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"Dawn at Mineral King Valley" by Daniel P. Selmi is a book that provides a comprehensive history of the legal case Sierra Club v. Morton, which centered around the development of Mineral King Valley in California. The book explores the conflict between development and nature protection, and the role of organizations like the Sierra Club in representing nature's interests in legal processes. The case ultimately resulted in the cancellation of the development plans and the annexation of Mineral King Valley to Sequoia National Park. The book also touches on the concepts of standing and the rights of nature, as well as the difference between conservation and preservation. The controversy over Mineral King Valley has had a lasting impact on environmental ethics, political theory, and the development of environmental legislation. [Extracted from the article]

Among the key characteristics of democratic governance are opportunities for meaningful public participation, transparency, and adherence to the rule of law, including reasoned and substantiated decision-making. These characteristics are particularly important in decision-making by administrative agencies, which, unlike legislative bodies that formulate public policy and adopt laws, are not directly accountable to the electorate. Under the Trump Administration, the processes by which agencies with environmental protection responsibilities manage the information that is relevant to the exercise of delegated policy discretion and the implementation of their statutory responsibilities reflect none of the three characteristics of democratic governance. These agencies are instead practicing shuttered government. They are doing so by pursuing three distinct but overlapping strategies. First, they are blocking (or proposing to block) input from outside the agencies. They achieve this through three mechanisms: disqualifying significant swaths of important scientific and technical information from consideration, curtailing opportunities for public participation in the administrative process, and excluding the input of neutral policy and technical experts by stacking advisory boards and panels with those sympathetic to the Administration's environmental policy agenda. Second, the agencies are blocking public access to information in their possession that may conflict with their preferred policies or undercut the explanations they devise to support their actions. This strategy is also being pursued through three techniques: removing information from the public domain, such as by shutting down agency websites that previously provided information about matters such as climate change; censoring their own officials to prevent them from providing information that the agencies do not want publicized; and refusing to disclose information requested by the public under the Freedom of Information Act and otherwise. Third, during the Trump Administration, environmental agencies are simply not producing or sharing with each other information that was previously regarded as critical to informed decision-making. The tools these agencies have wielded to implement this strategy include draining themselves of policy and technical expertise, allowing agencies to shut fellow agency officials with greater environmental expertise out of the decision-making process, blocking oversight of the environmental compliance status of regulated entities, and preparing superficial administrative records in contexts such as planning and environmental consultation and assessment. This Article identifies three counterweights to the Administration's operation of shuttered government in the environmental law and policy domain. In some cases, policy and technical experts are pushing back on information deficiencies and distortions; current and former agency officials, acting as whistleblowers, are revealing information that the agencies have suppressed or mischaracterized; and courts are invalidating agency actions that reflect information management that is inconsistent with good governance norms and statutory and regulatory requirements. Although there are encouraging signs, the degree to which these counterweights will succeed in cracking open the shutters remains to be seen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spectacular reassurance strategies, drawing from Guy Debord's concept of the spectacle, refer to tactics that mitigate environmental concern and action while simultaneously maintaining or accelerating the social-structural causes of environmental harm. Three such strategies are identified here, each of which advances a critique of image-based, consumerist-oriented, and ineffective environmental politics. First, spectacular justifications for environmental harm are legitimations of environmental degradation based on values that paradoxically presuppose a livable environment. Second, spectacular environmental communication is the use of 'green' images and symbols that mitigate environmental concern and action. Third, spectacular environmental reform refers to policy or lifestyle changes that fail to alter the underlying systemic causes of the environmental crisis. Debord's prescriptive environmental politics are explicated and his conceptual framework is brought into conversation with overlapping theories and concepts influential in contemporary environmental political analysis: social practice theory, green governmentality, hegemony, and post-ecologist politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main achievements of the debates on deliberative democracy and democratised science are investigated in order to analyse the reasons, meanings and prospects for a democratisation of global environmental policy. A deliberative systems approach, which emphasises the need to explore how processes in societal spheres interact to shape the deliberative qualities of the system as a whole, is adopted. Although science plays a key role in this, its potential to enhance deliberative capacity has hardly been addressed in deliberative theories. The democratisation of science has potential to contribute to the democratisation of global environmental policy, in that it also shapes the potential of deliberative arrangements in the policy sphere. Deliberative arrangements within the policy sphere may stimulate the democratisation of science to different degrees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The state is not only a main environmental player, but its involvement in environmental regulation has major consequences for the dynamics of statecraft. Environmental governance is the expression that better summarises the ongoing transformations of state interventions and the search for more f lexible, adaptive approaches. A growing body of scholarly work has tried to establish the connections between the failures of environmental governance and the wider commitments of the state. What is largely missing in those studies is the synergy between environmental governance and the statecraft model put forward by Hegel in the early period of the industrial, liberal capitalism. Recent environmental policies have been particularly inf luenced by the Hegelian constitutional theory, especially considering the pursuit of legitimacy and f lexibility. Consequently, the central challenge for geographers and other scholars of environmental governance is still to identify the changes in the rationale and configuration of the state apparatus and relate them to the wider political ecology of state action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the political events that took place in Norway in 2006. A change in the cabinet due to resignation and a new party law was passed. The publication of the caricatures of Prophet Muhammed resulted to criticisms on the curtailment of freedom of expression and spurred debates. The government's foreign policies concerning its political asylum and immigration policies were sources of divergent politics. Issues on the violation of the environment agreement among parties when it bowed to the demands of an oil company, tax hikes, change in the national sick pay scheme, the separation of Church and State, and the attention on the Progress Party's official's misuse of parliamentary group funds are also discussed.

