Institutional Frameworks and Environmental ConflictAuthor(s): Edmund Penning-RowsellSource: Area, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Jun., 1993), pp. 167-168Published by: The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20003261 .

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Annual Conference 167

from excessive groundwater abstraction and flood problems respectively, and the wetland hydrologists management response was presented. Chris Hancock (Somerset Trust for Nature Conservation) described efforts to reconstruct a peat dome on a part worked 2.2 hectare block in the Somerset Levels. The results showed that mire regeneration was unsuccessful for a lowland site. Pond loss in Cheshire was presented by John Boothby (Liverpool), and this survey indicated that since the 1970s, more than half of the 60,000 ponds that existed have disappeared.

We would like to thank the British Hydrological Society for supporting the symposium by sending Kevin Gilman (Institute of Hydrology) to chair a session.

Jocelyne Hughes University of Reading

Louise Heathwaite University of Sheffield

Institutional frameworks and environmental conflict At this inaugural meeting of the Environmental Research Group the aims were to explore the relationships between institutions and environmental conflict. Institutions were defined widely to encompass both the political, economic and social processes which act to create environmental change and the administrative organisational and management tools which have roles to play in environmental conflict resolution.

David Harvey (Oxford), opened the seminar with a penetrating analysis of the way that a narrow Cartesian view of science had dominated the analysis of environmental problems. The values underlying such a view of nature-with its emphasis on the separation of mind and body-led to an emotionless approach to the environment, and a stress on 'things' rather than relationships. Yet it is the relationships in both physical systems and their inter action with human systems that are important in environmental sustainability, and we need to move away from a static Cartesian analysis towards a more dynamic and process oriented exploration.

Tim O'Riordan (UEA) stressed that environmental conflicts can be orchestrated, mishandled, predicted and programmed to be avoided, or used as a learning and realigning experience. Geographers could play a valuable role in examining the issues raised, but as yet few do, Michael Redclift (Wye) suggested that as social scientists we have responded to the theoretical challenge of the ecological crisis in a piecemeal, incoherent fashion. He saw ecological crisis as the outcome of an ambivalent relationship between technology, nature and social forces. It is the job of the social sciences to address this relationship, and to do so by distancing themselves from the symptoms of post-industrial decline.

Robin Grove-White (Lancaster) suggested that environmental conflicts in a country like the UK frequently embody deep social and cultural tensions-for example about the dominant definitions, methodologies and epistemologies used by key institutions. However, the public forms taken by such conflicts have tended to disguise this reality. The roles of environmental

NGOs is changing and there is a real danger that they will be partially swallowed by official policy-making agencies in Britain. Judith Rees, (Hull), analysed the outcome of environmental policy as critically determined by the institutional framework (agency type, legal base, jurisdic tion, professional competence, etc) and the particular regulatory instruments chosen to im plement policy. Frameworks and instruments are closely interrelated since both the range of feasible instruments and the ways they are implemented are dependent upon the regulatory framework, while the' appropriate' framework will vary with the chosen regulatory instrument.

To analyse policy outcomes fully it is necessary to go beyond the ' first order' impact on the specific environmental problem which the policy seeks to address; also vital are 'third party' effects, including other elements within the environmental system as well as particular economic, social and political interests.

Patsy Healey (Newcastle) argued for strategic spatial and environmental planning to resolve environmental conflicts and to improve the efficiency of development through coordinated

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168 Annual Conference

assessment of its environmental impacts for ' sustainability ' objectives. But the planning system needs to rethink its goals, methods and processes to address the new agendas and relationships. Susan Owens (Cambridge) on the other hand, suggested that effective environmental policy requires integration in a number of different senses. Most crucially, an environmental dimension

must be integrated into policy making in all areas; this is widely advocated but nowhere achieved. Andrew Blowers (Open University) argued that environmental inequality is an outcome of

social inequality. The powerful are able to resist unwanted land uses which tend to become more and more concentrated in what can be termed peripheral communities. Such communities are characterised by remoteness, marginality, powerlessness and environmental degradation. John Thornes (King's College, London) stressed that it is generally assumed that environmental conflicts are played out against a static physical background. Historical and contemporary examples illustrate that this is rarely the case and the lack of understanding of the physical system, coupled with the related uncertainty, adds a further dimension to theoretical perspectives of this problem.

In summarising a stimulating day, Edmund Penning-Rowsell (Middlesex) stressed the need to analyse power relations within policy making, and the way that this power is exercised.

Conflict differed in different circumstances, but fundamentally concerned a clash of values or power, or both. Only with a correct understanding of the dynamics of the ways that power relations operate will we understand the way that policy evolves, and be able-at the margin-to influence that evolution.

Edmund Penning-Rowsell Middlesex University

Geographical perspectives on resource allocation This four-module session was convened by the Quantitative Methods Study Group to draw attention to a number of very practical issues concerned with how central government allocates resources to local government, with particular reference to Standard Spending Assessment (SSA). SSA is the method used by the British government to assess the needs of local govern

ment and hence to determine the levels of grant paid to the different local authorities. The study of spatial variations in spending needs is an excellent example of a very important public issue which is clearly geographical, and where appropriate analytical methods can contribute a great deal to the policy debate.

M Senior, T G Powell, R D Knowles, E K Grime (Salford) and T Fairclough (Wigan Metropolitan Borough) described the basis of the SSA system and examined how it worked out

in assessing the needs for education, personal social services and other services provided by district councils. Their analysis suggested there were inconsistencies in how the methodology was applied, that some of the indices used as measures of need were of questionable relevance, and that there were clear and consistent regional trends in the parts of England and Wales that gained and lost. Brian Francis (Lancaster) concentrating on SSA for children's social services, showed how several of the need indicators used by the Department of the Environment did not

meet the DoE's own stated criteria. He also argued that conditions in London were so different from those in the rest of the country that it was misleading to apply the same model to London and the shire counties. Harvey Goldstein (Institute of Education, London) pointed out the sensitivity of SSA calculations to the specific statistical model used, showing in particular that the failure of DoE to consider transformations of the variables used in regressions resulted in unnecessarily inaccurate models being used, with important effects on resource allocation.

Martin Charlton, Mike Coombes, Jacqui Nicol (CURDS, Newcastle) and Stan Openshaw (Leeds) discussed SSA for fire services, concentrating on how the effect of population distri bution on service needs could be more accurately assessed. Robin Flowerdew (Lancaster) reviewed the calculation of SSA for district-level services, criticising the decisions to exclude economic indicators and to include sparsity of population despite the evidence of the DoE's own analyses. Bob Chilton (Audit Commission) suggested that a system that was easy to understand

might be more politically acceptable than one that was technically more correct, and discussed

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