Shades of green in local authority policy-making: a regional case study

Area (2000) 32.4, 369-382

Shades of green in local authority policy-making: a regional case study

Kate Muir”, Martin Phillipst and Mick Healey* *School of Natural and Environmental Sciences, Coventry University, Coventry CV1 5FB

Email: [email protected]

+Geography and Environmental Management Research Unit, Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education, Cheltenham GL50 4AZ

Email: [email protected]

tDepartment of Geography, University of Leicester, Leicester LEI 7RH

Revised manuscript received 24 February 2000.

Summary Local authorities have been seen as an important agent in the development of more sustainable economies. This paper explores the level and form of ‘greening’ taking place amongst local authorities in the Midland region of the UK. Particular attention is paid to intra-regional variations in environmental policy-making.

Introduction

The late 1980s and early 1990s saw a growing awareness of ‘green’ issues at global, national and local levels. There has been an increasing amount of environmental legislation and guidelines issued from bodies such as the European Union and national governments, and local authorities have also started developing environmental strategies, initiatives and audits. Within much of this environmental policy- making there has been commitment to the delivery of ’sustainable development’ seen as the integration of environmental and economic development (Blowers 1993; Council for the Protection of Rural England 1993; Roberts and Tilley 1993).

One high profile manifestation of this concern to integrate economic development and environmental issues has been the Agenda 21 process initiated in 1992 at the ‘Earth Summit’ in Rio de Janeiro. The Agenda 2 I document signed there outlined a range of plans for solving environmental problems and integrating environmental actions with concerns for economic and social development (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development 1992). Chapter 28 of this document discussed the actions that local authorities could make to imple-

ment sustainable development, although it did not specifically set any commitments for or on local authorities. Local authorities have, however, been seen as a central agency for the implementation of the plans contained in Agenda 2 I , with an estimated 80 per cent of the document being seen as presup- posing an active involvement of local authorities and communities (Stott 1993). Furthermore, local authorities have been portrayed as being amongst the prime movers in making Agenda 21 an initiative or process which has extended beyond the Rio conference with many countries, including the UK, developing their own ’Local Agenda 21’ plans (see Local Government Management Board 1993, 1997; Agyeman and Evans 1994; Morphet and Hams 1994; and Selman 1996). Local economic development policy has been identified as amongst the key areas where local authorities can foster more sustainable forms of development (Local Government Management Board 1993). However, as Wilks and Hall (1994) point out, Agenda 21 both in its global and local forms is neither legally binding nor subject to central government requirements, which allows considerable latitude in the formation and implementation of sustainable development policy.

ISSN 0004-0894 0 Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2000

370 Kate Muir, Martin Phillips and Mick Healey

The present paper seeks to explore the greening of local authority policy-making within the Englishh Midlands, with particular emphasis on the greening of economic development policies. The paper begins by highlighting five relatively over-looked issues con- cerning the formation and implementation of sustainable economic development policies and then examines these by drawing on a study of environmental policy-making within local authorities in the English Midlands.

Environmental policy-making within Britain

A review of studies about the level of environmental activity in local authorities in the UK suggests that the number of local authorities with some form of environmental or ‘green’ document has increased from some 60 to 70 per cent in the early 1990s (Raemakers et a/ 1991; Marshall 1992, 1993; Pritchard 1995; Raemakers 1993; Wilson and Raemakers 1992) to 91 per cent in the mid-1990s (Tuxworth and Thomas 1996).

We would suggest, however, that there are five key lacunae within these studies which require further consideration. First, geographical differences in approach have tended to be ignored, particularly at the intra-regional scale. The concern has mainly been on establishing a general level of environmental policy-making, although at least one study has pointed to the existence of regional variations:

the geographical core is more active than the periphery: 78% of English authorities have one or more types of CEM (corporate environmental management) document in preparation or effect, against 66% of Scottish and 41% of Welsh; and within England the most active region is’Creater London and least active are the north, north-east and south-west (Raemakers 1993, 39).

No reasons for the regional variations are advanced. Similarly, although Tuxworth and Thomas (1 996) present information on different levels of local authority environmental policy-making by regions, there is no attempt to explain the variations. Marshall (1 992) highlights the existence of some regional differentials in policy making within London and seeks to explain these in terms of ’development hungry’ and ‘development doubtful‘ boroughs. How- ever, his analysis remains anecdotal on the grounds that ‘is not easy to measure development pressure’ (Marshall 1992, 5).

