Envi Policy Readings

Lemos and Agrawal

• governance has moved beyond the state to encompass hybrid partnerships between states, markets, and civil society

• MAFIs

• decentralization and diversification of actors in 21st-century environmental policy

Biermann

• anthropocene realities require a fundamental restructuring of environmental policy toward earth system governance

• re-frames environmental policy away from national resource management toward global system stewardship

Pinchot

• utilitarian environmentalism/conservation

• US Forest Agency

  • allow people to use forest materials, but regulations on the amount

• where is the threshold of sustainability?

• still exploitation of nature

• limited scientific research

Muir

• intrinsic/preservation

• spiritual connection to nature

• 1964 Wilderness Act

  • protected national parks, cannot build or use their resources

• can hinder from advancing or developing

• can you preserve when some land have native people? —> who exploit these places

Bruskotter et al

• farmers will push back against regulations that protect wolves

• Endangered Species Act

• public support for endangered species law

• political challenges in statutory execution

Berkes

• community-based conservation

• both institutions and communities should coexist and work together to help the environment

  • ex. local communities knowledge of their area, and conserve it. institutions should reach out and learn from them, and benefit in their policymaking

Berry et al

• conserve biodiversity → ecosystem services

• “fortress” conservation

  • creating an area that is protected

  • what if these areas have native people?

    • shifts to an institution in terms of policy, so conservation can work in people are there

Hayes and Ostrom

• protection does not mean it is effectively protecting

• acknowledge the importance of community based initiatives and NGOs, but not powerful enough to preserve biodiversity

• *right conditions*

Abbott and Snidal

• why we need IOs?

  • problems cross borders

1. centralization

2. independence

• look at problem from all angles

• not all countries have the same political ideology

• will not likely compromise, want to do what they want

Haas

• why we need conferences

  • all countries participate

  • show what works, what fails

• limitations

  • not every conference changes something

  • still creates a space to discuss and face the problem

Falkner

• private authority and corporate standards create real governance rules without direct state treaty enforcement

  • the role of corporation in setting global rules

Kamat

• NGOs need participation to be successful

• good at creating norms that spread quickly

• if the NGO is challenging the government, they can cut their funds, and funds certain NGOs that agree with them

• NGOs need to be analyzed because they might have some hidden agendas

Eckersley

• “The Big Chill”

  • the country with more power will win

  • WTO win most of the time → companies want to focus on the economy more

  • MEAs are less powerful and more limited

  • nations fear facing economic penalties leads to weaker, more conservative MEAs

Heras and Gupta

• GN and GS are more complex than told, but are important to understand

• global environmental governance is driven by GN power imbalances rather than a shared, equal “unified humanity”

Roberts and Parks

structural inequality

1. ecologically unequal exchange

   1. GS produces less, faces the consequences

2. ecological debt

   1. GN exploits GS for resources, GN in debt to the GS

3. climate justice

   1. are we paying out dues to the GS?

• not only a collective-action problem, but also a disruptive conflict

Kaiser

governance inequality

• should have NGOs and firms making decisions, not just one government

• more actors ≠ more equality

• geography of governance remains in the GN

  • GN has more resources to bring people together

  • have more power, so can control most of the action