Anthem EnviroExperts

Review by Sean Nolon, Vermont Law School

Joel Mintz’s work offers fascinating insights into changing approaches to environmental law enforcement in recent decades.

Enforcement at the EPA: High Stakes and Hard Choices, by Joel A Mintz, University of Texas Press, 323pp

This book presents a fascinating historical account of how EPA’s approach to enforcing environmental laws has changed over the last forty years. Fortunately, this book has many moments where the author brings a potentially dry topic alive through the use of quotes and personal accounts from agency insiders.  Professor Mintz has written an enjoyable and informative volume that follows in the tradition of great qualitative research such as Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down.

This work is the product of many years of research and the author’s passion to make sense out of the tangled path that EPA has followed since being created by President Nixon in the 1970s. Professor Mintz reviewed EPA enforcement policy documents from 1970–2009 and interviewed over 190 present and former government officials. This behind-the-scenes presentation of how presidents from Carter to Bush II affect enforcement at the EPA is fascinating. Some of the highlights addressed are: EPA’s style of enforcement over the years; the effect of congressional oversight, including decentralized committees and budget authority on EPA’s ability to enforce; the relationship of political appointees to agency staff under different administrations; the decline of agency effectiveness in recent years; and an exploration of the threat and reality of agency “capture.”

By giving a thorough historical account of enforcement at EPA, readers will see more detail of the shadow under which many environmental negotiations take place. Readers with an interest in environmental regulation and those who enjoy the evolution of institutions and how they respond to changes in society will enjoy this volume.

Reviewed by W. Todd Jarvis, Oregon State University

Shafiqul Islam and Lawrence E. Susskind provide an interesting new framework that is both innovative and complementary to existing water negotiations frameworks.

Water Diplomacy: A Negotiated Approach to Managing Complex Water Networks, by Shafiqul Islam and Lawrence E. Susskind, RFF Press, 334pp

The days of groundwater problems being solved by hydrologists watching water move through well screens or across computer screens is quickly being replaced by the political melodramas typically found on the movie screen – negotiating over water use and reuse. This is where the new book by Shafiqul Islam and Lawrence Susskind is an important addition to the library of postmodern hydrologists. The objective of the book is to provide “a 21st century approach to water management that acknowledges the complexity and uncertainty of natural and societal systems, accepts the increasing interconnectivity and consequences of important decisions, and rejects the unquestioned authority of hierarchical governance structures.”

Water Diplomacy reads like three books under one cover. The first book develops the water diplomacy framework with an introduction to complexity theory, scale and networks through the clever use of a fable about a fictitious river basin, Indopotamia. The second book sets the stage for negotiations by examining a non-zero sum approach to water negotiations. Special features of the first two ‘books’ include many excerpts from selected journal articles related to each chapter topic, followed by short commentary by the authors.

The reader revisits Indopotamia in the third book, where a well-documented role play simulation is offered as a capacity-building exercise. I participated in this role play simulation during the 2012 Water Diplomacy Workshop. The book, the annual workshop and the role play are wonderful additions to the many other trainings and frameworks on negotiations over water resources.