A second problem besetting many of the existing studies is that the precise nature of environmental policy-making and implementation is obscured by a concern to present general indicators of environmental policy development. The problems of an aggregate approach are well illustrated by Raemakers (1993) who notes that although 74 per cent of local authorities had ‘green plans’, this figure was very much ’putting the best face’ on the situ- ation with only half of the surveyed local authorities having ‘actually adopted a charter . . . only a quarter have an action programme rolling and still fewer have completed an internal audit or state of the environment report’ (Raemakers 1993, 37).

The higher figures for charters, as compared with action programmes, audits and environmental reports also raises a third issue, namely the relation- ship between policy formation and policy implementation. Environmental charters may be seen as mainly statements of intent and rather easier to implement than the more action dependent processes of developing action programmes and environmental audits and reports. The higher level of charter creation may hence be indicative of, at best, a temporal lag between the rhetoric and practice of environmental policy-making. Bruder (1 995) has, for example, suggested that there are six aspects to formulating and implementing environmental policy (see Figure 1 ), only the first of which is the establishment of some kind of charter or statement of basic principles. Although Bruder’s model may be criticized for adopting an overly linear view of the planning process, it does highlight that there is much more involved in establishing a substantive environmental policy beyond the publication of a charter or statement of principles.

A fourth characteristic of research on local authority environmental policy-making is that there has been an emphasis on the quantity of environmental policy-making at the expense of considering qualita- tive differences in the content of policies. Healey and Shaw (19941, Owens (19941, and Myerson and Rydin (1 994) have, however, all demonstrated that there are clear differences in the way environmental issues are conceived and articulated in planning discourses. Daly and Cobb (1 989) have argued that it is possible to classify sustainable development policies into ‘strong’ and ‘weak‘ policies and their classification has some parallels with the broader classification of social attitudes towards environmental issues developed by O’Riordan (1976, 1991, 1995). Hence, as Marshall (1992,

Shades of green in local authdrity policy-making 371

Description

No action taken to date

Theoretical progression (after B d e r 1995) Midland Local Authorities undertaking policy (%)

35

STATEMENTOFPRINCIPLES t

/ l l RIP PIA SOE

kview of Internal Policy Impact State of

Stage One - The fmt stage in environmental policy making, includes developing a set of

principles and envinmmental charters

Practices Assessment Environment Repor

26

1 IMPLEMENTATION

1

REVIEW

Stage Two - Prcduction of documents which provide contextual statements for policy and

plan development

Stage Three -Formulation of plans and policies fmm the statements of conditions

Stage Four - Implementation of plans and policies

4

Stage Five - Monitoring of plans and policies

Stage Six -Reassessment of process, with fresuent redevelopment of plans and policies

Figure 1 The elements of environmental policy making: theory and the practice in Midland local Authorities

1993) suggests, there is a clear need to pay careful attention to the form as well as extent of local authority policy-making.

A final issue that is in need of some attention is the extent to which particular geographical localities may create differing pressures for and demands on environmental policy-making. It has been widely recognized that the economic and social structure of localities may have a profound impact on local policy-making and implementation. It has also been argued that there is a need to recognize that economic processes necessarily have an ecological dimension or ’footprint’ (Blaikie and Brookfield 1987; Redclift 1987; Selman 1996). Bringing these two features together, Bristow (1 993) and Lowe and Flynn (1 989) have identified ’environmental localities’ in which ‘divergent economic pressures’ stem- ming from processes of economic restructuring and ‘mediated through local and state structures’ yield variations in environmental politics and policies (Lowe and Flynn 1989, 259-60).

The level of environmental policy-making in the Midlands

The present paper addresses these five issues through using the results of a survey of environmental policy-making sent to all local authorities in

the Midlands, together with some extracts from semi-structured interviews conducted with officers in six of the local authorities. The survey was undertaken between April and May 1995 with a postal questionnaire being targeted at economic development officers in all 85 local authorities in the East and West Midlands Standard Planning Regions.’ Overall some 64 per cent of the surveyed authorities returned the questionnaire with similar response rates from metropolitan districts, non-metropolitan districts and county councils. The questionnaire included questions on the extent of general environmental policy-making within the local authority, the degree to which this was influenced by the Agenda 21 process and the degree to which environmental concerns were impacting on economic development policy. The semi-structured interviews were conducted over 1995 and 1996 and overall some 24 local authority officers involved in local economic development and/or environmental policy-making were interviewed.

