Today, the environment seems omnipresent in European policy within and beyond the European Union. The idea of a shared European environment, however, has come a long way and is still being contested. Greening Europe focuses on the many ways people have interacted with nature and made it an issue of European concern. The authors ask how notions of Europe mattered in these activities and they expose the many entanglements of activists across the subcontinent who set out to connect and network, and to exchange knowledge, worldviews, and strategies that exceeded their national horizons. Moving beyond human agency, the handbook also highlights the eminent role nature played in both "greening" Europe and making Europe a shared environment.

Green European addresses the quest for a better understanding of European type(s) of environmentalism. This monograph focuses on public attitudes and behaviours and the culturally rooted as well as country specific differences. The book addresses the wider issue that many European countries are rendered ‘green’ or as having an advanced environmental awareness, but the question - ‘how green are Green Europeans really’, is yet to be answered. The book covers a variety of unique data-driven comparative studies and is divided into three parts: the first addresses perceptions of environmental and technological threats and risks, the second part deals with environmental activism in Europe, the third discusses environmental attitudes, environmental concerns and their imminent link to personal pro-environmental behaviour. The empirical comparative nature of the contributions is enabled by data from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP).

The experiences of these countries in wrestling with issues of sustainability may serve also as examples for both developed and developing countries worldwide."--Jacket.

This second and fully revised edition brings together some of the most influential work on the theory and practice of contemporary EU environmental policy. Comprising five comprehensive parts, it includes in-depth case studies of contemporary policy issues such as climate change, genetically modified organisms and trans-Atlantic relations, as well as an assessment of how well the EU is responding to new challenges such as enlargement, environmental policy integration and sustainability. The book's aim is to look forward and ask whether the EU is prepared or even able to respond to the 'new' governance challenges posed by the perceived need to use 'new' policy instruments and processes to 'mainstream' environmental thinking in all EU policy sectors.

The continuing development of the European Union (EU) is transforming policy and politics in its member countries, and possibly in an even larger number of potential members. This book offers a detailed investigation of the Europeanization of national environmental policy in ten western European countries since 1970. By blending state-of-the-art theories with fresh empirical material on the many manifestations of Europeanization, it sheds new light on the dynamics that are decisively reshaping national environmental policy. It also offers an original assessment of how far Europeanization has produced greater policy convergence in western Europe. Throughout, the approach taken is genuinely comparative, drawing on the insights provided by leading country specialists.

In this new edition, the progress made in the last decade to solve the environmental problems described in the first edition is assessed. The attempts to bring environmental legislation into line with West European norms is also described. Environmental Problems of East-Central Europe looks at air and water pollution, modern farming, water supplies, waste management and landscape protection. These topics are placed within economic, social and political profiles, as spending on a clean environment must be reconciled with welfare spending and the safeguarding of jobs, European Union assistance, civil society and the work of environmental NGOs are also discussed. All of these matters are considered within the context of the wider geographical area and then by each individual country, including the previously communist states lying to the west of the Soviet Union (now with the former federal states of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia broken up into seven different entities) and a review of the former Soviet Union with particular reference to the Baltic States. Environmental Problems in East-Central Europe provides a wealth of up-to-date reference material, with a vast amount of supporting literature on environmental conditions and the functioning of civil society and a map of each country. The environment is being taken seriously by them all, such is the influence of the Rio sustainability agenda in general and the EU environmental 'acquis' in particular. The book reveals that Eastern Europe is not a blighted area, but in some respects has a higher biodiversity than Western Europe. Although there is enormous waste and inefficiency in energy use, people actually consume relatively little and the East therefore has some lessons for the West in terms of managing on the bases of 'fair share' of the earth's resources.

Europe remains divided between east and west, with differences caused and worsened by uneven economic and political development. Amid these divisions, the environment has become a key battleground. The condition and sustainability of environmental resources are interlinked with systems of governance and power, from local to EU levels. Key challenges in the eastern European region today include increasingly authoritarian forms of government that threaten the operations and very existence of civil society groups; the importation of locally-contested conservation and environmental programmes that were designed elsewhere; and a resurgence in cultural nationalism that prescribes and normalises exclusionary nation-building myths. This volume draws together essays by early-career academic researchers from across eastern Europe. Engaging with the critical tools of political ecology, its contributors provide a hitherto overlooked perspective on the current fate and reception of ‘environmentalism’ in the region. It asks how emergent forms of environmentalism have been received, how these movements and perspectives have redefined landscapes, and what the subtler effects of new regulatory regimes on communities and environment-dependent livelihoods have been. Arranged in three sections, with case studies from Czechia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Serbia, this collection develops anthropological views on the processes and consequences of the politicisation of the environment. It is valuable reading for human geographers, social and cultural historians, political ecologists, social movement and government scholars, political scientists, and specialists on Europe and European Union politics.