Journal articles
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Ford L, Kuetting G, 'Discourses of Degrowth: new value systems for global environmental governance?'
Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization 20 (2) (2020)
ISSN: 2052-1499 eISSN: 1473-2866
Abstract The Global Environmental Politics literature tends to focus on institutional and governance frameworks as the solution to global environmental problems rather than on the systemic constraints that limit the potential effectiveness of governance efforts. Part of the problem with institutional frameworks to reform global environmental governance is insufficient attention paid to deeper structural challenges. We seek to contribute to these debates drawing on critical political ecology understood as a broad, interdisciplinary set of discourses and practices that goes to the roots of structural challenges. In particular, we focus on a broad area of research around degrowth. Usually, critical approaches are considered idealist. However, we argue that value changes are a vital component in the transition to a post-growth, post-capitalist world, which is inevitable given the biophysical and social limits to growth. While degrowth is not by any means on the verge of becoming a new dominant value system, it nevertheless presents both a coherent frame of reference as well as contains concrete examples of alternative ways of organizing society and the economy. Thus it offers important new value sets to the treasure chest of approaches wanting to bring about ecological and social change and thus a potentially important contribution to global environmental politics.
Website
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Ford L, 'For a sustainable and just Europe: Can civil society effectively influence the EU?'
System Change 1 (2) (2018)
ISSN: 2396-7293
Abstract Within critical debates about European governance scholars have highlighted the role of social forces in both maintaining and challenging the dominance of market liberalism. The works of Antonio Gramsci on the links between ideology and governance provide some powerful tools for understanding these relationships that have been applied by neo-Gramscians. Working from this starting point, this paper provides a broad analysis of civil society actors that are engaging and challenging European hegemonic governance, including NGOs and social movements. These questions are explored through the retrospective case study of EU trade policy questioning the extent of the opportunities for civil society to influence this policy area, with implications for current challenges. Scholars on the left have habitually dismissed new social movements as not being properly class based actors, and thus helping to maintain current forms of governance. In addressing this, the paper discusses the self understanding of such movement actors and how they see their interventions in a wider context of campaigning and mobilisation. From the point of view of systemic change, this paper raises interdisciplinary questions of how we see second order (or radical) system change in the sphere of discourse, concepts and beliefs about social and economic systems. Again, this is a relatively unexplored area in system change discussions which tend to be focused on desired outcomes, or economic levers, and tend to leave out the cultural aspects that are also needed help achieve transformational change. Website
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Henfrey T, Ford L, 'Permacultures of transformation: steps to a cultural ecology of environmental action'
Journal of Political Ecology 25 (1) (2018) pp.104-119
ISSN: 1073-0451
Abstract This article examines a trend over the past two decades towards more explicit politicization in some areas of the ecovillage movement, particularly where covillages engage with related grassroots movements for environmental and social change. It does so using an expanded political ecology framework, also drawing upon 'Multi-level Perspective on Sustainability Transitions' and Gregory Bateson's Ecology of Mind. It argues that apparently apolitical focii on lifestyle change and personal development have in some cases given way to overt recognition of the need for global political change. It attributes this to the global political economy of sustainability becoming more evident and critiques of dominant social, political and economic regimes more compelling and widely accepted.Website
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Ford L, Kuetting G, 'Global environmental governance in the Anthropocene: breaking out of the enclosures?'
