The environments of environmental impact assessment: Transforming neoliberal environmental governance from within

Abstract

The transformation of neoliberal environmental governance is beset by conceptual and empirical complexity. Utilising a governmentality conceptual and analytical framework, this piece seeks to illustrate how, on their own terms, environmental governance interventions create the potential for change via a modality I have labelled the temporalised environment. Through a discourse analysis of select guidance and regulatory documents, a programmer’s view of environmental impact assessment in England and Wales is generated. As both an object and a technology of governmental power, I show how the environment can reinforce extant neoliberal logics (as ‘artefact’) or be productive of a new re-socialised, globalising form of biopower (as ‘aspiration’). I explore the risks posed to the transformative potential of the latter ‘aspirational’ environment in terms of difficulties distinguishing between its neoliberal and non-neoliberal effects, its capture by neoliberal institutions, and the scalability of its transformation from local to global. I argue that these can only be adequately mitigated if a continued critical disposition is adopted towards the defining features, purpose and functionality of an environment. I propose a series of straightforward questions to aid this process. Overall, this distinction between artefactual and aspirational environments is intended to be heuristic, orienting those strategising against neoliberal environmental governance towards the instabilities internal to the logic of specific interventions.

Keywords

Governmentality environmental impact assessment neoliberalism environmental governance biopower

The ‘how’ of transforming environmental governance: introducing the temporalised environment

Arguably, it is the task of environmental governance to find some way of forging, maintaining and managing relationships between a complex variety of actors, institutions and organisations tasked with achieving a sustainable balance between socio-economic activity and environmental quality (Bridge and Perreault, 2009; Brondizio et al., 2009). Simultaneously, however, these relationships cannot be restrained or circumscribed by currently existing administrative and judicial boundaries (Lemos and Agrawal, 2006). It is argued that there is potential in ‘hybrid’ (Lemos and Agrawal, 2006) forms of governance which suffuse these operating categories, engendering new relationships better suited to the management of natural resources, conservation, climate change mitigation and socio-ecological adaptation. In this vein, radical revisions of the social contract, hierarchy, territory and scale have been posited to reconstruct environmental governance to better meet this challenge (Adger et al., 2003; Benson and Jordan, 2016; Bulkeley, 2005; Folke et al., 2011).

These propositions, however, all must contend with the hegemonic political economic framework of neoliberalism. In principle, neoliberalism and sustainability are not mutually exclusive goals and can, theoretically, be furthered in tandem (see Castree, 2008b). In practice, however, results are mixed. Neoliberal interventions can result in ostensibly positive environmental outcomes (Castree, 2008a), and indeed through processes of globalisation radical revisions of previously fixed political categories have already taken place. However, even in a best-case scenario, these frameworks are argued to depend upon and reinforce neoliberal principles of techno-managerial steering, private responsibility, individual autonomy, the primacy of market mechanisms and self-governing networks (Collier, 2017; Swyngedouw, 2005). In turn, socio-economic inequalities are further reinforced and normalised, raising concerns regarding the intersecting issues of access to environmental quality and justice in environmental matters (McCarthy, 2012).

Intensive examinations of single case studies within a variety of contexts from scholars in political ecology and the environmental humanities suggest that these inequalities have manifestly unjust and exploitative outcomes in actually existing forms of environmental governance (Ciplet and Roberts, 2017; Collard et al., 2018; Dunlap and Sullivan, 2020; Fletcher, 2019; Harris, 2017). If circumstances are to be positively changed, it therefore stands to reason that it is necessary to find some form of anti- or post-neoliberal environmental governance (McCarthy, 2012). Formulating and advancing this is, however, a task beset by conceptual complexity. Debates within critical geography highlight considerable disagreement regarding neoliberalism’s ambiguity, variability and inevitability (Blühdorn, 2014; Castree, 2006; Ferguson, 2010; Larner, 2003; Peck, 2013; Weller and O’Neill, 2014), both as an analytical/descriptive category and an observable process, cause or outcome (Castree, 2008a). In environmental governance terms, this manifests itself in difficulties distinguishing between the neoliberal and non/anti/post-neoliberal; trans-contextualising transformation/resistance; and identifying a path out of neoliberalism (McCarthy, 2012). For those seeking to transform neoliberal environmental governance, then, several key questions are apparent:

What distinguishes a non/anti/post-neoliberal form of environmental governance?

Are transformations in neoliberalism’s contextual variegations scalable?

How, when, and in what forms can non/anti/post-neoliberal environmental governance emerge?

My contribution in this article is to identify how environmental governance creates, on its own terms, the possibility of transformation (Ferguson, 2010). Through my analysis of environmental impact assessment (EIA) in England and Wales, I identify a particular modality – the temporalised environment – which is generative of an instability via contradictory expectations of the human subject. Through this instability, I argue, one can start to parse the intricacies of the above questions and provide tentative answers.

While more detail will be provided in later sections, the thinking behind the key elements of this modality – temporality and environment – is introduced here. With regards to the former, I interpret debates around transformations in environmental governance as fundamentally dependent on temporality. On the one hand, neoliberal environmental governance is contingent on a particular historical moment. It is built upon a bricolage of existing institutions, political and economic norms and social relationships, each with their own formative histories. Its emergence is intimately dependent upon a precise spatio-temporal point at which these phenomena assemble and interact (Lockwood and Davidson, 2010). Readings of this ‘material’ form of environmental governance are, in some way, historically focused (Fletcher, 2019). Conversely, those authors advocating for new, transformative forms of environmental governance are future-oriented (Chaffin et al., 2016). New configurations of, for example, scale, territory, the social and the relationships that constitute them are envisaged and advocated for on the basis of conceptual ideals imagining a future distinct from the present we currently experience. The environmental aspect of governance also possesses a temporality, necessitating the management of existing socio-ecological systems so that these are maintained or reversed in pursuit of a future (or, indeed, previously experienced) ‘sustainable’ state.

Turning to the environment, this conceptualisation is built from the analytical framework of governmentality (Foucault, 1991b). Drawing upon an understanding of power as an ‘omnipresent’ phenomenon, subjugating and enabling (Foucault, 1982), government is conceptualised as the conduct of individual and collective conduct (Foucault, 1991b). Governmentality interprets this as a rational, technical activity, specific to a particular historical moment, of rendering social, political, economic, or indeed environmental issues calculable and amenable to everyday, mundane forms of management (Miller and Rose, 1990; Rose, 1999; Rose et al., 2006). These analyses ask ‘how’ (Dean, 1999):

How is the heterogenous ensemble of ‘actions upon actions’ (Foucault, 1982) which make up the social body managed productively?

