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History and archaeology have a well-established engagement with issues of premodern societal development and the interaction between physical and cultural environments; together, they offer a holistic view that can generate insights into the nature of cultural resilience and adaptation, as well as responses to catastrophe. Grasping the challenges that climate change presents and evolving appropriate policies that promote and support mitigation and adaptation requires not only an understanding of the science and the contemporary politics, but also an understanding of the history of the societies affected and in particular of their cultural logic. But whereas archaeologists have developed productive links with the paleosciences, historians have, on the whole, remained muted voices in the debate until recently. Here, we suggest several ways in which a consilience between the historical sciences and the natural sciences, including attention to even distant historical pasts, can deepen contemporary understanding of environmental change and its effects on human societies.

UNEP’s proposal of the green economy advocates the pricing of ecosystem services in the hope of providing greater environmental protection and eradicating poverty. There are five aspects of the green economy which could undermine its practical implementation as well as its social legitimacy; i) ecosystem services are inherently difficult to price, ii) the consideration of the rebound effect is insufficient, iii) primacy of economics over the environment is ensured, iv) markets offer little protection for the poorest people, and v) existing market mechanisms aimed at safeguarding the environment have not succeeded. The green economy relies upon the discursive power of ecological modernization and our faith in progress to uphold a failing strategy of unfettered economic growth. This discourse limits our capacity to conceive solutions outside the economic sphere. Achieving sustainable development will require a process of social change that could be facilitated by the acceptance that nature is more than just a form of capital.

Development aid is characterized by an inherent asymmetry between donor and recipient institution. Despite regular aid reforms and bold ambitions to change this relation, the asymmetry seems to persist. Inspired by post-development theory, and drawing on both a review of development theory and fieldwork within the World Bank, this article argues that the lopsided aid-relations are continuously being reproduced through the formation of development expert knowledge within authoritative donor communities. Here, contemporary knowledge/power formations shape and are shaped by historically embedded structures and epistemic communities that benefit the donor’s need for legible and operational knowledge. Hence, top-down approaches to development planning are reproduced at the cost of participatory, bottom-up ones, as per the official rhetoric.

The Botswana Bushmen live in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in the centre of Botswana. The area is known to be one of the most rugged, arid landscapes on the face of the planet. In recent years, due to claims from the Botswana government that the Bushmen needed to ‘develop’, extreme efforts have been made to force the Bushmen from the reserve originally allotted to them in the 1960s.

In the Amazonian department of Caquetá (Colombia), considered a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) stronghold, 300 families are currently challenged with implementing the peace agreement in their territory while also navigating the road to sustainable development. This process entails trusting others, collaborating, and making decisions about health and education services, environmental problems, economic issues, and even aspects of everyday life. The Paisajes Conectados program is focused on reducing deforestation and promoting sustainable development in two municipalities of Caquetá. Its mission is to build new skills and share knowledge within local communities in order to strengthen governance and participation. This paper presents the findings of a field practicum, developed with the objective of determining community perceptions of the Capacity Building and Governance Strategy implemented under the Paisajes Conectados program in the context of a transition from conflict to peace.

An analysis of Alberta’s oil sands industry’s sustainability perspectives from a communication, and specifically metaphorical, standpoint is a valuable endeavour due to the importance of the oil sands (both in Alberta and elsewhere) today with the world’s reliance on fossil fuels. Learning how sustainability is used and conceptualized by the industry will reward us with a more comprehensive understanding of how to approach sustainable development in industry. Moreover, analysing the industry’s sustainability metaphors in a systematic manner will allow a greater variety of metaphors to be introduced and investigated, allowing us to more succinctly articulate metaphorical conceptualizations of sustainability, sustainable and energy development, environmentalism, nature, and the oil sands themselves.

