Anthem EnviroExperts

Reviewed by Mahdu Dutter-Kohler, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Adaptation to Climate Change: From Resilience to Transformation, by Mark Pelling, Routledge, 203pp

In this work, Mark Pelling goes beyond mere examination of the often-myopic defensive strategies to combating climate change in order to understand how human development is being shaped by its impacts. Embedded in a comprehensive socio-political analysis, Pelling’s work examines the interrelationships among the political and cultural norms of a society and its adaptation efforts. Drawing upon a range of perspectives, from organizations to urban governance to state politics, Pelling argues that in order to make significant reductions in human vulnerabilities to environmental risks, we first and foremost must understand the multifaceted social dimensions of climate change.

The book offers a flexible yet robust framework, anchored in what Pelling describes as the “the three visions of adaptation,” which serves as a useful backdrop within which adaptation options can be more comprehensively evaluated. These “visions”—resilience, transition and transformation—differ in their “levels of engagement with specific social systems.” In his explication, resilience corresponds to the most limited of the categories of adaptive actions, while transition, likewise incremental in nature, refers to a situation in which the engagement of the governance regimes has the intent of assuming “full rights and responsibilities” for action “rather than making changes in the regime.” He positions transformation, which he describes as the “deepest level of engagement,” in socio-political, economic, cultural, and developmental discourses; this vision comprehensively addresses overall security and risk related to climate change.

One of the most useful contributions of this book is its take on the new thematic strain, coined as “transformational adaptation,” which has recently emerged in the climate change literature. Transformational adaptation until now has best been viewed as a meta-theory rather than as a set of concrete guidelines for the planning of climate change adaptation. Pelling examines the practical utility of the approach to further this idea. He argues that, for lasting and truly effective climate adaptation to occur, it has to be implemented across geographic and causal lines; piecemeal, localized efforts are thus ineffectual in the longer run. This approach to “adaptation at scale” rests on the premise that, in order to make a palpable difference in situations of grave vulnerability, rapid, systemic, broad-based actions are required to produce significant amelioration of the effects of climate change.

Pelling’s book provides a comprehensive overview of the existing adaptation frameworks and their theoretical underpinnings while attempting to explicate the gaps among them. Through a series of in-depth hypothetical and empirical examples, supported by three detailed case-study chapters, Dr. Pelling analyzes a range of adaptive actions across different scales, from grassroots farmers’ movements to national policies, both in the developed and developing contexts.  In his conclusions, Pelling proposes useful methods for applying his framework in practice and identifies specific sites and levels of intervention for adaptive action contingent upon the social contexts. Pelling’s work represents a compelling contribution to the discourse surrounding the cultural, social, and political environment within which climate change adaptation occurs, while also offering useful insights for practitioners.

Review by Isabelle Anguelovski, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona

In this book Park and Pellow explore environmental privilege in relation to the international flow of goods, services, and people and to the exacerbation of poverty and exclusion.

The Slums of Aspen: Immigrants Vs the Environment in America’s Eden, by Lisa Sun-Hee Park and David Pellow, New York University Press, 275pp

Much of the extensive literature on environmental justice has examined inequities in exposure to contamination. Historically, minorities and low-income populations have suffered from greater environmental harm from waste sites, incinerators, refineries, transportation, and small-area sources than white and well-off communities. However, inequalities exist not only in the distribution of environmental ills. They are also manifested in the territorial allocation of environmental goods and services, including parks, coasts, and open spaces, which scholars have recently started to pay more attention to.

In The Slums of Aspen, sociologists Lisa Park and David Pellow examine the flip side of environmental burden: environmental privilege. In Aspen, Colorado, the authors show how a municipal resolution from 1999—under the discourse of environmental protection and embodying nativist claims of population growth through immigration being responsible for environmental degradation—attempted to limit immigration and eliminate Latino immigrants from the seemingly serene and pristine landscape of Aspen. The power of Pellow and Park’s fine, in-depth and nuanced qualitative study is to show that wealthier and white groups are actually able to enjoy natural areas like Aspen thanks to the invisible work of immigrant and poor workers, whom they in turn accuse of damaging natural resources and attempt to exclude from spaces of environmental privilege.

