711

We have looked at the economic system and the roles of natural capital and human capital. This understanding provides us with the tools we need to evaluate different options for monitoring and managing human systems in a way that will result in the least amount of harm to the natural environment. Regulatory tools are also used to bring about the least environmental harm. Ultimately, the goal is freedom from exposure to environmental harm for all the people in the world. This is the final topic of the book: environmental equity.

Learning Objectives

After reading this module you should be able to

Many different techniques and approaches are used to influence how we treat the environment. Sometimes laws and regulations help achieve a certain outcome. Before examining some of the major laws and regulations in the United States and the world, we must familiarize ourselves with an important factor that shapes the way nations approach policy making—how people look at the world.

Environmental Worldviews and Regulatory Approaches

We have seen that the approach a nation takes to the regulation of economic activity and the environment depends in part on that nation’s stage of development. In addition, worldview and attitude toward risk also shape a nation’s approach to economics and the environment.

Worldviews

An environmental worldview is a worldview that encompasses how one thinks the world works; how one views his or her role in the world; and what one believes to be proper environmental behavior. Three types of environmental worldviews dominate: human-centered, life-centered, and Earth-centered.

712

The anthropocentric worldview is a worldview that focuses on human welfare and well-being. In other words, nature has an instrumental value to provide for our needs. There are variations on this human-centered worldview. For example, those who favor a free-market approach to economics are optimistic about the results of unlimited competition and minimal government intervention. The planetary management school, while optimistic that we can solve resource depletion issues with technological innovations, believes that nature requires protection and that government intervention is at times necessary to provide this protection. Stewardship, a subset of the anthropocentric worldview, supports the careful and responsible management and care for Earth and its resources. The stewardship school of thought considers that while the natural world requires protection, it is also our ethical responsibility to be good managers of Earth.

The biocentric worldview is life-centered and holds that humans are just one of many species on Earth, all of which have equal intrinsic value. At the same time, this worldview considers that the ecosystems in which humans live have an instrumental value. There are various positions within the life-centered approach. While some consider that it is our obligation to protect a species, others consider that it is our obligation to protect every living creature.

The ecocentric worldview is Earth-centered. It places equal value on all living organisms and the ecosystems in which they live, and it demands that we consider nature free of any associations with our own existence. This worldview takes various forms. The environmental wisdom school, for example, believes that since resources on Earth are limited, we should adapt our needs to nature rather than adapt nature to our needs. The deep ecology school, meanwhile, insists that humans have no right to interfere with nature and its diversity. Our worldviews determine the decisions we make about our lives, our work, and the way we treat the planet.

Environmental worldviews can play a significant role in the policies a nation considers and how it implements them. For example, a nation that operates on an anthropocentric worldview might not concern itself with how economic activity affects the natural environment. A country with an ecocentric worldview might carefully regulate economic activity in order to protect ecosystems and the species within them. In practice, the policies and regulations of most nations represent a variety of worldviews depending on the particular nation and the specific resource or region of the biosphere that is being affected.

The Precautionary Principle

A nation’s approach to environmental policy and regulation may also be influenced by whether or not it tends to follow the precautionary principle. In Chapter 17 we discussed the precautionary principle, which states that when the results of an action are uncertain—such as the effects caused by the introduction of a compound or chemical—it is better to choose an alternative known to be harmless. In many situations, scientific uncertainty complicates the estimation of the comparative risks of different actions. This is an important part of environmental decision making. In the United States, environmental law and policy has at times treated scientific uncertainty as a reason to discount or downplay scientific evidence of problems in the environment. Industrial and business groups have also used scientific uncertainty as a reason to avoid implementing expensive measures that would mitigate future environmental harms. Those who favor using the precautionary principle argue that if we wait for widespread scientific consensus about the adverse effects of a particular compound or action, we run the risk of creating an environmentally unsustainable and inequitable future.

Critics of the precautionary principle maintain that economic progress and human well-being will be hindered if we wait to use something until we verify that it is completely safe for the environment. There may also be an additional economic cost to waiting, or for choosing alternative means of achieving a goal.

In 1994, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, an organization composed of over 800 government and nongovernmental wildlife organizations, strengthened the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity by publishing guidelines that included applying the precautionary principle as a tool in reaching decisions about the sustainable use of plant and animal species. The guidelines emphasize using the “best science available” in deciding whether to list a species as endangered and whether to ban any activity that could jeopardize that species.