How do authoritative bodies render the social body visible, knowable, amenable to technical intervention, and what forms of individual and collective behaviour(s) are targeted (Dean, 1999)?

How do these ‘dimensions’ cohere and what are the consequences for social order and authority?

What will be shown through this piece is that not only do these ‘programmes of government’ (Dean, 1999) provide a framework for governing environmental conduct, but they also enable ‘the environment’ to be ‘brought into existence as a calculable and manageable space’ (Rose et al., 2006: 94, emphasis added). Once brought into existence, the environment can be controlled and enabled and play a functional role in controlling and enabling conduct (Gabrys, 2014; Huxley, 2007). Recognising the temporalities of a functional environment, one can begin to parse its dependent and possible relationalities and materialities. In turn, the dynamisms of the ‘programmer’s view’ (Dean, 2007) can be examined in attempt to identify potential contradictions, ruptures and transformative potential.

EIA, in this regard, is of particular interest. Borne of increasing popular concern for the environment in the 1960s combined with the predominance of rationalist decision-making theories at the time (Weston, 2004), it ostensibly seeks to promote a form of ecological rationality (Caldwell, 1988). Applied to proposed developments prior to major decisions being taken, it is used to identify, assess, predict and propose mitigation measures to avoid or reduce the impacts of development upon the environment (International Association for Impact Assessment, 1999). In environmental governance terms, it principally seeks to promote sustainable development but does not set targets a priori (Cashmore et al., 2004; Jay et al., 2007). Instead, as a processual tool, it promotes the participation of a diverse range of actors inclusive of the public, NGOs, private developers and government representatives (Heinelt et al., 2001). Through negotiation between these actors, EIA facilitates the inclusion of expert and lay knowledge, enhances democratic value and capacity, increases environmental awareness and builds partnerships and capacity to tackle local and broader environmental issues (Arts et al., 2012; Glucker et al., 2013; Jones and Morrison-Saunders, 2017; Sheate, 2012; Sinclair and Diduck, 2017). While not necessarily neoliberal in cause or, indeed, effect, it does foster the relationships necessary to govern ‘at a distance’ (Miller and Rose, 1990; Summerville et al., 2008).

This article is structured as follows. In the next section, I provide an overview of how the functioning of power is typically understood in governmentality analyses, covering its disciplinary, biopolitical and advanced liberal ‘eras’. I then provide a review of governmentality’s application to studies of the environment and, following work by Gabrys (2014) and Huxley (2007), draw a distinction between the environment as an object and technology of governmental power (Donzelot, 1979, cited in Rose et al., 2006). I then introduce the idea of temporality. Drawing upon existing theorisations, I explore the environment’s contingencies and possibilities. In the examples cited I show how these temporalities reaffirm neoliberal spaces and scales. Drawing upon the notion of ‘reinscription’ (Dean, 2002), I postulate that the interactions between governmental environments create an incipient transformative potential within existing governance frameworks. Then, the next section details the discourse analysis methodology applied to the selected EIA guidance and policy documents utilised to explore this incipient potential. The results of this analysis are then provided. The penultimate section shows how, from a governmentality perspective, multiple environments are produced and animated through this discourse. Their interactions produce new possibilities, contingent on the temporalities invoked. I provide two distinct categories to illustrate this potential: artefact and aspiration. Looking forward, using examples from existing literature and the current state of global environmental governance, I utilise these categories to speculate on potential future scenarios for the form and circulation of power and, in the concluding section, explore their transformative potential.

Governmentality and the environment

While governmentality poses a series of ‘how’ questions (Dean, 1999) in relation to individual and collective conduct, it is their coherence in support and maintenance of particular forms of rule which provides the analyst with an insight into the spatio-temporally specific form and function of power. With regards Foucault’s (1991b) work, governmentality refers to a form of power which problematises the population and is made possible by and works through particular knowledges, technologies (i.e. externally and self-applied practices which shape individual and/or collective behaviour (Foucault, 1997)) and subjectivities. Dean’s (1999) ‘dimensions’ of governmentality, explained in Table 1, draw attention to this interdependency. While ordinarily, following Foucault’s (2008) theorisations in his Birth of Biopolitics lectures, governmentality analyses often employ ‘discipline’, ‘biopower’ and ‘advanced/neo-liberalism’ to categorise the forms of governmentality they identify, the distinction between eras requires careful elucidation. For while it is often convenient to focus on the differences between eras produced through historically contingent fluctuations in their constitutive dimensions, there is also a dependency between them. This is also shown in Table 1. Disciplinary knowledge and technologies are utilised under biopower to identify and ‘correct’ individual irregularities according to the norms established by political economy’s assay of population growth and resources (Coleman and Grove, 2009; Foucault, 1991b). Political economy itself enabled the transposition of relational mechanisms of the economy (previously assumed to be an isolated entity) into the ‘internal rationality … of individuals’ activity’ (Foucault, 2008: 223), allowing the social to be autonomised on the basis of a commonly held economic rationality under neoliberalism (Lemke, 2019).

Table 1.

Eras of government and their respective characteristics (based on Foucault, 1991a, 1991b, 2003, 2008; Lemke 2019; Rose, 1999).

Dimension of government	Era
Dimension of government	Discipline	Biopower	Advanced/neo-liberalism
VisibilityThe target of power	• The spatio-temporal comportments of the individual body	• The social population and epidemical threats to its ongoing security	• The autonomous individual
GovernabilityThe knowledges productive of and produced through attempts to govern and the technologies equipped to inscribe power into the activities of a target population	• Economic utility• Surveillance• Distributing bodies within space• Seriating activities across time	• Political economy• Epidemiological normalisation of society• Social regulation• Insurance technologies	• Human capital• Risk management• Self-care• Regulated choice
SubjectivityThe expectations of, and intended outcomes for, identity	• Obedient• Self-responsible• Efficient• Productive	• Socially dependent• Self-responsible• Individual with desires and needs• Productive	• Active• Self-responsible• Self-entrepreneurial• Productive
Form and function of power	• Invested through the individual body• Grants authority to defined centres within particular spaces	• Invested through life in its totality, both as population and individual• Grants authority to defined centres of expertise	• Realised through individual freedom• Grants authority to a commonly held and thereby equalising economic rationality

This latent dynamism, the potential for power to be transformed through the entanglement of these dimensions, and the ‘reinscription’ (Dean, 2002) of precedent governmental techniques into emergent ones, has interesting implications for the environment. When applied to studies of the environment, governmentality analyses tend to fall into one of two broad categories. While these analyses may employ similar terminology to categorise their analysis (e.g. ‘environmentality’) their difference, I argue, hinges upon whether the environment is considered an ‘object’ or a ‘technology’ of governmental power (Donzelot, 1979: cited in Rose et al., 2006). Treating the environment as an object of governmental concern, studies in environmentality (or variants thereof) address a perceived gap in Foucault’s work regarding the biophysical environment (Rutherford, 2007). This work traces the emergence of the environment as a problem requiring governmental intervention (Agrawal, 2005; Darier, 1996; Rutherford, 2016). Specific interventions or historical periods are analysed in terms of the power/knowledges, rationalities, technologies and subjectivities generated in response to environmental problems. These studies identify the operationalisation of, for example, planetary or conservation science in support of biopolitical or neoliberal ends (Fletcher, 2010; Luke, 2009).

