Toward Post-Sovereign Environmental Governance? Politics, Scale and the EU Water Framework Directive,
- UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
- Corey Johnson, Assistant Professor (Creator)
- Institution
- The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
- Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/
Abstract: The EU Water Framework Directive (EUWFD) of 2000 requires that all EU member states "protect,
enhance and restore" rivers to attain good surface water quality by 2015. To achieve this mandate, member
states divide themselves into watershed basins (River Basin Districts) for the purposes of monitoring and
remediation, even if those districts cross international borders. This paper examines three key elements of the
rescaling of governance along watershed lines. First, I draw on a cross section of literatures on territoriality of the
state and the changing regulation of nature to argue that analyses of the EU tend to privilege the nation-state as
an ontological starting point. Second, the EUWFD as a rescaling of environmental gCorey Johnsonvernance is
explored. The third element of the paper considers the relationship between the de- and re-territorialisation of
environmental governance on the one hand, and the changing character of sovereignty in the EU on the other. On
this basis, the paper argues that the EUWFD represents a hybrid form of territoriality that is changing the political
geography of the European Union and that the redrawing of political-administrative scales along physical
geographical lines provides evidence of the emergence of a new, non-nested scalar politics of governance in
Europe.
Toward Post-Sovereign Environmental Governance? Politics, Scale and the EU Water Framework Directive,
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Created on 10/15/2013
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Additional Information
- Publication
- Language: English
- Date: 2012
- Keywords
- transboundary river basins, scale, political geography, governance, European Union