Cities across the United States are preparing for the impacts of climate change by developing adaptation or action plans. In the south-central U.S., cities that would like to address climate change often face many barriers, including fiscal challenges, state pre-emption, or citizen pushback. Drawing on principles of grounded theory, this study investigates climate ac tion planning in Fayetteville, Arkansas, a university town in a conservative state. Through interviews with city decision-makers, local environmental organizations, and involved residents, this work highlights the tensions municipalities must navigate when planning for climate change. In addition, despite their best efforts, cities such as Fayetteville often reproduce existing inequities when acting on climate change as their ability to implement transformational changes is often heavily limited. As a result, low-income communities of color in Fayetteville, and similar cities, remain more vulnerable to the impacts of a warmer and more unpredictable world.
In response to the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD), Sweden launched the National Plan for Modern Environmental Assessments (NAP) to align hydropower operations with contemporary environmental standards. However, repeated government-initiated pauses between 2023 and 2025 have disrupted the plan's implementation, sparking debate and raising concerns about Sweden's commitment to following the directives of WFD. This study investigates how these pauses have affected the implementation process, drawing on survey data from 120 respondents, including officials at County Administrative Boards and hydropower operators. Findings reveal that the pauses have introduced uncertainty, and additional administrative burdens for a significant portion of the respondents. However, there are differences across actor groups; while some used the extra time for preparation, others suspended activity entirely. The study contributes to implementation theory by illustrating how large-scale reforms unfold not as linear processes, but as episodic cycles shaped by political contingencies. It highlights the disruptions in bureaucratic processes related to political interventions, the strategic use of government-mandated pauses, the tension between environmental and energy goals, and the differentiated capacity of actors to navigate a rapidly changing administrative landscape and adapt to new circumstances. A more dynamic understanding of implementation cycles in politically sensitive environmental reforms is thus needed.
This article compares dog parks in Krakow, Poland, and Hamburg, Germany, across spatial, legal and social dimensions. Using field research, observation, GIS-based spatial analysis and a review of local regulations, it examines the design, features and management of dog parks in both cities. The results reveal two contrasting approaches: Hamburg shows a more formalised and institutionally embedded approach to dog parks, while Krakow exhibits a more fragmented, locally driven pattern. These findings highlight the role of local socio-spatial conditions and user practices in shaping urban green spaces. This study introduces the Spatial Saturation Index (SSI) as an original method to assess the integration of dog parks within the urban structure. Beyond filling a gap in cross-cultural comparisons of dog parks in Central and Western Europe, this article underscores the need for flexible but coherent planning frameworks that balance local specificities with consistency and functionality.
As increasing numbers of wind farms reach the end of their operational lives, the management of onshore wind energy closures is becoming an important yet under-examined dimension of renewable energy transitions. Existing research has focused largely on techno-economic assessments or idealised projections of recyclability and decommissioning, with little empirical evidence of what happens in practice. This paper addresses this gap through a multi-method investigation of all UK onshore wind farms that have closed to date. It identifies the factors driving closure, evaluates the extent of infrastructure removal and site remediation and examines the environmental and social outcomes. By analysing key cases in detail, the study reveals different 'end-of-life pathways' shaped by interacting technical, economic and institutional pressures: 'becoming unnecessary', 'becoming uneconomic' and 'becoming environmentally unacceptable'. Many of the factors driving closure reflect technology and siting choices shaped by the early years of the UK's onshore wind development, but the cases also yielded wider insights into decommissioning practices and how 'successful outcomes' are judged. More broadly, the research also exposes significant data limitations and conceptual ambiguities in end-of-life research, and offers a more grounded basis for understanding future decommissioning challenges, for sites, materials and places.
Increasing attention to the environmental impacts of the transport sector has given rise to a range of studies dedicated to identifying policy instruments that can promote a shift towards more sustainable land use and transport planning. However, little is understood about the calibration of policy instruments to support this shift. This article seeks to illustrate the impacts of instrument calibration in reducing transport emissions and volumes. It does so by studying the evolution of policies for sustainable mobility in the city of Espoo (Finland) from 2013 to 2025. The empirical material highlights the significance of the calibration of policy instruments in the process of transitioning to more sustainable forms of urban mobility.
