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Environmental Policy Analysis and Practice
Pressing environmental challenges are frequently surrounded with stakeholders on all sides of the issues. Opinions expressed by government agencies, the private sector, special interests, nonprofit communities, and the media, among others can quickly cloud the dialogue, leaving one to wonder how policy decisions actually come about.
InEnvironmental Policy Analysis and Practice, Michael R. Greenberg cuts through the complicated layers of bureaucracy, science, and the public interest to show how all policy considerations can be broken down according to six specific factors: 1) the reaction of elected government officials, 2) the reactions of the public and special interests, 3) knowledge developed by scientists and engineers, 4) economics, 5) ethical imperatives, and 6) time pressure to make a decision.
The book is organized into two parts, with the first part defining and illustrating each one of these criteria. Greenberg draws on examples such as nuclear power, pesticides, brownfield redevelopment, gasoline additives, and environmental cancer, but focuses onhowthese subjects can be analyzed rather than exclusively on the issues themselves. Part two goes on to describe a set of over twenty tools that are used widely in policy analysis, including risk assessment, environmental impact analysis, public opinion surveys, cost-benefit analysis, and others. These tools are described and then illustrated with examples from part one.
Weaving together an impressive combination of practical advice and engaging first person accounts from government officials, administrators, and leaders in the fields of public health and medicine, this clearly written volume is poised to become a leading text in environmental policy.
eBook
Rethinking private authority
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
eBook
Consumption-based GHG emission accounting: a UK case study
Global GHG emissions continue to rise, with nearly a quarter of it due to trade that is not currently captured within global climate policy. In the context of current trade patterns and limited global cooperation on climate change, the feasibility of consumption-based emissions accounting to contribute to a more comprehensive (national) policy framework in the UK is investigated. Consumption-based emissions results for the UK from a range of models are presented, their technical robustness is assessed, and their potential application in national climate policy is examined using examples of policies designed to reduce carbon leakage and to address high levels of consumption. It is shown that there is a need to include consumption-based emissions as a complementary indicator to the current approach of measuring territorial emissions. Methods are shown to be robust enough to measure progress on climate change and develop and inform mitigation policy. Finally, some suggestions are made for future policy-oriented research in the area of consumption-based accounting that will facilitate its application to policy. Policy relevance Emissions embodied in trade are rapidly increasing and there is thus a growing gap between production emissions and the emissions associated with consumption. This is a growing concern due to the absence of a global cap and significant variation in country-level mitigation ambitions. Robust measurements of consumption-based emissions are possible and provide new insights into policy options. This includes trade-related policy (e.g. border carbon adjustments) and domestic policies (e.g. resource efficiency strategies). As climate policy targets deepen, there is a need for a broad range of policy options in addition to production and technological solutions. Consumption-based emissions are complementary to production-based emissions inventories, which are still the most accurate estimate for aggregated emissions at the global level. However, without consumption-based approaches, territorial emissions alone will not provide a complete picture of progress in regional and national emissions reduction.
Journal Article
Weather, Climate and Total Factor Productivity
Recently it has been hypothesized that climate change will affect total factor productivity growth. Given the importance of TFP for long-run economic growth, if true this would entail a substantial upward revision of current impact estimates. Using macro TFP data from a recently developed dataset in the Penn World Table, we test this hypothesis by directly examining the nature of the relationship between annual temperature shocks and TFP growth rates in the period 1960–2006. The results show a negative relationship only exists in poor countries, where a 1 °C annual increase in temperature decreases TFP growth rates by about 1.1–1.8 percentage points, whereas the impact is indistinguishable from zero in rich countries. Extrapolating from weather to climate, the possibility of dynamic effects of climate change in poor countries increases concerns over the distributional issues of future impacts and, from a policy perspective, restates the case for complementarity between climate policy and poverty reduction.
Journal Article
An Empirical Study of the Impact of Corruption on Environmental Performance: Evidence from Panel Data
This paper extends the empirical debate on the effects of corruption on environmental degradation by considering a recently available measure of environmental quality, the Environmental Performance Index. This indicator is more comprehensive than the measures of air pollutant emissions commonly used in the literature and, in particular, can also capture the impact of pollution on human health. This allows for a better understanding of the actual effects of a wide range of human activities on the ecosystem. From a panel data analysis, two regularities emerge. First, corruption deteriorates the overall environmental quality. This effect is robust and persistent. Second, our findings highlight the improvement of environmental quality as income rises, even at an initial level of development. This is not in contradiction with the EKC hypothesis because an increase in income levels provides positive externalities on the whole environmental quality by compensating the mere negative effects induced by industrialization on the emission levels. As a consequence, in emerging economies, policies fighting corruption and enhancing development are very likely to improve the environmental performances.