A progressive piece of legislation in 1993 granted collective land rights to Colombia's black communities living in the rural areas of the Pacific coast region. This measure aimed partly to support sustainable development strategies in the region through territorial empowering of local communities. Yet 14 years later, the escalation of the country's internal conflict into the Pacific region has created unprecedented levels of forced displacement among rural black communities. Once referred to as a 'peace haven', the Colombian Pacific coast is now characterised by new spaces of violence and terror, imposed by warring guerrilla and paramilitary groups, as well as the armed forces. This article examines the nature of the externally induced violence in the region and shows how specific economic interests, in particular in the African Palm sector, are colluding with illegal groups that are used to spread fear and terror among local residents, to make them comply with the requirements of these economic actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to propose and consider a new constitutional provision that can contribute to the protection of the vital needs of future generations. The proposal I wish to elaborate can be termed the posterity provision, and it has both substantive and procedural elements. The aim of this constitutional provision is twofold. The first is to encourage state authorities to make more future-oriented deliberations and decisions. The second is to create more public awareness and improve the process of public deliberation about issues affecting near and remote future generations. It is argued that a good case can be made for the proposed reforms compared with alternative substantive constitutional environmental provisions found in existing constitutions and in the literature on legal and political theory. The main reason for this is that the proposed law constitutes a better and more adequate basis for judicial enforcement than the alternatives, which tend to be very vague or unclear. In this connection, I contend that there are both epistemological and moral reasons for introducing constitutional provisions that focus on the protection of critical natural resources essential for meeting the basic physiological needs of future people. It is also argued that the posterity provision can be defended on the basis of central ideas and ideals in recent theory of deliberative democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Castells's influential work on the Information Age has hardly impacted on the environmental social sciences; and where it has, it has been mainly in terms of intrusions of global flows and networks in fragile environments. This paper explores to what extent and how environmental governance is changing under the conditions of the Information Age. On the waves of information and communication technologies and globalisation processes, a new informational mode of environmental governance—or informational governance—is emerging, in which environmental information gains transformative powers. Information generation, processing, transmission, and use become fundamental (re)sources of power and transformation in environmental reform. As illustrated by several examples, the conventional powers of (state) authority in environmental protection are partly replaced by informational resources, flows, and processes in new governance arrangements and networks. These new modes of informational governance not only point at innovative means of environmental reform, but also pose a series of more critical questions related to new power constellations, (information) access and democracy, and structural uncertainties following multiple knowledges. Hence, a new research agenda emerges for the environmental social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the notion of environmental controversies as frame conflicts through a case study of the waste-policy dialogue in Finland. The argument that intractable policy controversies result from internally consistent but incompatible normative-prescriptive scripts which name and frame problems differently is explored. Different waste-policy frames are identified and it is suggested that these frames do indeed contribute to the stubbornness of on-going debate on incineration versus waste reduction. However, the importance of interest, identities, and ineffectual communication in these controversies is also highlighted, and it is suggested that consensus building can result in practical agreements even in the face of seemingly incompatible frames. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents abstracts of articles related to city planning. "Promoting Retail Innovation: Knowledge Flows During the Emergence of Self-Service and Supermarket Retailing in Britain," by Andrew Alexander, Gareth Shaw and Louise Curth; "The Nature of Op Art: Bridget Riley and the Art of Nonrepresentation," by Simon Rycroft; "Was the 1937 U.S. Housing Act a Pyrrhic Victory?," by D. Bradford Hunt.

