Chapter Unraveling Stakeholders’ Discourses Regarding Sustainable Development and Biodiversity Conservation in Greece

Pharmacolog

Investigating the barriers to adopting a 'human-in-nature' view in Greek biodiversity conservation

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The rise and fall of biodiversity offsetting in the Lodge Hill large-scale housing development, South East England

In this paper, we aim to shed light on the geographies that led both to the selection of Lodge Hill for the construction of a large-scale housing development and to the subsequent attempt to use biodiversity offsetting to compensate for its environmental impacts. We draw on extensive fieldwork from 2012 to 2016, and diverge from previous studies on offsetting by focusing less on issues related to metrics and governance and shifting our analytic attention to the economic and urban geographies surrounding the Lodge Hill case. We argue that this approach can offer not only an empirically grounded account of why offsetting is being selected to address the impacts of specific urban development projects, but also an in-depth understanding of the factors that determine offsetting’s actual implementation on the ground. Viewing the Lodge Hill case through the frame of urbanization allows us to better grasp the how, why and when particular alliances of actors contest and/or support the implementation of biodiversity offsetting. Our analytical lens also helps exposing the fragility of neoliberal natures and the roles inter-capitalist competition and species biology and ecology can play on the success or failure of neoliberal policies

Can green infrastructure help to conserve biodiversity?

The gradually decreasing connectivity of habitats threatens biodiversity and ecological processes valuable to humans. Green infrastructure is promoted by the European Commission as a key instrument for the conservation of ecosystems in the EU biodiversity strategy to 2020. Green infrastructure has been defined as a network of natural and semi-natural areas, designed and managed to deliver a wide range of ecosystem services. We surveyed Finnish experts' perceptions on the development of green infrastructure within the existing policy framework. Our results show that improving the implementation of existing conservation policy instruments needs to be an integral part of developing green infrastructure. Despite the potential of green infrastructure to benefit biodiversity, existing conceptual ambiguity of green infrastructure with rather complex role of ecosystem services - and the possible interpretation of this in practice - raises concerns regarding its ability to contribute to biodiversity conservation.Peer reviewe

Political ecology

With 78 specially commissioned entries written by a diverse range of contributors, this essential reference book covers the breadth and depth of human geography to provide a lively and accessible state of the art of the discipline for students, instructors and researcher

Biodiversity offsetting in England: governance rescaling, socio-spatial injustices, and the neoliberalization of nature

In this paper, I use primary empirical data obtained through interviews in selected case studies around England to shed light on the neoliberal character of biodiversity offsetting, its interrelationship with governance rescaling processes, and the way the latter influences the distribution of the costs and benefits of biodiversity offsetting policies. My results show that biodiversity offsetting in England has been a reactionary neoliberal policy whose implementation has so far been characterized by important deficits from an environmental and socio-spatial justice perspective

The uneven geographies of China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Authoritarian neoliberal urbanism, social inequality and grassroots resistance in London, Athens and Colombo

In this presentation, I explore the links between infrastructure-led development, urban transformation and social inequality in China’s Belt and Road Initiative. I theorise the BRI as an exemplar of infrastructure-led development that primarily acts as a spatial fix to the overaccumulation problems of Chinese capitalism while also benefiting corporate elites beyond China. By drawing on the experiences of London, Piraeus, and Colombo where BRI-related projects are being currently materialised, I aim at shedding light to the way the initiative may transform the geographies of everyday lives, remaking places, ecosystems and livelihoods. I argue that the BRI is an emblematic manifestation of the emergence of a tight interrelationship between infrastructure-led development and authoritarian neoliberal urbanism that despite its variegated expressions across different contexts is deepening social, spatial and environmental inequality in cities across the Global South and North. By shedding light on social contestation against BRI projects in London, Piraeus and Sri Lanka, I conclude that grassroots resistance linking the right to the city to the right to nature is the only way to challenge uneven socio-spatial change and open pathways to radically different urban futures.Prince of Wales Global Sustainability Fellowship in Infrastructure and Sustainable Communities, supported by The Equal Opportunities Foundation. Code ENAG/015; award number G105730