A decade of climate change negotiations almost ended in failure because of the different policy approaches of the industrialized states. Japan, Germany, and the United States exemplify the deep ...divisions that exist among states in their approaches to environmental protection. Germany is following what could be called the green social welfare state approach to environmental protection, which is increasingly guided by what is known as the precautionary principle. In contrast, the US is increasingly leaning away from the use of environmental regulations, towards the use of market-based mechanisms to control pollution and cost-benefit analysis to determine when environmental protection should take precedence over economic activities. Internal political divisions mean that Japan sits uneasily between these two approaches. Miranda A. Schreurs uses a variety of case studies to explore why these different policy approaches emerged and what their implications are, examining the differing ideas, actors, and institutions in each state.
The global governance of climate change is in flux. Conventional strategies of addressing climate change through universal, interstate negotiations--the most prominent of which is the Kyoto ...Protocol--have been stymied by the gaps that exist between the negotiating powers of states, rendering such initiatives stagnant and ineffectual. In response, a number of new actors and processes have begun to challenge the traditionally exclusive authority of nation-states to create rules and manage environmental problems via multi-national treaties. Dozens of innovative climate response initiatives, or "governance experiments," have emerged at multiple levels of politics and across multiple jurisdictions: individuals, cities, states/provinces, corporations, and even new multilateral initiatives. Climate Governance at the Crossroads explains how and why these new governance experiments have emerged, drawing upon a database of such initiatives to ascertain how these initiatives fit together and how they influence what is defined as environmental governance. In assessing the relational impact of these initiatives (whether they complement each other or clash; whether they can be scaled up or down; and whether they can be expanded beyond their current jurisdictional and geographic boundaries), Matthew Hoffmann provides insight into whether this experimentation is likely to result in an effective response to climate change. Additionally, he draws broader conclusions about how we understand global governance, addressing questions of how we understand authority and what we accept as modes of rule-making in global political spaces. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/politicalscience/9780195390087/toc.html
The world currently faces several severe social and environmental crises, including economic under-development, widespread poverty and hunger, lack of safe drinking water for one-sixth of the world's ...population, deforestation, rapidly increasing levels of pollution and waste, dramatic declines in soil fertility and biodiversity, and global warming.Inequality, Democracy, and the Environmentsheds light on the structural causes of these and other social and environmental crises, highlighting in particular the key role that elite-controlled organizations, institutions, and networks play in creating these crises.
Liam Downey focuses on four topics-globalization, agriculture, mining, and U.S. energy and military policy-to show how organizational and institutional inequality and elite-controlled organizational networks produce environmental degradation and social harm. He focuses on key institutions like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. Military and the World Trade Organization to show how specific policies are conceived and enacted in order to further elite goals. Ultimately, Downey lays out a path for environmental social scientists and environmentalists to better understand and help solve the world's myriad social and environmental crises.Inequality, Democracy and the Environmentpresents a passionate exposé of the true role inequality, undemocratic institutions and organizational power play in harming people and the environment.
The Politics of Precautionexamines the politics of consumer and environmental risk regulation in the United States and Europe over the last five decades, explaining why America and Europe have often ...regulated a wide range of similar risks differently. It finds that between 1960 and 1990, American health, safety, and environmental regulations were more stringent, risk averse, comprehensive, and innovative than those adopted in Europe. But since around 1990, the book shows, global regulatory leadership has shifted to Europe. What explains this striking reversal?
David Vogel takes an in-depth, comparative look at European and American policies toward a range of consumer and environmental risks, including vehicle air pollution, ozone depletion, climate change, beef and milk hormones, genetically modified agriculture, antibiotics in animal feed, pesticides, cosmetic safety, and hazardous substances in electronic products. He traces how concerns over such risks--and pressure on political leaders to do something about them--have risen among the European public but declined among Americans. Vogel explores how policymakers in Europe have grown supportive of more stringent regulations while those in the United States have become sharply polarized along partisan lines. And as European policymakers have grown more willing to regulate risks on precautionary grounds, increasingly skeptical American policymakers have called for higher levels of scientific certainty before imposing additional regulatory controls on business.
