Emerging Issues in Decentralized Resource Governance: Environmental Federalism, Spillovers, and Linked Socio-Ecological Systems

Spillovers among jurisdictions are ubiquitous and likely to increase with increasing population and consumption, so the centralization or decentralization of environmental governance is of pressing concern in a world of tightly linked socio-ecological systems. Spillovers play a key role in federalism analysis because they tend to reduce benefits from decentralization. Laboratory federalism, a common rationale for decentralization, has not proven successful as a model of local policy innovation. Given a national policy toward a public good, differences in preferences across jurisdictions may push national policy toward a quantity instrument rather than a tax instrument. Finally, the lack of interaction between environmental federalism analysis and studies of adaptive governance and linked complex adaptive systems leaves both literatures incomplete. The increasing urgency of global sustainability issues argues for linking insights from environmental federalism with the literature on linked socio-ecological complex adaptive systems.

Environmental Federalism in a Polarized Era

Environmental policy making and implementation in the United States occurs within a federal system. This system has served its purpose for nearly five decades but is now being challenged by four trends: political polarization in Congress; increasingly divergent state policies; an erosion in federal funding; and federal policy instability. Taking the place of the old, relatively cooperative federalism is an increasingly disruptive federalism. It is time to reexamine the foundations of environmental federalism and the effects of the four challenges on the effectiveness and capacities of the US system. Such efforts to evaluate environmental federalism should account for variations among programs and statutes as well as the effects on policy stability. A benefit of a federal system for environmental protection is its contribution to stability in an era of polarization and conflict.