The 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer is an example of the precautionary principle applied to global change. When the protocol was adopted, there was still some scientific uncertainty about the evidence for the effect of CFCs on ozone depletion. You may recall from Chapter 14 that CFCs are chemicals that were used for refrigeration and other commercial applications. Despite the uncertainty about the effect of CFCs on the atmosphere, the protocol recommended eliminating their use. In this case, economic and political factors were balanced with the scientific findings to reach an agreement that CFCs should be phased out over a period of decades rather than immediately. Part of the success of the Montreal Protocol has been credited to the availability of an affordable and fairly effective replacement for CFCs. It has proven much more difficult to find affordable and effective replacements for the fossil fuels we currently use. Therefore, it is less likely that a similar scenario will unfold with respect to a reduction of greenhouse gases.

713

The precautionary principle is a relatively new and important part of environmental policy. It does not recommend or require any specific actions, but it does provide a reminder to environmental policy makers and managers that, in many cases, absolute scientific certainty may come too late when dealing with potentially serious environmental harms.

World Agencies

By considering the variety of worldviews presented earlier, and to the extent a particular country or agency subscribes to the precautionary principle, we can begin to understand more about the decision-making process that influences the various world agencies that have jurisdiction over global environmental issues. Global, national, or personal situations may prompt key beneficial decisions out of a sense of necessity and urgency. After World War II (1939 –1945), leaders of the allied nations agreed to found the United Nations (UN), a global institution dedicated to promoting dialogue among countries with the goal of maintaining world peace. When its charter was ratified in 1945, the UN had 51 member countries; by 2011, it had grown to 193, which is the number of member countries today. Since its establishment, the UN has created many internal agencies and institutions. Four of the many important UN organizations relating to the environment are the United Nations Environment Programme, the World Bank, the World Health Organization, and the United Nations Development Programme.

The United Nations Environment Programme

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is a program of the United Nations responsible for gathering environmental information, conducting research, and assessing environmental problems. Headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, UNEP is also the international agency responsible for negotiating certain environmental treaties. In particular, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), and the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer are three important international treaties UNEP negotiated. The Global Environment Outlook (GEO) reports are prepared under the auspices of UNEP.

The World Bank

The World Bank is a global institution that provides technical and financial assistance to developing countries with the objectives of reducing poverty and promoting growth, especially in the poorest countries. The World Bank cites four goals for economic development: (1) educating government officials and strengthening governments; (2) creating infrastructure; (3) developing financial systems, from microcredit to much larger systems; and (4) combating corruption. Critics of the World Bank maintain that there is too little consideration of environmental and ecological impacts when projects are evaluated and approved.

The World Health Organization

Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, the World Health Organization (WHO) is a global institution dedicated to the improvement of human health by monitoring and assessing health trends and providing medical advice to countries (FIGURE 66.1). It is the group within the UN responsible for human health, including combating the spread of infectious diseases, such as those that are exacerbated by global climate changes. This organization is also responsible for health issues in crises and emergencies created by storms and other natural disasters. The five key objectives of the WHO are: (1) promoting development, which should lead to improved health of individuals; (2) fostering health security to defend against outbreaks of emerging diseases; (3) strengthening health care systems; (4) coordinating and synthesizing health research, information, and evidence; and (5) enhancing partnerships with other organizations.

714

The United Nations Development Programme

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is an international program that operates in 166 countries around the world to advocate change that will help people obtain a better life through development. Headquartered in New York City, UNDP has a primary mission of addressing and facilitating issues of democratic governance, poverty reduction, crisis prevention and recovery, environment and energy issues, and prevention of the spread of HIV/AIDS. UNDP prepares an annual Human Development Report (HDR) that is an extremely useful measurement tool for the status of the human population.

Other Agencies

There are also a great number of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that work on worldwide environmental issues. These include Greenpeace, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, World Wide Fund for Nature (formerly World Wildlife Fund), and Friends of the Earth International.

U.S. Agencies

In January 1969, offshore oil platforms 10 kilometers (6 miles) from Santa Barbara, California, began to leak oil. Roughly 11.4 million liters (3 million gallons) of oil spilled out over the next 11 days and the leak continued throughout the year. This was not the first oil spill during the 1960s, nor the largest, but its proximity to the southern California coast resulted in something new—vast media attention. Daily television news reports of dead seabirds, fish, and marine mammals, as well as large stretches of oil-soaked beaches, shocked the American public and government officials. The Santa Barbara oil spill caused a major shift in federal policy toward incorporating an awareness of how human society affects the environment.

