Anthem EnviroExperts

Reviewed by Jungwoo Chun, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Could it be that governance is more important than reliance on either greener technology or reductions in the scale of resource utilization in achieving urban sustainability and enhanced resilience?

by Jeroen van der Heijden, Governance for Urban Sustainability and Resilience, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2014, 229 pp.

There is no doubt that cities could do less harm to the natural environment and use resources more efficiently. Employing “greener” technologies or simply using fewer resources are often cited as solutions––albeit partial––to the environmental challenges that cities face and, in some cases, cause. Van der Heijden suggests that getting governance right may be more important than introducing new technology or using fewer resources. Drawing from about 500 interviews and examining close to 70 real-life governance tools from around the world, this book offers a unique insight into how various governance tools can help cities achieve sustainability and resilience in the face of natural disasters.

Chapter 1 gives a sense of what urban sustainability and resilience mean to practitioners and academics, and explains how governance relates to each concept. Chapter 2 examines the most common approach to governance—direct regulatory intervention––and the tools it relies on, such as statutory regulation, direct subsidies and the application of economic instruments. Chapter 3 explores collaborative efforts by government, businesses and civil society to work together using tools such as networks, negotiated agreements and covenants. Chapter 4 focuses on voluntary programs and market-driven governance tools such as green leasing, private regulation and innovative financing. Chapter 5 discusses five governance trends and their contribution to achieving urban sustainability and resilience. It analyzes real-life examples, especially the prominent role that governments play in promoting the most innovative forms of governance. Chapter 6 concludes with suggestions regarding the choice of governance strategies for sustainability and resilience, building on the ideas explored in Chapters 2–5.

While not suggesting a one-size-fits-all approach to enhancing sustainability and resilience, Governance for Urban Sustainability and Resilience clearly shows that there are windows of opportunities for every city government to shift to more innovative governance tools. This book is particularly useful for those seeking a broad understanding of existing governance tools associated with efforts to enhance urban sustainability and resilience.

Reviewed by Elise Harrington, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Sometimes private authorities have a role in international environmental governance. When and why do states delegate authority to non-state actors? How can private actors play a helpful role in drafting rules and regulations?   

by Jessica F. Green, Rethinking Private Authority: Agents and Entrepreneurs in Global Environmental Governance, Princeton University Press, 2014, 232 pp.

In Rethinking Private Authority: Agents and Entrepreneurs in Global Environmental Governance, Jessica Green makes a distinction between two forms of non-state involvement in environmental governance: delegated private authority and entrepreneurial private authority. Against a backdrop of increased involvement of non-state actors, Green shows that the growth in private authority involves primarily entrepreneurial authority; delegated private authority continues to play only a minor part in international environmental governance. Green provides a model for predicting when private authority will be included and what form that private authority is likely to take. She defines private authority “as situations in which non-state actors make rules or set standards that other relevant actors in world politics adopt” (p. 29). Non-state actors can include NGOs, corporations, advocacy networks and foundations among others. She excludes international organizations involving state representatives. Her forecasting model and its tests offer a valuable study of international delegation and the reasons why private authority is increasing in global environmental governance.

In Chapter 1, Green outlines the first stage of her model. It is based on what she considers to be the supply and demand for private authority, the convergence of state–non-state preferences and the presence of focal institutions. Supply and demand is contingent on costs and benefits, such that “private authority emerges because actors in world politics—states, private actors, and institutions comprising both types of actors—anticipate they will benefit from deferring to private authority” (p. 39). The primary cost to the state of granting more authority to private actors is a loss of autonomy; thus “the less autonomy the adopters have to sacrifice, the greater the net gain for them in deferring to private authority” (p. 47). In the second stage of the model, Green hypothesizes that homogeneous state preferences (among powerful states) will result in increased delegation of private authority, while with heterogeneous preferences entrepreneurial private authority is more likely. Further, the presence of a strong focal institution, such as the Montreal Protocol’s Technical and Economic Assessments Panel, increases the likelihood of delegated authority. Focal institutions‪ likely reduce opportunities for agency slack, both as shirking responsibility or slippage between agency and principal preferences. ‬‬‬

