Book Cover -- Half-Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Plates -- Figures -- Maps -- Tables -- Preface -- Abbreviations -- Part I Introduction -- 1 The political economy of environmental transitions -- Environment and transition -- The structure of the book -- Origins of the environmental crisis -- 2 Theorizing social and environmental change -- Regulation theory and the environment -- Nature, environment, and risk: towards a geopolitics of the environment -- A dialectics of nature: conceptualizing social and ecological change -- Dialectical geographies of transition -- A political economy of geographic scale in CEE -- Structured coherence and the study of regional transformations -- The concept of structured coherence -- Regulation theory and local/regional political economy -- Structured coherence and the production of space -- Part II Nature, risk and the legacies of state socialism -- 3 Environmental quality in Central and Eastern Europe -- Introduction -- Environmental degradation in CEE and Western industrial countries -- Environmental quality in CEE -- Air pollution -- Water pollution -- Land degradation -- The political ecology of Bulgarian agriculture -- Agricultural ecology prior to 1944 -- Changes in agricultural ecology under central planning -- Conclusion -- 4 Nature, society and extensive industrialization -- The district of Most -- Coal mining, structured coherence and the production of space -- State socialism and coal mining in the Most region -- Socialist competition and workers' exploitation in coal mining -- Coal mining and restructuring under state socialism -- The chemical industry in the Most basin -- 5 Social and environmental regulation under state socialism -- Communist Party hegemony in the Most District under state socialism -- Industrial paternalism in the Most District.

The eradication of civil society -- Production of space and environment in the Most District under state socialism -- Large scale landscape devastation -- Environmental degradation in the Most District under state socialism -- Structured coherence in the Most District under state socialism -- 6 Constructing risk -- Health care and health "risk": regimes and economies -- Life expectancy and infant mortality -- Czech Republic -- Hungary -- Poland -- Slovakia -- Romania -- Bulgaria -- Conclusion -- Part III Post-communist transformations and the environment -- 7 Post-communist reform and the democratization of nature -- Theorizing civil society and environmental futures -- The new social movements, civil society, and public space -- What is civil society? -- Civil society and Central and Eastern Europe -- Civil society and political economy -- From democratization to the politics of protest in Central and Eastern Europe -- Post-1989 euphoria -- Environmental politics and ecological defence in Bulgaria -- Balancing "other needs": Polish environmentalism and shock therapy -- Neo-liberalism, healthy environments and the debate about priorities in the Czech Republic -- Environmentalism as politics by other means: the case of Hungary -- Environmentalism and nationalism in Slovakia -- Environmentalism without origins: the case of Romania -- The future of environmental activism and environmental management -- 8 Environmental legislation and policy -- Introduction -- The legislative revolution in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic -- Economic instruments for environmental protection in the Czech Republic -- Slovakia's environmental policy and legislation after independence -- Slow but steady progress in Hungary -- Struggles over environmental change in Poland -- Economic instruments for environmental protection in Poland -- Recent reforms in Romania.

Albania -- Delayed reform in Bulgaria -- Conclusion -- 9 State, environment and information in post-communist transformations -- Introduction -- The information revolution in a bureaucratic state -- Environmental data in a centrally planned economy -- Democratizing access to environmental data and the limits of state institutions in the period of transition -- GIS and the restructuring of national systems of data collection: a case study of Bulgaria -- Sectoral differentiation and trends in data acquisition and dissemination in Bulgaria -- Conclusions -- 10 Environmental effects of post-communist transformations -- Shock therapy: economic crisis and struggles over environmental quality -- Failed transitions, delayed transitions or dialectics of nature? -- New environmental problems of transformation: the automobile -- New problems in foreign direct investment -- Environmental effects of post-communist transformation in Slovakia -- Environmental effects of post-communist transformation in the Czech Republic -- The environmental effects of post-communist transformation in other CEE countries -- Bulgaria: ecological change in an agricultural economy -- Early environmental results -- The withering of the central state and local state responses -- Conclusion -- Part IV Nature in post-communist societies -- 11 Conclusion -- The political economy of environmental risk and health -- Path dependency and path-shaping environmental strategies -- The geopolitics, cultural politics, and class politics of environmental reconstruction -- TINA (There Is No Alternative) or THEMBA (There Must Be Alternatives)? -- The future of environmental politics and environmental management -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.