Environmental politics in southern Europe: Actors, institutions and discourses in a Europeanizing society

Book abstract:

The North-South divide is a term which, while often associated with both England and Italy, has in recent years frequently been applied to the European Union. This book investigates the role the North plays in the environmental policies and politics of the South. Bringing together several papers, it focuses on the structure of European political elites, on features of environment-related collective action, and on the institutional ordering of conflicts at national and supranational levels. It also looks at the social factors which are increasingly influencing environmental politics in Europe.

The book is divided into three parts. Part one examines the europeanisation of environmental politics. The first chapter looks at the role of European publics as social actors influencing environmental policy-making. The next three chapters focus on the sustainable development aspect of environmental politics. This includes an analysis of how the North and South respectively influence the European environmental agenda, a discussion of how sustainable development can be achieved through actions directed towards either the formal or informal sector, and the effects of tourism on the environment in southern Europe.

In part two of the book the focus is specifically on southern Europe with a discussion of how sustainability is achieved from above and below in the region. This is followed by three case studies: one on the efforts to achieve sustainable development in Greek rural society, one on the ecologist movement in the Basque country and one which examines environmental action in Portugal from 1974 to 1994.

The emergence of institutions for collective action is the subject of part three with two chapters which examine the role of social actors in Spanish environmental policy. This is followed by a discussion of the role of state and non-state actors in the implementation of CAP agri-measures with specific reference to Greece. There are also two chapters which look at sustainable development and environmentalist discourse in Italy and one examining the role of NGOs and the State in Portuguese environmental politics. The penultimate chapter of the book is a comparative study of the relationship between tourism and sustainable development in Italy, Spain and Greece. The final chapter of the book seeks to establish how the environment may influence social functions as well as suggesting that the traditional North - South cleavage is undergoing transformation and a Mediterranean syndrome in environmental politics is increasingly apparent.

This book will interest all environmentalists as well as those seeking a discussion of the role of social actors in European policy-making.