Mick Smith, whose work bridges philosophy and environmental studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, has been carving out a distinctive intellectual niche of his own for some years. With a background in ecological science, he is a transatlantic transplant from Britain to North America whose previous works have involved critical engagement with postmodern environmental thought, hermeneutics, concern for place and the relationship of nonhuman nature to environmental ethics and politics. In this book, he newly introduces, updates and draws together a range of his previous work to develop a perspective that is self-consciously anarchistic yet profoundly engaged with the ethical and political aspects of environmental philosophy.

The manner in which the book’s orientation is anarchist, however, first needs some elaboration. This is not a straightforwardly political eco-anarchism of the type associated with thinkers such as Murray Bookchin and Alan Carter. Rather, Smith’s target is the concept of sovereignty as it is conceived ecologically, metaphysically and in statist legitimation claims: that is, ‘human dominion over the natural world’ (p. xi) in the first case, the shifting range of dualistic human-nonhuman, subject-object divisions that support this dominion – which Smith sometimes refers to, following Agamben, as the ‘anthropological machine’ (p. 4) – in the second case, and the narrower political sense of national sovereignty over a territory in the third instance, with the third of these taken as presupposing the first two in some form. To immediately outline his most direct criticisms, Smith draws on Carl Schmitt’s view that ‘the ultimate mark of sovereign power’ is ‘to be able to suspend the rule of law and the political order by declaring a state of emergency’, a suspension that must itself ‘depend on extralegal/procedural decision made by the very power that thereby awards itself a monopoly on political power/action’ (p. 123, emphasis in original), and then draws upon Agamben’s use of Foucault to indicate ways in which today ‘politics is everywhere being replaced by biopolitics, the governmental management and control of the biological life (and death) of populations’ (p. xv). The intersection of the former possibility with the latter dynamic and the ongoing technological enframing of humans and nature thus opens up an alarming and ironic possibility: that ‘the global war on terror will segue seamlessly into the crisis of global warming’, the growing danger being ‘that this emergency is used to legitimate further technocratic interventions, to further extend the state and corporate management of biological life, including the continuing reduction of humanity to bare life’ (p. 126). It is against these conceptions of sovereign power and the alarming prospects that they may imply that Smith sets his conception of ‘radical ecology’, an anarchist perspective that ‘constitutes a fundamental political challenge precisely because it refuses to accept the reality of any aspect of this myth of state sovereignty, whether in terms of sovereignty over human practical possibilities or natality of the natural world or national territories’ but will instead ‘advocate ethical, nonauthoritarian, non-territorially delineated relations to the more-than-human world’ that ‘envisages ecological ethics as anarchic ‘first philosophy’ ... that can persuasively inform (rather than compel assent to) diverse forms of ecological politics’ (p. 122, emphases original). Accordingly, Smith draws upon the thought of Levinas, Iris Murdoch and Hannah Arendt, amongst others, to open out possibilities for such an ecological ethics, while examining what may be drawn from primitivism as a possible source for cross-pollinating anarchic ethics with ecological concern.

The most significant element that Smith draws from primitivism proves to be the notion of ‘wildness’, not in the locational sense of ‘a point of origin that can be defined and controlled’ but as ‘an opening that escapes the order of things authority always seeks to impose’, a resistance to the ongoing reduction of life to merely instrumental relations – ‘the initiating and differentiating creativity, the life-affirming, animating negativity with no use, the natality of beings, by which the more-than-human world resists dominion’ (p. 96, emphasis original). From this primitivist perspective, ‘wildness is regarded as synonymous with creative freedom from social constraint’, whilst ‘“wilderness experiences” allow a person to recognize and express something of the wildness that... lies within all people’; such experience ‘illuminates humanity’s affinity with wild nature’ (p. 94) whilst the wildness of nature itself ‘signifies how life exceeds the boundaries and categories of such systematic impositions, how nature is never just a resource’ (p. 95), and should thus be allowed to ‘exist as something big enough to lose and find oneself in’ (p. 97), counterbalancing the narcissism of contemporary culture. This intertwining of anarchism, primitivism and ecology in turn generates some normative grip on what is meant by the rhetoric of ‘saving the earth’, for whilst Smith’s book is all but bereft of policy proposals, at least some things are clear. For his radical ecology, to ‘save the whales is to free them from all claims of human sovereignty, to release them into their singularity, their being such as it is’ (p. 103, emphases original) and this will require ‘constituting a new politics’ and ‘revitalizing politicoethical understandings of the possible relations among humanity and the nonhuman world’ (p. 110). In Smith’s view, such a new politics and ethics must reject the human exceptionalism of the anthropological machine, but at the same time retain the creative possibilities opened up by such practices as art, love, play, wildness and politics without reducing individual responsibilities to systems theory. He duly devotes a chapter (Chapter 5) to comparing Ulrich Beck’s risk society theory with Arendt’s political framework to help evaluate the politics of acting into nature before finishing off by connecting Arendtian politics to Levinasian ethical concerns against an ecological backdrop in Chapter 6, and drawing the strands in the concluding Chapter 7 and apologue to oppose the notion of ecological sovereignty against recent statist suggestions from the likes of Robyn Eckersley and James Lovelock.

