NIMBY

This chapter explores how science-based, technical judgments of scientific authority and the socio-economic concerns of political authority interact in the decision-making process of Japan. Where expert authority unanimously found the nuclear reactors to be unsafe, political authority hesitated to challenge the judgment. In cases where the scientific authority was divided on such judgments, political elites stepped into the vacuum to debate the question of the re-start’s overall “necessity.” In cases where scientific authority found no existing safety issue to exist, the restart was temporarily allowed without much political backlash at all. In all three cases, it highlights how variation in scientific consensus in Japan pre-determines the level of political involvement.

La legge 19/2001 della Regione Campania permette di costruire parcheggi interrati pertinenziali che, specie in Penisola Sorrentina, ha consentito frequenti e imponenti scavi per realizzare box-auto sotto gli agrumeti. Con la motivazione della diminuzione del traffico automobilistico, è stata avviata una nuova forma di speculazione cementizia, avversata da un movimento popolare trasversale denominato “Stop Boxlandia”. Negli anni, si sono avuti molteplici effetti deleteri: il numero di auto non è diminuito, gli agrumeti sono stati sradicati e molti vani realizzati sono rimasti invenduti o sono, impropriamente, adibiti ad altri usi. Una sentenza del 2013 del Consiglio di Stato, però, precisa che il piano paesaggistico sorrentino prevale su qualsiasi legge in materia urbanistica, per cui non si possono autorizzare opere in contrasto con esso.

In Italy, movements designed to delay, block, or permanently disable large infrastructure projects get often put under the same category as anti-vaxxers, in that both rebel against impositions from above, and happen to be accused of being intolerably selfish. In this paper I show that that they are very differently vulnerable to the accusation of selfishness. It is contingently true that almost any specific case of opposition to large infrastructure projects is prima facie selfish, but when we take into consideration the arguments used to defend them, selfishness fades away most of the time. When it persist, however, – as in the Nimby case – it turns out to be a morally legitimate kind of selfishness. On the contrary, not every form of the anti-vax position is prima facie selfish. But the forms that are prima facie selfish are unamendably so; and those that are prima facie not selfish do become immorally selfish, or at least generically immoral, when one tries to concretely argue in favour of them.

Le posizioni No Tav e No Vax sono spesso equiparate perché entrambe accusabili di essere intollerabilmente egoistiche. Lo scopo di questo articolo è mostrare che, contrariamente alle apparenze, la loro vulnerabilità all’obiezione dell’egoismo è molto diversa. La posizione No Tav è prima facie sempre imputabile di egoismo, ma quando si va a supportare No Tav con argomentazioni specifiche, o l’accusa viene spazzata via, o (come nel sottocaso Nimby) si tratta di un egoismo moralmente legittimo. D’altra parte solo alcune forme che No Vax assume sono prima facie imputabili di egoismo, ma in questo caso non c’è redenzione morale che giunga dalla loro difesa argomentativa. Quanto alle forme di No Vax che non sono a priori accusabili di egoismo, esse diventano immorali, e in parte rilevante immorali perché egoistiche, proprio in virtù delle argomentazioni che vengono invocate per suffragarle.

Germany’s about-face in energy policy, the »Energiewende«, requires massive extension and new construction of fossil and renewable fuel power plants, as well as grid and transmission line extension. Acceleration of planning and permission processes is a high priority for government and industry. It stands in contrast to growing citizens’ and interest groups’ demands for participation. Siting and environmental concerns often lead to controversies and protest with considerable political risk. The article discusses resistance and confl ict potential in energy project environments and evaluates resources and strategies of environmental groups, whose negotiating position has been strengthened by a May 2011 European Court of Justice decision. / GERMAN Die deutsche Energiewende erfordert einen massiven
Aus- und Neubau von Kraftwerken auf fossiler wie regenerativer Energiebasis sowie den Netzausbau. Die Beschleunigung der Planungs- und Genehmigungsverfahren hat für Regierung und Wirtschaft hohe Priorität. Dem stehen wachsende Beteiligungsansprüche von Bürgern und Interessengruppen gegenüber. Standortwahl und Umweltschutz führen oft zu Kontroversen und Protesten mit beträchtlichem politischem Risiko. Der Beitrag erörtert Widerstands- und Konfliktpotenzial im Umfeld von Energieprojekten und bewertet die Ressourcen und Strategien der Umweltverbände, deren Verhandlungsposition durch ein Urteil des Europäischen Gerichtshofs im Mai 2011 gestärkt wurde.

