While sustainable cities have been promoted as a desirable goal within a variety of policy contexts, critical questions concerning the extent to which cities and local governments can address the challenges of sustainability remain unanswered. We use a multilevel governance perspective to examine the discursive and material struggles which take place in creating sustainable cities. In exploring the politics of implementing climate protection through development planning in Newcastle upon Tyne and transport planning in Cambridgeshire, we find that the interpretation and implementation of sustainability are shaped by forms of governance which stretch across geographical scales and beyond the boundary of the urban. We argue that the 'urban' governance of climate protection involves relations between levels of the state and new network spheres of authority which challenge traditional distinctions between local, national and global environmental politics.

Rethinking Sustainable Cities: Multilevel Governance and the 'Urban' Politics of Climate Change

This book opens a fresh chapter in the debate on local enterprise clusters and their strategies for upgrading in the global economy. The authors employ a novel conceptual framework in their research on industrial clusters in Europe, Latin America and Asia and provide new perspectives and insights for researchers and policymakers alike.

Governance in global value chains

Ecosystems and Human Well-Being: Synthesis

This paper argues that, in order to address the challenges of climate change, attention needs to be focused not only at the international level but also on how climate protection policy is taking shape locally. It provides a comparative analysis of local climate change policy in Germany and the UK. By moving the focus from an analysis of the formal competencies of local government to the multiple modes of governing through which climate protection is taking place, the similarities between the two countries are brought into view. In both cases, actions are concentrated in the energy sphere and municipalities are increasingly deploying self-governing and enabling approaches to undertaken emissions reductions. The paper argues that the impacts of EU policies, financial crises and the political challenges of implementing climate change policies are changing the capacity for local intervention, with potentially significant consequences for medium- and long-term goals for climate protection.

Local Government and the Governing of Climate Change in Germany and the UK

Development and Change

Wetlands are critical natural resources in developing countries where they perform a range of environmental functions and provide numerous socio-economic benefits to local communities and a wider population. In recent years, however, many wetlands throughout eastern Africa have come under extreme pressure as government policies, socio-economic change and population pressure have stimulated a need for more agriculturally productive land. Although wetland drainage and cultivation can make a key contribution to food and livelihood security in the short term, in the long term there are concerns over the sustainability of this utilization and the maintenance of wetland benefits. This article draws upon recent research carried out in western Ethiopia, which addressed the sustainability of wetland agriculture in an area of increasing food insecurity and population pressure. It discusses the impacts of drainage and cultivation on wetland hydrology and draws attention to local wetland management strategies, particularly those characterized by multiple use of wetlands, where agriculture exists alongside other wetland uses. The article suggests that where multiple wetland uses exist, a range of benefits can be sustained with little evidence of environmental degradation. Ways of promoting and empowering such sustainable wetland management systems are discussed in the context of the wider need for water security throughout the region.

Wetland cultivation and hydrological management in eastern Africa: Matching community and hydrological needs through sustainable wetland use

This publication is the result of a two-and-a-half-year process that has drawn together critical thinking and practical experience concerning agriculture and wetland interactions. The process began at the Ramsar Conference of Parties (COP) 9 in Uganda, involved a workshop in Wageningen (the Netherlands) in early 2006. This report has been prepared for presentation at the Ramsar COP 10 in the Republic of Korea in October 2008

Scoping agriculture – wetland interactions: Towards a sustainable multiple-response strategy

In this book the authors argue for a paradigm shift in the way African wetlands are considered. Current policies and wetland management are too frequently underpinned by a perspective that views agriculture simply as a threat and disregards its important contribution to livelihoods. In rural areas where people are entrenched in poverty, wetlands (in particular wetland agriculture) have a critical role to play in supporting and developing peoples' livelihoods. Furthermore, as populations rise and climate change takes grip they will be increasingly important.

The authors argue that an approach to wetland management that is much more people focused is required. That is an approach that instead of being concerned primarily with environmental outcomes is centred on livelihood outcomes supported by the sustainable use of natural wetland resources.

The authors stress the need for Integrated Water Resource Management and landscape approaches to ensure sustainable use of wetlands throughout a river catchment and the need for wetland management interventions to engage with a wide range of stakeholders. They also assess the feasibility of creating incentives and value in wetlands to support sustainable use. Drawing on nine empirical case studies, this book highlights the different ways in which sustainable use of wetlands has been sought, each case focusing on specific issues about wetlands, agriculture and livelihoods.

Wetland Management and Sustainable Livelihoods in Africa

This paper assesses the contribution of land-use planning to the objectives of local sustainable development in some of the UK's most urbanized areas. Sustainable development provides the context within which local planning policies are now being prepared, and can be seen to be a potentially important aspect of central government's proposals for modernizing local government. Using the results from a comprehensive survey of development plans in metropolitan authorities, the paper assesses both the strengths and the weaknesses of land-use planning in terms of sustainable development and speculates upon the lessons they may offer to the government's more recent proposals on modernizing local government.

Local Sustainable Development: Land-use Planning's Contribution to Modern Local Government

Locally developed institutions that include rules and regulations, common values and mechanisms of conflict resolution are increasingly regarded as adaptive solutions to resource management problems at the grass-roots level. Since they are rooted in community social capital rather than in external, top-down decision making, they are seen as being dynamic, flexible and responsive to societal and environmental change and, as such, they promote sustainability. Within this context, this chapter examines the case of local institutions for wetland management in western Ethiopia. It discusses how the structure and functioning of these institutions have evolved in response to a changing external environment, and the extent to which this has facilitated the sustainable use of wetlands. It is suggested that these local institutions do play a key role in regulating wetland use, yet they have, uncharacteristically, always relied on external intervention to maintain their local legitimacy. Now there are concerns that the institutional arrangements are breaking down due to a lack of support from local administrative structures and current political ideology. This has major implications for the sustainable use of wetland resources and food security throughout the region.

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Adrian P. Wood

Papers

Wetland cultivation and hydrological management in eastern Africa: Matching community and hydrological needs through sustainable wetland use

Scoping agriculture – wetland interactions: Towards a sustainable multiple-response strategy

Wetland Management and Sustainable Livelihoods in Africa

Local Sustainable Development: Land-use Planning's Contribution to Modern Local Government

Local institutions for wetland management in Ethiopia: sustainability and state intervention.