The Conceptual Repertoire of Environmental Policy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Meadowcroft ◽  
Daniel J. Fiorino
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Environmental Policy ◽  
Precautionary Principle ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Environmental Security ◽  
Or Management ◽  
Policy Domain ◽  
Management Concepts ◽  
Polluter Pays Principle ◽  
Environmental Concepts

This chapter examines the evolution of concepts used in the environmental policy domain since the emergence of modern environmental governance. It includes a general discussion of environmental concepts including root terms which have generated 'families' of environment-related concepts: 'environment', 'sustainable', 'eco' or 'ecological' and 'green'. This is followed by a discussion of different types of concepts and an examination of concepts that play a particularly important role in structuring the policy realm. Examples here include meso-level analytic or management concepts such as the 'polluter pays principle', 'the precautionary principle', 'ecosystem services', resilience' , 'environmental security', and so on. Finally, the chapter explores the temporal evolution of the conceptual field tracing the evolution of the categories used to think about the environmental domain.

Conceptual Innovation in Environmental Policy

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Policy ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Sustainable Consumption ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Green Economy ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Conceptual Innovation ◽  
Environmental Concepts ◽  
Conceptual Evolution

Concepts are thought categories through which we apprehend the world; they enable, but also constrain, reasoning and debate and serve as building blocks for more elaborate arguments. This book traces the links between conceptual innovation in the environmental sphere and the evolution of environmental policy and discourse. It offers both a broad framework for examining the emergence, evolution, and effects of policy concepts and a detailed analysis of eleven influential environmental concepts. In recent decades, conceptual evolution has been particularly notable in environmental governance, as new problems have emerged and as environmental issues have increasingly intersected with other areas. “Biodiversity,” for example, was unheard of until the late 1980s; “negative carbon emissions” only came into being over the last few years. After a review of concepts and their use in environmental argument, chapters chart the trajectories of a range of environmental concepts: environment, sustainable development, biodiversity, environmental assessment, critical loads, adaptive management, green economy, environmental risk, environmental security, environmental justice, and sustainable consumption. The book provides a valuable resource for scholars and policy makers and also offers a novel introduction to the environmental policy field through the evolution of its conceptual categories. Contributors Richard N. L. Andrews, Karin Bäckstrand, Karen Baehler, Daniel J. Fiorino, Yrjö Haila, Michael E. Kraft, Oluf Langhelle, Judith A. Layzer, James Meadowcroft, Alexis Schulman, Johannes Stripple, Philip J. Vergragt

scholarly journals Achieving Robust and Socially Acceptable Environmental Policy Recommendations: Lessons from Combining the Choice Experiment Method and Institutional Analysis Focused on Cultural Ecosystem Services

Forests ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 484
Author(s):  
Jiří Louda ◽  
Ondřej Vojáček ◽  
Lenka Slavíková
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Environmental Policy ◽  
Choice Experiment ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Institutional Analysis ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Policy Recommendations ◽  
Social Perspectives ◽  
Experiment Method

The reflection of ecosystem services in environmental policy has recently become a key aspect in solving environmental problems occurring as a consequence of their overburdening. However, decision makers often pay attention predominantly to results of quantitative (monetary valuation) methods. This article explores a new way of combining quantitative and qualitative methods that has proven to be a useful practice for achieving better environmental governance. We combine the (quantitative) choice experiment method and (qualitative) institutional analysis as full and equal complements. In our approach, the goal of qualitative institutional analysis is not to verify the adequacy of willingness-to-pay results but rather to better address cultural and social perspectives of society representatives. Such an approach increases the robustness of policy recommendations and their acceptance in comparison with isolated applications of both methods. To verify this general premise, both methods were applied in the territory of the Eastern Ore Mountains in the Czech Republic to capture preferences and attitudes of local stakeholders as well as tourists towards small-scale ecosystems. The results confirm that preference calculations regarding aesthetic values of ecosystems need to be complemented with facts about institutional settings and barriers in order to better address locally relevant recommendations for decision makers, such as the introduction of new economic instruments (e.g., local taxes or entrance fees). The findings of this study can also be considered for governance of larger local, common-pool resources such as (public) forests or protected areas.

Evaluating the efficiency of the environmental security policy in the Russian regions

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 633-649
Author(s):  
G.T. Shkiperova ◽  
P.V. Druzhinin
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Policy ◽  
Russian Federation ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Federal District ◽  
Environmental Security ◽  
Environmental Indicators ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Environmental Situation ◽  
The Russian Federation