This is strikingly original and densely argued book, and whilst this reviewer found the intertwining of ideas of nature and liberty in the treatment of primitivism to be most to his taste, this brief review cannot do justice to the range of ideas involved or the breadth and complexity of the whole work. Though predominantly drawn from a quite different tradition, I would rank it as the most systematic work of explicitly ecological anarchism since Alan Carter’s book A Radical Green Political Theory (1999), and it deserves a suitable audience as such.

References
Carter, A. 1999. A Radical Green Political Theory. London: Routledge.

PIERS G.H. STEPHENS
University of Georgia

Convergence with Nature is a stimulating reflection on human beings’ relationship with the natural world – with plants and animals, places and landscapes – and the practices and activities through which, for better or for worse, we engage with it. The writing is brisk and clear, achieving an admirable combination of depth, insight, and intimacy, qualities readers of Cooper’s other works will be familiar with. Although the book is short, it covers a striking range of topics, subjects, and concerns, ranging from learned expositions of Daoist philosophy, the role of technology and theology in our relationships with nature, reflections on contemporary environmental issues, and discussion of a range of writers on nature, animals, and agriculture. It is a credit to Cooper’s economy of style and thought that so much is covered in such detail in a book which will interest and satisfy both the general reader and the learned scholar alike.

The book’s thirteen chapters can be grouped into roughly three parts. Chapters one through four introduce the theme of our engagement with nature, our ‘estrangement’ from it, the role of theology and technology in that estrangement, and in the nature of and need for ‘convergence’ with nature. Cooper identifies a series of ‘moods’ – of yearning, nostalgia, disillusion, and a feeling for mystery – which betray the atrophy of our sense of convergence with nature, and therefore ones which must be addressed as part of the ‘shaping of an appropriate relationship to nature’ (p. 12). These moods can be articulated and examined in a variety of ways, ranging from poetry and art to philosophical reflection, but Cooper argues that Daoist philosophy is an especially apt resources, such that to reflect on the broad issue of convergence with nature ‘in a Daoist key’ offers a promising means of both exploring and responding to the sense of loss represented by those moods. Daoism is, after all, a philosophy which finds rich expression in art and poetry, whose texts are replete with animals and landscapes, and whose characters are often fisherman, woodsmiths, and farmers. At a deeper level, Daoism also proposes that human beings should ‘learn from and emulate natural processes’, ‘seek to commune and converge with nature’, and, more deeply, do so in a way – that of the Way – marked by ‘spontaneity [and] naturalness’ (pp. 23–24).

If such sentiments sound too pithy or ‘New Age’ for pragmatically-inclined readers more interested in ‘nuts and bolts’ issues, the second part of the book, in chapters five to seven, offers a sustained account of Daoism which both clarifies the role of that philosophy, and defends its special significance to Cooper’s wider concerns. It’s not just that Daoists, as it happens, liked to spent time outdoors, for the high-tech modern hunter and the work-weary city-dweller escaping to his weekend cottage in the country likes that too. Rather, what is distinctive about Daoists is, to borrow their central term, their way of engaging with their world, an ‘authentic relationship to nature’ involving the exercise of ‘virtues ... grounded in a certain wisdom’, that being ‘knowledge of the dao’ (p. 57). Unpacking these claims – about nature, virtue, and dao – is the task of these chapters, and Cooper is to be commended for providing an intelligible and compelling account of a philosophical tradition that is, even for its admirers, often complex and difficult to expound, not least owing to its favoured devices of anecdote and irony. (Daoist texts abound with stories of fishermen chiding pompous sages, and fantastical fables involving animals). Dao deserves a richer, less compressed treatment that I can afford it here, but the core idea, that one’s own way through the world can be aligned with the Way of the world, is rendered both attractive and salient by Cooper, enough, at the least, to quell the concerns of impatiently pragmatic readers. Indeed, these chapters demonstrate Cooper’s own discreetly rigorous philosophical style, replete with careful qualifications and unobtrusive objections and responses.

The emerging picture of the Daoist is of someone ‘alert and mindful’, able to ‘respond appropriately’ to the changing world, without the distractions of impatience, frenzied pursuit of goals, rigid plans, and the like which are characteristic of modern life (p. 78). Cooper acknowledges that his sketch of the Daoist sage who is ‘on the Way’ is just that – a sketch – but the third part of the book, chapters eight to thirteen, move on to more ‘applied’ questions about what a person attuned to and comporting themselves within the world ‘in a Daoist key’ might be like. The discussion of mindfulness in chapter eight is especially instructive. A mindful person is freed from both ‘pragmatic attention to nature’ and ‘regimented forms of reflection’, and therefore from experiences of the world in terms of parochial concerns – like ‘outputs’ and analysis – and instead engages in ‘reverie’, a ‘form of attentiveness ... to the presence and ‘reverberations’ of things’ (p. 91). Such mindfulness has both cognitive and affective aspects, allowing us to experience and appreciate the world in modes very different from which Cooper argues are characteristic of many contemporary forms of engagement with nature, such as box-ticking birdwatchers or modern industrial agriculturalists preoccupied with yield and output. Such persons are not ‘on the Way’, for their attention to and engagement with the world is guided by concerns – for planning and production – which owe less to the dao and more to the imperatives of modern technological society.