The second group considers environmentality to be a specific era of governmental power where conduct is conducted through ‘the modulation and regulation of environments’ (Gabrys, 2014: 35). Studies of this variety build upon Foucault’s (2008) conceptualisation of the milieu. The emergence of knowledge on ‘natural’ elements (e.g. geography, demography and hygiene) made possible the management of connections between a population and its surroundings i.e. the milieu (Braun, 2014; Rabinow, 1995). These connections can be manipulated in order to generate a desired response, depending upon the presumed subjectivity of those making up this environment. Examples of this governance through the environment include regulating the supply of drugs to control addiction (Foucault, 2008), introducing remote sensing devices to monitor and allocate resources in urban areas (Gabrys, 2014), and planning the spatial layouts of towns in order to expose the lower classes to the ‘social and moral order’ of the higher classes (Huxley, 2007: 196). As demonstrated by these examples, this need not be oriented towards the achievement of ‘environmentalist objectives’ (Gabrys, 2014). Importantly, however, thinking back to the dimensions of governmentality outlined in Table 1, the environment has two distinct forms in relation to the application of power. It can be a target of governmental power and a technology through which it functions.

Relating this to neoliberal environmental governance, the dual form and function of the environment enables connections to be drawn between different scales of action. An individual’s environment, for instance, can be regulated in accordance with the demands of a global environment. Braun’s (2014) example of fuel efficiency gauges in new car models illustrates how targeted environments can be highly localised in terms of the scale and the size of their target population (in this case a single car model and an individual driver). As a technology of government, this individual environment recognises existing social predilections (car journeys) and identity (the consumer). A neoliberal ‘modulation and management’ (Braun, 2014) approach whereby the fuel efficiency gauge is an incentive within this existing environment (Foucault, 2008) can then be pursued. Achieving a greater level of fuel efficiency provides an individualised, consumer-oriented response to the problematised environment-as-object i.e. the global climate system.

The multiple forms an environment can take creates interesting possibilities for studies of and action in environmental governance. On the one hand, the environment can be both a problem and a technology of governmental power and can therefore plausibly exist in different forms simultaneously, as per the fuel gauge example. As shown in Table 1, certain problematisations, knowledges, technologies or subjectivities from one form of power can be ‘reinscribed’ (Dean, 2002) in service of an altogether different form. On the other, as discussed in the introduction, the environment can be imbued with specific temporalities. The environments associated with the fuel efficiency gauge are formed out of extant neoliberal presuppositions, but the environment also exists as a future imaginary. While there is convincing evidence that some of these future imaginaries serve only to de-politicise environmental movements in favour of techno-managerial, business-as-usual responses (Swyngedouw, 2007, 2011), they can also make visible alternate ways of being and provide the (potential) basis for specific demands or a wider platform for change (Gabriel, 2014; Yusoff and Gabrys, 2011). Thinking about the potential presence of multiple environments existing simultaneously and coalescing, one can immediately see a complex and dynamic array of contingent pasts and possible futures with the potential to reinforce or transform governmental power. Fundamental aspects of environmental governance, inclusive of the environment’s defining features (Taber, 2017), relationalities (Folke et al., 2011) and administrative spaces and scales (Nightingale, 2018), could plausibly then necessitate reconfiguration.

I contend that neoliberal environmental governance interventions possess both a latent and endogenous transformative potential. The environment’s dual governmental function, the temporalities with which it can be imbued and the dynamic quality of governmental power mean that the context within which the environment is forged, conditioned and transformed is in a perpetual state of flux, with the environment itself playing a reciprocating role in this process. Governance interventions are contingent upon a particular interpretation of the environment and seek to manage it towards a desired future state (or, indeed, manage through it), producing distinct variants of the environment prior to intervention. Not only can these imagined environments interact with one another, but through this interaction render visible new problems and, therefore, targets of power, inclusive of the environment itself. The potential transformation of the knowledges, technologies (including environmental ones), subjectivities which shape the form and function of power is then at play. The specific contours of this dynamic interplay between environments will now be explored.

Methodological approach: the programmer’s view in governmentality

In analysing EIA’s environments, I took the decision to focus on the following key regulatory and guidance documents which set the framework for practice in England and Wales:

Directive 2011/92/EU on the assessment of the effects of certain public and private projects on the environment;

The Town and Country Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) Regulations (2011);

Department for Communities and Local Government’s Guidance on Environmental Impact Assessment 2014.

While governmentality often stands accused of a lack of ‘realism’ (McKee, 2009), the implications of the ‘blueprint’ (Rose et al., 2006) of environmental governance these documents provide are important. By focusing on these prescriptive texts, a governing telos relating to the environment can be provided. While I do not claim to unearth the explicit intention of their various authors (Graham, 2011), instead offering a particular interpretation of that which is ‘made possible’ through them, in seeking to explore EIA’s production of environments these represented a justifiable starting point. By analysing these documents, the multitude of environments that are made possible prior to implementation are identifiable. The dynamic interplays between these environments and their contingent and possible future relationalities can then be explored, thereby helping to answer the overarching question of whether transformation of environmental governance is possible from within i.e. utilising the rules and presuppositions of legislative and guidance frameworks. The decision to focus on just three documents was driven by a desire for a more detailed form of analysis (Cashmore et al., 2015). One document was selected from the supranational organisation responsible for the overarching direction of EIA, the European Union (EU) and two from the jurisdiction of England and Wales. The relationship between EU Directives and implementing member states has, in relation to this study, implications for the scalability of governance transformations.