Smart grids are widely promoted as key technologies for enabling low-carbon and flexible electricity systems, with households expected to play an active role through dynamic pricing and automation. This article examines the representation of households in Swedish energy policymaking. This is done by investigating how households are represented in two policy processes concerning smart grids and grid tariffs in Sweden, as well as through interviews with energy sector actors. The qualitative analysis of the documents and interviews reveals a significant gap between policy expectations and institutional practice. Using an energy democracy framework, we analyse household representation across four dimensions: actors and representation, capacity and responsibility, framing, and justice. Our findings point to a dominance of technocratic and market-based logics that overlook socio-material inequalities and democratic inclusion. Over time, the policy processes have relied heavily on the same professional actors, which contributes to the same issues being raised and the same answers being given. Both problems and solutions follow a path dependency in the processes, and the involved actors seem unable to introduce new ideas or solutions to the known problems. We argue that integrating diverse household perspectives is crucial for socially legitimate and equitable energy policies.
Over recent decades, European countries have supported the bioeconomy transition by implementing strategies and policy instruments. The bioeconomy is framed as a shift to a more sustainable future by increasing the use of biomass across sectors, and thereby reducing dependence on fossil resources and mitigating climate change, while stimulating biotechnological innovation and economic growth. However, an emerging academic discussion highlights the negative effects of the European bioeconomy transition, also those occurring in other locations. Our study analyzes this growing body of literature through a critical interpretive synthesis (CIS). Based on 108 publications, we assess the discussed environmental, social, and economic impacts, their interconnections, and the described mechanisms, including the link to bioeconomy policies. Our study shows that environmental impacts receive stronger attention, while economic and social aspects, such as equality or land ownership, have only recently been studied. Scholars predominantly frame rising biomass demand as the main driver of the cross-border impacts. However, the literature often remains vague in discussing causality. The characterization of the impacts ranges from unintended consequences to inherent features of the bioeconomy transition, depending on the underlying interpretations of the concept, the emphasized factors, and assumptions about the transition's underlying intentions in Europe.
This article presents a nationwide, commune-level comparison of two national flood hazard mapping cycles in Poland, Cycle I (2010-2015) and Cycle II (2016-2021), and examines changes in built-up land within mapped flood-prone areas. The analysis combines official flood hazard map layers provided by State Water Management 'Polish Waters' with commune-level administrative and land-use data from the Polish Topographic Objects Database (BDOT10k). For each commune and scenario, it quantifies changes in flood-prone area and built-up area within flood-prone zones across seven official flood scenarios using spatial overlay analysis, descriptive statistics, entropy measures, cluster analysis, and non-negative matrix factorisation. The results show that increases in flood-prone area and built-up exposure are more frequent than decreases, especially along the Vistula and Oder systems. Szczecin records the largest absolute increase in the 1% flood extent, while W & eogon;gorzyno shows the largest relative increase; under the levee-failure scenario, Warsaw records the largest absolute increase and Wisznica Ma & lstrok;a the largest relative increase. Built-up exposure is more sensitive than hazard extent, as many communes intensified development within flood-prone zones even where mapped extents remained stable. These findings support more anticipatory and scenario-specific spatial planning and flood risk management.
The Welsh Government's Well-being of Future Generations Act represents a ground-breaking attempt to improve well-being, social justice, and sustainability across Wales. The implementation of key parts of the Act is devolved to the local authority level where Public Services Boards (PSBs) conduct well-being assessments for their areas using a 'place-based' approach. In this paper, we critically evaluate the spatial methodologies used by PSBs to make well-being 'legible' at a local level through their well-being assessments. We discuss how the practice of aggregating data to spatial units is prone to distortions and masking effects associated with the modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP), and how this issue is compounded by the multi-stranded vision of well-being contained within the Act. Drawing on mixed methods and a comparative case study, an alternative 'grounded' approach is explored using near-disaggregated data to inform the definition of spatial units. In this alternative approach, spatial units are considered as the analytical categories that result from analysis, rather than preconstructed units to contain the analysis. We conclude this 'grounded' approach produces a more spatially sensitive analysis that minimises MAUP effects, and that the Well-being Act needs to accommodate a plurality of spatial units for well-being to be maximised.
