This study explores how meso-institutional configurations shape coordination mechanisms that enable compliance with the European Union Deforestation-Free Regulation within the coffee supply chains of Brazil and Colombia. Using an institutional economics framework and a qualitative design, the study uses semi-structured interviews and institutional documents to assess how meso-institutions translate, monitor, and adapt to regulatory norms. Results show that Colombia, through the coordination of the National Federation of Coffee Growers, presents a more integrated pattern of regulatory compliance supported by legitimacy and information dissemination. Brazil operates under a decentralized structure where meso-institutions, including CECAFE and cooperatives, promote compliance through diverse, locally adapted strategies. Technological and organizational innovations emerged as an outcome of the process, with institutions deploying digital traceability platforms, georeferencing systems, and capacity-building initiatives. The findings underscore that different institutional paths can support regulatory compliance when aligned with historical governance structures. The analysis indicates that the way meso-institutions structure rule translation, information coordination, and uncertainty reduction shapes the emergence of these arrangements as adaptive responses to European regularion requirements rather than as analytically distinct types of innovation.
Environmental policymaking is intrinsically intricate, involving diverse actors, competing values, and scientific knowledge. Policy actors strategically construct arguments to influence decision making, with discourse serving as a central medium in policy debates. Drawing on insights from the Advocacy Coalition Framework and the Discourse Coalition literatures, this study examines how policy actors share beliefs and discourses to persuade others in contentious policy conflicts. Using U.S. wind energy policy debates as a case of contested environmental politics, this study analyzes discourse presented through news media during a period marked by changes in national political leadership and broader shifts in wind energy policy. Policy actors' statements were coded and analyzed using Discourse Network Analysis. The results show that (i) discourse coalitions formed around problems and solutions based on actors' policy beliefs, (ii) discourse coalitions remained relatively stable despite changes in government leadership, and (iii) policy frames exhibited distinct patterns across coalitions and shifts in the political environment. This study advances understanding of coalition dynamics in contentious energy and environmental policymaking by showing how policy beliefs and discourses shape coalition interactions, and how distinguishing advocacy and discourse coalitions enables a more nuanced understanding of coalition stability and adaptation under political change.
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.