While not exhibiting any notable European or international irregularities in terms of EIA, England and Wales does represent a jurisdiction which in the run up to the study did undergo wider planning transformations in the form of the National Planning Policy Framework (Communities and Local Government, 2012). This was interpreted in many quarters as an attempt to neoliberalise planning as part of a wider austerity agenda. Economic development was explicitly encouraged alongside a vague interpretation of sustainable development which facilitated this (Allmendinger and Haughton, 2019; Featherstone et al., 2012; Raco, 2014). While not necessarily neoliberal itself, EIA’s findings help inform decisions over whether to approve a proposed project on the basis of its sustainability. Within the assessment process itself, EIA can identify potential mitigation offsets, whereby biodiversity loss in one place is compensated for in another (Apostolopoulou and Adams, 2015). The process it is very much ensconced in a neoliberal setting, can be utilised to lend expert support to the neoliberalisation of nature (Sullivan and Hannis, 2015) and/or be employed instrumentally to rationalise an economically oriented vision of sustainability at the expense of an ecological interpretation (Hansen and Wood, 2016; Richardson, 2005).

The Foucauldian discourse analysis approach takes a series of statements regarding the object under investigation (in this case ‘the environment’) and ‘on the basis of discourse itself … go(es) towards its external conditions of possibility’ (Foucault, 1981: 67). This ‘corpus of statements’ (Arribas-Ayllon and Walkerdine, 2008: 98) constructs the object and organises, regulates and administers the operating relations and practices which circulate around and maintain it (Kendall and Wickham, 1999). It is important to specify that, as a method, governmentality seeks to go beyond an interpretation of discourse as something which ‘directly forms and shapes realities and subjectivities’ (Rose et al., 2006: 89). Discourse constitutes one important mechanism for governing conduct (Miller and Rose, 1990) but is part of a broader governing assemblage alongside material techniques, knowledges and authoritative bodies and institutions (Rose et al., 2006: 89). In recognition of this, the approach adopted here is to use EIA policy and guidance discourse to situate efforts to govern the environment within existing practices ‘in certain places and at certain times’ (Dean, 1999: 22). This is where the dimensions of governmentality discussed in Table 1 are helpful. These dimensions reaffirm a technical understanding of government. From this perspective, discourse enters into an already existing material field of practice and is constituted by it. While there is intention that the programme forwarded is transformative, it is still contingent on these existing practices.

The approach adopted to discourse analysis was as follows. Statements were selected from the EIA policy and guidance documents and arranged under each of the dimensions of governmentality listed in Table 2 to answer the various questions relating to the operation and practice of government (Dean, 1999). Under each dimension, an analysis was provided of the ‘external conditions of possibility’ of this discourse produced when combined with existing practices relative to these dimensions. Through this analysis, the ends of EIA relating to social and environmental order, authority and the form and circulation of power can be identified (Dean, 1999).

Table 2.

Dimensions of governmentality (adapted from Dean (1999)).

Dimension	Questions for this analysis
Visibility	Why does the environment require intervention?How is the environment made visible and what is obscured?
Governability	Upon what forms of knowledge does control and management of the environment depend?What forms of knowledge does this proposed intervention give rise to? By what mechanisms is the environment brought under control and managed? Is the environment itself a mechanism for control and management? If so, what form can it take?
Subjectivity	What identities are expected in relation to and/or made possible by the environment?How is identity transformed in relation to the environment?

The programmer’s view of the environment

Visibility

Statement 1 problematises an environment of governmental concern. This is borne from an implied distinction between ‘environment’ and ‘ecosystem’:

‘The effects of a project on the environment must be assessed in order to take account of concerns to protect human health, to contribute by means of a better environment to the quality of life … and to maintain the reproductive capacity of the ecosystem as a basic resource for life’ (Directive 2011/92/EU).

The environment is cast as fundamental to ‘quality of life’ and ‘human health’. It requires forms of control and intervention on the basis that it supports the ongoing process of living, centred around a human experience which goes beyond basic physiological functions i.e. a life of ‘quality’. In contrast, ‘the ecosystem’ is cast as a foundation – the ‘basic resource’ – which enables life but is not necessarily perpetual, in that its status ‘as a basic resource for life’ is being problematised. The obverse scenario is that it fails to fulfil this function. Its relationship to the human experience is therefore static. It fulfils its function as a ‘basic resource’ or it does not. The environment, on the other hand, is constant and dynamical, in that it is inextricably linked to the necessarily perpetual and evolving facets of living i.e. quality and healthiness. By intending to make an environment ‘better’ one necessarily aims to make lives better too, but what constitutes an environment and the conditions which need to be satisfied for it to be considered ‘better’ (or, indeed, ‘worse’) are left unclear.

To enable EIA to perform its role of ‘contributing to the quality of life’, the environment is defined in Statement 2 as a:

2. ‘list of aspects of … population, fauna, flora, soil, water, air, climatic factors, material assets, including the architectural and archaeological heritage, landscape and the interrelationship between these factors’ (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2014).

In Statement 3, the environment is defined and problematised according to the aspects which are:

3. ‘likely to be significantly affected by the proposed project’ (Directive 2011/92/EU).

This environment is, therefore, constituted by the individual aspects and ‘the interrelationships’ between them according to this measure of significance. This serves to define and illuminates the environment for:

4. ‘a local planning authority … deciding whether to grant planning permission for a project’ (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2014).

The obverse of Statement 4 is that those aspects and interrelationships which are not likely to be significant affected are obscured. The non-significantly, un-problematised environment exists beyond EIA’s, and therefore the decision-maker’s, purview.

Governability

Given that the environment is contextually specific, defined through a measure of significance, knowledge relating to this measure is necessary to ensure governability. Within this discourse, significance relates to the interactions between the environment – as a collection of individuated aspects and their interrelations – and the proposed development. Statement 5 disaggregates the development into specifiable ‘characteristics’:

5. the size of the development; the cumulation with other development; the use of natural resources; the production of waste; pollution and nuisances; the risk of accidents, having regard in particular to substances or technologies used (SI 2011/1824).

In the same way as the environment, the development is made visible and obscured on the basis of those ‘characteristics’ which are deemed relevant to this measure of significance. The interactions between these characteristics and ‘aspects’ of the environment produce ‘impacts’. Measuring significance in the first instance therefore necessitates a knowledge of the individual aspects of the environment in addition to an understanding of development processes.