Adopting the principle that the mention of any environmental policy instrument is a sufficient indicator of development of a ‘green’ policy, then the general level of environmental policy-making in the Midlands appears to be lower than that found in the surveys previously discussed, with 65 per cent of the surveyed authorities having an element of an

372 Kate Muir, Martin Phillips and Mick Heaky

environmental policy in place. The most common policy elements were environmental charters or statements (51 per cent of surveyed local authorities), while Local Agenda 21s or sustainable development strategies with a greater commitment to action had been completed by only 6 per cent of authorities in the Midlands, which was again consid- erably lower than the national figure calculated by Tuxworth and Thomas (1 996).

Going beyond the aggregative approach, Figure 1 presents the degree to which local authorities adopted the elements of environmental policy- making identified by Bruder (1 995)? The results suggest that, at the time of the survey, very few of the ’green’ authorities had completed much more than an ynvironmental charter, although some 55 per cent intended to produce a Local Agenda 21 strategy in the future.

The predominance of environmental charters and expressions of intent over fully formulated and implemented plans might be seen as a reflection of a relatively short history of environmental policy- making. Certainly, the majority of the environmental policy documents mentioned by the respondents, with the exception of the environmental statements, had been published only in the preceding three years, a date which coincides with the Earth Summit and the start of Agenda 21 initiatives. However, working against such a generalized explanation is evidence of clear differences between local authorities in the rate of progress made towards formulating and implementing Local Agenda 2 1 s. We would suggest, therefore, that other influences need to be explored, including the impact that different policy forms have on implementation and the demands created for and on planning by the nature of localized environments.

The form of environmental policy-making in the Midlands

One possible explanation for the seemingly low level of environmental policy-making is that it is the result of local authorities developing complex and wide ranging policies which are slow to both formulate and implement. Conversely, it may be that the authorities which are apparently making most progress at the present time are those adopting the least radical policies which are easiest to implement. Evidence for such arguments was certainly available when responses given by local authority officers in the semi-structured interviews are compared. Some

officers made much of the complexity of environmental policy-making and how this affected the temporal horizons of implementation:

[Sustainable development] will take time, and just because you can’t get something down now doesn’t mean it’s not the right idea . . . I would be more committed to achieving this in the longer term than getting half a dozen green schemes up ’cos [although] I think the green schemes are important . . . they are not actually going to change that employment and investment decisions are predominantly made by business.

The approach that originally came from chief officers was we must have a strategy by December 96, to which I promptly said ’well you won’t have one, if you want a strategy document then fine we will have one, don’t bother with a group just let me loose for two or three days . . . I will take somebody else’s and there will just be a load of bland statements about ‘we will try and do this’, ‘we will consider this’ and ‘we will say yes to that and it will not mean a thing’. Now I mean if you want to do LA 21 properly then the first thing you say is we can not possibly reach that time scale.

Other officers, from one of the seemingly most advanced authorities in terms of their implementation of Local Agenda 21, admitted that they took quite a different approach:

I took a definition [of sustainable development] which I stole . . . from some wonderful document.. . I basically lifted it, plagiarized it, ‘cos I thought it sounded good and it seemed what I believed.

being relatively newcomers to the game we had to decide what to do and . . . I think we probably picked on the easiest option, that was to go for environmental audits.

These comments reinforce the earlier claim that there is a need to not only examine the extent of environmental policy-making but also its form.

