David Gibbs

Continued concern over environmental degradation and anthropogenically induced climate change has led policymakers to search for new approaches to economic growth. Green growth has gained policy traction in recent years, notably amongst international organisations and national governments. Green growth asserts that GDP growth is compatible with environmental protection and that it can be decoupled from resource use and carbon emissions. This chapter outlines the rise of green growth as a strategy at the international level, the various definitions used and the reasons why it has been adopted as a policy aim. Criticisms of the green growth approach are examined, including one of its central propositions that growth can be decoupled from environmental damage, together with arguments that more radical changes are needed to address economy-environment tensions. In the conclusions, it is suggested that despite its shortcomings, green growth could provide a transitional strategy towards more substantive change.

This chapter develops the concept of experience landscapes to explore how UK mountain bike trail centres create experiences for riders, and how riders encounter these trails in practice. We draw on empirical research involving an online survey of UK mountain bikers and interviews with five individuals from public and private sector organisations involved in mountain bike trail provision in the North of England and Scotland. The chapter explores: how trail centre providers work with and modify existing landscapes; users’ different perspectives on the trail centre experience; the embodied and technologically mediated encounters between people and trail centre environments; and the challenges posed by the development of unofficial ‘wild trails’ by users. The chapter concludes by calling for greater acknowledgement of the need for a diversity of potential experience to cater for the requirements of more diverse trail centre users, alongside users wanting to create ‘wild trail’ experiences alongside ‘official’ routes.

There has been a growing interest by both academics and policymakers at the local and regional scales in the development of a green economy both to promote economic development and to achieve environmental policy aims. Despite this, there is little evidence about whether either the economic or the environmental aims are being met, nor how local and regional authorities are promoting and developing green economies in their localities. In order to address these issues, this paper explores the development of the offshore wind industry in North West Germany, drawing upon sustainability transitions research and the path creation literature.

Urban policies which include energy and environmental objectives are seen as potentially effective instruments in the quest for urban sustainability. Recent consensus is that the modern city region forms an important focal point for assessment and implementation of energy strategies, facilitating practical solutions to local problems as well as providing beneficial additions to national policies. Reducing the carbon intensity of economies both prevents environmental degradation and supports the regional economy in the medium to long term. The authors look at the construction of a CO₂ inventory for the Greater Manchester region, an urban conurbation set for economic growth after recent restructuring and diversification. The authors argue that, by providing an indication of the localised carbon flows specific to the region, it is possible to target problem areas, prioritise carbon-reduction strategies, and recommend policies that will case the transition to a more sustainable urban settlement. The increased focus on finding ‘local’ solutions to the reduction of carbon intensity has coincided with privatisation of much of the energy industry. The newly competitive energy market conflicts with the shift to local-scale evaluations and has resulted in energy details at the regional level becoming increasingly harder to obtain. The problems experienced in the construction of this inventory will be common to other cities in the United Kingdom and will have to be addressed if the ‘local’ approach is to be as effective as is hoped.