Cooper therefore devotes much time to discussing how familiar contemporary practices of engaging with nature may be affected by Daoist reflections. The topics discussed include hunting, industrial and agricultural interventions, and environmental activism, each illustrated with examples and insights from both modern writers, such as Richard Mabey and Ortega y Gasset, and such Daoist luminaries as Zhuangzi and Laozi. Cooper offers an especially insightful set of criticisms of the claim, common in ‘hunter porn’, that hunters enjoy just the sort of ‘intensely heightened attention to animals and their environment’ that the Daoists celebrated: their ‘perceptual alertness’ is, argues Cooper, very narrow, for everything is ‘seen pragmatically and instrumentally’ in relation to the ‘objective of killing an animal’ (p. 124). It is in Cooper’s descriptions of hunting and modern industrial and agricultural practices that his claims regarding the especial relevance of Daoism fully are fully made good. Daoism is, he argues, opposed to many aspects of contemporary environmentalism, especially those which betray the same zeal for long-term planning and vigorous intervention, which reflect the comportment of a person who has ‘lost the Way’. The Daoist will ‘retreat’, but not from the world itself, but from ‘a frenzied world of activity and ambition’, including all the projects, like ‘saving the planet’, which contemporary ‘green heroes’ like Al Gore celebrate (p. 151).

There is much to admire in Cooper’s elegant and insightful book. It offers a sustained account of how Daoism can help to inform our understanding of our own engagement with nature, and a way of achieving, or regaining, ‘convergence with nature’. Daoism’s contribution isn’t, however, a ‘new principle ... nor a new plan’ of the sort many environmental ethicists will expect, but rather something which, Cooper argues, is far more radical: ‘a way of living that is achieved only through a deep transformation of the self’ (pp. 151–152). I suspect that many readers will find such proposals perplexing, even irresponsible, that such putative calls the abandonment of active and sustained ‘planet-saving’ strategies would, in fact, spell our doom. Or others readers may find Cooper’s proposals insufficiently ‘action-guiding’ to inform any concrete policies or practices. That is a matter for readers to decide, but in my judgement, it is a merit of Cooper’s book not only to show how venerable Daoist insights have a direct bearing on the familiar agenda of environmental issues, but also to offer a critical perspective upon our contemporary ways of conceiving of and responding to them. Cooper’s implicit proposal that prevailing ways are not aligned with the Way offers a salutary lesson for those who are, perhaps, seeking convergence with nature in all the wrong ways.

IAN JAMES KIDD
Department of Philosophy
Durham University

A number of recent books, such as Mike Hulme’s Why We Disagree about Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity (Cambridge University Press, 2009) and Max Boykoff’s Who Speaks for the Climate? Making Sense of Media Reporting on Climate Change (Cambridge University Press, 2011), attest to a growing interest in climate change as a cultural, political, and sociological phenomenon. Written by a distinguished climate scientist, Hulme’s book presents climate change as an idea and not just as a physical phenomenon. Boykoff’s work explores the role of media reporting in shaping popular understandings of climate change as well as the range of possibilities for policy action.

Julie Doyle’s Mediating Climate Change belongs in that company, so it is unsurprising that the supportive blurbs on the back cover of the book are written by Boykoff and Hulme. Indeed, Mediating Climate Change is reminiscent of those other works in a number of ways. Following an introductory chapter entitled ‘Making Climate Change Meaningful’, the manuscript is organised into two main parts. Part One, entitled ‘Historicising/Theorising Climate Change’, contains three chapters devoted to the question of how climate change is made culturally meaningful. Whereas Who Speaks for the Climate? is devoted to media reporting, Doyle begins by ‘examining the ways in which scientific knowledge has constructed concepts of nature, vision and time which have impeded our ability to understand climate change as a temporally complex, invisible and incremental phenomena’ (p. 7). The representational (particularly visual) practices of environmentalism and the mass media, Doyle suggests, have operated from within the same discursive framework as modern western science. Chapter two offers a detailed analysis of the use of images in climate change communication from 1990 to 2007 within and across science, environmentalism and the media. Designed as a bridge to what follows, chapter three provides a very brief (two page) summary of the key themes and arguments of the first two chapters.

The second section of the book, entitled ‘Mediating/Addressing Climate Change,’ offers an eclectic look at various contemporary mediations on climate change. Chapter four is devoted to the climate action campaigns of CAFOD, Friends of the Earth International and Camp for Climate Action, which together amount to what Doyle describes as ‘an emerging climate movement’ (p. 7). Chapter five reviews UK print media coverage of the Copenhagen Conference of 2009 while chapter six marries debates about sustainable consumption to climate change mitigation through analysis of civil society campaigns targeted at meat and dairy consumption. Chapter seven, finally, contemplates the usefulness of visual arts as modes of climate change communication.

The choice of topics covered in part two shows how research and policy interest in climate change keep exceeding the bounds of climate science and mainstream environmentalism. Doyle’s examples illustrate the growing articulation of climate change discourse with broader concerns about uneven global development, neo-liberal capitalism and unsustainable western lifestyles. Among the artists, NGOs and climate activists at work, Doyle searches for evidence of attempts to break down the enlightenment distinctions between nature and culture, self and other which ‘problematically figure humans as separate from the environment’ (p. 79). The overall aim of the book, then, is not only to show how science, environmentalism and the media are all equally to blame for popular misunderstandings of climate change. It is also a plea for ‘a reconception of the environment, and of climate change, as the imbricated and mutually interdependent relationship between humans and ecosystems’ (p. 158).