Chapters 2 through 5 provide Green’s empirical analyses of delegation and private authority. Her longitudinal data analysis seeks to account for historical patterns and recent changes in private authority. In Chapter 2, using a random sample of 152 multilateral environmental treaties adopted between 1857 and 2002, Green coded for policy functions and responsible actors. She determined that private authority has not substantially increased over time as a proportion of policy actions; rather, delegation “is a relatively rare occurrence” (p. 66). When delegation does occur, private expertise appears to play a key role. Chapter 2 identifies historical patterns of delegated private authority while Chapter 3 unpacks entrepreneurial private authority using a dataset of transnational civil regulations adopted between 1954 and 2009. Green finds that 90 percent of the regulations in this dataset were created between 1990 and 2009, and over 80 percent created in those two decades were “hard” standards requiring third-party verification. She argues that this indicates “that these rules are being used as real governance tools. They go beyond mere second-party certification where the firm itself judges whether it is in compliance” (p. 91).

Chapters 4 and 5 examine in-depth cases of delegated and entrepreneurial private authority for climate change and regulating carbon emissions. In Chapter 4, Green examines private authority in the operation of the Clean Development Mechanism. She identifies reductions in transaction costs (benefits of private authority) and convergence of negotiating blocs which resulted in delegated monitoring authority to the private sector. Chapter 5 discusses the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, which was started by the World Resources Institute and World Business Council on Sustainable Development––two NGOs––rather than by state delegation. Green argues that the Greenhouse Gas Protocol was initiated with entrepreneurial authority because “the inability of public authorities (governments or international organizations) to address the issue of firm-level emissions, combined with the lack of a strong focal institution to screen and monitor agents […] created an opening for entrepreneurial private authority” (p. 133).

Green’s work stands as a strong contribution to the growing focus in political science on the role of non-state actors and state–non-state interactions. Both her model and her empirical findings offer a number of intriguing areas for further study. For example, it should be possible to further specify both the first and second steps in the operation of her model. Questions remain about how and when benefits accrue and whether they are associated with one form of private authority more than another. While Green identifies state autonomy as the primary cost to the state, how within-state politics influence adoption, delegation and enforcement remains unclear. Finally, state–non-state relationships are generally discussed with reference to strong states, but the influence of private authority in developing and weak state contexts is equally interesting and in need of further examination.

Reviewed by Jessica Gordon, Massachusetts Institute for Technology 

China faces severe environmental challenges and its environmental policies and governance arrangements are in the process of changing.

edited by Hideki Kitagawa Environmental Policy and Governance in China, Springer, 2017, 198 pp.

China is facing severe environmental challenges including pervasive water, air and soil pollution. To address these issues, its environmental governance regime has undergone significant transformations. These include the emergence of new laws and regulations, new enforcement strategies, and increasing participation of the public and non-state actors. This edited volume provides a predominately historical and legal analysis of China’s unique environmental governance system.

The first chapter by Kitagawa reviews recent environmental policy reforms that have been implemented during the current Xi government. In Chapter 2, Wang examines the detailed changes in the drafts and final texts of the environmental protection law. This includes an overview of the latest, 2014 revisions, providing a useful historical perspective. In Chapter 3, Zhao examines the limited laws and regulations dealing with contaminated land, pointing out, for example, that there are no guidelines regarding soil pollution monitoring. In Chapter 4, Jin offers a legal analysis of the Target Responsibility System, which was created to ensure local compliance and enforcement of national policy in an effort to address widespread implementation gaps. In Chapter 5, He offers an economic analysis of coal resource taxation as a means of reducing fossil fuel use.

In Chapter 6, Sakurai presents a case study of a class action lawsuit brought by pollution victims, making it clear that the absence of an independent judiciary is significant given the ways in which various political bodies influence outcomes. In Chapter 7, Zhang examines environmental petitions, a means for citizens to report issues to the Chinese Communist Party. This is a long-standing alternative to litigation. Given the system’s current shortcomings, and drawing on cases from Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, the author suggests China ought to establish a new environmental dispute resolution system. In Chapter 8, Wang demonstrates how legislation related to Environmental Impact Assessment has provided increased opportunities for public participation. In Chapter 9, Chiashi looks beyond the state, at the role of environmental NGOs in industrial and air pollution control. In Chapter 10, Aikawa takes a historical look at the evolution of environmental NGOs in China.

Interestingly, several chapters focus on the increasing role of public participation, and its limitations, in environmental governance in China. Jin and Wang focus on environmental information disclosure requirements in conjunction with Environmental Impact Assessment requirements. Sakurai describes how the plaintiffs in the class action lawsuits formed an environmental advocacy organization, although it was later shut down. Chiashi and Aikawa focus on the increasing role that NGOs play in environmental policy-making and implementation.

