Environmental Science and Policy

1. Environmental Science and Policy Chapter 15

3. Outline: • Decision Making • Environmental Policy Cycle • NEPA and EIS • Environmental Law • Statutory Law • Case Law • Administrative Law • International Treaties • Dispute Resolution • Collective Action

4. DECISIONS IN AN UNCERTAIN WORLD • Adaptive Management • A solutions approach designed to test clearly formulated hypotheses about the actions being taken. • Learning by doing or adaptive Management ,adopted by natural resource managers • Polices are designed at the outset to utilize scientific principles to examine alternative and assess outcomes.

5. Wicked Problems • Environmental problems tend to be intractable because they are nested within sets of interlocking issues. • Often poor match between bearers of costs and bearers of benefits. • No value-free objective answers. • Best approach comes from community based planning & often consensus building.

6. Precautionary Principle • Four basic precautionary actions. • People have a duty to take anticipatory steps to prevent harm. • Burden of proof of carelessness lies within new technologies,process, activity and not the public. • Full range of alternatives must be examined by people before using a new technology. • Decision must be open, informed, democratic & must include all affected parties.

7. ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION • Broad Goals • 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. • Environ. Science is highly interdisciplinary and integrates information from many fields of study, how the world works and how we should behave as environ citizens.

8. ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY • Environmental Policy - Official rules and regulations concerning the environment that are adopted, implemented, and enforced by a governmental agency. • National Policy e.g Clean Air Act. • The international Policy e.g Convention on International Trade in Endangered species. • Also encompasses public opinion.

9. Environmental Policy

10. The Policy Cycle

11. Political Decision Making • Politics as Power • Politics is a struggle among competing interest groups as they strive to shape public policy to suit their own agendas. • Rational Choice: • No policy should have greater total cost than benefits • In choosing between policy alternatives, preference should be given to those with the greatest cumulative welfare and the least negative impacts.

12. Arguments Against Rational Choice • Conflicting values and needs are not comparable due to lack of information • Few agreed-upon broad social goals (rather benefits on specific group or individual) • Policymakers not motivated by societal goals. • Large investments create sunken costs • Uncertainty drives policy makers toward past. • Costs and benefits difficult to calculate. • Segmented nature of policy making in large bureaucracies makes policy making difficult.

13. NEPA • National Environmental Policy Act (1970) signed by President Nixon: • Authorizes Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) as the oversight board for general environ conditions. • 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 on quality of human environment.

14. EIS (Enviromment Impact Statement) • ESI is one of the most powerful tool in the environment arsenal: • Every EIS must contain: • Purpose and need for project. • Alternative to proposed action. • Statement of positive and negative impacts of the proposed activities. • A final ESI document is often 100’s of pages and takes approx 6-9 months to prepare.

15. ENVIRONMENTAL LAW • Laws that govern environmental quality, natural resources & ecological sustainibility. • 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.

16. Legislative Branch • A bill succeeding in full committee is reported to full House or Senate for a floor debate. • Amendments proposed at each stage. • House and Senate versions are often different, and must be sent to conference committee to meld differences. • Bill goes back to House and Senate for confirmation. • Passed on to President for signature.

17. Case law: The Judicial Branch • Establishes environmental law by ruling on constitutionality of statutes and interpreting their meaning. • Legal Standing :First one must determined if participants have a right to initiate an action.

18. The Judicial Branch • Criminal Law - Derives from federal and state statutes that prohibit wrongs against the state or society. • Charges always initiated by a government prosecutor. • Guilt or innocence of defendant determined by a jury of peers. • Violation of environmental statutes constitutes a criminal offense

19. The Judicial Branch • Civil Law - 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.

20. SLAPP • Strategic Lawsuits Against Political Participation - Practice of suing citizens who criticize businesses or government agencies over environmental issues. • Legal defense costs can be exorbitant.

21. Administrative Law: The Executive Branch • More than 100 federal agencies have environmental oversight. • Federal agencies often delegate power to a matching state agency to decentralize authority. • They usually have power to set rules,adjudicates disputes & investigate misconduct.

22. The Executive Branch

23. Regulatory Agencies • EPA - Primary agency with responsibility for protecting environmental quality in US • Cabinet-level department. • Department of Interior (Natural Resources) • National Park Service • Bureau of Land Management • US Fish and Wildlife Service

24. Regulatory Agencies • Department of Agriculture • US Forest Service • Department of Labor • Occupational Health and Safety Agency (OSHA) • Revolving door with workers moving back and forth between industry and government.

25. INTERNATIONAL TREATIES AND CONVENTIONS • Over past 25 years, more than 170 environmental treaties and conventions have been negotiated initiated to protect our global environment. • Unfortunately many of these environmental treaties are vague and many do not comply due to public embarassment. • Most nations unwilling to give up sovereignty. • International court has no enforcement powers.

26. 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 more interested in resolving the disputes than application of the law.

27. Mediation • 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.

28. Collaborative Approaches to Planning • Community-Based Planning -Incorporates holistic, adaptive, pluralistic approaches. • Collaborative Approaches - Working with local communities to gain traditional knowledge and gain local acceptance of management plans.

29. COLLECTIVE ACTION • Student Environmental Groups • Student Environmental Action Coalition • Public Interest Research Groups, etc. • Mainline Environmental Organization • National Wildlife Federation • Sierra Club,etc. • Radical Environmental Groups • Earth First • Sea Shepherd,etc, • International Nongovernmental Organizations(NGOs) have become powerful aspects of environmental protection.

30. Summary: • Decision Making • Environmental Policy Cycle • NEPA and EIS • Environmental Law • Statutory Law • Case Law • Administrative Law • International Treaties • Dispute Resolution • Collective Action