There is much of value in this book on purely academic grounds. Doyle argues persuasively that climate change communication in its various forms is indebted to visual discourse, and that the dominant visual forms (namely graphs, charts, photographs and videos) are paradoxical in the way they construct climate knowledge and lend it authority whilst simultaneously constraining our ability to really understand the multi-faceted phenomenon of climate change. Her analyses of the relationship in modern scientific thought between visibility and truth claims, and between enlightenment conceptions of nature, vision and time are especially insightful.

Yet this book is not simply an academic text, as Doyle herself makes clear. It is also the latest stage of a personal journey, which is why the narrative is partly autobiography. The reader is informed early of Doyle’s background in environmental activism, which included a stint campaigning for Greenpeace UK on the streets of Brighton in 1997. This testimonial in the introduction is accompanied by professed frustration with the UK general public, who mostly do not believe in the reality of climate change because ‘they cannot see it, so therefore it cannot be happening’ (p. 1). This frustration, combined with an existing academic interest in visuality within science, gave rise to the book. The advocacy of a vegan diet in chapter six and overview in chapter seven of a collaborative visual arts project underway with the artist David Harradine, offer further evidence of Doyle’s activist credentials and personal commitment to positive action. These autobiographical elements are neither unwelcome nor unusual in scholarly tomes about climate change. The aforementioned Mike Hulme also links his personal and professional experiences with climate change in the preface to Why We Disagree about Climate Change (Hulme, 2009: xxix).

My only issue with Mediating Climate Change is that at times I found Doyle’s narrative style to be a bit too colloquial and chatty, as for example in the section in chapter seven that begins: ‘I am irritated. I’ve come to King’s Palace in London to visit Cape Farewell’s Unfold exhibition and I can’t find it’ (p. 152). I would have preferred a dispassionate treatment of the role of visual arts in climate change communication to the subjective assessment of a couple of arts exhibitions. That said, this is a thought-provoking and erudite book, which will certainly be of interest to readers of this journal. I recommend it highly.

KATE MANZO
School of GPS
University of Newcastle

Whilst the title of this book appears to be a hangover from the traditional linear model of education to action, the book by no means advocates this type of approach as an effective means by which we will motivate society to reduce its carbon footprint and adapt to a changing climate. That this method is singularly ineffective in breaking long-established, carbon-intensive habits, just as more recent marketing based initiatives produce short-term gains at the expense of long-term changes in consumer-driven culture, is spelled out in this carefully crafted journey through the social and psychological aspects of behaviour change theories and practical methods devised to address this most pressing of problems. This book will therefore be a useful point of reference for any researcher, theorist, policy-maker, community activist or student who is interested to develop, or simply understand, research and initiatives designed to evaluate and/or implement methods that result in positive behaviour change. Not withstanding the overall climate change theme of the book, it would be equally relevant in any setting where behaviour change is sought. For researchers and students in particular, this book brings together a broad mix of respected authors from academia and the ‘real world’, and provides an excellent overview of methods and theoretical insights as well as useful up-to-date references for extended reading in this area.

Although each chapter will likely become a lasting point of reference to go back to for specific subjects of research, it is very important to read the whole book in order to put each chapter into context. Divided into two distinct halves – the first being predominantly theoretical and an excellent introduction to where we are right now. As Corina Höpner and Lorraine Whitmarsh suggest in chapter three, serious efforts to inform and facilitate behaviour change ‘cannot come too soon’; the implication is that we haven’t yet reached the societal tipping point (Davidson, chapter 10) of mass interest in altering ingrained habits and adopting new technologies, infrastructures and processes that this book implies we need. And as Johanna Wolf points out in chapter seven, not enough has been done to remove the infrastructural and policy barriers that exist to prevent those who already consider themselves to be ecological citizens from reaching their environmental goals. As a result, the reader may find the journey through the first half akin to slowly pushing a bicycle up a steep hill. On every stop for breath one contemplates another useful tool for behaviour change to put into one’s basket but as the summit approaches anxiety over what lies on the other side increases. How can the mix of theoretical information gathered be deployed to effective use, to take the researcher beyond current limits?

In chapter six, Peat Leith offers insight into interdisciplinary research for adaptation that draws the researcher and the citizen closer together in order to legitimise the development of knowledge that is meaningful and credible to communities. This is why it is very important to read the whole book and not just the first half, as the free wheel down the other side is as exhilarating and uplifting as the real thing. We are treated to positive examples of public initiatives that do actually work, written refreshingly by authors such as Jo Hamilton and Scott Davidson (chapters nine and ten), that are positive about behaviour change and at the same time realistic about the impact limits of distinct community-based initiatives such as Open Eco-Homes and Global Action Plan’s Eco-Teams, respectively. As Davidson acknowledges, they lack the weight to ‘register on the radar of mainstream society’, whereas campaigns aimed at inspiring mainstream society to think and act are the focus of chapter eleven by Gemma Regniez and Savita Custead, who bring to the reader the frank viewpoints of communication experts who dare to say what academics might not. Indeed, why do climate campaigns not go hand-in-hand with regulation?