In this sense, the knowledges governing the production of truth regarding the environment in an EIA context are fixed. Pre-existing scientific disciplines (e.g. ecology, biology and hydrology) and their sub-disciplines (e.g. noise, air quality) provide the ability to speak truth on matters concerning individuated environmental aspects. Disciplines of architecture, structural engineering and waste management similarly provide the ability to speak truth on matters concerning development processes. The broader knowledges governing the production of environmental truth are therefore consistent from one context to the next. The specific configuration of development ‘characteristics’ and environmental ‘aspects’ (interrelated or independent) is, however, indeterminate.

Statement 6 ensures that this interaction between developmental characteristics and environmental aspects can be temporally and spatially mapped through measurements of:

6. ‘the extent of the impact (geographical area and size of the affected population); the transfrontier nature of the impact; the magnitude and complexity of the impact; the probability of the impact; the duration, frequency and reversibility of the impact’ (Directive 2011/92/EU).

This provides those with the aforementioned knowledge a detailed understanding of how each of these aspects is impacted by the development and makes visible a number of seriations across time and within space. The precision with which this can be achieved is contingent on the ability to devise and operationalise predictive models and software technologies. Principally, any complexity of environmental aspects and development characteristics can be spatio-temporally mapped. In combination, these measurements allow development–environment interactions and any second- and third-order interactions to also be mapped. Constraints arise only as a result of:

7. ‘technical deficiencies or lack of know-how’ (SI 2011/1824).

Through Statement 7, constraints on governability are capacity-based rather than resulting from epistemological or ontological gaps. The rules of this discourse place no ostensive restriction on the ability to know the full spatial, temporal or relational extent of an environmental impact.

Precisely mapping an impact according to these measurements grants the ability to intervene at designated points. This can be translated into:

8. ‘measures envisaged to prevent, reduce and where possible offset any significant adverse effects’ (SI 2011/1824).

Statement 8 therefore concretises the authority of those with this capacity. The problem that EIA is responding to – the absence of ex ante assessments of development – and the aim set for it – to achieve a ‘better environment’ – is dependent upon this ability to ‘prevent, reduce or offset’ the effects of development. Technical expertise is paramount in meeting this aim.

Statement 9 re-asserts the authority of existing decision-making processes, in that the environment is to be:

9. ‘protect(ed) … by ensuring that a local planning authority when deciding whether to grant planning permission for a project … does so in the full knowledge of the likely significant effects, and takes this into account in the decision-making process’ (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2014).

Through Statement 10, ‘full knowledge’ is granted via the provision of:

10. ‘the appropriate information supplied by the developer, which may be supplemented by the authorities and by the public likely to be concerned by the project in question’ (Directive 2011/92/EU).

Full knowledge is commensurate with the technical capacity of the assessors to compile the relevant and ‘appropriate’ information. This information is contained within an environmental statement (ES), which Statement 11 constitutes as a:

11. ‘single and accessible compilation … and the summary in non-technical language’ (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2014).

The compilation of the ES requires skills relating to presentation, technical translation and written communication in its expository, descriptive and narrative forms. As the entirety of the assessment is recorded in the environmental statement, and indeed prior to it being compiled, judgements are made regarding the information:

12. ‘reasonably required to assess the environmental effects of the development’ (SI 2011/1824).

Statement 12 further reinforces the authority of those responsible for undertaking the assessment. Without this assessment, a competent authority cannot take the environment ‘into account’ in its decisions. Knowledge of existing decision-making processes, what is considered ‘reasonable’ and ‘excessive’ levels of information, and the alignment of this knowledge with the communication skills discussed above, all become central to the governability of the environment.

Subjectivity

The identities presumed of and forged through this discourse pertain to the roles played as part of the process of predicting impacts, assessing their significance and communicating the results in an environmental statement.

The decision-maker and the assessor generate, process and ultimately evaluate environmental information. While they are not explicitly objective beings, without EIA the decision-maker lacks ‘full knowledge’. Antecedently, the decision-making process prior to the enactment of EIA is not fundamentally malfunctional. As in Statement 13, EIA addresses the inability of decision-makers taking:

13. ‘environmental information into consideration, and … state in their decision that they have done so’ (SI 2011/1824).

The decision-maker lacks knowledge prior to EIA, and it becomes the task of assessors to provide this. While Statement 12 qualifies the impartiality of this knowledge with the proviso that it should be limited to what is ‘reasonably required’, a judgement presumably made by the assessor, this is still related to the decision-maker’s level of understanding. Potential polemics and conflicts before and after these judgements and understandings are left unaddressed.

The individual citizen, on the other hand, possesses two distinct identities with contradicting expectations and possibilities. This hinges on the two groups of which an individual citizen can conceivably belong: whether they are a ‘member of the public’ or a part of the human ‘population’. With regards the former identity, Statement 14 defines a ‘public concerned’ by the proposed development as:

14. ‘the public affected or likely to be affected by, or having an interest, the environmental decision-making procedures’ (Directive 2011/92/EU).

Furthermore, an undifferentiated ‘public’ should, according to Statement 15, be:

15. ‘given early and effective opportunities to participate in the environmental decision-making procedures … and shall, for that purpose, be entitled to express comments and opinions … before the decision on the request for development consent is taken’ (Directive 2011/92/EU).

The public, as a whole, expresses their opinion with the expectation that, in the context of development consent, the decision-maker will:

16. ‘take account of opinions and concerns which may be relevant to those decisions’ (Directive 2011/92/EU).

The overarching aim of public participation is:

17. ‘to contribute to the protection of the right to live in an environment which is adequate for personal health and well-being’ (Directive 2011/92/EU).

Through Statement 16, the member of the public is expected to recognise in themselves the possibility that they may be ‘affected’ or ‘interested’ by the decision-making process. They then, through Statement 17, participate to ‘protect’ their own individual environmental rights related to ‘personal health and well-being’.

In contrast, however, an individual as part of a ‘population’ (as per Statement 2) is an ‘aspect’ of the environment. The techniques associated with defining and assessing significance and granting authority and control over the environment to an assessor are, accordingly, just as applicable to human bodies as they are to the biophysical aspects listed. Consequently, they can be locked into the assessment framework discussed in the previous sub-section, subject to the expert direction of those with the requisite EIA-based knowledge. The ability to act self-responsibly and autonomously in the pursuit of a ‘better environment’ is negated.