In order to differentiate between the various forms of environmental policy an environmental classification of policies was developed based on the assessment of environmental attitudes developed by O’Riordan (1 991) and the more policy focused classifications of Daly and Cobb (1 989), Turner (1993) and Gibbs and Healey (1995). Combining these classifications (see Figure 2), it can be suggested that a ’dry green’ attitude may correspond to the adoption of a ‘very weak‘ version of sustainable development which is concerned with minor

Shades of green in local authority policy-making 3 73

Ecocentric - earth centred or nurturing mode Technocentric - human centred or manipulative mode Modes of society- iahue interaction

:nvironmental

Favoured political Ecofacist or eco-socialist structures

Favoured environmental management naNre strategies

Giving way to Gaia : focus is on adherence to laws of

Concepts of sustainable Very strong development Typical local state Eco-auditing policies Public consultation and

empowerment Social redistribution

Proportion of 2 Midland Local Authorities (%) n= 54

I ’ -1 I Light green I Shallow green

economies and

response to evidence of environmental problems and crises

Devolved power, self- Strong central states Hollowed out states reliant communities orientated to sustaining concerned to interfere connected by federal market economies. minimally with operation smctures I 1 of a free-market economy

Desimine. with nature : eco-auditing leadine. to 1 Science first reliance of - - I - comprehensive accounting, assessment and rational scientific credibility,

decision-making: modelling and prediction and the rationality of the marker

By public discussion C-----, By experts

I Strong Weak Very Weak

Eco-auditing Eco-auditing Environmental research Environmental promotion Cost benefit analysis and advice Public consultation Environmental promotion Perfecting markets Local economic trading and enfoxcement systems Infrastructure and land-use

planning 30 50 18

I I I

Figure 2 Environmental attitudes, social organization and economic development policies

adjustments to contemporary practices in order to minimize their environmental impacts. ‘Shallow greens’ may adopt stronger versions of the notion of sustainable development which focus on more ecological interpretations of the environment and recognize the potential need to manage levels and forms of production and consumption. Finally, for the ‘deep greens’ the notion of sustainable development requires a radical rethink of the very notion of development as resting on expanding production and consumption. How radical change is envisaged to come about varies greatly, with some deep greens advocating greater social participation in decision making (an approach often called ‘eco-socialists’; see Pepper 1984), while others (sometimes referred to as ’eco-fascists’) argue that the need for change is so great that central direction and control is req~i red.~

Local authority officers in the Midlands were asked what types of policies their development plans contained or were likely to address? Their replies were then classified into forms of sustainable development

policy (see base of Figure 2). The results revealed that there are significant differences in the form of ’environmentalism’ being adopted by individual authorities. Not only had a significant proportion of local authorities apparently failed to initiate environmental policy-making, but the majority of those who had started had adopted weak notions. Hence, for example, the most widely adopted environmental development policy was the use of the land use planning system to promote sustainable patterns of development (see Table 1) and for many of those classified as ‘weak‘ this remained the extent of sustainable development policies. This result may stem in part from the long-established emphasis within planning on land-use development and control, and also on arguments that land-use con- trols may be a significant lever in delivering more sustainable economies. Second, the result may also reflect a continuing aesthetization of environment policy-making as the protection of visually attractive landscapes (see Harrison 1991; Healey and Shaw


Table 1 Environmental development policies within local authorities in the Midlands ~~

Policy Percentage of local authorities: With policy intending to neither have or

establish policy intend to have policy

Land-use planning Sustainable transport Reducing energy consumption Reduction of waste production Green tourism Combating poverty New environmental businesses Other environmental policy

80 57 39 22 16 14 10 18

16 20 20 10 20

8 12

7

4 23 41 68 64 76 78 75

Note: Based on responses from 54 local authorities

1994; MacNaghten and Urry 1998). Third, Ward (1 993) has suggested that local authority adoption of environmental policy may be a fairly instrumental repackaging of established practices in a new language in order to provide local authorities and councils with a new legitimacy at a time when many of their other functions have been under attack.

Support for each of these explanations could be gleaned from comments in the questionnaire and particularly from the interviews conducted with local authority officers. So, for example, many respondents made some reference to the role of land-use planning and control within environmental policy- making; generally either ‘naturalizing’ this connection or complaining about its effects, as in the case of this officer who commented:

The authority signed the LA2 1 sustainable development declaration and then everybody sort of said . . . ’well that’s great but now what are we doing?’ And then it transpired that planning were actually running with it because they were doing the local plan . . . [Tlhey were doing it entirely on their own . . . I don’t think anybody else in this authority had got the foggiest idea of what the sustainable declaration was all about, but planning were already writing . . . all these wonderful references to sustainable development, and then it was decided that we really ought to do something about it.