This paper studies the discourse surrounding sustainable mobility transitions (SMTs) implicated in a recent urban planning initiative, 'Development of Urban Planning Technology Using Big Data and AI', conducted by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport in South Korea. The country's transition context, particularly its ambiguous positionality within the Global North-South dichotomy, makes it a compelling case for examining the critical contestation between 'development' and 'sustainability' in the discourse of sustainable transitions. The persistent ethos of developmentalism within its institutional regime perpetuates inertia in its pathway, translating global pressure for SMTs into the more pressing national concern regarding shrinking cities - by capitalising on the intersection of sustainability and development through innovative technology. This discursive process reinforces mobility as 'quantifiable', transforming the meaning of SMTs through a dominant technoeconomic approach, which is also closely linked to its identity as an export-oriented economy, now aiming to develop and market 'innovative urban models' to cities in the Global South. The paper calls for a deeper examination of 'mobility' within SMTs to better address mobility justice, especially in light of the increasing datafication of mobility, which is expected to intensify in the discourse in the coming years.
Flooding is one of the most frequent and damaging consequences of hydrometeorological hazards in T & uuml;rkiye, where growing urbanization, climatic variability, and socio-economic disparities exacerbate risk conditions. This study develops a province-level flood risk assessment across 81 provinces by integrating hazard (H), exposure (E), and vulnerability (V) indicators into a composite spatial index. The findings reveal that while some provinces face high hazard intensity, others are marked by dense exposure or structural vulnerability. Notably, over 855,000 people and critical infrastructure - including one airport, 11 power plants, and 273 hospitals - are located in flood-prone areas, many of which are classified as high or very high flood-risk zones. The analysis tailors province-scale policy by offering region-specific spatial planning strategies aimed at reducing flood risks and enhancing resilience, providing a scalable framework for integrating flood risk into planning processes. The implications cover hazard mitigation (e.g., 'space for water'; coordinated runoff management; long-term emissions mitigation), exposure reduction (siting controls; flood-adaptive land-use transitions and strategic relocation), and vulnerability reduction (integrating technological, nature-based, and social measures), thereby mainstreaming flood risk in spatial governance and advancing risk-informed spatial planning.
The European Green Deal marks a shift in policy-making, aiming to transform the European economy and society to achieve sustainability and climate neutrality. Its zero-pollution ambition, outlined in the Zero Pollution Action Plan, provides an opportunity to address marine pollution in the European Union in a more integrated manner, setting the ground for new governance requirements to address existing challenges, and drive the integration of previously separate policy domains. In this context, the Source to Sea concept is explored to assess plastic pollution policy integration with regard to tyre wear particles, a form of unintentionally released microplastics. In this vein, the article considers the life cycle stages and pathways of tyre wear particle pollution across land, freshwater, and the marine environment to identify key actors, including responsible authorities, and policies that govern them. In applying a Source to Sea approach to the tyre wear particles case, the assessment highlights cooperation and conflicts among actors, conflicting policy objectives and how tyre wear particles are covered under the European Green Deal. This assessment offers a perspective to explore opportunities for policy integration regarding marine pollution and for future research avenues into policy integration, including through the application of empirical studies.
