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From sustainable development to carbon control: Eco-state restructuring and the politics of urban and regional development

While, Aidan; Jonas, Andrew E. G.; Gibbs, David

Authors

Aidan While



Abstract

The management of carbon emissions holds some prospect for challenging sustainable development as the organising principle of socio-environmental regulation. This paper explores the rise of a distinctive low-carbon polity as an ideological state project, and examines its potential ramifications for the regulation of economy-environment relations at the urban and regional scale. Carbon control would seem to introduce a new set of values into state regulation and this might open up possibilities for challenging mainstream modes of urban and regional development in a manner not possible under sustainable development. But low-carbon restructuring also portends intensified uneven development, new forms of state control and a socially uneven reworking of state-society relations. In order to explore these issues we start by setting out a framework for conceptualising environmental regulation based around the idea of eco-state restructuring. This idea is introduced to capture the conflicts, power struggles and strategic selectivities involved as governments seek to reconcile environmental protection with multiple other pressures and demands. Overall the paper seeks to make a distinctive contribution to theoretical work on state environmental regulation and the emerging spatial dimensions of climate policy.

Citation

While, A., Jonas, A. E. G., & Gibbs, D. (2010). From sustainable development to carbon control: Eco-state restructuring and the politics of urban and regional development. Transactions - Institute of British Geographers, 35(1), 76-93. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-5661.2009.00362.x

Journal Article Type Article
Online Publication Date Dec 9, 2009
Publication Date Jan 1, 2010
Deposit Date Nov 13, 2014
Journal Transactions Of The Institute Of British Geographers
Print ISSN 0020-2754
Publisher Wiley
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 35
Issue 1
Pages 76-93
DOI https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-5661.2009.00362.x
Keywords Earth-Surface Processes; Geography, Planning and Development
Public URL https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/460728
Publisher URL https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1475-5661.2009.00362.x
Contract Date Nov 13, 2014