(Re)Connecting the Global and Local: Europe's Regional Seas
| Date | 01 March 2009 |
| Author | Laurence Etherington,Stuart Bell |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2009.00457.x |
| Published date | 01 March 2009 |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 36, NUMBER 1, MARCH 2009
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 75±93
(Re)Connecting the Global and Local:
Europe's Regional Seas
Stuart Bell* and Laurence Etherington*
One of the challenges to sustainable development is the disconnection
between environmental impacts and their underlying causes. Whilst
impacts are often localized and perceptions limited accordingly,
sources can often be traced to broader factors, and there is a need for
methodologies to establish these linkages between localized effects and
global causes. Europe's Regional Seas provide a useful illustration,
characterized by a variety of ecological problems influenced by a
range of local and wider factors within complex ecosystems. The
Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) model is one
methodology used to establish connections between ecological con-
ditions and human activity. Whilst there are some significant
challenges in developing and using such models, they deepen under-
standing of ecological systems and the influences of socio-economic
forces on them. In particular, they can help in contextualizing the
apparent effectiveness of regulatory interventions and understanding
the role that the forces of globalization play in creating localized
ecosystem degradation.
INTRODUCTION
The environmental problems encountered within Europe's regional seas are
emblematic of the tensions between economic globalization and ecological
localization. Those problems are often manifested through localized impacts
on the environment, but their fundamental sources can often be traced to
75
ß2009 The Author. Journal Compilation ß2009 Cardiff University Law School. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
*York Law School, University of York, Heslington, York YO10 5DD,
England
sb595@york.ac.uk lme503@york.ac.uk
This paper draws on work undertaken by the authors, together with Dr Philip Cooper of
the University of Bath and Dr Julian Williams of the University of Bristol, as part of the
European Lifestyles and Marine Ecosystems (`ELME') Project funded by the European
Commission under the Sixth Framework Programme.
broader, globalized phenomena. Of course, many of those large-scale
developments represent the aggregation of individual (and so `local')
preferences as expressed through desires and decisions. These relationships
are complex, and in the case of marine ecosystems the consequences of these
(aggregated) preferences are often hidden from view, so that there is a
`disconnect' in perceptions of individual decisions and their aggregated
outcomes. These (dis)connections between the global and local and between
individual preferences and aggregated environmental effects are all
characteristics of complex environmental systems where cause and effect
are difficult to disentangle. In many of the key environmental challenges of
the twenty-first century, this complexity raises significant issues for policy-
makers.
1
In the past, policy and regulatory responses to environmental
problems have been relatively linear and limited in scope. Thus, put crudely,
the earliest responses were characterized by localized `end-of-pipe' solutions
to local issues.
2
With greater understanding of the causal links between
activities and environmental degradation, broader, more integrative
approaches have been adopted.
3
In recent years, even these integrated tools have proved to be ineffective
against diffuse and multi-faceted problems such as climate change and the
degradation of the marine environment. Part of the reason for this is that
policy-makers and regulators have reached the limit of their ability to use
blunt `command and control' regulatory instruments to deal with multi-link
causal chains. As Dryzek has suggested, one of the great weaknesses of
administrative rationalism as a management approach to controlling environ-
mental problems is that once the `low-hanging fruit' have been picked, there
are still the complex problems to solve.
4
Thus, as the law of diminishing
returns suggests, with well-established systems of environmental regulation,
greater effort is required to improve the effectiveness of future
environmental policy. One of the ways in which these more complex issues
are being tackled is through the use of frameworks and indicators for the
assessment of environmental problems. As Martello and Jasanoff have
identified, `How we understand and represent environmental problems is
inescapably linked to the ways in which we choose to ameliorate or solve
76
1 Most obviously seen in the wide-ranging responses to the complexities of climate
change both at a transnational and domestic level, see, for example, the range of
measures adopted by the United Kingdom government: Defra, Climate Change: The
UK Programme 2006 (2006; Cm. 6764).
2D.Robinson, `Regulatory Evolution in Pollution Control' in Law in Environmental
Decision Making,eds. T. Jewell and J. Steele (1998).
3N.Gunningham and P. Grabosky, Smart Regulation: Designing Environmental
Policy (1998) 88.
4J.Dryzek, The Politics of the Earth: Environmental Discourses (2005, 2nd edn.) 93.
5M.L. Martello and S. Jasanoff `Globalization and Environmental Governance' in
Earthly Politics: Local and Global in Environmental Governance,eds. S. Jasanoff
and M.L. Martello (2004) 5.
ß2009 The Author. Journal Compilation ß2009 Cardiff University Law School
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