In the foreword, Susanne Moser alludes to the problem of choice in slowing progress on behaviour change. In her words, ‘choice gets simpler when you don’t have much of it’. Presently the public in the UK can still choose whether to engage with climate change or not, but time and financial pressures ensure that every behaviour change initiative must count. Practitioners will look increasingly at new media for fast and effective communications to large audiences to get their messages across. Saffron O’Neill and Mazwell Boykoff advocate a cautionary approach to all forms of media, where sources of disinformation about climate change are as prevalent as trusted and accurate sources – and can be as easily used by individuals to support a choice not to change behaviour, as to choose to switch to positive environmental behaviour. Consequently, knowing when something works will be an essential ingredient in future awareness-raising ventures. In this text, Nick Eyre, Brooke Flanagan and Ken Double place the Energy Saving Trust in the spotlight: the method by which its success is evaluated seemingly provides evidence for its effectiveness and value for money. Its direct interface with the consumer results in considerable carbon savings. The importance of good information that gives individuals greater control and thereby choice to take action and move from being a ‘passive consumer’ to an ‘active manager’ is highlighted by Sarah Darby (chapter 12) in her appraisal of how new technologies may or may not improve energy literacy, which unpicks some of the communication technologies our hopes for greater efficiency are pinned on. However, the overall tenet of the book is of two-way delivery and mixing the theoretical and practical for successful behaviour change initiatives. It certainly works in this book.

REBECCA PEARCE

Even though the seminal definition of sustainable development by the World Commission for Environment and Development argued for an integration of issues of intra- and intergenerational justice and environmental and development issues respectively (WCED 1987, 43), the observable debate regarding sustainable development can be differentiated into two main threads. While proponents of sustainability primarily emphasise the need to sustain (parts of) nature either because they assign intrinsic value to nature or parts thereof or in acknowledgment of obligations of justice towards future generations, proponents of (sustainable) development emphasise the necessity of enhancing the lot of contemporary poor (cf. Burger and Christen 2011, 791). The Human Development Report, an independent publication commissioned by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) generally aims at new ways of thinking about and measuring development. Accordingly, the annually published HDRs can be assigned to the latter of the two realms mentioned above. It is for this reason that it is especially interesting that last year’s HDR, published in October 2011, tackles the issue of sustainability and equity.

The report reasons its choice of subject with the insight that while the last forty years exhibited an enormous progress in human development, continuing progress is increasingly threatened by environmental deterioration. It is divided into two parts: The first part starts with a conceptual chapter, followed by two chapters describing and explaining the trends in and effects of human development and environmental indicators. From this result the final two chapters of (policy) recommendations. The second part comprises an extensive statistical annex. The subsequent review focuses on the first part of the report.

The first chapter starts from the notion of (natural, environmental) limits to human development, introduces the two competing paradigms of weak and strong sustainability and positions itself in favour of the latter (p. 17). Building on the work of Anand and Sen (2000), the report defines SD as ‘the expansion of the substantive freedoms of people today while making reasonable efforts to avoid seriously compromising those of future generations’ (p. 18). The report conceives of SD and equity as separate but related issues that both focus on distributive justice: SD is defined as distributive justice between generations and equity as addressing issues of intragenerational justice, that is, justice between groups of contemporary humans. In regard to the former, the report solely addresses environmental issues. The report argues that a certain policy measure can (i) solely advance SD (and thereby possibly compromise equity), (ii) solely advance equity (and thereby possibly compromise SD), (iii) advance both SD and equity or (iv) advance neither (cf. figure 1.1, p. 20). This conceptual framework guides the analysis in the subsequent two chapters. While it does not assume a positive empirical association between sustainability and equity, the report focuses on identifying positive synergies between the two goals (i.e. iii; cf. pp. 20–21).

Chapter two deals with patterns and trends in human development, equity and environmental indicators. While the Human Development Index (HDI), a composite index combining indicators of life expectancy, educational attainment and income, has steadily risen in the last 40 years, the report points to two caveats: on the one hand, income growth is correlated with rising GHG-emissions; on the other hand, income inequality has worsened. Regarding the former issue, the report argues first that the different dimensions of the HDI ‘interact very differently with carbon dioxide emissions per capita: the association is positive and strong for income, still positive but weaker for the HDI and non-existent for health and education’ (p. 25). Second, it differentiates three kinds of environmental threats: direct household deprivations such as indoor air pollution, poor water and sanitation; community deprivations such as urban air pollution; and deprivations with global effects, most notably, climate change. Drawing on Hughes et al. (2011), the report argues that there is a linear positive correlation between increase in HDI and countries engagement in direct household deprivations, and an inverted U-curve-relation (that is, a Kuznet curve) between increase in HDI and community deprivations. However, it also shows that there is a positive linear correlation between increase in HDI and global deprivations. That is, while the report demonstrates that some kind of environmental threats decrease with rise in HDI, it acknowledge that this does not hold for GHG-emissions: increasing HDI, especially increasing income results in increasing per capita GHG-emissions. Regarding the latter issue, that is, the rise in income inequality, the report points out that both ‘poor sustainability performance [...] raised inequality in HDI’ and that ‘[higher] levels of gender inequality led to lower levels of sustainability’ (p. 28). It therefore infers that ‘inequality is bad not just intrinsically but also for the environment’ (p. 28). In the second part of the chapter, the report demonstrates how environmental deterioration threatens sustained progress in HDI. It addresses the effects of climate change, soil erosion, desertification, water scarcity, deforestation, degradation of marine ecosystems and pollution. It argues that the poorest countries experience the most serious consequences of environmental degradation (cf. pp. 37, 40).

