Based on the author’s 39 years of teaching environmental policy, working in Washington, and traveling, Comparing Environmental Policies in 16 Countries offers a complete primer in environmental dilemmas and policies from a comparative perspective. The book covers 16 countries according to five themes: participation, interest groups, political parties, governmental structures, and the diplomatic agenda. The author has visited all of the 16 countries and offers original insights on the dynamics of their policies. The author balances theory and practical solutions, comparing policies, highlighting successes and failures, and suggesting best practices. He looks for common features such as the Environmental Decade or response to the Kyoto Protocol. He finds many cases of diffusion such as the impact of Rachel Carson or Jacques Cousteau. The analysis ranges from advanced industrial countries to developing ones. The tone is positive, with facts and ideas conveyed through vignettes Each chapter concludes with highlights of what that country received from others, such as the popularity of Carson’s book or Cousteau’s films, and innovations, such as the idea of a national park or of a green political party. From the theoretical perspective, comparing environmental issues can illuminate other policy areas. Over all, the book demonstrates rapid diffusion among the Western democracies, and slower diffusion to Russia and China.
Featuring an original introduction by the editors, this important collection of essays explores the main issues surrounding the regulation of the environment. The expert contributors illustrate that regulating the environment in the UK is conceptually complex, involves a diverse range of institutions, techniques and methodologies and crosses geographical and national boundaries. In the USA it is more formalised, juridical, adversarial and formally dependent upon legal rules. The articles highlight the fact that despite differences in the UK and the USA's regulatory styles, environmental regulation today has much in common with both traditions.
This comprehensive analysis of key issues in North American environmental policy provides an overview of how the US, Mexico, and Canada differ in their environmental management approaches and capacity levels, and how these differences play into cross-border cooperation on environmental problems. The book offers insights into transboundary cooperation both before and after NAFTA, and presents a framework for making environmental interaction more effective in the future. The book is organized into two parts. The first, more general, section compares the national contexts for environmental management in each country—including economic conditions, sociocultural dynamics, and political decision-making frameworks— and shows how these have led to variations in policy approaches and levels of capacity. The authors argue that effective environmental governance in North America depends on the ability of transboundary institutions to address and mediate these differences. The book's second section illustrates this argument, using four case studies of environmental management in North America: biodiversity and protected areas, air pollution (smog); greenhouse gas reduction, and genetically modified crops.
Where should the United States focus its long-term efforts to improve the nation's environment? What are the nation's most important environmental issues? What role should science and technology play in addressing these issues? Linking Science and Technology to Society's Environmental Goals provides the current thinking and answers to these questions. Based on input from a range of experts and interested individuals, including representatives of industry, government, academia, environmental organizations, and Native American communities, this book urges policymakers to: Use social science and risk assessment to guide decision-making. Monitor environmental changes in a more thorough, consistent, and coordinated manner. Reduce the adverse impact of chemicals on the environment. Move away from the use of fossil fuels. Adopt an environmental approach to engineering that reduces the use of natural resources. Substantially increase our understanding of the relationship between population and consumption. This book will be of special interest to policymakers in government and industry; environmental scientists, engineers, and advocates; and faculty, students, and researchers.
Based on the author‘s 39 years of teaching environmental policy, working in Washington, and traveling, Comparing Environmental Policies in 16 Countries offers a complete primer in environmental dilemmas and policies from a comparative perspective. The book covers 16 countries according to five themes: participation, interest groups, political parti
Over the past decades, governments have gradually adopted more rigorous environmental policies to tackle challenges associated with pressing environmental issues, such as climate change. The ambition of these policies is, however, often tempered by their perceived negative effects on the economy.
Combining the theoretical tools of comparative politics with the substantive concerns of environmental policy, experts explore responses to environmental problems across nations and political systems.
ÔThis path-breaking book, written by three well known experts, makes an extremely valuable contribution to the study of ÒnewÓ environmental policy instruments as well as to much wider theoretical debates about governance, policy innovation, learning and transfer. Drawing on an unrivalled comparative empirical study of five different jurisdictions, it manages to make many new points about issues that many of us thought had already been settled.Õ Ð Martin JŠnicke, Free University of Berlin, and former deputy chair, German Advisory Council on the Environment, Germany ÔMuch more than a study of environmental policy instruments, this book ranges widely and authoritatively over the Ògovernment to governanceÓ debate, theories of policy change, regulation, policy transfer, and policy learning. Its lessons and conclusions are relevant and timely well beyond the European context of its case studies and it will be essential reading for public policy scholars everywhere for some time to come.Õ Ð Jeremy Rayner, University of Saskatchewan, Canada ÔThis book represents a very rare achievement in that it combines detailed and up-to-the-minute empirical analysis of environmental policy over the past four decades, with a sophisticated discussion and critique of current theoretical issues in comparative and policy studies generally. It unfolds with a keen eye towards understanding the temporal dimensions of policy dynamics both in the specific policy field examined but also in terms of testing key analytical concepts. Taken as a whole it provides the most detailed empirical assessment to date of the general Ògovernment to governanceÓ hypothesis, with significant implications for policy and governance studies in general.Õ Ð Michael Howlett, Simon Fraser University, Canada and National University of Singapore ÔThis book fills an important gap in the environmental governance literature, addressing governance at a lower level of abstraction than other texts and examining how it plays out in relation to specific modes and instruments of governing. It also contributes towards governance theory-building efforts through the development of an empirically relevant analytical framework. In so doing it provides a firm underpinning for assessing whether, to what extent and in what ways there has been a transition from government towards governance in environmental policy.Õ Ð Neil Gunningham, Australian National University ÔTheoretically sophisticated and empirically rich, this book provides an overview of the introduction, development, and use of new policy instruments and new modes of environmental governance in the European context, taking into account both national and European Union experiences. This is a welcome addition to the field!Õ Ð Miranda Schreurs, Environmental Policy Research Centre and Free University of Berlin, Germany European governance has witnessed dramatic changes in recent decades. By assessing the use of ÔnewÕ environmental policy instruments in European Union countries including the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands and Austria, this timely book analyses whether traditional forms of top-down government have given way to less hierarchical governance instruments, which rely strongly on societal self-steering and/or market forces. The authors provide important new theoretical insights as well as fresh empirical detail on why, and in what form, these instruments are being adopted within and across different levels of governance, along with analysis of the often-overlooked interactions between the instrument types. Providing important new theoretical insights into the governance debate by combining institutionalist and policy learning/transfer approaches, this book will be invaluable for both undergraduate and postgraduate students. The analytical insights as well as a thorough empirical assessment of the use of environmental policy instruments in practice will prove essential for environmental policy specialists/practitioners.