Justiça Ambiental: Atualidade e Incompletudes do Pensamento de Joan Martínez Alier, é um durante a terceira investigação de Pós-Doutorado do autor (PNPD-CAPES, 2014-2015). O título, foi disponibilizado na Internet em Julho de 2018 em Formato PDF pela Editora Kotev (Kotev ©). Enquanto tal, esta edição de Justiça Ambiental: Atualidade e Incompletudes do Pensamento de Joan Martínez Alier atende às regras vigentes quanto à norma culta da língua portuguesa e também agrega cautelas de estilo, repaginação normativa e ajustes de programação inerentes ao formato PDF. Anote-se que editorialmente, o texto de Justiça Ambiental: Atualidade e Incompletudes do Pensamento de Joan Martínez Alier é um material gratuito, sendo vedada qualquer modalidade de reprodução comercial e também, de divulgação sem aprovação prévia da Editora Kotev (Kotev©). A citação de Justiça Ambiental: Atualidade e Incompletudes do Pensamento de Joan Martínez Alier deve obrigatoriamente incorporar referências bibliográficas em conformidade com o padrão modelar que segue: WALDMAN, Maurício. Justiça Ambiental: Atualidade e Incompletudes do Pensamento de Joan Martínez Alier. Série Meio Ambiente, Nº. 15. São Paulo (SP): Editora Kotev. 2018.

RESUMO: A questão ambiental tem se configurado como uma temática essencial da Modernidade. Reflexo de diversas dificuldades de reprodução do sistema, não há mais nenhum campo do conhecimento alheio ao debate relacionado ao meio ambiente. Neste sentido, a contribuição de Joan Martínez Alier é essencial. Em primeiro lugar por posicionar o debate do meio ambiente no campo da economia. Em segundo, pelo recorte social que imprime às lutas pela conservação da natureza. Com efeito, o Ecologismo dos Pobres revela-se como a grande contribuição deste autor para entender e repensar de diversos modos o que de fato consiste no cerne da questão ambiental. Ao mesmo tempo, fruto de determinado período histórico, a obra de Joan Martínez Alier não deixa de ser gravada por incompletudes. Méritos e reparos, o texto que segue busca alinhavar as ideias centrais do autor e as lacunas conceituais de uma obra exemplar.

PALAVRAS CHAVE: economia ecológica, ecologismo dos pobres, conflitos ambientais, linguagens de valoração, movimento ambientalista, gestão ambiental.

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: CONTEMPORANEITY AND INCOMPLETENESS OF JOAN MARTÍNEZ ALIER THOUGHT

ABSTRACT: The environmental issue has emerged as an essential theme of Modernity. Reflection of diverse difficulties of the system reproduction, there is no more scientific field oblivious to the knowledge related to the environment debate. In this sense, the contribution of Joan Martínez Alier is essential. In the first place, Alier analyzes the environment question on the economy field. Second, he demonstrates how the global society, mainly the poor, struggling for nature conservation. Indeed, the Environmental Justice reveals itself as a major contribution of this author to understand and rethink the environmental issues whit paradigms what in fact, are the center of environmental issues. At the same time, as a result of its historical context, the work of Joan Martínez Alier incorporates several incompleteness. Debating merits and repairs, the paper that follows seeks to outline the central ideas of the author and conceptual gaps of an exemplary work.

