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Summary Lectures Environmental Policy: Analysis and Evaluation (ENP34306)
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Summary environmental policyPolitics and the environment (Connelly et al., 2012)
Core ideas within sustainable development:
1. Environment-economy integration
- Integrating economic development and environmental protection in planning and implementation
2. Futurity
- Explicit concern with the impact of current activity on future generations
3. Environmental protection
- Reducing pollution and environmental degradation and protection of the non-human world
4. Equity
- Commitment to meeting the basic needs of the poor of the present generation and to equity between
generations
5. Quality of life
- Recognition that human well-being is constituted by more than economic growth and prosperity alone
6. Participation
- Recognition that sustainable development requires institutions to be restructured to allow all voices in
society to be hear along decision making
The environment as a policy problem (Carter, 2007)
Seven characteristics that distinguish environment as policy problem:
1. Public goods
Lecture 1
Constructivism: in contrast to positivism. A set of believes influences the way you look at the world. Reality is
perceived in different ways by different people. Interpretivism.
Policy: the concept of policy refers to a line of action (or inaction) aiming to preserve or change conditions perceived
as collective problems are challenges. Accordingly, a policy is always related to somebody’s perceptions of the
problem situation.
Environment as policy problem: key points
- There is a wide diversity of environmental issues and responses
- Problems create specific challenges for policy
- Three ‘waves’ of environmental concern and policy
- Sustainable development
Environment as policy problem: Why so hard?
1. Collective action and free-riding
o Each individual benefits from overusing resources
o Each individual’s contribution to the problem is small, waiting for others to act first free-riding
o Organizing collective action to prevent environmental harm is a key policy challenge
o Tragedy of the commons, solutions:
Privatize commons market-based instruments
Ban herding? Limit numbers? command and control (regulation)
Reform institutions self-governance
Policy challenge: implement the right (mix of) instrument(s)
2. Complexity and interlinkages
o Linkages between human and natural systems complex and not completely understood: ‘wicked
problems’
, o
Interconnectedness of ecosystems non-reducible environmental problems
Holistic approach
o Challenge for policy: prevent fragmentation
o Example: long chimneys in England to prevent local air pollution, but acid rain started to occur in
Sweden (transboundary problem)
o Catalytic converters in cars improve local air quality but cause losses in fuel efficiency
(complexity/trade-offs in policy)
3. Uncertainty and irreversibility
o Not enough is known about the nature, extent, causes and consequences of environmental harm
Key role of science (but, contestation is common; no consensus or it takes time)
o E.g. GMOs what are the impacts, time-frame, spatial distribution. Once released into the
environment irreversible
o Policy has to be made under conditions if incomplete information
Dilemma: wait and generate more information or take precautionary measures?
4. Temporal and spatial variability
- Environmental damage can occur over long term but requires (costly) action now
- Environmental improvements have long time-lags
- Harm unevenly distributed spatially
- Crosses national boundaries
- Challenges for policy: how to account for temporal and spatial variability? How to balance competing
interests?
5. Administrative fragmentation
- Government divided in policy sectors, with own responsibility
- Environmental problems are often cross-sectoral
- Climate change: transport, energy, industrial production, agriculture, forestry and overall economic
policy
- Challenges for policy: responsibility for protecting the environment typically given to ministry
- Policy-making compartmentalized
- Coordinated responses are needed, but lock of coordination
Environment, just another policy area?
- Natural resources are finite
- Ethical dimensions of the relation between humans and non-humans (e.g. distribution, inter- and
intragenerational justice issues)
- Often a trade-off: ecology vs economy
Exam question: think about the challenge for policy makers regarding the nature of environmental problems
History of environmental policy
Three waves:
- First: late 19th/early 20th century
- Second: 1960s – 1970s
- Third: mid-1980s to the present (?)