Subject. Considering the existing environmental situation, it becomes especially important for the State to regulate the anthropogenic footprint on the environment in the Russian Federation. Current amendments to the legislative framework for environmental security are intended to ensure the innovative development of regions concurrently with a reduction in adverse environmental effects and more active environmental policy. Objectives. The research is to devise methodological tools to evaluate the efficiency of environmental policy in regions. Methods. The research employs qualitative and quantitative methods of economic analysis, including statistical and content analysis, rating, matrix zoning. The dataset proceeds from the Federal State Statistics Service, governmental reports on the current environmental situation and environmental protection in the Russian Federation. Results. We propose our own approach to evaluating the efficiency of environmental policy. It may help trace the correlation between the quality of strategic documents and changes in environmental indicators for a certain period, flag the challenging areas in terms of the environmental policy implementation and outline possible development paths. The approach extends the list of quantification indicators in line with those ones adopted internationally and presented in the Environmental Security Strategy of the Russian Federation up to 2025. We evaluated the efficiency of the environmental policy referring to the regions of the Northwestern Federal District for the period from 2012–2016. Conclusions. Having analyzed the evaluation results, most of the Northwestern regions tend to be controversial and ambivalent in setting environmental goals and achieving them. The findings may prove useful as the analytical and data basis for articulating the environmental and economic policy of the regions.

scholarly journals Resource Scarcity and Sustainability—The Shapes Have Shifted but the Stakes Keep Rising

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 5751
Author(s):  
Alan Randall
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Policy ◽  
Renewable Resource ◽  
Resource Scarcity ◽  
Problem Definition ◽  
Planetary Boundaries ◽  
Strong Sustainability ◽  
Management Concepts ◽  
Special Cases ◽  
Sustainability Theory ◽  
Assimilation Capacity

The objective is to provide an interpretive reading of the literature in resource scarcity and sustainability theory from the nineteenth century to the present time, focusing on shifts that have occurred in problem definition, conceptual framing, research tools applied, findings, and their implications. My reading shows, as one would expect, that the discourse has become more technical and the analysis more sophisticated; special cases have been incorporated into the mainstream of theory; and, where relevant, dynamic formulations have largely supplanted static analysis. However, that is barely scratching the surface. Here, I focus on more fundamental shifts. Exhaustible and renewable resource analyses were incorporated into the mainstream theory of financial and capital markets. Parallels between the resources and environmental spheres were discovered: market failure concepts, fundamental to environmental policy, found applications in the resources sector (e.g., fisheries), and renewable resource management concepts and approaches (e.g., waste assimilation capacity) were adopted in environmental policy. To motivate sustainability theory and assessment, there has been a foundational problem shift from restraining human greed to dealing with risk viewed as chance of harm, and a newfound willingness to look beyond stochastic risk to uncertainty, ambiguity, and gross ignorance. Newtonian dynamics, which seeks a stable equilibrium following a shock, gave way to a new dynamics of complexity that valued resilience in the face of shocks, warned of potential for regime shifts, and focused on the possibility of systemic collapse and recovery, perhaps incomplete. New concepts of sustainability (a safe minimum standard of conservation, the precautionary principle, and planetary boundaries) emerged, along with hybrid approaches such as WS-plus which treats weak sustainability (WS) as the default but may impose strong sustainability restrictions on a few essential but threatened resources. The strong sustainability objective has evolved from maintaining baseline flows of resource services to safety defined as minimizing the chance of irreversible collapse. New tools for management and policy (sustainability indicators and downscaled planetary boundaries) have proliferated, and still struggle to keep up with the emerging understanding of complex systems.

Economic valuation and the commodification of ecosystem services

2011 ◽  
Vol 35 (5) ◽  
pp. 613-628 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Gómez-Baggethun ◽  
Manuel Ruiz-Pérez
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Environmental Policy ◽  
Biodiversity Conservation ◽  
Economic Valuation ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Valuation Of Ecosystem Services ◽  
Equity Of Access ◽  
The Way

In the last decade a growing number of environmental scientists have advocated economic valuation of ecosystem services as a pragmatic short-term strategy to communicate the value of biodiversity in a language that reflects dominant political and economic views. This paper revisits the controversy on economic valuation of ecosystem services in the light of two aspects that are often neglected in ongoing debates. First, the role of the particular institutional setup in which environmental policy and governance is currently embedded in shaping valuation outcomes. Second, the broader economic and sociopolitical processes that have governed the expansion of pricing into previously non-marketed areas of the environment. Our analysis suggests that within the institutional setup and broader sociopolitical processes that have become prominent since the late 1980s economic valuation is likely to pave the way for the commodification of ecosystem services with potentially counterproductive effects in the long term for biodiversity conservation and equity of access to ecosystem services benefits.

Conceptual Innovation and the Future of Environmental Policy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Meadowcroft ◽  
Daniel J. Fiorino
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Policy ◽  
Underlying Structure ◽  
Environmental Equity ◽  
Science And Policy ◽  
Individual Concept ◽  
Policy Domain ◽  
Conceptual Innovation ◽  
The Future ◽  
Environmental Limits

This chapter provides a conclusion to the volume. It begins by synthesising some of the main findings of the eleven individual concept studies. It then considers the light these studies shed on processes of conceptual innovation in the environmental policy domain. Finally, it considers what these cases, and attention to concepts and conceptual innovation more generally, can tell us about the underlying structure and evolution of the environmental policy domain. In particular it discusses four cross-cutting themes which emerge from this enquiry: science and policy, environmental limits, economy and environment, and environmental equity.

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