Countries increasingly vulnerable to climate-induced disasters struggle to align urban governance with global resilience norms due to complex scalar arrangements and governance technologies. Using a sequential exploratory mixed-methods research approach - comprising of historical and document analyses, surveys, and interviews - we analyze how 'risks' and 'responsibility' are socially constructed within Pakistan's disaster governance system's discursive practices, particularly affecting urban informal settlers who face disproportionate climate and disaster risks. Responsibility-related tensions and multi-scalar 'blame games' between a monolithic Westphalian state reliant on politically centralized authority and local governance systems seeking greater autonomy critically shape the effectiveness of disaster risk reduction and resilience initiatives. Institutional and political constraints, including neocolonial, military, and media influences, perpetuate scalar inequalities and hinder the adaptation of global resilience norms to local contexts. This reveals how disaster risk reduction and resilience interventions are deeply embedded in political and institutional logics shaping land, communities, and ecosystems. Re-evaluating power structures within intergovernmental systems can help address resilience challenges and implement contextually appropriate strategies.
The Clean Industrial Deal (CID) proposed in early 2025 creates a new framework for EU climate action by shifting its emphasis on competitiveness and resilience against geopolitical challenges. How does this new agenda affect dynamics of Climate Policy Integration (CPI) in relation to the previous framework of the European Green Deal (EGD)? Addressing this question, the article presents a theoretical approach that accounts for change in the boundaries and rationales of climate action, particularly by considering the demand for policy integration resulting from change of political agendas in relation to the proposed supply of mechanisms to enact CPI. Adopting the established distinction of four related dimensions of policy integration, the theoretical approach applies the two criteria of scope and strength to evaluate conditions for CPI resulting from evolving climate action agendas. The empirical part reviews how the CID has affected the policy frames, subsystems, goals and instruments of EU climate action in relation to previous stages of EGD governance. The analysis concludes that the re-framing of climate action as green industrial policy proposed by the CID creates new imbalances of CPI mechanisms, rendering its enactment more difficult and its analytical evaluation more complex.
Since 2019, the European Green Deal (EGD) has sought to harmonise efforts across several sectors towards a long-term goal of carbon neutrality. In response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the 2022 REPowerEU Plan positioned decarbonisation as a key means to reduce dependence on imports of Russian fossil fuels. Central to achieving this goal is reforming the permitting processes for renewable energy projects, particularly regarding environmental rules and principles. We trace how the EU has addressed the challenge of balancing renewables and biodiversity concerns by identifying and explaining the effects of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 on policy integration. Drawing on the processual approach to policy integration, our study identifies three phases of integration of biodiversity concerns into EU renewable energy policy. The most recent phase disrupted ongoing efforts towards policy integration initiated by the EGD and shifted the balance towards accelerated renewable energy deployment over biodiversity concerns. Employing insights from the EU crisis literature and focusing on the effects of the crisis on actor-level factors of policy integration (capacity, core beliefs, commitment), we unpack how the crisis contributed to reducing policy integration of biodiversity into renewable policy.
This article examines how analytical, operational, and political capacities shape policy instrument design, using Brazil's wind energy policy as a case study. While prior research has often focused on political capacity, we apply the Policy Capacity Framework to show that improvements in a broader range of capacities correspond to shifts in policy design - from administratively priced feed-in tariffs to competitive auctions. Theoretically, we advance the framework by specifying the mechanisms of this co-evolution: early capacity limitations led to simple instruments, while capacity enhancement enabled the adoption of more sophisticated tools like auctions. Moreover, we find that policy design can foster capacity-building, creating feedback loops that enable future policy innovation. Our findings on the Brazilian case demonstrate that the interaction of capacities is crucial for renewable energy policy and highlight how policy design can create feedback loops for sustained innovation, offering lessons for other late-developing countries.
Intensive livestock farming has significant environmental, health, and animal welfare impacts, driving increased societal pressure for legislative action, particularly in high-income countries. This study investigates the evolution of political discourses on livestock farming in Germany from the post-war period to 2021, using a corpus-assisted discourse analysis combining structural topic modeling and lexicometric analysis of parliamentary speeches. Sixteen topics were identified and grouped into four themes: structural change, animal welfare, environmental degradation, and consumer safety. Semantic analysis revealed changing concepts and priorities, from livestock farming as an exclusively economic activity, to criticism of declining family farming with growing attention to animal welfare. The combination of methods allowed to identify predominant discourses of animal welfare and structural change, while environmental risks and consumer safety were less prominent. The findings demonstrate the complexity of political debates surrounding livestock farming in Germany and the strength of combining topic modeling with lexicometric analysis to integrate thematic and linguistic dimensions. The analysis reveals that while the discourse on livestock farming has diversified to include environmental, welfare and consumer concerns, new topics were often adopted through recombination with established discourses. This corpus-assisted approach provides a transferable framework for analyzing political discourses across spatial and historical contexts.