First wave:
- Period: late 19th/early 20th century
- Focus: nature protection
- Actor: urban elite
- Debate: aesthetic value of nature; apolitical, not against industrialisation or capitalism
- Policy focus: laws for nature conservation, birds
- Geography: USA, Western Europe
, - Key concepts: conservation/preservation
- E.g. Yellowstone national park
Second wave: modern environmentalism
- Period: late 1960s – 1970s
- Focus: local air pollution; pesticides
- Actors: new middle class; civil society
- Debate: against modern institutions: industry, bureaucratic state, market economy
- Policy focus: environmental pollution control laws, standards
- Geography: industrialised countries (mainly)
- Key concepts: limits to growth
o Publications:
Club of Rome: Limits to growth
Silent spring
Differences first and second wave:
- Second wave was driven by perceived global ecological crisis that threatened the very existence of
humanity
- A questioning of existing practices of industrialization and market economy
- Driven by a political/activist mass movement (Rather than elite)
Second wave: policy responses (traditional policy paradigm)
- Environmental policy institutionalized as result of protest/concern
- But:
o Piecemeal, reactive responses
o Issues addressed in isolation
o Technocratic belief that ‘environmental crisis’ could be solved
- Outcome: environmental policies proliferated but environmental degradation continued
Second wave: criticising ‘limits to growth’
- Population, natural resources, food, industrial output were modelled
- Limits to growth criticized as simplistic and pessimistic
- Main criticisms: ignored feedback mechanisms
o Scarcity results in new supplies/substitutes
o New technologies would overcome limits to growth
From 1970s to 1980s: changing global context for environmental policy
- 1970s environmentalism established as ‘northern’ (industrialized country) phenomenon
- Criticized by global south for lack of attention to growth, poverty alleviation and development
- But emerging global environmental challenges also needed the global south
Changing environmental context: need for an alternative discourse
- By late 1980s, need for a new concept/discourse to
o Engage the global south in addressing (global) environmental problems
o Bridge gap between environmental sustainability and economic growth
- Notion of ‘sustainable development’ appeared
Third wave:
- Period: mid 1980s-now
- Focus: global environmental problems (climate change, ozone depletion)
- Actors: large segments of society
- Debate: globalization, environment and development
- Policy focus: international cooperation
, - Geography: all countries
- Key concept: sustainable development
o Brundtland report (our common future)
Aimed to show environmental protection and development
Produced iconic sustainable development definition
Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the
ability of future generations to meet their own needs
Concept of needs, in particular the essential needs of the world’s poor, to which
overriding priority should be given
The idea of limitations imposed by state of technology and social organization on the
environment’s ability to meet present and future needs
Sustainable development: core ideas
1. Environment-economy integration
2. Futurity: concern about future generations
3. Environmental protection
4. Equity: inter and intra-generational equity
5. Quality of life: prosperity is not just economic growth
6. Participation: participation in decision-making
Sustainable-development: critiques
- Oxymoron – contradiction in terms (econ. development on finite Earth is impossible)
- Conceptual malleability: can be used to justify almost any activity
- Critique of core ideas:
o Environment-economy integration: extent of trade-offs?
o Futurity: what sacrifices from current generation required?
o Environmental protection: nature of environmental protection? (anthropocentric – eco-centric
continuum)
o Equity: desert (what people deserve), merit of needs? Clash with futurity idea?
o Quality of life: how to define and measure?
o Participation: what role of states, business and civil society?
Alternatives:
1. Self-reliant communities which recognize the intrinsic value of nature
2. Sustainable development cannot be achieved without fundamental reassessment and restructuring of
values, practices and institutions
Has the wave of sustainable development come to an end?
- Possible directions:
o Ecological modernisation?
Developed as response to neo-marxist environmental theorisation (anti-capitalist)
Economic development and environmental protection are not mutually exclusive
Environment-economy integration possible within a (green) capitalist)
framework
Reform of core institutions is needed: state, market and civil society
o Green economy?
Book ‘blueprint for a green economy’
Prominent theme at rio+20 (2012), in response to global financial crisis
UNEP definition:
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