1st Edition

Environmental Transitions Transformation and Ecological Defense in Central and Eastern Europe

By Petr Pavlínek, John Pickles Copyright 2000
    384 Pages
    by Routledge

    384 Pages
    by Routledge

    Environmental Transitions is a detailed and comprehensive account of the environmental changes in Central and Eastern Europe, both under state socialism and during the period of transition to capitalism. The change in politics in the late 1980s and early 1990s allowed an opportunity for a rapid environmental clean up, in an area once considered one of the most environmentally devastated regions on earth. The book illustrates how transformations after 1989 have brought major environmental improvements, as well as new environmental problems. It shows how environmental policy, economic change and popular support for environmental movements, have specific and changing geographies associated with them. Environmental Transitions addresses a large number of topics, including the historical geographical analysis of the environmental change, health impacts of environmental degradation, the role of environmental issues during the anti-communist revolutions, legislative reform and the effects of transition on environmental quality after 1989. Environmental Transitions contains detailed case studies from the region, which illustrate the complexity of environmental issues and their intimate relationship with political and economic realities. It gives theoretically informed ideas for understanding environmental change in the context of the political economy of state socialism and post-communist transformations, drawing on a wide body of literature from West, Central and Eastern Europe.

    I: Introduction; 1: The political economy of environmental transitions; 2: Theorizing social and environmental change; II: Nature, risk and the legacies of state socialism; 3: Environmental quality in Central and Eastern Europe; 4: Nature, society and extensive industrialization; 5: Social and environmental regulation under state socialism; 6: Constructing risk; III: Post-communist transformations and the environment; 7: Post-communist reform and the democratization of nature; 8: Environmental legislation and policy; 9: State, environment and information in post-communist transformations; 10: Environmental effects of post-communist transformations; IV: Nature in post-communist societies; 11: Conclusion

    Biography

    Petr Pavlínek, John Pickles