Procuratorial public interest litigation has become a vital legal mechanism for advancing environmental protection in China. Although public authorities are mandated by law to safeguard the public interest, enforcement bodies often lack the capacity or willingness to act effectively. Traditional public law enforcement focuses primarily on injunctions and administrative penalties, offering limited pathways for environmental remediation. To address these shortcomings, this article proposes two theoretical models of public interest litigation. The first targets administrative inaction by holding public authorities accountable for failing to fulfill their statutory duties. The second addresses the insufficiency of restorative measures in public law enforcement by seeking to impose substantive environmental obligations. Within this evolving framework, procuratorial organs play a pivotal role in compelling government agencies to act in the public interest. However, their authority to initiate environmental compensation claims remains contested and underdeveloped. The dynamic relationships among prosecutors, administrative bodies, NGOs, and private actors also raise concerns about constrained public participation under China's model of 'authoritarian environmentalism.' By analyzing the institutional functions and limitations of procuratorial litigation, this article contributes to a deeper understanding of how China is reshaping environmental governance through legal innovation while grappling with issues of transparency, accountability, and citizen engagement.
The 'promotion tournament' constitutes a hierarchical incentive mechanism wherein superior governments incentivize subordinate officials by conditioning career advancement on demonstrably outperforming their peers, thereby securing recognition and upward mobility within the administrative hierarchy. This study introduces the novel theoretical construct of 'climate promotion tournaments' - a conceptual innovation examining whether competitive intergovernmental dynamics can be harnessed to foster collaborative governance between central and local governments. Employing a mixed-methods approach that synthesizes empirical extensive field studies with systematic documentary analysis, we formulate an evolutionary game model to rigorously analyze strategic interactions, behavioral dynamics, and equilibrium stability under China's carbon neutrality policy implementation. Results indicate that an ideal equilibrium involves the central government effectively advancing the climate promotion tournaments, while local governments actively engage in these tournaments. Economic capacity and promotion prospects are two key factors in central-local dynamics within climate promotion tournaments. As the economy grows faster and promotion prospects increase, the central and local governments become more active in advancing climate promotion tournaments, which in turn makes it easier to form collaborative governance. The findings validate the efficacy of climate promotion tournaments in fostering central-local collaborative governance, while also extending theoretical frameworks and practical insights to improve carbon neutrality policy implementation.
Biodiversity conservation is gaining prominence in urban and regional planning, yet limited attention has been paid to how local authorities translate high-level biodiversity policies into effective practices. This paper examines how urban development is managed to prevent biodiversity loss and enhance ecosystem services through a comparative analysis of planning practices in Manchester (England), Bologna (Italy), Calgary (Canada), Frankfurt (Germany), and Ghent (Belgium). The study explores how biodiversity is integrated into planning across three governance levels: national/regional, city, and project. It reveals that while all five cities demonstrate a commitment to biodiversity, their strategies differ according to governance structures, planning cultures, and legal frameworks. Regulatory systems, such as those in Germany and Italy, provide prescriptive, plan-led approaches, whereas discretionary systems, like England's, allow for more flexibility during project appraisal. However, these distinctions are not always clear-cut. Ghent, despite operating in a regulatory framework, adopts discretionary practices at the project level, resembling Manchester's approach. Conversely, Frankfurt, Bologna, and Calgary emphasise early-stage integration of biodiversity through zoning and city planning. The findings offer insights into the advantages and limitations of both regulatory and discretionary approaches and highlight the importance of aligning biodiversity strategies across governance levels to improve ecological outcomes in urban development.