The aesthetization of environmentalism was also widely evident, and was particularly apparent in one local authority, with one officer remarking that the focus of their environmental policy-making was ‘to keep the city as attractive as it is’ and another explaining that they were seeking to bring the city:

up to date in terms of what sort of modern industry and modern business means, but also to maintain it as a very green and attractive city . . . it‘s . . . sort of green and comfortable vibes.

The third explanation of the shallow greenness of policy, namely as a consequence of repackaging of established practices and concerns, was also recognized by some local authority officers. Sometimes this repackaging was seen to have been undertaken by elected politicians:

from a political point of view I think you are dealing with councillors who . . . seek some sort of theoretical left credential, and they can’t get it through [the] economic any more, since the break up of Eastern Europe and people can’t pretend that a planned economy works. . . [Ilt has given an alternative, to kind of, unbridled capitalism.

In other cases, however, the agency was seen to lie with the local authority officers themselves:

we recognized at a fairly early date the value and benefits, in a purely self interested way . . . of some of the ideas being expounded in Rio through the whole of the Earth’s Summit, but particularly around Local Agenda 21. I realized this was an opportunity and an opportunity we were pretty comfortable with in terms of our own personal backgrounds and where we’re coming from.

In the survey only 2 per cent of the local authorities adopted ’very strong’ sustainable development policies, although 30 per cent were adopting policies classified as ’strong’. Social or redistributional issues were amongst the least common to be addressed,

Shades of green in local authority policy-making 375

Table 2 The inteaded form and present level of environmental policy-making in local authorities in the Midlands

Levels of existing policy Very weak Weak Strong Very strong

Form of intended plans:

0 (No policy elements) 5 11 2

1 (Statement of principles) 3 7 4

3 (Formulation, implementation & monitoring of plans) 1 2 1 2 (Gathering of background information) 1 6 6

Note: Based on responses from 49 local authorities

with three-quarters of authorities making no connection between combating poverty and environmental iSsues. There was also little direct promotion of Cnvironmental business opportunities. The generally weak nature of the concept of sustainability adopted also appeared within definitions of sustainability with a large number of authorities content to refer simply to the essentially technocentric Brundtland definition of sustainable development as ’development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs’ (World Commission on Environ- ment and Development 1987, 43).

Authorities clearly not only varied from one another with respect to their progress in developing environmental policy-making, but with regard to the form that this policy-making took. As Table 2 shows, however, it appears that the varying rates of policy formulation and implementation were not clearly related to differences in the ‘greenness’ of the policies, with ‘very strong’, ‘strong’ and ’weak‘ forms of policy being present both in local authorities with the most fully implemented environmental policies and in those with the least.

The influence of local environments on environmental policy-making

So far we have established that there are clear intra-regional variations in the level of environmental policy-making and in the form of these policies, and that the variations in the former cannot be simply accounted for by variations in the latter. We will now address one further issue, namely whether variations in environmental policy-making may reflect the uneven development of the localities over which local authorities endeavour to exert governance.

Studies, such as Duncan and Goodwin (1988), have argued that local government policies and plans may refledt the uneven development of localities and in particular spatial divisions of labour, of civil society and imagined communities. Much research (eg Cockburn 1977; Dunleavy and Husbands 1985; Peck and Tickell 1994) has also recognized that there are a range of other influences on local governance, such as national and supra- national state and economic agencies. This having been said, there are still some clear reasons for suggesting that there may be important, and argu- ably rather neglected, connections between local authority environmental policy-making and the economic and social structure of localities. Differing economic structures of a locality may create differing demands on environmental policy-makers. As Gibbs and Healey (1 997) have highlighted and critiqued, a range of environmentalists (eg Elking et a/ 1991; Friends of the Earth 1990; World Commission on Environment and Development 1987) and academ- ics (eg Roberts 1994, 1995) have argued that a movement from a Fordist to post-Fordist economy may be environmentally beneficial in that it involves such changes as: (i) a shift from energy and material intensive products and production processes towards a more information intensive economy; (ii) a movement from disaggregated production to regional systems; and (iii) a decreasing ability to externalize environmental degradation from the calculation of economic costs. Associated differences in social structures may also create differing pressures for environmental policy-making. It has been argued, for instance, that the transition to a post-Fordist economy involves the emergence of a ’new middle’ or ‘service class’ and that this class exhibits a particularly strong concern for environmental matters (see Cotgrove and Duff 1981; Thrift 1987; Scott 1990; Eckersley 1991; McGrew 1993). Furthermore these

376 Kate Muir, Martin Phiitips and Mick Heaiey

classes are seen to have the necessary ’cultural competencies’ to exert considerable influence over local authority planning systems (Cloke 1990; Cloke and Little 1990; Murdoch and Marsden 1995). Finally, there has been some suggestion that service class environmentalism may be strongest in rural areas both due to these being sites of service class colonization (Cloke and Thrift 1987) and because these areas are frequently taken as a symbolic marker of ’nature’ and ’the environment’ (see Cloke and Goodwin 1993; Cloke et a1 1996; Soper 1995).

