Environmental Policy Commons^™

Wpa News 113 (2020), World Pheasant Association

Galliformes Specialist Group and Affiliated Societies: Newsletters

WPA News (Winter 2020), number 113

Published by the World Pheasant Association

Texas Landfills: The Need For Administrative Reform Of The Texas Commission On Environmental Quality’S Permitting Process, William Todd Keller Jr.

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming

Artificial Intelligence-Enhanced Decision Support For Informing Global Sustainable Development: A Human-Centric Ai-Thinking Approach, Meng-Leong How, Sin Mei Cheah, Yong-Jiet Chan, Aik Cheow Khor, Eunice Mei Ping Say

CCX Research

Sustainable development is crucial to humanity. Utilization of primary socio-environmental data for analysis is essential for informing decision making by policy makers about sustainability in development. Artificial intelligence (AI)-based approaches are useful for analyzing data. However, it was not easy for people who are not trained in computer science to use AI. The significance and novelty of this paper is that it shows how the use of AI can be democratized via a user-friendly human-centric probabilistic reasoning approach. Using this approach, analysts who are not computer scientists can also use AI to analyze sustainability-related EPI data. Further, this human-centric probabilistic …

Towards A Resilient Future: Federal Policies For Adapting The U.S. Coasts To Climate Change, Samuel Horowitz

Pitzer Senior Theses

Climate change is projected to have a devastating impact on the American coast, yet coastal communities and states have largely failed to prepare for projected impacts. This is in large part due to a lack of resources. This thesis analyzes innovative federal policy mechanisms that will address the current gap between actions and forecasted impacts, and will make U.S. coastal communities more resilient in the face of climate change.

Household Costs And Resistance To Germany's Energy Transition, Roger Karapin

Publications and Research

Germany is an exemplary case of an energy transition from nuclear energy and fossil fuels toward renewables in the electricity sector, but it also demonstrates repeated, increasingly successful counter-mobilization by energy incumbents and their allies. The course for Germany's energy transition was largely set with the adoption of a feed-in tariff law in 1990, but since then the energy transition has been altered by a series of policy-making episodes, each of which was shaped by the outcomes of the previous episodes; there has been a combination of reinforcing and reactive sequences. This article uses policy windows and advocacy coalition theory, …

On Environmental Law, Climate Change, And National Security Law, Mark P. Nevitt

Faculty Articles

This Article offers a new way to think about climate change. Two new climate change assessments—the 2018 Fourth National Climate Assessment (“NCA”) and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Special Report on Climate Change— prominently highlight climate change’s multifaceted national security risks. Indeed, not only is climate change an environmental problem, it also accelerates existing national security threats, acting as both a “threat accelerant” and “catalyst for conflict.” Further, climate change increases the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events while threatening nations’ territorial integrity and sovereignty through rising sea levels. It causes both internal displacement within nations …

Workshop And Side Events Report : Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction: Towards The Development Of A Balanced, Effective And Universal International Agreement, World Maritime University

Reports

No abstract provided.

Rights, Water, And Guardians: How Rights Of Nature Movements Are Reshaping Our Current Environmental Ethics And What These Policies Need To Be Successful, Megan Schmiesing

Pitzer Senior Theses

Giving legal rights to nature is no longer a fringe idea in international environmental law. Rights of Nature movements have gained traction in countries around the world, including Ecuador, Australia, India, Aotearoa New Zealand, and the United States. The act of organizing to recognize legal rights and legal personhood for nature represents a philosophical, moral, and political shift from previous anthropocentric values. Through two case studies in Aotearoa New Zealand and the United States, this thesis examines the policy language and the context and history that led to their creation. The Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Act and …

The Value Of Carbon Sequestration In The Developing World: Making The Economic Case For Tree Planting In Laos, Vongdalone Vongsikeo

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Tree plantations in developing countries are mostly driven by private sectors, mainly to increase forest cover and meet the timber demand. However, research studies on tree plantations in Laos, for instance, show that despite high profitability tree farmers and private companies face many challenges such as low timber quality, low timber selling price and slow plantation expansion. These challenges could be the result of slow policy improvement processes or the lack of basis on the justification of government intervention. This study uses a policy decision tool - a cost-benefit analysis to evaluate social costs and social benefits from private tree …

Intercropping For Water Conservation: Environmental And Economic Implications Of A Sustainable Farming Practice In California's Central Valley, Sophie Baker

Scripps Senior Theses

California’s agricultural sector is the biggest water consumer in the state and faces intense pressure to reduce its overall water usage. Industrialized monoculture systems dominate the industry and often disregard long-term environmental and economic externalities for short-term profit maximization. To maintain longstanding food security and economic stability as well as protect the state’s water supply, it is critical that these systems transition to more sustainable and resilient production mechanisms. As an alternative to monoculture, intercropping affords greater potential to conserve water, protect soil quality, and increase crop yields, among other metrics of sustainability. However, there has been much controversy over …

The Political Viability Of Carbon Pricing: Policy Design And Framing In British Columbia And California, Roger Karapin

Publications and Research

The adoption of climate policies with visible, substantial costs for households is uncommon because of expected political backlash, but British Columbia's carbon tax and California's cap-and-trade program imposed such costs and still survived vigorous opposition. To explain these outcomes, this paper tests hypotheses concerning policy design, framing, energy prices, and elections. It conducts universalizing and variation-finding comparisons across three subcases in the two jurisdictions and uses primary sources to carry out process tracing involving mechanisms of public opinion and elite position taking. The paper finds strong support for the timing of independent energy price changes, exogenous causes of election results, …

Federalism As A Double-Edged Sword: The Slow Energy Transition In The United States, Roger Karapin