KEYWORDS: ecological economics, environmentalism of the poor, environmental conflicts, languages of valuation, environmentalism, environmental management.

Gis of my backyard. Critical history of NIMBY with GIS spatial analysis.

NIMBY is a word which is going to find a place in dictionaries of all languages, and in those of academic geography as well. This article reviews the term NIMBY, when and where it came out and how it entered into geographical debate. A term often abused but which does not cease to attract attention (see the business sector). A suspected case of NIMBY has been described through participant observation and through GIS spatial analysis. Although from both kinds of investigations some signs of NIMBY spatial effects emerged, evidence is weak and induces to look for more complex explanations.

NIMBY è una parola ormai destinata a restare nei dizionari di tutte le lingue, anche in quelli della geografia accademica. L’articolo prende in esame il termine NIMBY, quando e dove nasce, e come entra nel dibattito geografico e delle scienze del territorio. Un termine spesso abusato ma che non cessa di destare interesse (anche da parte del business). L’analisi di un ipotetico caso  NIMBY viene affrontata in chiave metodologica confrontando l’osservazione partecipante e  l’analisi spaziale GIS. Sia attraverso la prima, sia attraverso la seconda investigazione, sebbene vi siano segni di incidenza della variabile spaziale che fanno pensare ad un caso NIMBY, emergono evidenze molto blande che inducono a cercare spiegazioni più complesse.

A partir del estudio de cuatro conflictos en relación al uso y a la gestión del territorio en Cataluña, este artículo analiza la capacidad de impacto de las movilizaciones ciudadanas en el nivel simbólico de la política, es decir, en la capacidad de crear nuevos marcos culturales que orienten las políticas territoriales (de ordenación, ambientales, de infraestructuras, de aguas, etc.). Se apunta como las diferentes “movilizaciones en defensa el territorio” están articulando un marco cultural sostenibilista, heterogéneo y a veces contradictorio, frente al marco cultural productivista-especulativo hegemónico.

NIMBY es el acrónimo de not in my backyard. Fue definido como la resistencia que provoca entre la población ciertas instalaciones asociadas a diferentes factores de riesgo

¿Qué sucede cuando una institución pública se enfrenta a cierta reacción ciudadana que no desea que una instalación, equipamiento o servicio, generadores de riqueza, se instale en su territorio a pesar de los efectos beneficiosos que pueda conllevar?

Resíduos Sólidos & Justiça Ambiental é um texto digital motivacional voltado para cursos de iniciação e de capacitação na área dos resíduos sólidos. Este material foi disponibilizado na Home Page Compostcheira em 6 de Agosto de 2018 no link: < http://compostcheira.eco.br/residuos-solidos-e-justica-ambiental/ >. A presente edição de Resíduos Sólidos & Justiça Ambiental, foi masterizada pela Editora Kotev para fins de acesso livre na Internet (2019, Kotev ©), atendendo às regras vigentes quanto à norma culta da língua portuguesa, cautelas de estilo e normatizações editoriais inerentes ao formato PDF. Os dados de Resíduos Sólidos & Justiça Ambiental podem ser reproduzidos para finalidades educativas, de pesquisa e comunicacionais desde que mencionadas a fonte e a autoria. É vedada a reprodução comercial deste material e igualmente, de divulgação sem aprovação prévia da Editora Kotev. A citação de Resíduos Sólidos & Justiça Ambiental deve incorporar referências bibliográficas em conformidade com o padrão modelar que segue: WALDMAN, Maurício. Resíduos Sólidos & Justiça Ambiental. Artigo digital disponibilizado na Home-Page de Compostcheira aos 06-08-2018. Série Resíduos Sólidos Nº. 16. São Paulo (SP): Editora Kotev. 2019.

Since the 1950s, nuclear reactors have generated not only electrical power but radioactive waste as well. High level nuclear waste in the form of spent fuel rods and boiling water is currently stored on reactor sites, where the risk is high that sabotage or malfunction could contaminate the global biosphere. Along with the editors of Scientific American, the editors of Theology and Science urge Washington to make long term plans for siting a permanent repository for nuclear waste that will protect both the present generation and our descendants.