The first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, was partially the result of public reaction to the Santa Barbara oil spill and to other environmental problems that surfaced during the 1960s, such as those documented by Rachel Carson in her book Silent Spring (FIGURE 66.2). Earth Day 1970 is the symbolic birthday of the modern expression of the view that the natural environment and human society are inextricably connected. It also signals the beginning of contemporary environmental policy. Before 1970, environmental policy focused primarily on biological and physical systems as economic resources for an industrial society. After 1970, sound environmental policy expanded to include the idea that economic benefits must be balanced by environmental science, environmental equity, and intergenerational equity—the interests of future generations in a healthy environment.

715

Since the early 1970s, several important U.S. agencies have been created to monitor human impact on the environment as well as to promote environmental and human health.

The Environmental Protection Agency

In 1970, President Richard Nixon signed the bill authorizing the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which oversees all governmental efforts related to the environment including science, research, assessment, and education. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the EPA also writes and develops regulations and works with the Department of Justice and Department of State and U.S. Native American governments to enforce those regulations.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration

Also in 1970, President Nixon signed the act creating the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), an agency of the U.S. Department of Labor that is responsible for the enforcement of health and safety regulations. Its main mission is to prevent injuries, illnesses, and deaths in the workplace. OSHA conducts inspections, workshops, and education efforts to achieve its goals. Limiting exposure to chemicals and pollutants in the workplace is one way that OSHA is involved in environmental protection.

The Department of Energy

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter signed an act creating the Department of Energy (DOE), which advances the energy and economic security of the United States. Among its top goals are scientific discovery, innovation, and environmental responsibility. Within the DOE, the Energy Information Agency gathers data on the use of energy in the United States and elsewhere.

Just as there are agencies, laws, and regulations designed to initiate and enhance sustainability, there are also a number of lenses through which to view the world, and a number of measurements or indexes used to evaluate sustainability. This section introduces some of these measurements and views. Eventually, some or all of these indices may become more directly involved in the measurement and assessment of sustainability.

Measuring Human Status

Despite the variety of economic indicators that are used around the world, there is still a call for a measurement that reports on the status of human beings with the specific goal of covering some of the noneconomic parameters such as levels of health and education. A variety of these are used and we describe two of them here.

The Human Development Index

The human development index (HDI) is a measurement index that combines three basic measures of human status: life expectancy; knowledge and education, as shown in adult literacy rate and educational attainment; and standard of living, as shown in per capita GDP and individual purchasing power. HDI was developed in 1990 by economists from Pakistan, England, and the United States, and it has been used since then by the UNDP in its annual HDR. As an index, HDI serves to rank countries in order of development and determine whether they are developed, developing, or underdeveloped. FIGURE 66.3 shows the range of HDI values and the distribution among countries. As you might expect, most of the developed countries have the highest HDI values.

The Human Poverty Index

The human poverty index (HPI) is a measurement index developed by the United Nations to investigate the proportion of a population suffering from deprivation in a country with a high HDI. This index measures three things: longevity, as indicated by the percentage of the population not expected to live past 40; knowledge, as measured by the adult illiteracy rate; and standard of living, as indicated by the proportion of the population without access to clean water and health services, as well as the percentage of children under 5 years of age who are underweight.

716

The Policy Process in the United States

To be fair and effective, environmental policies should be based on scientific indicators that suggest a certain behavior or action will be best for the environment. When policy makers believe there is adequate understanding of the science, and there is a course of preferred action for states or individuals, they begin a process to develop a policy.

The five basic steps in a policy cycle are problem identification, policy formulation, policy adoption, policy implementation, and policy evaluation. FIGURE 66.4 depicts this process as a circular or reiterative process. As a policy is evaluated, the need for amendment might arise. When an amendment is initiated, it follows roughly the same steps. Many good environmental policies have had numerous amendments. For example, the Clean Air Act has been amended twice, and even the original Clean Air Act of 1970 was actually a modification of earlier clean air legislation.

Legislative Approaches to Encourage Sustainability

United States governmental agencies have tried many ways to protect the environment, promote human safety and welfare and, in some cases, internalize externalities. The command-and-control approach is a strategy for pollution control that involves regulations and enforcement mechanisms. The incentive-based approach constructs financial and other incentives for lowering emissions based on profits and benefits. A combination of both approaches is likely to generate the maximum amount of desired changes.