The demands on, and pressure for, environmental policy-making may be seen as two lines of interaction between local policy-making and local environments. Thesq lines of interactions may promote quite a range of outcomes. Indeed demands on an8 pressures for environmental policy-making at the intra-regional level may rarely be coincident. For example, while local authorities within areas with a predominantly service sector population may have considerable pressure for environmental action, they may also be areas where the need for environmental action is least. On the other hand, heavy industrial- ized areas with serious environmental degradation may appear to be the areas in which local authorities experience least environmental pressure.

In order to assess whether these two lines of interaction are important influences on environmental policy-making it is necessary to gain some indicators for them. A very crude indicator of the demands on environmental policy-making is to measure the economic structure of a locality (Roberts 1999, and in particular the extent to which manufacturing or service sector activity predomi- nated. It was decided to use the 1991 Census of Employment and classify local authority areas as being ‘service dominated’, ‘service oriented’, ’industry oriented’ or ‘industry d~minated’ .~ A crude indicator of pressures for environmental policy-making was taken to be the social class composition of local authority areas, this being calculated from the Local Base Statistics of the 1991 Census. Local authorities were then classified into ’Working class’ or ‘Service/ New Middle Class’ areas on the basis of the proportion of the population falling in Classes I and II or 111, IV and V respectively? Finally, attention was paid to the urbanness or ruralness of local authority areas using another admittedly crude indicator, namely population density. Areas with a population density of less than one person per hectare were considered to be rural (Craig 7987).

Using these crude indicators of the local influences on, and for, environmental policy-making, a typology of local authority areas was constructed and compared to differences in the form of envtron- mental policy-making and level of policy implementation. As Figure 3 indicates, the associations between the form of environmental policy-making and the classification of local authority areas were rather different from those that might have been expected. First, rural service economies did not figure prominently amongst the two ’stronger’ forms of local authority making. Instead they, together with rural agricultural and industrial oriented economies, contained a large number of ’weak’ and ‘very weak‘ forms of environmental policy-making. This may in part be a reflection of the aesthetization of environmental issues: the officers previously quoted as expressing such views were, for example, both from a local authority servicing a rural service economy. Second, in urban areas it appeared that local authorities with a working class population were quite likely to be pursuing ‘stronger’ policies, although the like- lihood did not seem to be related to the extent to which they were industry dominated or oriented economies. The significance of working class localities amongst the ‘strong’ and ‘very strong’ environmental policy-making authorities might reflect the definition of deep green policies as encompassing issues of social inequalities. It may therefore be significant that this group of ‘strong’ and ’very strong’ environmental policy-making local authorities were generally under Labour control at the time of the survey. As mentioned before, it has suggested that environmentalism may be little more than a rhetoric for gaining access to resources to pursue traditional political concerns.

When one turns to the issue of levels of implementation, connections between the responses to the questionnaire and the typology of local authority areas did seem to be rather more as one might expect. In particular, the majority of ’high adopters’ (that is local authorities at Stage 2 or above on our classification of policy implementation) were located in service oriented or dominated economies. This could be interpreted as the result of either high demands for environmental policies or relatively low demands on environmental policy-making which makes implementation easier.