The third chapter focuses on two issues. On the one hand, it addresses how environmental degradation threats people’s ability to choose a live they value and have reason to value. In this regard, the chapter addresses the negative impacts of environmental degradation on health, education and livelihoods. It points to a so called ‘double burden’: people who are multidimensionally poor are more exposed to both localised household-level threats such as indoor air pollution, dirty water and unimproved sanitation and are also more vulnerable to large-scale effects such as environmental threats to natural resource-related livelihoods and extreme events (cf. pp. 45, 49). On the other hand, the chapter discusses how empowerment of marginalised groups such as enhancing women’s reproductive choices, increasing women participation in decision making and generally remedying power inequalities can contribute to sustainable development by strengthening claims for conservation and sustainable use of natural resources.

Chapter four aims at showcasing positive synergies between sustainability and equity. The first part of the chapter deals with ways to increase access to energy, water and sanitation; the second part addresses strategies for averting environmental degradation that simultaneously exhibit advances in terms of equity. In this regard, it points to expanding reproductive choice, supporting community management of natural resources and ensuring participation in conserving biodiversity. The last part of the chapter points to community-based disaster risk mapping, progressive distribution of reconstructed public assets and social protection programmes as means of addressing the disequalising effects of climate change and natural disasters.

The final chapter aims at policy proposals. At the national level it urges integrating equity concerns into green economy policies and stresses the potential of empowering poor people, especially women, in aiming at SD. At the global level it calls for greater resources for addressing environmental problems. In this regard, the report points to the potential of a currency transaction tax or a broader financial transaction tax as a new source for increasing development and sustainability finance. Finally, the chapter stresses the need for ensuring equity and voice in governing of and access to finance.

The report claims that its conceptual framework ‘encourages special attention to identifying positive synergies and to considering trade-offs’ (p. 2) between environmental sustainability and equity. However, the analysis in chapter 2 and 3 exhibits a rather strong tendency in favour of positive synergies. This is comprised in the discussion of the potential of empowering marginalised groups for advancing SD and of strategies that simultaneously avert environmental degradation and enhance equity. Even the increase of access to energy, water and sanitation is presented as a positive synergy, reasoned by the perception of lack of access to these issues as environmental deprivation. Meanwhile, though the access to energy, water and sanitation or lack thereof certainly constitute a feature of human’s environment in the broader sense, the report does not make clear why it conceives of increasing access as advancing what it calls environmental sustainability.

There is a notable lack in addressing tradeoffs between equity and environmental sustainability. This is especially obvious in regard to GHG-emissions. The report does acknowledge that ‘in the absence of reform, the links between economic growth and rising greenhouse gas emissions could jeopardise the extraordinary progress in the HDI in recent decades’ (p. 31). Nevertheless, it does not offer compelling arguments for how rising incomes in low-HDI-countries could be balanced, for instance by redistribution of income from high-income countries or by focusing on increasing life expectancy and educational attainments rather than on income growth. Instead, the report leaves the imminent trade-off between the legitimate aim of raising incomes in low HDI-countries and the sustainability goal of mitigating climate change more or less unaddressed. The reason for this might consist in the fact that the human development paradigm, while delegating attention from income growth alone towards life expectancy and education, nevertheless maintains a certain proximity to the notion of ‘the more, the better’. By contrast, in the light of absolute environmental limits, human development might possibly need to either include environmental indicators into the HDI or accept that a certain HDI – or at least a certain level of income – could simply be enough.

The report should be read against the background that, while both the discourse on human development and the discourse regarding sustainability are broad and well-developed, the two discourses are still more or less separated. Even though the report leans fairly strongly towards the developmental perspective, it should be credited for opening up the development discourse to issues of what it calls environmental sustainability. Thus its main strength consists in offering a conceptual framework for integrating equity and sustainability and elaborating how this framework can be applied to empirical data and employed to generate policy recommendations. Furthermore, the report offers a wealth of data and insights that – precisely because of their solid base in the development discourse – offer interesting and very fruitful insights for scholars from the sustainability and environmental realm.

References
Anand, Sudhir and Amartya Kumar Sen. 2000. ‘Human development and economic sustainability’. World Development 28(12): 2029–2049.
Burger, Paul and Marius Christen. 2011. ‘Towards a capability approach of sustainability’. Journal of Cleaner Production 19(8): 787–795.
Hughes, Barry, Randall Kuhn, Cecilia Mosca Peterson, Dale S. Rothman and Roberto Jose. 2011. Improving Global Health: Forecasting the Next 50 Years. Boulder, Colorado: Paradigm Publishers.
World Commission on Environment and Development. 1987. Our Common Future. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press.

