Putting community to use in environmental policy making: Emerging trends in Scotland and the UK

Abstract

Community is frequently called upon in policy to meet environmental challenges. It is increasingly recognised that the success of these environmental interventions relies on community awareness and action. But what this emphasis on community does, and what the impacts are, are often neglected, or left uncritiqued. To explore this issue, we surveyed literature from the UK across four distinct environmental domains—energy, urban greenspace, water, and land—to chart what characterises the use of community in pursuit of environmental goals. We highlight the main conceptual commonalities across the domains by focusing on research that gives insight into the increased interest in communities in environmental policy. In summary, we posit that where community is used environmentally, it brings with it (a) a reframing of justice, (b) processes of ‘public making,’ and (c) a rescaling of governance.

Justice in (English) Water Infrastructure: A Systematic Review

“…Academic discourse on justice in the energy literature appears to be establishing itself [3,[5][6][7], but it is emerging in other sectors such as transport as well [8,9]. The authors of this paper are not alone in noting its relative absence in infrastructure in the water sector, particularly in developed economies such as in England [10,11]. This leads to what appears to be a gap in discussions on infrastructure and governance in the water sector here; whether justice considerations are evident in how infrastructure interventions are framed and planned.…”

“…The interest lies in what discussions there have been, if any, and how they have been encapsulated in the interventions that have been taken forward. It does not seek to include all water justice texts, although the lack of literature in this field generally, particularly in developed countries, has already been noted [10,11]. The limit to England may exclude other texts, but what is particular about the English system is its renowned system of privatisation.…”

Wellbeing and blue‐green space in post‐pandemic cities: Drivers, debates and departures

“…They may also be localities where capacity for action is being eroded (Mathers et al., 2015). Capacity needs to exist not only to pursue beneficial environmental outcomes (Holstead et al., 2018), but also to resist the loss of environmental goods (Haaland & van den Bosch, 2015). Other factors may also be at work, including population pressures leading to the densification of cities such as London (Whitten, 2019).…”

Community as tool for low carbon transitions: Involvement and containment, policy and action

“…Movements such as Transition use intentional forms of community, actively chosen, opted into and desired, in order to generate an involving feeling of solidarity within the group, a supportive context and increased agency and capacity to achieve their low carbon aims and ambitions. Community policy, however, has often used the particular social configuration of community -settled and static, rooted and reified -as a means to guide, arrange and contain populations (Middlemiss, 2014;Taylor-Aiken, 2016b;Creamer, et al 2018;Holstead et al, 2018). Thus, Zuhanden and Vorhanden -spatialised as involvement and containment -comprise a powerful explanatory framework to understand the separate subjectivities involved wherever community is used to meet low carbon challenges.…”