Environmental Policy and Governance in China demonstrates the extensive environmental challenges that China still faces. The book chapters can easily be read individually, depending on the interests of the reader, and understood even by those unfamiliar with China’s legal system. The book includes extensive background information. However, the volume is most likely to engage those with a long-standing interest in China.

Reviewed by Andrea Beck, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 

Global water governance is based on the hidden philosophy of “normal water”––a finding with important ethical and ecological implications for water management in the Anthropocene. 

by Jeremy J. Schmidt Water: Abundance, Scarcity, and Security in the Age of Humanity, New York University Press, 2017, 308 pp.

Is water governance guided by a comprehensive philosophy? Contrary to the prevailing wisdom, geographer Jeremy J. Schmidt answers this question in the affirmative: water governance is based on a hidden philosophy which conceptualizes water as a “resource” to be managed in support of liberal ways of life. Rooted in a particular confluence of early American geology and anthropology, this view of water has attained global dominance through strategies of international development. It has become accepted to the extent that its ethnocentric and utilitarian foundations now seem all but forgotten within the global water governance mainstream. Thinking about water as a resource is commonplace today. Schmidt seeks to challenge this complacency by opening our eyes to the fact that what appears to be “normal” is in fact a normative choice.

The bulk of the book traces the origins and subsequent globalization of the philosophy of “normal water.” Schmidt provides insights into the roots and evolution of the “narrative of abundance, scarcity, and security,” while also discussing the implications of this narrative for water management in the Anthropocene. While the accounts of the thinking of protagonists such as John Wesley Powell, William John McGee, David Lilienthal and Gilbert White are illustrative and engaging, frequent philosophical excursions render the book somewhat impenetrable for readers unfamiliar with the philosophical works of Hannah Arendt, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Søren Kierkegaard and several others.

If the book is meant to showcase the results of an interdisciplinary intellectual exercise, its purpose has been achieved. However, Schmidt seeks to go further, spelling out the applied implications of his work. What, specifically, are the problems with viewing water as a resource (a very fundamental question)? What are the mechanisms by which alternate place-based approaches to water are being oppressed or marginalized by “normal water?” Beyond recommendations addressed to social scientists (e.g., disrupt the colonial project of water management within academia, relativize existing “stopping rules”), what are possible action avenues for practitioners committed to promoting water justice and equity in the field? Addressing these questions more explicitly and extensively could enhance the transformative impact of the book and make its important message accessible to a wider audience.

Reviewed by J. W. Chun, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Creating new ways of thinking about the value of biodiversity and hence new opportunities for biodiversity law and regulation

by Colin T. Reid and Walters Nsoh The Privatisation of Biodiversity? New Approaches to Conservation Law, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016, 275 pp.

Despite many laws and policies aimed at protecting biodiversity, biodiversity losses continue to mount. Colin T. Reid and Walters Nsoh explore biodiversity regulation from a new perspective: as a value-creating opportunity rather than a set of restrictions. Their aim “is to identify not a single favoured solution, but the questions which have to be answered in designing a scheme that will meet the needs of the specific policy goals and the legal and physical context in which the mechanism is to be deployed.”

Reid and Nsoh divide their book into two sections. The first offers an overview of existing laws and regulations. The authors review some of the most “pervasive” issues surrounding various mechanisms used to conserve biodiversity. Although not exhaustive, their list includes uncertainty, exchangeability and units of trade, which must be considered in the design and implementation of new, market-oriented mechanisms. These pervasive issues have to be taken into account no matter what options are considered for better managing natural capital.

The second section of the book introduces a wide range of biodiversity protection mechanisms and discusses their practicalities. For each, the relevant legal construct and the actors typically involved are discussed. The authors emphasize that various mechanisms could almost always be applied. However, they argue that a more open, accountable, and holistic approach would be preferable.

The authors admit that there are limitations to their approach; for instance, it is rooted in “Western” concepts of law (i.e., they have a UK perspective). This may undermine its viability in certain contexts, limiting its application in locations where new mechanisms are needed the most. The Privatisation of Biodiversity is carefully organized, drawing attention to the importance of looking at biodiversity from a number of angles, particularly through a lens of market-driven mechanisms. The book provides a starting point for those who want to think about local biodiversity in new ways.