717

Taxation is a major deterrent used to discourage companies from producing pollution and generating other negative impacts. A green tax is a tax placed on environmentally harmful activities or emissions in an attempt to internalize some of the externalities that may be involved in the life cycle of those activities or products. However, a tax alone may not be sufficient to achieve the desired results. Sometimes rebates or tax credits are given to individuals and businesses purchasing certain items such as energy-efficient appliances or building materials such as windows and doors. Another technique, known as cap-and-trade, is discussed in “Science Applied: Can We Solve the Carbon Crisis Using Cap-and-Trade” on page 730.

In 1996, President Clinton’s Council on Sustainable Development declared that “the essence of sustainable development is the recognition that the pursuit of one set of goals affects others and that we must pursue policies that integrate economic, environmental, and social goals.” The triple bottom line is an approach to sustainability that considers three factors—economic, environmental, and social—when making decisions about business, the economy, and development. FIGURE 66.5 shows that the intersection of these three factors is sustainability. There are many organizations and businesses that place one of these three factors at the top of a priority list. Some businesses strive for economic well-being—a sound financial bottom line—to the exclusion of human welfare or the environment. They may be regarded as successful within certain communities, but the triple bottom line concept emphasizes that to be a true success, there must be adequate treatment of both humans and environment. Paul Hawken, the author of Natural Capitalism, states the objective as, “Leave the world better than you found it, take no more than you need, try not to harm life or the environment, and make amends if you do.”

U.S. Policies for Promoting Sustainability

Of the many regulations that have been established in the last 50 years or so in the United States, there are at least seven important pieces of legislation that may help move the United States toward sustainability. All of these regulations have been discussed in other chapters and are summarized in TABLE 66.1.

The classic environmental dichotomy is “jobs versus the environment.” Those primarily concerned with human well-being ask how we can make demands for environmental improvements when there is so much poverty and injustice in the world. Those primarily concerned with the environment ask how we can focus exclusively on human suffering when an impoverished environment cannot support human health and well-being.

Poverty and Inequity

Approximately one-sixth of the human population— more than one billion people—lives in unsanitary conditions in informal settlements, slums, and shantytowns. Roughly one-sixth of the human population earns less than $1 a day, and one-third earns less than $2 a day. In the last 100 years, as developed countries have increased their GDPs and as many countries have modernized and developed their economies, the disparities between the rich and the poor have become greater. Poverty is simultaneously an issue of human rights, economics, and the environment. Every human has a basic right to survival, well-being, and happiness—all directly threatened by poverty. Indebted individuals and nations are often unable to pay what they owe. In 2005, the 8 major industrial countries of the world, known as the G8, canceled the debt of the 18 poorest countries. From an environmental standpoint, poverty increases overuse of the land, degradation of the water, and incidence of disease.

718

In 2000, the United Nations offered an eight-point resolution listing what its member countries agreed were pressing issues that the world could no longer ignore. The member countries committed to reaching these Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), as outlined in the United Nations’ Millennium Declaration, by 2015:

As of this writing, some countries are well on their way to meeting these goals while others lag far behind. As with environmental laws and their implementation, the distance from resolutions to results is immense, and not all developed countries have committed the resources that they had promised.

One proponent of the UN MDGs was Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Dr. Wangari Maathai (1940–2011) from Kenya (FIGURE 66.6). Dr. Maathai was the founder of the Green Belt Movement, a Kenyan and international environmental organization that empowers women by paying them to plant trees, some of which can be harvested for firewood after a few years. The Green Belt Movement is credited with replanting large expanses of land in East Africa, thereby reducing erosion and improving soil conditions and moisture retention. In addition, the trees that have been replanted, provided that they are not overharvested, offer a renewable source of fuel for cooking. The Green Belt Movement is considered a global sustainability success story promoting both individual human and environmental well-being. Dr. Maathai was also involved in environmental activism to achieve her goals, which sometimes caused her difficulties with certain governmental organizations.

Environmental Justice

The typical North American uses many more resources than the average person in many other parts of the world. This situation is not equitable. The subject of fair distribution of the resources of Earth, known as environmental equity, has received increasing international attention in recent years. Beyond moral objections to inequity, there are concerns about sustainability. We have seen how increased resource use usually increases harm to the environment. As more and more people develop a legitimate desire for better living conditions, the resources of Earth may not be able to support continued consumption at such high levels. Closely related to the equity of resource allocation are questions of the inequitable distribution of pollution and of environmental degradation with their adverse effects on humans and ecosystems. All of these topics fall under the subject of environmental equity.