The Danish island Samsø is world-famous as Denmark's Renewable Energy Island. 21 wind turbines supply the island's electricity. Today, public hostility toward a projected nearshore wind farm off the island's preserved northern coast is growing. This paper takes its main theoretical cue from Gomart and Hajer's (2003) call to open up political questions to empirical inquiry and to pay attention to the material settings in which political questions unfold. The paper seeks to make sense of the islanders' unexpected opposition to a new wind farm, and it does so through a critique of the unexperimental and depoliticizing attitude – found in the empirical case as well as in some academic scholarship – of the NIMBY (Not In My BackYard) logic. Replacing the NIMBY logic of closing down deliberation with an empirical and 'cosmopolitical' (Stengers, 2005) approach to open up the space of politics to close investigation, the paper focuses on the empirical settings which give the controversy its specifi c shape and asks how the projected wind farm is interrogated, negotiated and recast as it travels through the socio-material politics of the wind controversy.

Nonostante i conflitti ambientali vengano abitualmente descritti come scontro fra interessi (interesse nazionale/NIMBY), o basati sulla conoscenza scientifica, il paper tenta di mostrare come essi rappresentino piuttosto dispute tra framework normativi spesso incommensurabili. Dietro ad ogni problema presentato come meramente tecnico si nasconde sempre un quadro valoriale ben preciso, probabilmente in contrasto con altri quadri valoriali presenti nella società. I conflitti ambientali rappresenterebbero una delle più rilevanti policy issue attualmente interessate da dispute di carattere normativo, sulla direzione che debba prendere lo sviluppo economico. Prendendo come caso di studio il decision-making relativo alla linea Torino-Lione, il paper sostiene, attraverso la policy analysis diacronica e comparativa col caso francese e la frame analysis testuale dei claim prodotti dagli attori, che in esso si fronteggerebbero due visioni normative principali: quella ufficiale, tecnica e fondata sulla crescita economica, e quella oppositiva, ecologica e fondata su un’economia a misura d’uomo. Il lavoro si propone di far luce sulla vera natura dei conflitti ambientali, suggerendo che le arene negoziali sarebbero inadeguate (pur a fronte di forti interessi coinvolti), e che anche la discussione evidencebased non sarebbe sufficiente se usata trattando come mero problema tecnico ciò che in realtà è una scelta normativa. Facendo riferimento critico alla letteratura, le arene decisionali utilizzate nel caso di studio sono quindi classificate tentando di mostrare limiti e potenzialità rispetto alla risoluzione di ciò che è stato descritto come conflitto di valori.

"The field of development is subject to shifts in paradigms, and it is important to examine how some new approaches are
present in this partial change. The relationship between different forms of local participation and local knowledge is
interesting for a new approach to the sustainable development. In this paper the attention is pointed on the different
forms taken by local participation and knowledge in the practice of development, with regard to the politics of waste
management. Two cases in the Campania region are studied: Ariano Irpino, in the province of Avellino, and Acerra, in
the province of Naples. The general goal is to point in evidence how some forms of informal participation can produce
and stimulate different and deeper knowledge about local environmental issues."