EIA’s governmentalities and governmental environments

EIA: preparing the environment for neoliberal biopower

To interpret the form and function of governmental power, I have cross-referenced the analyses of the preceding section with Table 1. In this case, EIA seeks to impose a contemporaneous form of neoliberal biopower (Rabinow and Rose, 2006; Waters, 2019). The environment is made visible as necessitating intervention as it is determinative of human well-being and health i.e. ‘life in general’ (Foucault, 2003). Its interactions with development are either productive or unproductive on this anthropocentric basis. The framework of significance allows for the identification of epidemical threats to life and the proposal of technologies designed to discipline these threats (Foucault, 2008). As there is no ostensive restriction on this ability (as per Statement 7), an ‘uninterrupted, constant’ observation (Foucault, 1991a: 202) is enabled. The stated ability to prevent, reduce and offset (as per Statement 8) ensures that these interactions which threaten productivity can be intervened upon at a localised scale at specific points in time. Non-significant impacts constitute the normalised counterpart i.e. the environment that would exist without development. Individually and in totality, these non-significantly impacted aspects constitute a population that lives according to identifiable traits, established through the scientific disciplines discussed in the Governability section. These traits provide the basis for regularising significant impacts so they can form part of the healthy, well-faring environment.

However, while the analyses of the preceding section indicate a concern for an interconnected population, this is not inclusive of the territories and demographics typically associated with biopower (Rabinow and Rose, 2006). The localised level at which the technologies operate (i.e. the individual development and the collection of individuated significantly impacted aspects which relate to it) combined with the absence of any unifying norm against which they are applied (Foucault, 2008) means that a more generalised, social population is absent as a ‘target’ of governmental power (as per Table 1). While the fixed scientific disciplines which grant authority over individual environmental aspects generate certain standards against which the impacts of development can be generalised, the impacts upon the environment as a whole are context specific. What is significant about development–aspect interactions and why (i.e. their extent, magnitude, duration, frequency and reversibility as per Statement 6) can only be determined in the context of the proposed project. The environment itself is produced through this project level, context-specific consideration of identifying ‘significant’ impacts.

Accordingly, the environment itself is a flexible entity, with its significantly and non-significantly impacted enmeshments differing from case-to-case. This flexibility in operating norms means that government of the environment can respond to time- and place-specific demands and effects (Rabinow and Rose, 2006). Plausibly, these can be top-down, ‘rolled-out’ responses to crises (Peck and Tickell, 2002) and/or programmatic failures as neoliberalism ‘lurches haphazardly onward’ (Peck, 2010: 109), or dynamic shifts in demand emanating from the bottom-up. EIA is capable of governing through this change, while also producing an environment which accords with this ideal. Hence, the environment as a population is visible, as per biopower, but is rendered governable as a localised composite of contextually variable, interconnected elements. As such, rather than being regulated via generalisable norms and the identification of epidemical threats (see: ‘Biopower’ in Table 1), the environment is defined and managed via the regulated choices of EIA’s participants. The framework of significance provides this regulative framework, but the environment and its defining, governing norms are the consequence of an interaction between the choices of autonomous participants (see ‘Advanced/neo-liberalism’ in Table 1).

This is underlined by the presumed and expected identities of public participants. The expectation that the public will be active in taking advantage of opportunities to participate (as per Statement 15) and in doing so will be responsible for pursuing their own environmental desires (as per Statement 17) clearly reaffirms a neoliberal subjectivity (Binkley, 2009; Li, 2007; Rose, 1999). This also means that the norms by which the environment is governed are contestable as well as contextually specific, in that the public participant relates their own desires for the environment to the results of the assessment and, as per Statement 16, provides their own evaluation. Ostensibly, this can form part of the decision-maker’s judgement on the information provided.

The public’s ability to contest the outcomes of EIA buttresses the emergent nature of the environment’s defining and regularising norms with a form of voluntary validation. A member of the public is – of their own accord – invited to confirm that the findings of an assessment are satisfactory. This means that, in governmentality terms, even though we are presented with a situation whereby, prima facie, scientific disciplinary norms are fixed, their authority (i.e. as part of the final decision) is mutable (Rose, 1993). The public can compare the findings of, for example, a noise assessment to their own desires and expectations. Their opinions, where they are considered ‘relevant’, can be taken account of in the final decision (as in Statements 15 and 16). In defining and assessing the environment, the public are active (as per Table 1) partners alongside the project proponent and the decision-maker (Summerville et al., 2008) in a multi-actored, localised process of providing, analysing and evaluating environmental information (Heinelt et al., 2001).

Dynamic interactions between temporalised environments: making possible transformation

In relation to a neoliberalised form of biopower, the environment is both visible as a practical object and operationalised as a technology for shaping conduct. The health and productivity of the human population is perpetually intertwined with its surrounding aspects, constituting an environment of governmental concern. By virtue of its defining interconnections, it is made practical in accordance with an ongoing concern for the security of the population (i.e. protection against unhealthy lives and discontent), a security which is guaranteed at a distance from the state. The environment does not, however, possess definitive generalised traits. This emergent nature allows it to function as a technology. As an essentially empty entity, portable from one locality to the next, contextually specific values and priorities can be mapped onto it while reaffirming the perpetual uncertainty and volatility of neoliberalism. Its emptiness and portability mean it can modulate power bidirectionally. It can be used to mediate between a localised and national or even global level, capturing shifts in demands emanating from the bottom-up as well as transmitting standards from the top-down. The environment appears as two governmental dimensions which exist simultaneously and mutually supportively.

Cyclising the relationship between these environments, however, reveals a further potentiality. The interconnections between nonhuman and human ‘aspects’ constitutive of the environment creates a practical object which, conceivably, need not recognise the autonomy of its human subjects. The possibility of generating measures of ‘personal health and well-being’ (as in Statement 17) without needing this to be defined by the individual themselves allows one to manage this environment without an autonomous or self-responsible subject. The emergence of this type of ‘epidemiological scrutiny’ (Osborne, 1994) on a global scale can be seen in a series of health and well-being assessments and methodological typologies developed and employed by the United Nations and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). These range from ‘appraisals of the condition and trends in the world’s ecosystems and the services they provide’ (United Nations, 2005) to frameworks for assessing the progress of well-being through the functioning of the economy and living conditions (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2020). With these assessments having a global scope and application, these assessments and frameworks establish the UN and OECD as defined centres for epidemiological data, analysis and methodological guidance. The purpose of this centreing is clearly focused around improving ‘life in general’ (Foucault, 2003), inclusive of the biophysical environment. In relation to an emergent environment-as-object, these centres have the potential to reconfigure the direction of power and authority. Instead of being dispersed, this environment forces authority to move centripetally towards these centres. The norms against which a ‘quality life’ can be defined and the methods for establishing them can then, plausibly, move away from these centres, establishing a centrifugal flow of power.