Over the course of nearly thirty years, the environmental justice movement has changed the politics of environmental activism and influenced environmental policy. In the process, it has turned the ...attention of environmental activists and regulatory agencies to issues of pollution, toxics, and human health as they affect ordinary people, especially people of color. This book argues that the environmental justice movement has also begun to transform science and engineering. The chapters present case studies of technical experts' encounters with environmental justice activists and issues, exploring the transformative potential of these interactions. Technoscience and Environmental Justice first examines the scientific practices and identities of technical experts who work with environmental justice organizations, whether by becoming activists themselves or by sharing scientific information with communities. It then explore scientists' and engineers' activities in such mainstream scientific institutions as regulatory agencies and universities, where environmental justice concerns have been (partially) institutionalized as a response to environmental justice activism. All of the chapters grapple with the difficulty of transformation that experts face, but the studies also show how environmental justice activism has created opportunities for changing technical practices and, in a few cases, has even accomplished significant transformations.The hardcover edition does not include a dust jacket.
Why is climate change the subject of such vehement political rhetoric in the United States? What explains the policy deadlock that has existed for nearly two decades-and that has resulted in the ...failure of US leadership in the international arena? Addressing these questions, Glen Sussman and Byron Daynes trace the evolution of US climate change policy, assess how key players-the scientific community, Congress, the president, the judiciary, interest groups, the states, and the public-have responded to climate change, and explore the prospects for effective policymaking in the future.
Rethinking Private Authorityexamines the role of non-state actors in global environmental politics, arguing that a fuller understanding of their role requires a new way of conceptualizing private ...authority. Jessica Green identifies two distinct forms of private authority--one in which states delegate authority to private actors, and another in which entrepreneurial actors generate their own rules, persuading others to adopt them.
Drawing on a wealth of empirical evidence spanning a century of environmental rule making, Green shows how the delegation of authority to private actors has played a small but consistent role in multilateral environmental agreements over the past fifty years, largely in the area of treaty implementation. This contrasts with entrepreneurial authority, where most private environmental rules have been created in the past two decades. Green traces how this dynamic and fast-growing form of private authority is becoming increasingly common in areas ranging from organic food to green building practices to sustainable tourism. She persuasively argues that the configuration of state preferences and the existing institutional landscape are paramount to explaining why private authority emerges and assumes the form that it does. In-depth cases on climate change provide evidence for her arguments.
Groundbreaking in scope,Rethinking Private Authoritydemonstrates that authority in world politics is diffused across multiple levels and diverse actors, and it offers a more complete picture of how private actors are helping to shape our response to today's most pressing environmental problems
Federal agencies have taken steps to include the public in a wide range of environmental decisions. Although some form of public participation is often required by law, agencies usually have broad ...discretion about the extent of that involvement. Approaches vary widely, from holding public information-gathering meetings to forming advisory groups to actively including citizens in making and implementing decisions.
Proponents of public participation argue that those who must live with the outcome of an environmental decision should have some influence on it. Critics maintain that public participation slows decision making and can lower its quality by including people unfamiliar with the science involved.
This book concludes that, when done correctly, public participation improves the quality of federal agencies' decisions about the environment. Well-managed public involvement also increases the legitimacy of decisions in the eyes of those affected by them, which makes it more likely that the decisions will be implemented effectively. This book recommends that agencies recognize public participation as valuable to their objectives, not just as a formality required by the law. It details principles and approaches agencies can use to successfully involve the public.
Growing green Deichmann, Uwe; Zhang, Fan
2013., 2013, 04-15-2013, 2013-04-12, 2015-03-18, 20130401
eBook, Book
Open access
In the first post-transition decade after the fall of communism, Europe and Central Asia (ECA) moved its economy from plan to market. In the second decade, the 2000s, it moved from social division to ...inclusion. The region has an opportunity to use the third decade, the 2010s, to move from brown to green growth making production and consumption more sustainable, increasing quality of life, and reducing impacts on the climate. Lowering climate change risks in ECA will involve many different actions that fall broadly into three areas: Some, like energy efficiency improvements, are often economically beneficial regardless of climate concerns. Others, like creating a good business environment for green enterprises, are investments that create new growth opportunities. Finally, actions like expanding wind and solar energy will have net costs for some time but are essential to tackling climate change. A simple framework helps guide climate action. The priorities are to use energy more efficiently, use cleaner energy, and manage natural resources better. Although price instruments like carbon or energy taxes tend to be most effective, climate action will also require regulations and investments such as fuel efficiency standards or research and development spending. Complementary growth, social, and environmental policies promote the broader benefits of climate action while limiting its costs. This report will show that climate action in ECA will benefit from rapid progress in three main areas: (a) large improvements in energy efficiency; (b) a shift to cleaner energy systems that will also improve local health and energy security; and (c) better management of green natural resources that will make the countries more economically productive while keeping more carbon out of the atmosphere.