"Il discorso politico e giornalistico e, in parte, la ricerca sociale tendono ad interpretare i conflitti ambientali locali con il ricorso all’acronimo-concetto ‘nimby’. In questo modo, viene attribuito un carattere egoistico, particolaristico ed irrazionale alle forme di opposizione sociale che si manifestano verso specifiche politiche o scelte localizzative determinate in una località, prescindendo dalle motivazioni che esse esprimono. L’utilizzo di questo concetto, inoltre, generalizza ed omogeneizza la definizione pubblica dei diversi conflitti locali, spesso attivi su questioni ambientali, comprimendone l’eterogeneità delle ragioni e dei caratteri manifestati.
Il presente contributo ha l’obiettivo di guardare criticamente al concetto in esame, confrontandosi con una parte della letteratura disponibile. Specificamente, nella prima sezione del testo si affronta l’incertezza del concetto, proponendone una definizione che prende in esame le sue diverse possibili componenti ed articolazioni. Nella seconda parte si mostra la scarsa appropriatezza di questo concetto per la comprensione dei conflitti sociali di natura ambientale, con riferimento ad una serie di valutazioni di carattere specifico e generale. Si pone in risalto, infine, una diversa direttrice analitica attraverso cui guardare ai conflitti ambientali locali, che ne riconosce il carattere situato ma non, per questo, limitato, utilizzando la categoria di ‘particolarismo militante’."

This report summarises the findings of research into the use of financial payments on planning for new housing. The study was commissioned to help inform the government’s approach to piloting Development Benefits (DB). The research focuses particularly on whether direct financial payments to individuals who are likely to oppose house building might reduce local opposition to housing development.

The research employed a case study approach and made use of qualitative methods. Structured interviews were undertaken with 109 households who would be likely to oppose development across six local authority areas in England. Although this work does not constitute a representative survey of the population, the respondents provide a substantive evidence base of the views of households in opposition to new housebuilding across a range of local authorities. The numbers of interviews achieved have provided significant depth and spread of views of different types of households across a range of different contexts. Complementary interviews were undertaken with 3-5 ‘key professionals’ (local authority officers, elected members, developers and other stakeholders) in each of the six case study areas (n=22) to help contextualize the household interviews and provide evidence on the likely impact on the planning system. In total the research involved 131 in-depth interviews conducted over a six week period between October and November 2014.

Phenomena such as the opposition of the population to facilities and infrastructure considered at risk are recorded with increasing frequency; whole areas of the country are declared at increased risk of environmental crisis; there are increasing cases of contamination of soil and are being launched measures to address the facilities at risk of a major accident. It is increasingly apparent that the technological risk begins to pose a set of problems that have significant relevance to the regional scale, both in terms of new interpretation and in terms of effective management. This book attempts to give, in this perspective, a contribution to the understanding of issues related to technological risk also reflecting on the environmental aspects of the problem.

Analyse Die Proteste in Shifang und Qidong lassen sich in einen größeren Trend zunehmender Umweltproteste einordnen, der spätestens mit den „Spaziergängen“ in Xiamen im Jahr 2007 bekannt geworden ist. Beide Fälle sind typisch für diese neue Form des Bürgeraktivismus, der die chinesische Regierung vor erhebliche Herausforderungen stellt. Bürgerliche Aktivisten in China bedienen sich unkonventioneller Formen des Protests und greifen auch zur Gewalt. Dahinter steht nicht kleinbürgerlicher Egoismus, sondern eine tiefe Krise des Vertrauens zwischen Bürger und Staat.

The aim of this article is to assess the relationship between the so called NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) syndrome and the risk it poses to the community in terms of its impacts and social cost. These issues are discussed with regard to the differing views of a development proposer and public citizen when a new plan for development is proposed. These roles may become conflictual, as the relationship often incurs significant impacts, risks and social cost. The interposing role of social representation is between administration and citizens and amount to symbolize citizens mental and ideological representation of project to be realized. The way in which the development is symbolically represented in social media, is also considered. Social media becomes a catalyst in the conflictual process, as it seeks to represent the objectives of the administration of the project as well as the emotions and experiences of private citizens. This new form of communication becomes a platform for the contrasting views, but also one that can become used as an opportunity for dialogue and prevention of risks and social costs.

A recent application for an eight-room boarding house in the leafy north Sydney suburb of Cromer attracted over 800 objections from residents and the school community.

Proponents of the project, including governments, may be tempted to dismiss these residents as NIMBYs – members of the not-in-my-backyard brigade.

Our research, however, found that ignoring residents' concerns and failing to allay their fears helps nobody – least of all those in dire need of affordable housing options.