eThekwini’s green and ecological infrastructure policy landscape: research paradigms, theories and epistocrats

Richard Meissner ()
Additional contact information
Richard Meissner: University of South Africa

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, 2022, vol. 22, issue 3, No 6, 543-560

Abstract: Abstract The purpose of this paper is to indicate how dominant research paradigms, social theories, and an epistocracy influence the governance of green and ecological infrastructures within a South African local government context. Paradigms and theories play an important constituting role that (local) government actors and institutions actively and subconsciously promote within the green and ecological infrastructure policy landscape. Research conducted by the author indicates that epistemic actors within the eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality, South Africa, use paradigms and theories to promote green and ecological infrastructures, as materialities, coupled with climate change adaptation and mitigation and water governance and security aspirations. I conclude that an epistocracy is active in the municipality and that it promotes the development and implementation of the infrastructure types through a positivist paradigm and accompanied theories. In this article, I will report on a two-year study that investigated eThekwini’s green and ecological infrastructure policy landscape.

Keywords: Research paradigms; Social theories; eThekwini; Ecological infrastructure; Green infrastructure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10784-021-09557-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:ieaple:v:22:y:2022:i:3:d:10.1007_s10784-021-09557-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10784

DOI: 10.1007/s10784-021-09557-0

Access Statistics for this article

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics is currently edited by Joyeeta Gupta

More articles in International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().