This research focuses the interactions between urban development and global environmental change processes as crucial for reducing the impacts of climate change. Together with the challenges of rapid urban growth, environmental change impacts will undermine efforts to achieve the sustainable development. Peri-urban refers to the area where urban and rural features and processes meet, intertwine and interact, usually located between city and countryside. Peri-urban growth patterns are shaping most of the urban development in sub-Saharan Africa, raising concerns regarding vulnerability to global environmental change in unplanned settlements. To date, there has been little exploration of the implications of peri-urban patterns for social vulnerability and adaptation options. The study discussed in this paper, conducted in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, illustrates the livelihood strategies and environmental management practices used by peri-urban dwellers, while underlining challenges and opportunities for adaptive capacity. According to a few scholars, the acknowledgement of such hybridity leads to a reconsideration of the dominant strategies for addressing environmental issues in peri-urban areas. Assuming the transition to urban is the best solution, those strategies emphasize the role of infrastructure and services provisioning. Moreover, a criticism of dominant approaches arises through analysis of the recent trend toward ecological security in global cities’ environmental management.

Through the lens of political ecology, the idea of alternative consumption, as defined by Bryant et al, is the consumption of more sustainable products with eco-labels alerting consumers about the benefits of purchasing said product instead of traditional products. Here, I examine the efficacy of Fair Trade certification on environmental sustainability and human rights in developing countries. Benefits accrued to Fair Trade, namely that certification informs consumers about environmental and social issues occurring in developing countries, provides consumers an option for “alternative”, more sustainable consumption, encourages businesses to develop in a more sustainable manner, and also may provide premiums that support environmental conservation and human well-being in developing countries or traditionally rentier-states. However, several drawbacks of Fair Trade certification and alternative consumption also have been noted, namely the concerns about corporate greenwashing, as well as the potential for creating a moral hazard for consumers who feel as though they are making a difference by simply perpetuating a neo-liberal capitalistic culture that oppresses those in developing countries in the first place. In addition, the definite Edenization of the rainforest can have arguably positive and negative benefits on the environmental and social aspects of developing countries. This paper will also examine the long-term effects of green marketing in the global North on the perceptions of the South as a place of unaltered wilderness and pristine ecosystems separate from the social struggles of human society. This paper argues that Fair Trade and alternative consumption has its benefits and constraints/limitations, but overall has greatly improved the plight of developing countries. Inherently, alternative consumption subscribes to neo- liberal systems and capitalistic culture, yet given we all must consume and alternative consumption captures a large audience and corporations with considerable purchasing power, Fair Trade certification and alternative consumption may be an effective means of consumptive change within the system.

This paper examines one specific theme of the democracy-environment interface of environmental governance: the participation of stakeholders in environmental policy formulation and implementation. After a short discussion of environmental governance, its main functions and challenges, the paper addresses the issue of stakeholder participation and the claim of a “democratic deficit” in international environmental governance. It stresses that while stakeholder involvement does not increase the democratic legitimacy, it may nevertheless increase the quality and through this the legitimacy of environmental policy processes. It will then argue that certain international processes such as the UN Commission on Sustainable Development have reached an unsatisfactory Pareto Optimum of stakeholder participation where formalization and proceduralization have become an impediment for active interaction and input of specific expertise and competence from non-state actors into state-centric policy making. It will suggest several changes to get beyond this non-productive Pareto Optimum, including de-formalization of participation, exchange of generality by specificity, and perception of non-state actors as partners and not as competitors. It will conclude by arguing that neither the alleged lack of an authoritative, effective central institution addressing the main environmental problems, nor the so called “democratic deficit” are the main challenge to today’s international environmental governance; but the lack of political will. Stakeholders, however, can be crucial in addressing this deficit.

Two federal policies—the protection of endangered species, and the rapid creation of renewable energy infrastructure—currently exist in significant legal tension. While both are important for the development of necessary sustainability, climate change induced by the continuous burning of carbon-based fuels likely poses a greater threat to endangered species than does the growth of commercial-scale renewable energy sites. This paper outlines several points of conflict between the two policies and subsequently considers the extent to which federal agencies responsible for renewable energy oversight and development possess “wiggle room” under the Endangered Species Act. A few recommendations for greater leeway are then offered.