Anthem EnviroExperts

Reviewed by Alexis Schulman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

In this book, Judith A. Layzer analyzes seven prominent Ecosystem-based management (EBM) initiatives to determine if EBM delivers the benefits its supporters promise.

Natural Experiments: Ecosystem-Based Management and the Environment by Judith A. Layzer, MIT Press, 2008, 384 pp.

Although the sweeping environmental statutes passed in the 1960s and 1970s produced substantial improvements in US environmental quality, over the years these laws have also been assailed as too top-down, homogenous, and inflexible. Ecosystem-based management (EBM) has found favor among industry critics, as well as scientists, policymakers, and environmentalists, as a panacea to the failings of the conventional, “command and control” approach to regulation. EBM rests on three core principles: the domain of management ought to be defined by ecological, not political, boundaries; stakeholders, those impacted by management decisions, need to be included in decision-making processes; and management rules should adapt over time to changing local conditions. EBM cheerleaders argue that this approach will yield improved environmental health, while protecting other social interests, reducing conflicts, and producing lasting decisions.

But does it?

In Natural Experiments, Judith A. Layzer examines the efficacy of EBM in practice by analyzing seven of the most prominent EBM initiatives in the US, including the Everglades Restoration Plan and the California Bay-Delta Program (CALFED). Lazyer is primarily interested in testing the proposition that EBM improves environmental outcomes, above and beyond what would be expected under the status quo. Methodologically, such an evaluation presents enormous challenges, including the demands of extensive counterfactual analysis across cases that vary greatly. It is not, therefore, surprising that her work is one of very few to address this critical question with any analytical rigor. Applying a multi-pronged qualitative analysis, replete with exceedingly detailed case studies and process tracing, Layzer’s most significant result lends support to EBM skeptics. She finds the collaborative dictum, in particular, “perpetuates, rather than mitigates, the existing power imbalance,” resulting in less protective management plans and poorer environmental outcomes. Instead political leadership—specifically a willingness to prioritize environmental protection over other interests—exerted within the “conventional political framework,” resulted in the greatest environmental gains.

Advocates of collaborative management may rightly argue that process design is critical, and these cases stray far from the ideal set out in the literature. Nonetheless, the question remains: given the failures of the collaborative efforts Layzer assesses, is collaborative environmental management practical for the scale and complexity of the environmental challenges we face? Or is EBM better off without it?

Reviewed by Kelly Heber, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Cold Cash, Cool Climate: Science-Based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs by Jonathan Koomey, Analytics Press, 2012, 222pp.

Cold Cash, Cool Climate begins with a novel, concise, and easy-to-read explanation of current climate science, as if pitching a green startup to an investor. It is a useful presentation for a society burdened by what a recent New York Times article called “climate fatigue.” It offers what could be a practical response to the unnecessary stalemate between industrial competition and sustainability noted by Michael Porter. Koomey summarizes decades of climate science, positing unprecedented levels of greenhouse gases already in the earth’s atmosphere. From there, he illustrates how entrepreneurs, would-be investors, and startups interested in turning a profit can make money while addressing the challenges posed by climate change. The book reads like the kind of policy report a consulting firm might turn out. Non-business and non-technical readers will remain engaged as he makes connections between impending crises and market-driven change possibilities. Most of this change, according to Koomey, should occur in industries prepared to develop infrastructure for renewables. He makes a surprising assertion, though, when he alleges that the Apollo Program is an inadequate analogy for the role government might play to bring about systemic change, since it is too myopic. I would argue that Congressional politics are also too polarized for government to take the steps necessary to support relevant entrepreneurial efforts. Nevertheless, Koomey argues that newer areas of innovation like connectivity and social media will allow for a more cohesive institutional overhaul of what is possible, setting the stage for would-be investors and startups looking to profit from helping to “solve” the climate problem. In Koomey’s book, the entrepreneur is both the protagonist and the target audience, cast as a convincing bringer-of-change, where slow moving institutions have failed in the past.

Reviewed by Lawrence Susskind, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Technology, Globalization And Sustainable Development: Transforming the Industrial State by Nicholas A. Ashford and Ralph P. Hall, Yale University Press, 752pp

Ashford and Hall have produced a mammoth volume explaining why technology change and globalization are the keys to addressing the three most important dimensions of sustainability – the economy, work, and the environment. At the heart of their analysis is a belief that national and international governments can produce industrial policies that will “encourage or require environmentally sustainable production, products and energy-related activities through the tools of environmental policy and regulation.” They describe ways that the industrial state might be transformed, covering everything from advancing worker health and safety to techniques for restructuring international trade and finance. In the final analysis, though, their prescriptions only make sense if they are right about co-optimization, that is, the notion that economic development, environmental protection, and more worker-oriented employment can be achieved simultaneously, and need not be traded off or balanced against each other.

