عنوان

The politics of sustainable development :

Number

TLets502563

Title Proper

The politics of sustainable development :

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Almaguer-Kalixto, Patricia Eugenia

Title Proper by Another Author

Analysing exclusion at multiple levels in the environmental policy process

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

University of East Anglia

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

2008

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Ph.D.

Body granting the degree

University of East Anglia

Text preceding or following the note

2008

Text of Note

This thesis examines the political process through which sustainable development is promoted and applied. It asks why policies designed at global or regional levels with claims to environmental concerns fail to tackle environmental degradation on a local scale. It seeks to analyse how the dynamics of exclusion within the policy process marginalise the environmental sustainability agenda at different policy levels. Based on a political ecology approach, the thesis contributes to knowledge on environmental policy processes by analysing weaknesses in the creation, design and implementation of environmental warrants. In this thesis, a warrant is considered to be a safeguard that gives reliable or formal assurance, guarantee or security concerning a policy decision that has been taken. The analysis ranges from the macro level, where the policy framework is discursively framed and contested by groups with antagonistic claims, to the meso level where the policy framework is shaped by techno-bureaucratic practices, to the micro level where the environmental challenges of project implementation are contrasted with the regional policy framework. The thesis investigates these processes within the context of the Mesoamerican Sustainable Development Initiative (MSDI) of the Puebla Panama Plan (PPP), a regional development strategy which has been implemented since 2001 in Central America and southern Mexico. The analysis focuses on an area under environmental stress where a project supported by the PPP appears to add to already unsustainable processes of environmental change. The modernisation of Dos Bocas port in Paraiso, in the State ofTabasco, Mexico, a project located at a site of considerable environment fragility, was selected as the location of the case study. The research fmds that although the MSDI is a fIrst step towards fostering environmental sustainability in the region, the environment, claims and interests of local stakeholders are systematically marginalised. This is through exclusionary deliberative practices operating at the three different policy levels, leading to a weak environmental warrant for the PPP infrastructure projects.

Almaguer-Kalixto, Patricia Eugenia

University of East Anglia

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y