LIESKE VOGET-KLESCHIN

In Alternative Food Networks: Knowledge, Practice and Politics, the authors aim to walk a line between two dominant discourses of alternative food movements: those which claim they have become incorporated into mainstream systems of food provisioning, resulting in a compromise of the ethical and/or transformative foundational principles; and those which discuss the unquestioning valorisation of these movements, whereby positive traits are assumed, at the expense of investigations of actual outcomes. In taking this reflexive approach, these arguments are logically elucidated in descriptions of the emergence and success of alternative food networks (AFNs), the ensuing co-optation of more successful initiatives (i.e. organic and Fair Trade food), and debates and struggles arising from the blurring of lines between ‘alternative’ and ‘mainstream’ embodiments of these foods and their networks. Illustrating their points with examinations of differing domains of food politics, the authors expertly thread the discursive tools of knowledge, practice and politics throughout the text; these concepts are critically integrated in all discussions, resulting in a well-developed body of work which not only asks many questions of AFNs but provides a framework for others to do so.

The book opens with a historical contextualisation of AFNs and their development which provides a framework to help understand and further question these movements. The authors’ approach to understanding how AFNs are constituted is set out as ‘relational’, and reflexivity, shared knowledge practices and alterity are selected as conceptual tools to facilitate this. A reflexive food politics is therefore advocated, particularly in the context of local food movements. These networks are laid out as manifestations of practices, routines and knowledge, not only producers’ but also consumers’. The second, third and final sections frame the remainder of this volume with different social spaces which host prominent projects of food activism and the alternative economy each dealt with in turn. Discussions of the emergence and development of alternative food in the UK and Western Europe focus on the role of farm and policy structures, questioning the power of these movements to change rural policy. Europe’s ‘quality turn’ is assessed from the perspective of challenges to the conventional system, contextualising an analysis of spaces and politics of ‘quality’. Social movement initiatives are considered as solutions to problems of resilience and food security, incorporating contemplation of the likely responses of policy-makers. The focus moves then to the conflict between alternative and conventional corporate food networks in the USA, such as that which has arisen in the realm of organic production. Goodman et al. reflect on how those movements which have successfully resisted ‘mainstreaming’ may be conceptualised as reflexive alternatives. The case of organic strawberry production in California is utilised in judging how new forms of economies and the knowledge surrounding these can be practically constructed, especially in the face of institutional challenges. The final section examines how fair trade movements were conceived and enacted and how, through global fair trade, the moral economy has been both commodified and marketised. The symbolism of fair trade, as presented by these networks themselves, has moved from representations of care to those of quality and fetishisation. The implications of this ‘turn’ are discussed; the authors highlight the limitations to achieving core goals of ‘fair trade’ while simultaneously operating within a market-driven, rather than mission-driven, system.

There is much to recommend in this book, which is a testament to the authors and both their obvious expertise in the area of AFNs and their determination to always push debates in this field forward. Co-authored rather than co-edited, the agenda is at all times clear and unified, which has resulted in a cohesive and logical piece of work. A key claim of the authors is that the food system is relational and its politics process-based. Reflexivity derived from relational engagements with food politics is set out early and consistently as one core analytical tool in studies of AFNs. They argue against rigid goals of a ‘perfect alternative world’, advocating a reflexive approach which is ‘...dry-eyed about ideals and understand that each set of values derives from a specific social context...’ (p. 157). This contention is of course not new but has been teased out and developed more here than in any previous publications, including the authors’ own. This relational approach is applied to consideration of stakeholders within AFNs: examining the neglect that the arena of consumption has suffered at the expense of a focus on production, Goodman et al. highlight both the danger of ignoring such an important sphere and the possible negative outcomes of such an atomistic approach. Their critical analysis of power within the food system is at all times balanced, taking care to advocate neither arguments against neoliberal attribution of consumer agency nor those in support consumer activism and political consumption, but instead to wisely remind readers that evaluations should be based solely on relations and processes involved. Again, rejecting rigidity in any form, the authors review the development of bifurcated models of economic life and politics: the twin model of farming which has arisen in the EU (one industrial, one place-based); the fragmentation of organic agriculture in the USA into an industry and an opposing movement; and Gibson-Graham’s ‘market segmentation’ thesis which sees the concurrent existence of multiple (i.e. alternative and capitalistic) economics. Situating these discussions within binary visions of future food system change, the authors have offered a new perspective on discourses of AFNs which will likely drive them in new and fruitful directions.

This book’s main strengths lie in its objectivity – it at all times provides a balanced case with the authors careful to avoid extreme statements in support of one or another argument, process or initiative. However, this could also be said to be its weakness: neglecting to expressly advocate future directions for aiding in the success of AFNs could be construed as a failing. However, it is clear that although no prescribed course is advocated, Goodman et al. are successful in their aim of facilitating readers to themselves move towards a better understanding of the core issues by setting out a framework of analytical tools and contextual materials. As such, those who are conducting research in any area of alternative food will benefit from reading this book, as will those across a broad spectrum of disciplines. Cultural and environmental geographers will likely benefit most, but those involved in studies of food, agriculture and tourism may also, as will social theorists find segments of interest. Alternative Food Networks: Knowledge, Practice and Politics constitutes a timely intervention in the vital arena of food system studies, providing a broad platform for future research and debate.

