ESC110 Chapter FifteenEnvironmental Science and Policy

Chapter Fifteen Reading Objectives

At the end of this lesson, you should be able to

• understand how adaptive and precautionary principles can help us make decisions in "wicked" problems where scientific evidence is incomplete or contradictory;

• be aware of goals and opportunities in environmental education and careers;

• summarize the cycle by which policy is established;

• describe the path of a bill through the legislature;

• recognize the differences among civil, criminal, and administrative law;

• judge the effectiveness of litigation in environmental issues;

• consider the reasons that international treaties have or have not been successful;

• scrutinize collaborative, community-based planning methods; and,

• compare radical and mainline environmental groups and the tactics they employ to bring about social change

Required ReadingsCunningham & Cunningham, Chapter Fifteen Principles of Ecology: Matter, Energy, and Life

Chapter Fifteen Key Terms

adaptive management see page 346 of text

agency rule-making 357

arbitration 361

case law 356

citizen science 350

community-based planning 361

criminal law 356

environmental law 353

environmental literacy 348

environmental policy 350

federal laws (statues) 353

international treaties and conventions 359

legal standing 356

lobbying 354

mediation 361

National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) 352

nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) 366

policy cycle 350

precautionary principle 347

reasoned judgment 362

Strategic Lawsuits against Political Participation (SLAPP) 357

"wicked" problems 347

Chapter Fifteen Topics

• Citizen Science• Making Decisions in an Uncertain World • Environmental Education• Environmental Policy• Environmental Law• International Treaties and Conventions• Dispute Resolution and Community-Based

Planning• Citizen Participation• Collective Action

PART 1: MAKING DECISIONS IN AN UNCERTAIN WORLD

• More than 1.3 billion people live in acute poverty.

• For developing countries air pollution is high due to use of dirty fuels.

• Water pollution creates sanitation problems.

• Health effects of exposure to hazardous chemicals are widespread

Adaptive Management

• Adaptive management means "learning by doing". It is a solutions approach designed to test clearly formulated hypotheses about the actions being taken.

• Policies are designed from the outset to use scientific principles to examine alternatives and assess outcomes.

• The goal of adaptive management is to enable us to live with the unexpected.

• Ecological, social, and economic impacts of our actions are considered equally important with the sheer availability or market cost of a commodity.

• Wicked Environmental Problems – These are problems that tend to be intractable because

they are nested within sets of interlocking issues.– With wicked problems there is often poor match between

bearers of costs and bearers of benefits. – There are no value-free objective answers such that the

best approach is often consensus building.

•Four Basic Tenets of the Precautionary Principle–People have a duty to take anticipatory steps to prevent harm.–Burden of proof with new technologies lies with its proponents.–Full range of alternatives must be examined before using a new technology.–Decision making must be open, informed, and democratic and include the affected parties.

PART 2: ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION

• National Environmental Education Act• Environmental topics can and should be incorporated into

reading, writing, arithmetic, and every other part of education.• Environmental literacy called for by William K. Reilly (EPA

administrator). The broad goals for this curriculum are:– Improve understanding among the general public of natural and

built environments and the relationships between human and their environment.

– Encourage postsecondary students to pursue environmental careers.

• Environmental careers - many interesting and well-paid jobs are opening up in environmental fields.

• Citizen science projects are ones in which ordinary people work with established scientists to answer scientific questions

Left - Coastal Cleanup Following an Alaskan Oil Spill.

Right - 1999 Battle for Seattle Protests against The World Trade Organization.

PART 3: ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY

Environmental policy is the official rules and regulations concerning the environment that are adopted, implemented, and enforced by some government agency, as well as general public opinion about environmental issues.•Politics as Power - Politics is a struggle among competing interest groups as they strive to shape public policy to suit their own agendas. Interests with the most money and influence often win out.•Rational Choice - In choosing between policy alternatives, preference should be given to those with the greatest cumulative welfare and the least negative impacts.

Arguments Against Rational Choice

• Conflicting views are not comparable.• Few agreed-upon broad social goals.• Policymakers not motivated by societal goals.• Large investments create path dependence.• Uncertainty drives policy makers toward past.• Costs and benefits difficult to calculate.• Segmented nature of large bureaucracies.

Environmental Policy Formulation and Decision Making

The PolicyCycle

•The policy cycle acts to continually define and refine the public agenda. One big obstacle to good policy is getting a problem noticed in the age of ever-increasing volume and tenor of shocking news. In such cases does rhetoric help or harm? ?

Public Interest Groups

• Public interest groups often lack direct access to corridors of power.

• Tools they use to gain access include dramatic protests, media events, threats, sensational claims

NEPA and EIS

Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) must contain:– Purpose and need for project.– Alternative to proposed action.– Statement of positive and negative

impacts of the proposed activities.

•National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA(1970)

–Authorizes Council on Environmental Quality as the oversight board.–Directs federal agencies to take environmental consequences into account during decision making.–Requires an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for every federal project having significant environmental impact.

