Zivian, Anna | USA

Zivian, Anna | USA

Anna Zivian is a doctoral candidate in Environmental Studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Her research studies the role of subnational government in regulating genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in Europe and the United States. A former elected official at the local level in Colorado, she is particularly interested in the role of local government in environmental and agricultural policy.

She is currently working on a project on the role of the Bundesländer in Austria in GMO regulation as a Fulbright Scholar. Anna’s research has also addressed GMO risk research funding in the US as well as transgenic aquaculture policy. Focussing on GMOs provides a vehicle for looking at the intersection of environmental policy, science, and society, and, in particular, issues of democracy and public participation in science.


Project at IAS-STS: Back to the Länder: Subnational GMO policy in Austria

Local governments are emerging as active players in environmental politics and policy, but with what effect? This question is increasingly important because of a growing trend of environmental politics contested at the local level.

To address it, I examine two axes of the problem:
(1) the turn to local government as a new strategy of environmental mobilization and
(2) the rationale of democratic, participatory environmental policymaking as a justification for this strategy.

I focus on Austria, where the Bundesländer (states) are at the forefront of efforts to control GMOs in the EU. Austria is an important site for assessing the growing phenomenon of local governance. The Austrian Länder – all members of the Network of GMO-free European Regions – have been leading actors in GMO policy creation and controversies within Austria and at the EU. Public opinion is strongly anti-GMO.

At the same time, Austria is strongly supportive of sustainable and organic agriculture. GMOs, as representative of agricultural industrialization and loss of culture, are seen as a threat to Austria’s agricultural traditions and environmental values.5 In Austria, the Länder have substantial regulatory authority. They have attempted to use this authority to oppose EU decisions on GMOs and to maintain jurisdiction over agricultural and environmental policy.

I look at local level actions and interactions between government and anti-GM activists and ask
(1) How and why are social movements using local government in their political strategies to influence and create environmental policies? and
(2) Does local government offer an opportunity to encourage democratic decision making and to improve public participation in environmental policy?

 

Selected Publications

“Anti-genetic engineering activists, pharm crops, and Franken-fish: Sowing seeds of hope in the fields of social resistance in California?” (co-authored with Dustin Mulvaney), in Ecologies of Hope, eds. Ravi Rajan and Colin Duncan. Santa Fe: SAR Press (in press).