The associations between the form and extent of environmental policy-making and the character of local authority areas shown in Figures 3 and 4 are, however, far from clear cut. This could be interpreted

Shades of green in local aythority policy-making 377

Demands for environmental policy- making related to social structure

I LOW

Demands on local authorities environmental policy-malung related to economic structure

High 4 b Low

Rural Rural service agricultural or oriented industrial oriented economy Strong = I Weak =4

Weak =4 Very weak = I Very weak =3

economy

Urban middle Urban middle . Urban middle Urban middle :lass‘ industrial class industrial class service class service lominated oriented sector oriented dominated xonomy economy economy economy Ytrong = I Strong =2 Weak =2 Strong =2 Weak = I Weak =I Very weak = I Weak =2 Jery weak = I

Urban working Urban working Urban working Urban worlung :lass industrial class industrial class service class service lominated oriented sector oriented sector xonomy economy economy dominated

economy Ytrong = I Strong =4 Strong =3 Very strong =I Veak =2 Weak =4 Weak =4 Strong = I lery weak =I Very weak =I Very weak =1

Figure 3 Forms of environmental policy-making by character of local authority areas

in, at least, four ways. First, it might suggest that there are no, or just weak, lines of interaction between local authority environmental policy-making and the differential character of local authority areas. We would, however, reject this interpretation, not least because in our interviews clear recognition of such interaction was apparent. So, for example, one local economic development officer argued that many of the problems his local authority faced stemmed from an ‘historical dependence on manufacturing industry’ which was now in decline which created not only large unemployment problems but also the need ’for a lot of clean up work to be done’ while

another remarked on how environmental management in a manufacturing industry ’has to be com- pletely different than in a service industry’ and that their environmental policies were very much conditioned by this:

what we try and do is sell it to industry on a pound note sign saying this will help you save money . . . to do that we need to.. . concentrate on manufacturers because there is a lot more happening in manufacturing processes and there is a lot more we can change and a lot of advice we can provide . . . a lot of the benefits for industry and the companies revolve around what they do in-house, rather than what they purchase. If we talk


+

Demands for environmental policy- making related to social structure High A

Demands local authorities environmental policy-making related to economic structure

High 4 b Low

Rural Rural service agricultura1 or oriented industrial economy oriented economy

High adoption =I High adoption =3

Low adoption =7 Low adoption =2

Urban middle Urban middle Urban middle Urban middle class industrial class industrial class service class service dominated oriented sector oriented dominated economy economy economy economy

High adoption = I High adoption = I Low adoption =3 Low adoption =3

Low adoption =2 Low adoption =3 ~~

Urban working Urban working Urban worlung Urban working class industrial class industrial class service class service dominated oriented sector oriented sector economy economy economy dominated

economy

High adoption = I High adoption =3 High adoption =S High adoption =I

Low adoption =3 Low adoption =6 Low adoption =2 Low adoption =2

Note: High adopters were taken to be local authorities that appeared to be at Stage 2 or beyond on the classification of policy implementation (see Figure 1). Low adopters were those at Stage 0 or Stage 1. n = 49 local authorities

Figure 4 Extent of environmental policy-making by character of local authority areas

to them about purchasing greener products or greener raw materials the chances are we will be increasing their expense rather then reducing their expense and they wouldn’t buy that. What we can talk to them about,

green process or environmentally sound process . . . [T]he pressure isn’t great enough for us to go in and say ‘customers demand a green product and therefore to do this you must do this’. . . . I suppose that when that

change occurs we will then be able to go to the service industry.

Another officer also argued that there was a clear

he argued that this was not necessarily because of inherent differences in their environmental impacts, but simply because ’the public perception, whether rightly or wrongly, [is that]

however, is making greener products through having a policy difference between manufacturing and Service

Shades of green in local authority pqlicy-making 3 79

manufacturing is more environmentally harmful than service industries’.

A second factor which might account for the weak association between forms of environmental policy- making and localities is the use of admittedly crude indicators of demands on and for environmental policy-making. All the variables used in the analysis are contested, and a variety of other measures could have been used. It should also be noted that the measures themselves were surrogate measures for pressures for and on environmental policy-making and the surrogate links are far from uniformly accepted. It has, for example, been suggested that environmentalism may no longer be as class specific as once thought (Witherspoon and Martin 1992) and that the manufacturing/service sector distinction may not signify distinct environmental de‘mands (see Centre for the Exploitation of Science and Technology 1990; Phillips and Mighall 2000).

While more work could clearly be done on grounding and reformulating the measures used in this analysis, our research also suggested a range of further factors to take into account in understanding spatial differences in local authority policy-making. Here we would just highlight two. First, Raemakers (1993) has argued that environmental policy-making in local authorities is often the outcome of the actions of particularly environmentally conscious individuals located in important position of influence and power. This was certainly the view of many of the local authority officers we interviewed, with one putting it very succinctly:

these initiatives tend to hinge on . . . the role of a champion . . . could be a counsellor, could be the chief executive, it could be another officer, but I think in launching or getting any initiative under way the role of the champion is quite critical.