As the environment-as-technology possesses the ability to modulate strategies and intentions from the top-down, there exists an incipient potential for re-scaling administrative boundaries. The synonymity between environment and population, the centralisation of authority for establishing and regularising its behaviours at a transnational level and the disciplinary powers granted to EIA through its measure of significance make possible a form of re-socialised biopower. The environment can be problematised as a singular, living phenomenon encompassing both human and nonhuman aspects. As there is no ostensive spatial restriction on the ability to draw connections between aspects that go beyond the individual project scale (as in Statement 7), this biopower can be globalised with the UN and OECD acting as authoritative centres for the establishment of global population norms and methodological frameworks. Provided interconnections were established between these centres and practice of EIA at the local project level, this tool could function to ‘let live’ those interconnections which are deemed ‘non-significant’ according to global population level norms and intervene to isolate those which threaten an ongoing, global regularity. These governmental environments interact with one another, encounter existing spaces and scales, and re-constitute them.

The 2016 public inquiry into applications to explore for shale gas in Fylde, Lancashire is a case in point. As part of proceedings, a key point of contention between the various parties involved was the issue of noise and the appropriateness of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Guidelines for Community Noise (Berglund et al., 1999), in particular the setting of both the lowest and significant observed adverse effect levels. The project proponent had used WHO guidelines to establish a standard against which the significance of the predicted noise impact and level of necessary mitigation was evaluated. Opponents at the inquiry argued, inter alia, that these proposed levels would have an unacceptable adverse impact. Having heard these arguments, the inspector concluded that in relation to WHO guidelines ‘there are factors in this particular case that support a reduction below that level’ (McKay, 2016: 324). While this certainly invalidates any notion of an unfailing acceptance of global standards at the local level, their utility within and centrality to the case indicates a subtler form of transmission and validation. Global standards regarding particular ‘aspects’ reaffirm the portability of the environment-as-technology, but instead of being entirely empty it is now imbued with connections to a global institution. A new, flattened administrative scale can plausibly be established that allows power to flow directly from the global to the local through the EIA environment.

In sum, the interaction between environments and existing institutions produces two temporally distinguishable pairs. The two former most environments clearly reaffirm existing identities and scales associated with neoliberalism, while the two latter environments pose new possibilities for the direction, form, scale and function of power. While I have sought to provide a degree of fecundity to this potential through reflections on its possible manifestations through existing transnational institutions and frameworks, this reflection is, to a large extent, speculative. These environments are incipient at the point at which EIA is implemented. They are distinct by virtue of their relationship to an as yet unrealised form of globalising, re-socialising form of biopower, with an attendant potential for reconfiguring the relationships, institutions and scales of environmental governance. They do not, yet, possess a concrete materiality.

To provide some fixity to this distinction, I have devised two categories of governmental environment. These are shown in Table 3. Artefact refers to those governmental environments which are tied to a historically particular set of practices, whereas aspiration refers to those which are generative of new possibilities. As seen throughout this section, while from an anti-neoliberal perspective the latter may warrant more strategic attention, the aspiration emerges alongside and in contrast to the artefact. The aspiration is, in its own way, contingent upon the governance context from which it emerges.

Table 3.

Categories of temporalised governmental environment.

Category of environment	Temporal traits	Examples from EIA (need to include whether these are objects or technologies)
Artefact	• Imprint of historically specific practices	• Produced through and productive of extant forms of neoliberal and biopolitical mentalities
Artefact	• Designed according to ideals at a particular moment	• Reaffirms autonomous, individually responsible subjectivity or the authority of designated experts
Aspiration	• Generates new possibilities for governing in accordance with revised interpretations of the relationship between human and nonhuman	• Interconnections between human and nonhuman aspects necessitate a new rationality for ensuring the livelihood of this population
Aspiration	• Proposes new regimes of practice (i.e. problematisations, rationalities, technologies and/or identities)	• EIA can function as a technique for normalising problematic interconnections in accordance with the regularities of the global population

This process of categorising environments and identifying those with transformative potential can serve as a useful starting point for questioning the fundaments upon which current frameworks depend, identifying problematic practices and envisioning new ends and means for their delivery. They should not, however, be interpreted as comprehensive or generalisable conceptualisations. Both are abstractions based on the particularities of a specific governance intervention. New categories may be identifiable within different programmes, and the relationship of these categories to governmental power may vary. Indeed, there may even be differing interpretations of what distinguishes an artefact from an aspiration. Earth system science, for instance, articulates a vision of the environment as a complex, interconnected, machine-like entity. While in one sense this can be argued to be artefactual, in that it is a lasting imprint of modernity’s vision of humanity mastering and controlling nature through scientific knowledge (Lövbrand et al., 2009), on the other it constitutes an environment which can be considered aspirational. The complexity of the earth system defies attempts to control it. Chaotic and non-equilibrist, the global environment becomes impossible to predict, generating extreme uncertainty and challenging ‘the very foundations of human rationality and progress’ (Lövbrand et al., 2009: 11). Rather than intending to establish a normativity, I see these categories as heuristic tools. The presence of these environments draws attention to the possibilities of change internal to governance endeavours. The extent to which this can offer a route out of neoliberal environmental governance, however, requires careful thought.

Transforming environmental governance: concluding thoughts

Through this analysis of a ‘programmer’s view’ of EIA, I have shown how multiple environments can exist together prior to the implementation of a governance instrument. The interaction between environments, each possessing its own potential and formative relationalities, turns the governmental gaze back upon itself. It poses an implicit uncertainty as to the distinguishability of humanity from its surroundings, the scalability of authority and the suitability of existing forms of knowledge. But to what extent can this uncertainty and instability be seized upon to instigate transformations in neoliberal environmental governance? Returning to the questions posed in the introduction to this piece, I utilise examples from existing literature to provide reflections on each. In doing so, I hope to provide a conceptual and analytical starting point for future work seeking to work strategically within and against neoliberal environmental governance.

Distinguishing the non-neoliberal

This task is beset by complexity. As previously discussed, while there is broad consensus that neoliberal environmental governance should be resisted on its own terms, there still exist specific instances where neoliberal modalities produce positive outcomes. This is in evidence here. While the emergent environment-as-technology can be adaptable and mediate bidirectionally, thus being neoliberalisable and neoliberalising, these qualities are also attributed to frameworks of adaptive governance, considered by many to be the optimum solution for overcoming structural political and economic barriers to sustainable ecosystem management (Boyd, 2008). Potential symbioses between ecological and neoliberal rationalities have been discussed in detail elsewhere (Evans, 2011; Walker and Cooper, 2011). The distinction drawn here between the environment as a technology and object and how they might feature together is useful in identifying the anti/post/non-neoliberal. For while the environment-as-technology’s emptiness, adaptability and mediating qualities can plausible be neoliberalisable and neoliberalising, the globalised population of interconnected human and nonhuman ‘aspects’ creates a social dependency between individuals, counteracting the autonomising and self-entrepreneurialising (see ‘Advanced/neo-liberalism’ in Table 1) logics of neoliberalism.