More than others writing about sustainable development, Ashford and Hall focus on industrial and trade policies that can stimulate “revolutionary technology innovation.” Their list of ways of overcoming the obstacles to sustainability run the gamut from education and human resource development to more extensive stakeholder involvement, to new approaches to underwriting the costs of sustainable development. In the end, though, everything comes back to government’s willingness to intervene. They analyze the “opportunity and capacity” of the government to act, making a case that crises create opportunities and social innovation can enhance capacity. What they are less clear about, though, is why there might be a sudden willingness on the part of national governments, locked in as they are to laissez faire strategies, to move in the activist and social welfare-oriented direction needed to achieve sustainable development.

 Reviewed by Todd Schenk, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Flexibility in Engineering Design by Richard de Neufville and Stefan Scholtes, MIT Press, 2011, 312 pp

For all our engineering marvels, the world has seen its share of white elephants and design failures – bridges to nowhere, communications networks out-of-date by the time they are deployed, and dikes overtopped leading to flooding. Perhaps these problems are to be expected; designers and engineers are always confronted with significant biophysical, social and economic uncertainty, and no model is perfect. Furthermore, the world is constantly changing, making different designs optimal at different points in time. The conventional approach to design is to use average or worst-case forecasts, add in safety factors and proceed as though we know what the future holds. Unfortunately, this leads to wasted resources when projects are overdesigned and failure when they are underdesigned.

de Neufville and Scholtes make a compelling case for another approach. Instead of preparing a single forecast of a possible future, they argue for building in flexibility so that engineered projects can be adapted easily as conditions change. One example they present is the bridge over the Tagus River in Lisbon, Portugal. When it was constructed in the 1960s, its designers had the foresight to make it strong enough to hold a second deck at some point in the future, if that became necessary. They also included a railroad station underneath the toll plaza in case rail connections were ever added. Thirty years later, their foresight paid off when a second deck carrying commuter rail lines was constructed at modest cost and little disruption to the transportation system.

While it may sound simple, the challenges associated with shifting the way project design proceeds, from the traditional predict, plan and build approach to something more iterative should not be underestimated. Designers and engineers need to rethink the way they use forecasting models. Budgeting and capital planning need to allow for longer-term project adaptation. de Neufville and Scholtes introduce a variety of tools to support this shift, including phasing projects and investments, Monte Carlo simulation for exploring scenarios, and dynamic forecasting to highlight uncertainties.

Strategies for making planning and design nimbler can not come soon enough, given that climate change is increasing uncertainty and budgets are regularly stretched. Flexibility should become the new design norm. This book represents both a manifesto for this important shift as well as an early guidebook instructing us how to get there.

Reviewed by Kathy Araújo
, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Kennedy School of Government

Benjamin Sovacool and Scott Valentine propose and evaluate a novel, interdisciplinary framework to explain key influences in nuclear adoption pathways.

The National Politics of Nuclear Power: Economics, Security and Governance, by Benjamin Sovacool and Scott Valentine,  Routledge, 292pp

Conventional policy writing on nuclear energy routinely turns to questions of safety and security, proliferation risk, siting, waste management, and opposition, among other considerations. However, much less is understood about underlying sociopolitical economy factors which shape national development trajectories. Benjamin Sovacool and Scott Valentine attempt to demystify this subject by presenting a provocative theory on conditions which shape propensities for nuclear energy development.

Extending earlier work, such as Henry Nau’s National Politics and International Technology: Nuclear Reactor Development in Western Europe (1975), Sovacool and Valentine analyze eight cases of nuclearized countries from North America, Asia, and Europe. Indicating a principally neutral stance on the acceptability of nuclear energy, the two argue that six conditions are historically essential to sustaining commercial nuclear power development: (1) national security and secrecy; (2) technocratic ideology; (3) economic interventionism; (4) a centrally controlled energy stakeholder network; (5) subordination of opposition to political authority; and (6) social peripheralization. Going further, they contend that this set of conditions must exist simultaneously for there to be robust and fluid development of nuclear energy. Sovacool and Valentine also observe that undemocratic regimes are where nuclear development tends to flourish.

Criticism could arguably challenge the scope of determinants and development that are evaluated, or the decidedly inductive nature of the study. Yet reasonable responses exist for both. For the former, the authors acknowledge the novel nature of their framework and encourage further testing. For the latter, statistical analysis could miss deeper and more complex explanations.

Fundamentally, this writing enhances our understanding of nuclear power in areas which intersect with sustainability, governance, and planning, as well as security and development. Taken together, the strengths of the book lie in its lucid discussion of nuclear technology, its cross-country assessment of discrete adoption pathways, and its predictive examination of relevant conditions. At a time when the world muddles through its post-Fukushima thinking on nuclear energy, this book enlightens with a fascinating and timely contribution.