in other private works.He was advisor to the Minister of TransportationÕs on matters of tellecommunications and a member of theNational Telecommunication’s Committee. He works as an telecommunications and telemetrics advisor.

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From climate change to environmental justice?

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