This article addresses the claim that the thickening of institutions in American national politics has reduced the capacity of partisan governing coalitions or regimes to introduce fundamental changes. We seek here to clarity what partisan regimes can accomplish under contemporary conditions. We find that in certain respects, regimes have acquired increased capacity for change by making use of the tools of the administrative presidency. In the two cases we study, the Reagan administration disrupted enforcement of pollution laws and transformed the national education agenda. The record of lasting accomplishments by the Reagan Republican regime, although underappreciated in the political science literature, indicates that regime builders in the modern era do not face intractable obstacles in the form of a thickened institutional context. What emerges from this analysis is a portrait of partisan regimes operating in the modern political environment that depicts them as effective, flexible but not omnipotent governing instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses on the development of environmental law in Belgium from 1 October-31 October 2003. In the agriculture environment a decision of the Walloon government of 18 September 2003 modifies the decision of the Walloon Government of 10 October 2002 regarding the sustainable management of nitrogen in the agriculture. The decision further transposes the Council Directive of 12 December 1991 concerning the protection of waters against pollution caused by nitrates from agricultural sources.

Discusses the history of Greek political ecology. Efforts of the Greek Greens to achieve parliamentary representation; Information on the two major Greek left parties; Impact of the constitutional protection Article 24 on the Greek natural environment.

Examines the arguments and evidence about how globalization affects the convergence of regulatory policies, in particular the setting of labor and environmental standards. Theoretical explanations of how globalization could affect the ability of states to regulate their own economies; Literature on globalization and its effects on labor and environmental standards; Approaches to policy convergence.

This article examines the way in which contemporary British environmental policies are formed, how public opinion is changing, and what the main political parties are advocating with regard to the issue, as of October 1988. In constitutional terms Great Britain allegedly experiences an unusual form of what is known as an elected dictatorship. In theory parliament is meant to represent the democratic voice of the British people. But members of parliament (MP) are elected on the basis of the greatest number of votes cast in each constituency. In a two-party system, such should produce a parliament that is fairly representative. In modern multiparty British politics, however, where an MP who receives as little as 35 percent of the total vote can be elected, the resulting composition of parliament does not reflect the popular voting pattern. In the 1987 general election, the Conservatives won a 101-seat majority in the 649-seat House of Commons with 42.3 percent of the popular vote. Thus a minority party in terms of the popular vote enjoys in effect dictatorial power by virtue of a large parliamentary majority. Although ministers are nominally accountable to parliament, in practice they tend to be more answerable to their own restive backbenchers, the non-ministerial MP who form the majority of the parliamentary party. INSET: Survey of environmental attitudes in the United Kingdom 1988..