A Federally Funded Dam Project Such As This One Would Now Require an Environmental Impact Statement Before Construction Starts.

PART 4: ENVIRONMENTAL LAW• Environmental law includes

official rules, decisions and actions involving environmental quality, natural resources and ecological sustainability. It can be established and modified in each of the 3 branches of government.

• Levels range from local to national levels.

• International environmental issues involve dealing mostly with treaties between countries.

• Statutory Law: The Legislative Branch– Federal laws (statutes) are enacted by Congress and signed by the

President.– After introduction, each bill is referred to a committee or sub-

committee for hearings and debate.– Language is modified, multiple bills may be combined, and overall

bill is passed on to full committee. – A bill succeeding in full committee is reported to full House or

Senate for a floor debate.– Amendments are proposed at each stage.– House and Senate versions are often different, and must be sent to

conference committee to meld differences.– A bill then goes back to House and Senate for confirmation.– Finally it is passed on to the President for signature or veto.– Bill becomes law with signature or, if vetoed, Congress can

override the veto.– If bill is not signed or vetoed by President within 10 days, it will

become law.

Judicial or case law establishes environmental law by ruling on constitutionality of statutes and interpreting their meaning.

Legal Standing (showing you personally suffer) is determined before participants have a right to initiate an action.

• Criminal Law derives from federal and state statues that prohibit wrongs against the state or society.– Charges are always initiated by a government prosecutor. Guilt or

innocence of defendant determined by a jury of peers.– The EPA now has a criminal branch.

• Civil Law is defined by a body of laws regulating relations between individuals or corporations.– Burden of proof lies with prosecution. Guilt or innocence based

on whether the defendant could reasonably have anticipated and avoided the offense.

– Purpose of civil suit may be an injunction from the actions of an individual or corporation.

SLAPP

• Strategic Lawsuits Against Political Participation is the practice of suing citizens who criticize businesses or government agencies over environmental issues. Legal defense costs can be exorbitant, thus driving the plaintiff from the playing field. Often these preemptive corporate strikes are groundless and ultimately dismissed, yet they succeed in diverting attention from the original environmental issue.

Administrative Law: The Executive Branch

•Most federal executive agencies are under the jurisdiction of cabinet-level departments.•More than 100 federal agencies and thousands of state and local bodies have environmental oversight.

–Federal agencies often delegate power to a matching state agency to decentralize authority.

Cabinet Level Regulatory Agencies• The EPA and the Departments of Interior, Agriculture and Labor

are cabinet level agencies• EPA - Primary agency with responsibility for protecting

environmental quality.• Department of Interior (Natural Resources) administers:

– National Park Service– Bureau of Land Management– US Fish and Wildlife Service

• Department of Agriculture– US Forest Service

• Department of Labor– Occupational Health and Safety Agency (OSHA)

• There is a vested interest problem in that workers moving back and forth between industry and government.

The Executive Branch

PART 5: INTERNATIONAL TREATIES AND CONVENTIONS

Environmental Treaties• Many environmental treaties

constitute little more than vague good intentions.

• No enforcement power means environmental change is based on a reliance on moral persuasion and public embarrassment.

• Trade sanctions can be an effective tool to compel compliance with international treaties.

• Trade agreements and organizations that formulate international trade policies can work against environmental protection and social justice. Some consider WTO and NAFTA formed to serve large corporations and, by so doing, avoid labor and environmental regulations.

Additions of Participating Nations to Some Major International Treaties

PART 6: DISPUTE RESOLUTION & COMMUNITY-BASED PLANNING

• Arbitration• Mediation• Community-

based planning

DISPUTE RESOLUTION• Arbitration is a formal dispute resolution, based in a trial-like

setting.– Arbitrator takes a more active role than a judge, and is not

constrained by precedent.• Useful when winning an entire case might be difficult.

• Does not create legally-binding precedent.

• A caveat of this process is that there is less opportunity to appeal should a constituency be unhappy with the resolution.

• Mediation is a process in which disputants are encouraged to come up with a solution on their own.– Useful in complex issues with multiple stakeholders with

different interests.

Collaborative or Community-Based Approaches to Planning

• Community-Based Planning - Incorporates holistic, adaptive, pluralistic approaches.– Collaborative Approaches involve working

with local communities to gain traditional knowledge and to gain local acceptance of management plans.

• Such approaches are especially important in nonlinear, nonequilibrium problems.

PART 7: CITIZEN PARTICIPATION

Right - Trail MaintenanceWith the Washington Trails Association.

Left - Riparian Restoration ProjectBeing Done by Citizen Volunteers

PART 8: COLLECTIVE ACTION

• Student Environmental Groups– Student Environmental Action Coalition– Public Interest Research Groups

• Nonprofit Environmental Organizations– National Wildlife Federation– Sierra Club

• Radical Environmental Groups– Earth First – Sea Shepherd– GreenPeace

• International Nongovernmental Organizations– Greenpeace– Conservation International (debt-for-nature swaps)