719

As we discussed in Chapter 16 and elsewhere, African Americans and other minorities in the United States are more likely than Caucasians to live in an area with solid waste incinerators, chemical production plants, and other so-called “dirty” industries. In a number of studies in the 1980s and later, investigators used the distribution of minority residents by postal zip code to relate race and class to the location of hazardous sites. In Atlanta, 83 percent of the African American population lived within the same zip code area as the 94 uncontrolled toxic waste sites, while 60 percent of the whites lived in those areas. In Los Angeles, roughly 60 percent of Hispanics lived in the same areas as the toxic waste sites, while only 35 percent of the white population lived in those areas. One study in five southern states compared the size of specific landfill facilities with the percentage of minorities in the zip code area in which the landfill was located. The study concluded that the largest landfills are located in areas that have the greatest percentage of minorities. An important issue that has not been entirely resolved, and that can vary from case to case, is whether the affected population or the hazardous facility came first to a given area. By knowing which came first, people and organizations attempting to remedy the situation will have a better idea of how to modify existing legislation and regulations to reduce the number of people who live in degraded environments.

More recently, it has become clear that the subjects of disproportionate exposure to environmental hazards were not only African Americans, but all races in lower income brackets. Moreover, the problem was not limited to the United States. The concept was broadened and named environmental justice, which is both a social movement and an academic field of study. Those involved in environmental justice examine whether there is equal enforcement of environmental laws and elimination of disparities—intended or unintended—in the exposure to pollutants and other environmental harms affecting different ethnic and socioeconomic groups within a society. Delegates to the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit in 1991 established 17 principles of environmental justice. Professor Robert Bullard of Texas Southern University has published books and papers in the academic area of environmental justice and has been involved in the social movement as well. He is probably best known for his 1990 book Dumping in Dixie, which demonstrated that minority and lower socioeconomic groups were often the recipients of pollution from dumping of MSW and hazardous wastes. More recently, Professors Paul Mohai of the University of Michigan and Robin Saha of the University of Montana reassessed the unequal distribution of hazardous waste dumping in the United States and found that the situation is actually worse than previously reported. In particular, they believe they have resolved the issue of whether the hazardous waste facility or the lower-socioeconomic and minority population came first to an area. The authors maintain that the minority community in many cases was present first and that the hazardous waste facility, which came later, was specifically targeted to that community.

Individual and Community Action

There are a fair number of people who believe that whether or not governments and private agencies are able to achieve their goals, individuals can and must act to further their own goals of sustaining human existence on the planet. These individuals have begun to make attempts to live a sustainable existence without government incentives, taxes, or other measures. They have begun activities such as calculating their own ecological footprint, carbon footprint, energy footprint, and other metrics to determine how much of an impact they are making on Earth. From this starting point, they have begun to make changes in their consumption, behavior, and lifestyle to reduce that impact. Some people act on their own while others act through groups and organizations. They have adopted a philosophy represented by the saying, “If the people lead, the leaders will follow.” Some individuals have joined together to organize communities centered around philosophies of sustainability.

720

Van Jones, a graduate of Yale Law School, was a community organizer in San Francisco working on civil rights and human justice issues when he decided to combine concerns about the environment and global climate change with the need for creating jobs in cities (FIGURE 66.7). He founded an organization called Green for All and in 2008 published a book titled The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems. The two problems, as he sees it, are global warming and urban poverty. He believes that creating green jobs, such as insulating buildings, constructing wind turbines and solar collectors, and building and operating mass transit systems, will improve the living conditions of some of the poorest people in the nation and reduce our impact on the environment. For Van Jones, this is a win-win solution—people will be employed and our emissions of global greenhouse gases will decrease.

Majora Carter exemplifies another model of how to participate in community activities. She was born and raised in the South Bronx section of New York City and is a Wesleyan University and New York University graduate. She founded a not-for-profit environmental justice organization before forming her own private sector firm. She advocates improving health and quality of life in communities by promoting economic development in a sustainable and environmentally sound way. She has attracted a great deal of attention by creating gardens and greenways in the South Bronx, while at the same time creating all types of employment opportunities, including green jobs.