BRÍDÍN CARROLL
Geography Department
National University of Ireland, Galway

Boons has produced a thoroughly well researched, informed and informative study on creating economic and ecological value. Written for those interested in business and sustainability whether they be academic faculty, students or business people who have both the interest and time, this book will repay some careful and close reading. Based on a considerable amount of empirical research, critical evaluation of secondary data and considered theoretical engagement, the book starts with a clear and defining statement (p1): ‘the ecological impact of any product depends on the human practices that accompany its production and consumption’. At one level a truism but at another an important reminder that human social and economic relationships underpin how, and to what degree, we use or exploit the planet’s resources. ‘Firms create economic value’, continues Boons and so they do, but not in a vacuum for they will not be able to continue to do so unless due care is taken of what enables economic activity to occur.

Boons sets the scene in a methodical manner by asking a key question: how do firms create ecological value? Answering this, he briefly explores various theoretical approaches guided by a methodology that intelligently articulates a social constructionist perspective. Definitions of ecological value, he argues, become established, are maintained and experience change through the activities of the firm where over time patterns of activity and frames of reference become engrained in its organisational routines. He develops this contention through establishing the historical contexts in which ecological value has become part of the business discourse, from the deleterious effects of smoke and pollution in the early stages of the industrial revolution to the recognition that waste constitutes inefficiency and that built in obsolescence is in the long run self destructive to ‘the gospel’ of efficiency as a primary business imperative. The growing respect for the need for environment regulation and more or less robust systems of environmental management, impact assessment and audit is also acknowledged.

In the creation of economic and ecological value Boons shows that technology is both highly important and something that is most susceptible to manipulation. Firms may lock themselves into a particular technological trajectory that may be beneficial to the firm and to the wider environment but frequently is not. Here, he identifies three technologically orientated perspectives: stable, dynamic and transformative. It is the transformative perspective that stimulates new ecologically innovative processes and practices and which consequently often necessitates a redefinition of ecological value. To ground this thinking in the internal dynamics of firms, Boons usefully offers a range of case studies, neatly captured within separate boxes, which succinctly explain how all this has occurred in the world beyond the academic monograph. He also notes that creating ecological values can create competitive advantage and warns, although rather too briefly, of the dangers of corporate greenwashing.

Resource networks are crucial to establishing ecological and economic value too, and Boons explores how this is achieved through outlining a number of strategies and operational activities and knowledge developments, rule constructions and regulations. Of course, firms operate within a social context as well as a business one, and collective perceptions of what firms should do, what is legitimate and what is not, are confirmed by another cluster of boxed case studies including discussions of the ISO 14001, the US mining industry and the Brent Spar fiasco. Although these boxed case studies do interrupt the narrative flow of the book they are extremely valuable. In chapters six and seven Boons offers an in-depth analysis of the coffee and the automobile production and consumption systems (abbreviated to PCS). Indeed, these more detailed chapter-length analyses draw out some important findings which may not necessarily be absolutely new but are nonetheless important to restate. GM, DaimlerChrysler and Ford tend towards the stable strategy type whereas Japanese manufacturers have tended towards the transformative and innovative – leading to the development, and commercialisation, of new (albeit hybrid) technologies, new resource networks, modes of knowledge development and material and energy resources. American firms have concentrated on meeting customer demands in one region (the US) where environmental regulation and sustainability awareness have been modest, whereas Japanese and European manufacturers have not been so confined and have consequently needed to explore fuel efficiency. Indeed, in France a market niche for electric vehicles has demonstrated the viability of this clean technology.

Boons argues that changes are evolutionary rather than revolutionary. He sees this evolution as gradual, hesitant but generally progressive pointing to four mechanisms whereby ecological knowledge and practices are created, transmitted and retained. They are by coercion from other organisations, conditioning through taxes and subsidies, imitation of successes elsewhere and diffusion through professional networks, consultants and standardising agencies involving various forms of specialised training and education about new business models and management norms. Competition and environmental responsiveness also play their part, with ‘natural selection’ and reflexivity being key to organisational learning actually taking place and having a measurable impact on sustainability practice.

The final chapter ‘Creating Ecological Value’ ends with an overall summary, which at the danger of tiresome repetition offers nine rational propositions. Two of these strike me as clearly important. Number six states: ‘stable firms play an active role in supporting the transmission of their existing strategic perspective, and will seek to obstruct the installation and operation of selection and transmission mechanisms that require them to alter elements of their perspective’. And number nine states: ‘increased ecological selection pressure will dominate other evolutionary mechanisms and will force firms to move to a dynamic and transformative perspective’. Firms which are not afraid of introducing novelty are crucial to this as they expand the level of diversity on which processes of selection, transmission and intelligent assessment rely. The same goes for other institutions, like universities, which may also be attempting to create ecological value in their ‘products’. A monoculture and a stable state, ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’, mentality is just not good enough. Indeed, ‘stable’ firms may oppose change and seek to maintain the status quo by a variety of ingenious but sometimes quite basic means. A great deal of thought may go into maintaining this stasis, which makes progressive action and debate on sustainability and ecological value in the wider society all the more important.

Taking a key term from systems thinking, Boons concludes with an important comment on the nature of resilience. He writes (p. 192): ‘If we can learn something from the past, it is that production and consumption systems that are not metabolically consistent can be remarkably resilient. Activities that intrude on ecological cycles, especially cycles at the global or long-term level, are not easily changed.’ If ecological selection pressures are such that firms are forced to change, then from a planetary perspective, it will probably mean it is all happening too late.

JOHN BLEWITT
Aston Business School, Aston University (UK)