Publications and Research

Much literature on federalism and multi-level governance argues that federalist institutional arrangements promote renewable-energy policies. However, the U.S. case supports a different view, that federalism has ambivalent effects. Policy innovation has occurred at the state level and to some extent has led to policy adoption by other states and the federal government, but the extent is limited by the veto power of fossil-fuel interests that are rooted in many state governments and in Congress, buttressed by increasing Republican Party hostility to environmental and climate policy. This argument is supported by a detailed analysis of five periods of federal and state …

Sculpting The Public Land Base Of Northern Minnesota: Past, Present And Future, Lori A. Dowling-Hanson Dr

School of Business Student Theses and Dissertations

Sculpting the Public Land Base in Northern Minnesota Counties: Past, Present and Future. This 3-article dissertation addresses the large public land base in the Arrowhead Region of Northern Minnesota. One fourth of all lands in the state are public lands, with the overwhelming majority located in the Arrowhead Region. These counties have anywhere from 30% to 92% public lands. The region relies heavily on a natural resource economy. Methodology for research includes secondary data analysis from several preexisting research projects and studies. Data was acquired from state auditor government costs of maintaining and managing public lands. Data was also collected …

Towards An Ecocentric Movement?, David Johns

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

An ecocentric movement is one which mobilizes and organizes people to transform, or abolish and replace, existing anthropocentric societies, which seek to dominate the other-than-human world. The instrumentalities of anthropocentric domination will not simply wither away. They must be forcefully dismantled. That dismantling will be neither quick nor easy, and will be met with enormous resistance from those that benefit from domination, and from those that fear change. Only by keeping one’s eyes on the prize – the recovery of biodiversity and the Earth – and not being diverted by other goals, can the prize be attained.

Sustainability, Urban Planning And Development: Sustainable And Self-Reliant Urban Development In Post- Pandemic Nepal, Ambika P. Adhikari, Keshav Bhattarai

Himalayan Research Papers Archive

COVID-19 pandemic is affecting many aspects of the society, economy and the way people live. The pandemic is also disrupting the process of physical planning and development in the cities. It will perhaps permanently change the way planners and policy makers think about the city and plan for its development. The residents and visitors will also find the city to be different from the pre-COVID-19 era. The emerging situation would likely require new ways of moving, working and living in the city, and building the different physical components of the city.

Cities around the world are experiencing varieties of unexpected …

Issues And Perspective On The Covid-19 And Nepal: An Introduction, Ambika P. Adhikari, Basu Sharma

Himalayan Research Papers Archive

Even though Nepal has relatively fewer Covid-19 cases as of 24 September 2020 (about 70,000 cases and more than 450 deaths), the numbers are on the rise. If this trend continues for a while, the likely consequences of the Pandemic would be no less severe than elsewhere. Further, Nepal’s next-door neighbor India is now experiencing a rapid rise in the virus infection rate and virus-related death toll. In fact, as of 24 September, 2020, India is seeing some about six million total Covid-19 cases, and more than 92,000 deaths. As India and Nepal have open borders, and as India is …

Urban Development In Nepal And The Impacts Of Covid-19, Ambika P. Adhikari, Keshav Bhattarai

Himalayan Research Papers Archive

The Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic has created a public health crisis worldwide and is impacting the way we plan and design cities. While much is still being learned about Covid-19, we have seen that the virus spreads quickly and its fatality rate is also significant. The virus has already seriously impacted the global economies and most urban activities.

During pandemics, regular public interactions in the city can be the cause for spread of communicable diseases. In this context, urban planning should include approached to help mitigate the spread of virus. Designs of facilities should help the residents to physically distance themselves …

Energy Development And Production In The Great Plains: Implications And Mitigation Opportunities, Jacqueline P. Ott, Bruce B. Hanberry, Mona Khalil, Mark W. Paschke, Max Post Van Der Burg, A.J. Prenni

United States Geological Survey, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center: Publications

Energy is an integral part of society. The major US energy sources of fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas); biofuels (ethanol); and wind are concentrated in grassland ecosystems of the Great Plains. As energy de- mand continues to increase, mounting pressures will be placed on North American grassland systems. In this review, we present the ecological effects of energy development and production on grassland sys- tems. We then identify opportunities to mitigate these effects during the planning, construction, and pro- duction phases by using informed methodology and improved technology. Primary effects during energy development include small- and large-scale soil disturbance …

Environmental Governance For Whom? Examining The Political, Institutional, Fiscal, And Legal Determinants Of State Environmental Agency Budget Policy In The Us, Andrew R. Duggan

Theses and Dissertations

Budgets are a prospective tool of governance, and appropriations are a planning vehicle reflecting: bureaucracies’ values, complex interactions, collective preferences, political influences, and available resources. Research spanning 30 years finds that environmental pollution is a key determinant of environmental budgets in the US, though myriad factors, actors, and subsystems are important to consider. Due to federalism and devolution of responsibilities and authorities, environmental governance falls largely to the states. While the dynamics that shape state environmental budget policy have received scholarly interest, theoretically-driven examinations of environmental appropriations remain limited within the public budgeting and environmental policy literature.

Using panel data …

The Political Viability Of Carbon Pricing: Policy Design And Framing In British Columbia And California, Roger Karapin

Publications and Research

The adoption of climate policies with visible, substantial costs for households is uncommon because of expected political backlash, but British Columbia's carbon tax and California's cap-and-trade program imposed such costs and still survived vigorous opposition. To explain these outcomes, this paper tests hypotheses concerning policy design, framing, energy prices, and elections. It conducts universalizing and variation-finding comparisons across three subcases in the two jurisdictions and uses primary sources to carry out process tracing involving mechanisms of public opinion and elite position taking. The paper finds strong support for the timing of independent energy price changes, exogenous causes of election results, …