Environmental and evolutionary economic geography: time for eeg2?

Abstract

This article argues that recent proposals for environmental and evolutionary economic geographies (EEG 1 and EEG2) should be integrated; EEG2 is used as “passing convenience” to make this case. EEG1's emphasis on environmental imperatives is loosely framed and needs a theoretical socio‐economic evolutionary base that is the central thrust of EEG2. Meanwhile EEG2 would be empowered by incorporating environmental concerns within its mandate. Moreover, both EEG1 and EEG2 share common roots in institutional methodologies, emphasize cumulative causation and path‐dependent behaviour, have strong interests at regional scales of analysis, and both are intimately tied to the causes and consequences of innovation. This article provides a rationale and suggests an integrative conceptual approach for developing EEG2. In particular, the article outlines a conceptual framework that interprets EEG2 in terms of co‐evolutionary socio‐ecological and multi‐scalar processes that are situated within a reasoned history interpretation of economic development. This framework further highlights the roles of path dependency, innovation, multinational corporations and value chains. How this multi‐scalar framework may be elaborated is then discussed around three themes: extending placed‐based analysis of localized clusters; broadening the scope of global value chain analysis; and re‐engaging the analysis of core–periphery relations. Ultimately the case for EEG2 is to ensure that economic geographic perspectives are fully incorporated in debates over the co‐evolution of economy and environment, in research and policy terms one of, if not the, central challenges of development in the 21st century.

The green economy and post‐growth regimes: opportunities and challenges for economic geography

“…In particular, economic geography's longstanding experience with regional structural change and regional innovation systems, the spatiality of value chains and production networks, and the context conditions shaping economic activities and the co-evolution of politics, society and economics provides promising foundations for further economic geography research on the market, institutional and spatial dynamics of both smart-growth and de-growth economies. Concepts of evolutionary economic geography, geographical innovation research and network and cluster research could be developed further, as could more recent approaches of practice research and financial geography (Patchell and Hayter 2013).…”

“…The latter critique also applies partly to evolutionary economic geography, and was one reason for Patchell and Hayter's (2013) call for integration between environmental economic geography (EEG1) and evolutionary economic geography (EEG2), based on the idea of EEG 2 , as a means of ensuring that economic geographic perspectives are fully incorporated in debates over the co-evolution of economy and environment. They argue both conceptually and normatively that 'incorporating the environment, and recognizing economic geography's growing interests in this regard …, could be as important a contribution to understanding economic development as EEG2's claim to compensate for neoclassical economics' focus on equilibrium states and failure to deal with institutional change' (Patchell and Hayter 2013, p. 111).…”

Trajectories of sustainability transitions in scale-transcending innovation systems: The case of photovoltaics

“…First, adding the temporal dimension helps better understanding the evolutionary dynamics of new environmental technologies (Patchell and Hayter, 2013). Second, we positioned the dynamic interplay of technology actors at four spatial scales each distinguished by particular institutional settings.…”

“…Before phase III the German market was served by foreign producers from Japan and the US, U. Dewald, M. Fromhold-Eisebith / Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions xxx (2015) xxx-xxx 11 in phase IV and V production shifted to Asia (as described by Essletzbichler, 2012;Patchell and Hayter, 2013). Second, technology production experienced a substantial shift regarding the type of companies involved, from incumbent large-scale companies to medium-sized firms specialized in PV.…”

“…Different re-scaling dynamics became obvious, most notably an internationalization of production and markets (Quitzow, this volume;Patchell and Hayter, 2013). Another facet of rescaling dynamics is G Model EIST-150;No.…”