Scaling transformation

Clearly, however, this re-socialisation of the population is contingent upon a population being made live according to a rationality which does not, amongst other things: alienate vulnerable groups, render human-nonhuman interactions disposal or fungible or grant an immutable authority to select, unaccountable groups of experts i.e. does not exhibit the faults of neoliberalism. Thinking about the emergent aspirational environment and the potential governing arrangement that EIA renders in relation to it, the possibility of this type of damaging rationality is apparent. While transnational frameworks for environmental governance are not necessarily neoliberal in intention or effect, the overarching bodies responsible for their development and implementation (e.g. the UN) can utilise these to achieve neoliberal ends (Wilshusen, 2019). Goldman’s (2005) study of the World Bank’s practices in Laos is a case in point. Funding for a sustainable dam was utilised to embed ecological and conservation codes and rules within the Laos state structure. In turn, this enabled the classification of forest-dwelling communities as ‘undeveloped’, ‘unsustainable’ and necessitating re-education, reinforcing the need for the dam and rendering these communities amenable to the demands of companies who stood to gain financially from the dam’s implementation. Relating this to the aspirational environment, the population of interconnected human and nonhuman aspects may appear transformative, but its contingent relationship with existing neoliberal institutions poses risks. Thinking about the commonalities established between local environments and the way contextual variation is effaced via the methodologies and global norms discussed previously, this alienation of vulnerable groups renders the locally and culturally specific human-nonhuman interconnections both fungible and exploitable by external groups.

The task, then, turns to ensuring that the process of transformation is not captured by institutions with neoliberalising intent/potential. In this sense, the fundamental assumptions upon which the definition and realisation of an environment depends must be contested and this ongoing process scaled. The temporality of the governmental environment in this respect is crucial. Distinguishing between a historically contingent environment, as in the artefactual environment, and an environment which dissociates itself from these contingencies draws attention towards these fundamental assumptions. The governing discourse analysed here generates instability as to the subjectivity of public participants. However, in moving from an individualised to a collective environment, in a new era of global biopolitics, authority would move centripetally and power centrifugally. While not necessarily neoliberal, this re-scaling would necessarily disempower those without expertise relating to the global population and potentially risk neoliberal forms of rule being realised regardless.

Pathways out of neoliberalism

Exposing and contesting both the fundamentals of the environment and the implications of changing these is therefore a crucial part of forging a pathway out of neoliberalism. In bringing together ever-differing groups of actors with the expectation that each can pursue and realise their own ends through the process (see: Subjectivity) EIA necessarily involves varied rationalities, invoking contestation (Richardson, 2005). What is more, while conflict can be muted by the technical aspects of the assessment process (Spiegel, 2017), there are several examples of local groups working with the process in order to empower themselves and resist extractive or exploitative development proposals (Death, 2006; Devlin and Yap, 2008). A recent article from Darrah-Okike (2019) in this journal exemplifies this. Native Hawaiian communities managed to ‘nest’ spiritual, moral and ancestral values relating to the relationship between humanity and nature within the technical processes and language of EIA. By identifying ‘shortcomings’ in the ES for the proposed project and articulating concerns which related to specific ‘aspects’ (in this case water and social impacts), opponents of the development were able to successfully convince the competent authority to reject the proposal. In the context of the theorisations forwarded here, this example illustrates how tools like EIA create openings for differing interpretations of, and contestation regarding, what the environment actually is without necessitating fundamental changes to the governance mechanism itself. While the features of this contestation will differ on a case-by-case basis, by challenging the development proposal and, indirectly, shining a light on the inadequacy of EIA’s interpretation of the environment one can begin to ask very simple, yet fundamental, questions such as:

What is the environment?

What does it include and exclude?

What purpose and who does it serve?

What knowledges define and uphold it?

Who is granted authority over and within it?

Could all the above be changed?

What would be the consequences of these changes?

As I have shown throughout this piece, the answers to these questions have varying potential consequences for environmental governance arrangements. The dynamisms between multiple environments produced through governance interventions can produce new environments with transformative potential, but only if the proceeding definitions, knowledges and identities which they uphold are properly problematised and clearly distinguished from neoliberal frameworks. An awareness of an environment’s relationship to power, a recognition of its temporalities and multiplicity and posing the above questions at points of instability can generate an ongoing interrogation of environmental governance. Moving forward with new research and strategy aiming to standardise and extend the reach of this critical perspective, the development of institutional frameworks sensitive to local contexts which seek to support work in contesting and re-contesting locally implemented governance practices like EIA, through the continued re-posing of these questions, can help initiate the mapping of a route out of neoliberalism. While no specific interpretation of this non/anti/post-neoliberal form of environmental governance is proffered here, a recognition of the environment’s multiple forms, establishing a commonality and interdependence between the human and nonhuman regardless of place, avoiding neoliberal capture, and ongoing contestation will be central to the creation and maintenance of whatever localised form it takes.

Highlights

Neoliberal environmental governance is examined for possible transformative potential ‘from within’

Using a governmentality conceptual and analytical framework, the potential of the ‘temporalised environment’ as a modality for generating instability ‘from within’ is explored

Through a discourse analysis of regulatory and guidance documents relevant to the practice of EIA in England and Wales, the piece identifies two distinct pairs of temporal environments. One pair is formed through and seeks to reaffirm a form of neoliberal biopower. The other pair makes possible an alternative globalised form of re-socialised biopower. These are categorised respectively as ‘artefacts’ and ‘aspirations’

The extent to which the aspirational environments can be transformative of neoliberalism is explored in terms of their ability to: facilitate a distinctly non-neoliberal governance arrangement, escape capture by neoliberal institutions and offer a route out of currently existing, variegated neoliberal arrangements

It is concluded that the value of this analysis lies in its ability to identify ruptures in existing governance practices. While it does not advocate for a specifiable form of environmental governance, its illumination of the environment’s multiple potentialities and associated materialities draw attention towards the foundational assumptions associated with the environment itself. The continued critical interrogation of these assumptions which underpin tools like EIA through pointed, replicable and straightforward questions can help prevent the normalisation of neoliberal principles and practices

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Andrew Snow

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