In this book, Pellow and Park portray two different worlds: the world of Saudi princes and American millionaires living in their 6,000 square foot mansions with heated driveways and consuming an absurd amount of resources and energy, and the one of Latino immigrants hidden in small trailers 100 miles away from the exclusive resort, but working daily to maintain the lifestyle of Aspen’s residents and visitors. The Slums of Aspen thus raises two fundamental questions: who is actually responsible for environmental damage and resource depletion? And how does the international flow of goods, services, and people contribute to this environmental state and to the exacerbation of poverty and exclusion?

Review by David Wirth, Boston College

An accessible collection of essays from around the world, offering insights into legal and political issues surrounding environmental law and sustainability.

Environmental Law and Sustainability After Rio, by Jamie Benidickson, Ben Boer, Antoni Herman Benjamin and Karen Morrow, Eds., Edward Elgar, 413pp

At first glance, the copyright date of 2011—immediately before the Rio+20 conference—seems strange for a collection of 21 essays ostensibly devoted to developments in domestic and international law since the original Earth Summit in 2002. Upon closer examination, however, it appears that the volume memorializes a conference held in 2007, timed to coincide with the 15th anniversary of Rio and midway between the two subsequent international follow-up meetings held at ten-year intervals.

The work segments the larger question of the law of sustainability into five categories: principles and concepts; environmental rights and access to justice; natural resources; nature conservation; and energy and climate change. Even within those themes, the individual contributions are largely free-standing and independent from one another. The tone is largely academic, with the individual pieces thoroughly documented with references. Although the work examines these and other issues through a legal lens, the treatment ought to be accessible to generalists, and appropriately synthesizes both law and policy.  The subject matter ranges from the theoretical to the practical, such as Karen Morrow’s analysis of public participation in British court proceedings.

While some readers might be interested in reading the entire collection cover to cover, the appeal of the book is more likely to be the unusual and innovative insights offered by particular papers in the collection. Joseph Dellapenna and Flavia Loures, for example, trenchantly critique the International Law Commission’s draft articles on transboundary aquifers. Other unusual subject matter is addressed by Robert Kibugi’s examination of access to environmental justice in Kenya, Arlindo Daibert’s treatment of damages in civil environmental cases in Brazil, Willemien du Plessis’s assessment of cross-border natural gas pipelines in southern Africa, Emmanuel Kasimbazi’s evaluation of climate policy in Uganda, and Marcelo Nogueira Camargos and Solange Teles da Silva’s scrutiny of sustainable management of mangrove swamps in Brazil.

Reviewed by William Moomaw, Tufts University

A forceful argument against America’s vicious circle of growing inequality by the Nobel Prize–winning economist.

The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future, by Joseph Stiglitz, W.W. Norton Company , 448pp

Joseph Stiglitz’s The Price of Inequality offers a remarkably insightful analysis of the economy that has major implications for sustainable development. One of the fundamental premises of sustainable development is equity, but Stiglitz demonstrates that the growing inequality of incomes in the United States is extracting a high cost not just from the economy, but also  from the environment and  society.

Using solid data, he lays bare the means by which the dramatic shift in income disparity has occurred. Wealth increases at the top have resulted from rent-seeking in the financial and other industries, changes in tax policy that favor the already wealthy and reductions in the negotiating capacity of labor. Stiglitz documents the financial instruments that lead to the transfer of wealth and ultimately caused the recent collapse of the global economy.

Of comparable importance are recently enacted governmental policies that externalize more of the environmental costs of doing business onto the public, and the destructive incentives that have flowed to resource-based industries. Subsidies include direct payments, but also enhanced profit from the very low prices paid to the government by extractive industries for leases on federal lands. This shift in governmental policies has been fuelled by the ability of top income earners to pay the “re-election costs” of politicians who will favor their economic interests. As Stiglitz notes, these anti-society and anti-environmental policies actually reduce the viability of the economy rather than enhance it. Not a strategy for a sustainable future.