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PSCI 3201 Environmental Policy 11/27/07

PSCI 3201 Environmental Policy 11/27/07. NEPA, cont’d Historic importance Contemporary significance: Environmental impact statements (EIS) Critique of NEPA Political bargaining Role of Congress in environmental policy. National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)

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PSCI 3201 Environmental Policy 11/27/07

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  1. PSCI 3201 Environmental Policy11/27/07 • NEPA, cont’d • Historic importance • Contemporary significance: Environmental impact statements (EIS) • Critique of NEPA • Political bargaining • Role of Congress in environmental policy

  2. National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) Major Elements in the Historic Enactment: Title I, Congressional Declaration of National Environmental Policy Sec. 101. Policy Statement Sec. 102. Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) required for all federal actions affecting the human environment Title II, Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ)

  3. NEPA: Title I CONGRESSIONAL DECLARATION OF NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY Sec. 102 [42 USC § 4331].Environmental Impact Statements. Required environmental assessments of all federal projects An EIS would : utilize a systematic, interdisciplinary approach, including natural and social sciences consider “presently unquantified environmental amenities and values” (ie, qualitative in addition to quantitative) Consider a wide variety of impacts and alternatives to the proposed action

  4. NEPA: Title II COUNCIL ON ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY Establishment of the CEQ Sec. 201 [42 USC § 4341]. Environmental Quality Report Sec. 202 – 209. Established the CEQ in the Executive Office of the President

  5. NEPA: Historically significant for – • National environmental policy statement • Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) • Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ)

  6. Most important aspect of NEPA today? Environmental impact statements

  7. Contemporary Significance of NEPA: Environmental impact statements (EIS) The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires federal agencies to integrate environmental values into their decision making processes by considering the environmental impacts of their proposed actions and reasonable alternatives to those actions. To meet this requirement, federal agencies prepare a detailed statement known as an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). EPA reviews and comments on EISs prepared by other federal agencies, maintains a national filing system for all EISs, and assures that its own actions comply with NEPA. [From the EPA website: http://www.epa.gov/compliance/nepa/index.html]

  8. Assessing NEPA • EIS’s designed as an antidote to the lack of science in decision making • However, EIS’s seen as cumbersome; not very valuable as decision tools • Why? • Interest groups learned to use the process to their purposes • Volumes of information produce with the result of information overload • Science (or the assessment of environmental impacts) not decisive

  9. MODELS OF POLITICAL BARGAINING (Or what we can learn from arm wrestling) Win-Lose Model Stalemate Model Win-Win Model

  10. Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In • (Harvard Negotiation Project) • Arm wrestling: positional bargaining • Participants are adversaries • The goal is victory • Demand concessions • Demand one-sided gains • Insist on your position • Try to win a contest of will • Apply pressure

  11. Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In • (Harvard Negotiation Project) • Arm wrestling: positional bargaining • Alternative: negotiating on the merits (or principled negotiation) • Separate the people from the problem • Focus on interests, not positions • Generate a variety of possibilities before • deciding what to do • Insist that the result be based on some • objective standard

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