Journal Article
The Climate Actions and Policies Measurement Framework: A Database to Monitor and Assess Countries’ Mitigation Action
There are major gaps in the measurement of the adoption and stringency of countries’ climate actions and policies, notably in a manner coherent across countries, time, sectors, and instrument types. The Climate Actions and Policies Measurement Framework (CAPMF) aims to fill this gap. It is the most extensive structured and internationally harmonised climate mitigation policy database available to date. Currently, it comprises 130 policy variables, grouped into 56 policy instruments and other climate actions, covering 50 countries and the EU-27 as a block for the period 1990–2022. Results indicate that countries strengthened their climate action between 1990 and 2022 in terms of policy adoption and policy stringency, although at different paces. Policy adoption, policy stringency and policy mixes changed over time and differ substantially across countries and country groups. Importantly, regression analysis suggests a significant relationship between stronger climate action and greater emission reductions. Mitigation policies helped reduce emissions by about 12% in the last 5 years; most of this effect is attributable to a reduction in the energy intensity of the economy, and only residually to other factors such as a reduction of GHG intensity.
Journal Article
Climate-resilient strategies for sustainable management of water resources and agriculture
Warming of the earth is considered as the major adverse effect of climate change along with other abnormalities such as non-availability of water resources, decreased agriculture production, food security, rise in seawater level, glaciers melting, and loss of biodiversity. Over the years, decreased agriculture production and water quality degradation have been observed due to climatic abnormalities. Crop production is highly sensitive to climate. It gets affected by long-term trends in average rainfall and temperature, annual climate variations, shocks during different stages of growth, and extreme weather events. Globally, the areas sown for the major crops of barley, maize, rice, sorghum, soya bean, and wheat have all seen an increase in the percentage of area affected by drought as defined in terms of the Palmer Drought Severity Index since the 1960s, from approximately 5–10% to approximately 15–25%. Increase in temperature will be observed in terms of wheat yield losses − 5.5 ± 4.4% per degree Celsius for the United States, − 9.1 ± 5.4% per degree Celsius for India, and − 7.8 ± 6.3% per degree Celsius for Russia as these countries are more vulnerable to temperature increase. Water management through increasing storage capacity (or rainwater storage), fair policies for water supply and distribution, river health, and watershed management can reduce the negative effects of climate change on water resource availability. Similarly, climate change-resistant crop development, water management in irrigation, adapting climate-smart agriculture approach, and promoting indigenous knowledge can ensure the food security via increasing agricultural yield. Technical intervention can equip the farmers with the scientific analyses of the climatic parameters required for the sustainable agriculture management. These technologies may include application of software, nutrient management, water management practices, instruments for temperature measurement and soil health analysis etc. Holistic efforts of the stakeholders (farmers, local society, academia, scientists, policy makers, NGOs etc.) can provide better results to reduce the risks of climate change on agriculture and water resources as discussed in this paper.
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Journal Article
The asymmetric effect of environmental policy stringency on CO2 emissions in OECD countries
This paper uses a quantile fixed-effect panel data approach to investigate how environmental policy stringency affects CO
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emissions in a set of 32 countries from 1990 to 2015, using OECD data. This approach allows us to identify the asymmetric impact of policy stringency on emissions, considering the emission level recorded in each analysed country. More precisely, we posit that the effectiveness of environmental regulations and policies is influenced by the air pollution level. Our results show that an increase in policy stringency has a negative impact on emissions and that environmental stringency has a more powerful impact in the countries with lower levels of carbon emissions. In addition, we show that policy stringency measures only became effective after the implementation of the Kyoto agreement, whereas the policy stringency effect is stronger for EU countries at high risk of missing the 20–20-20 target in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. Lastly, policy implications refer to the need to adapt policy stringency measures to emission levels to increase their effectiveness. At the same time, the setting up of emission targets determines policymakers to be more engaged in the fight against carbon emissions.
Journal Article
Social and Cultural Sustainability: Criteria, Indicators, Verifier Variables for Measurement and Maps for Visualization to Support Planning
Policies on economic use of natural resources require considerations to social and cultural values. In order to make those concrete in a planning context, this paper aims to interpret social and cultural criteria, identify indicators, match these with verifier variables and visualize them on maps. Indicators were selected from a review of scholarly work and natural resource policies, and then matched with verifier variables available for Sweden's 290 municipalities. Maps of the spatial distribution of four social and four cultural verifier variables were then produced. Consideration of social and cultural values in the studied natural resource use sectors was limited. The spatial distribution of the verifier variables exhibited a general divide between northwest and south Sweden, and regional rural and urban areas. We conclude that it is possible to identify indicators and match them with verifier variables to support inclusion of social and cultural values in planning.
Journal Article