A second important influence on local authority policy-making appeared to be the activity of local environmental pressure groups and their inter- connection with local authority policy-making. We have already suggested that local pressure may be a significant influence on environmental policy- making. However, within the interviews it appeared that the presence, or not of, environmental pressure groups was often vital in articulating environmentalism to local authority officers (see also Ward 1993). In several of the shallow green and least developed environmental policy-making local authorities there was a clear perception of low local demand for sustainable development policies:

Pressure groups? There are the usual few but they are not terribly high profile . . . for heaven sake [this is] not a major conurbation.

On the other hand, in some of the ’deepest green’ and most thoroughly implemented local authorities there was recognition of local environmental pressure, albeit exercized through localized groups:

green issues are not that high on most peoples’ agendas for there to be a mass opinion expressed. I think where people are moved to do something then they tend to do it through some of the established campaigning groups, ie by becoming a friend or a member of friends of the Earth, or . . . a campaigning group formed to oppose . . . [a locall~development.

Conclusion

This paper has sought to address the issue of variations in the form and extent of environmental policy-making. It has suggested that there are clear differences in both the level and form of environmental policy-making with the Midlands as a whole being somewhat behind the national average in its level of environmental policy-making and dominated by ‘dry’ and ’shallow green’ policies. Intra-regional variations in the level and form of environmental policy-making have also been identified

The paper has explored whether these variations in the form and level of environmental policy-making are internally related to each other and whether they are related to the characteristics of particular local authority areas. It has been argued that there is little connection between forms of environmentalism and different levels of implementation, although there appears to be some association between the level of implementation and the extent to which an area is dominated by service sector employment. This association is, however, far from clear cut and could be interpreted as the result of either high pressure for environmental policies or relatively low demands on environmental policy-making that makes implementation easier. The paper has also argued that the form and level of environmental policy-making may be associated with particular types of localities, although this association may be hard to empirically identify on the basis of an ‘extensive’ survey of environmental demands on policy and demands for environmental policy-making. Drawing on some more ‘intensive’ research with six local authorities, it has been suggested that intra-regional variations in local


authority policy making may also stem from the Bristow T (1993) ‘Environmental awareness and societal presence of environmental policy ’champions’ change in the U K in Harper S (ed) The greening of rural located in positions of influence and power, and poky: internationa! perspectives (Belhaven Press,

London)f 42-63 Bruder N (1 995) ‘Environmental auditing for sustainability’,

paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Insti- tute of British Geographers, University of Northumbria at

of environmental pressure groups able articulate environmental agendas to local authority policy makers.

Notes

1 Not all local au’clo t s have a distinct economic development officer ni st -e 30 per cent of the question- naires were reo ? ted to other local authority officers who had respor .ility for economic development in addition to some other responsibility.

2 Although Bruder’s ( 1 995) model appears to be based on quite a linear theory of policy making, it is used here merely as a descriptive tool to enable comparisons about , levels of policy making between local authorities.

3 It might be objected that the classification of environmental philosophies of O’Riordan is much broader than the classification of sustainable development policies, not least because some of those who espouse a ’deep green philosophy’ reject any instrumental approach to nature. Also, as Turner (1 993) has argued, some of ’free market’ technocentrics are also sceptical about the concept of sustainable development. In the present paper we have, however, adopted the argument of Turner (1993, 3) that these two viewpoints can be included under ’respectively the “very strong” . . . and the “very weak sustainability” positions’. Clearly, however, there may be important differences within each of philosophi- cal and policy categories as well as between them.

4 Development plans are taken to include structure plans and local plans, and form the main focus of the environmental classification as they are representations of the future development and growth which local authorities would like to see emerge in their areas.

5 This was based on the percentage of manufacturing and service industry in an area, using standard deviation to establish the level of domination of a particular industrial assemblage.

6 It is recognized that this method of calculation provides a very generalized picture of the level of new middle class population in each area due to the nature of the Census classification; it i s however the most accessible data source.

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Shades of green in local authority policy-making: a regional case study

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