System Change 1 (1) (2017)
ISSN: 2396-7293
Abstract This paper addresses some of the most fundamental questions of the ways in which 'global environmental governance' is both conceived and constructed as concept and practice. We join with other critical scholars to point out how orthodox, problem-solving environmental governance, rather than being ecologically and socially effective, is more concerned with institutional effectiveness. We review the ways in which this mainstream approach might actually be stabilising and perpetuating a world order based on inequality and ecological destruction. In order that movements for sustainability can develop more positive responses to the Anthropocene challenges, we question the very parameters of action, the very economic, political and socio-cultural structures that are perpetuating social injustice and ecological degradation. We use a concept of 'enclosure' to refer to the way in which the mainstream concepts shut down and limit our thinking and practice. In a positive conclusion, we utilize the CONVERGE project's broad focus on achieving equity within planetary limits to assess the de-growth movement as breaking out of these enclosures.Website
Book chapters
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Ford L, 'Transnational actors in global environmental politics' in Kuetting G and Herman K (ed.), Global Environmental Politics: Concepts, Theories and Case Studies (second edition), Routledge (2018)
ISBN: 9781351716635 eISBN: 9781351716642
Abstract After a month long campaign by indigenous and environmental activists to prevent an access pipeline from being drilled under the Missouri River in North Dakota, the Army Corp of Engineers refused the permit on 4 December 2016, handing initial victory to the protesters (Wong 2016). Commenting on this success, Shannon Jackson, Executive Director of Our Revolution, a movement to reclaim democracy in the United States, stated: Today’s decision clearly demonstrates the power of the political revolution. When people come together from all walks of life – veterans, Native Americans, environmentalists, farmers, young and old – to protect the health of our planet and generations to come, there is nothing we cannot accomplish. This victory sends a clear signal to those at the top: we are united and not giving up. We will continue to stand together and expect the decisions made by our government to benefit all of us, not just the rich and corporations.Website
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Gillard R, Ford L, Kuetting G, 'Justice discourses and the global environment: diverse perspectives on an uneven landscape' in O. Corry and H. Stevenson (ed.), Traditions and Trends in Global Environmental Politics: International Relations and the Earth, Routledge (2017)
ISBN: 9781138633872 eISBN: 9781351800785
Abstract This chapter engages with each of the social and environmental discourses and reflects upon how they have influenced Global Environmental Politics (GEP) and International Relations (IR) over the past twenty years. Twenty years ago, an explicit discourse of justice was largely absent from GEP research. Much IR scholarship suggests that by bringing as many nation-states together as possible, international institutions can address the increasingly globalised nature of human-environment relations and the governance challenges they pose. A political ecology approach reunites politics, economics and justice with deep green thought to produce a new environmental justice discourse. Feminist theory can offer vital and directly applicable insights for achieving environmental justice. Although not always explicitly couched in terms of justice, they highlight the need for an analysis of power and for understanding how structures of domination systematically reproduce environmental degradation. The environmental justice literature is rightly celebrated as a flexible and progressive agenda capable of problematising existing approaches to IR and the environment.Website
Reviews
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Ford L, review of Reforming Law and Economy for a Sustainable Earth: critical thought for turbulent times, ed. Paul Anderson, in Environmental Politics 26 (3) (2017) pp.552-553ISSN: 0964-4016 eISSN: 1743-8934
Website
Previous Publications
Ford, Lucy (2013) 'EU trade governance and policy: A critical perspective', Journal of Contemporary European Research, 9(4)578-596.
Ford, Lucy (2009) 'Transnational actors in global environmental politics’, chapter in Kuetting, Gabriela (ed), Global Environmental Politics, Routledge, pp. 27-41.
Ford, Lucy H. (2005) ‘Challenging the Global Environmental Governance of Toxics’, in David L. Levy and Peter J. Newell (eds) The Business of Global Environmental Governance, Cambridge Massachusetts:MIT Press, pp. 305-328.
Ford, Lucy H. (2004) ‘The Power of Technocracy:A critical analysis of global environmental governance’, in Anne Haugestadt and J.D Wulfhorst (eds) Environmental Justice and Global Citizenship, New York:Rodopi Press, pp.105-120.
Ford, Lucy H. (2003) ‘Challenging Global Environmental Governance: Social Movement Agency and Global Civil Society’, in the Special issue of Global Environmental Politics, ‘Global Environmental Governance for the Twenty-First Century’, edited by David Humphreys, Matthew Paterson and Lloyd Pettiford, Vol.3(2), pp.120-134.
Williams, Marc & Lucy H. Ford (1999), ‘The WTO, Social Movements and Global Environmental Management’, Environmental Politics Vol 08 No 01, pp. 268-289; and in Christopher Rootes (ed) Environmental Movements - Local, National and Global, London:Frank Cass, pp. 268-289.
Ford, L.H. (1999) ‘Social movements and the globalisation of environmental governance’, IDS Bulletin, Vol 30 No 3, pp.68-74.