Environmental Protection: New Approaches (CRS Report for Congress)
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| Release Date |
Dec. 11, 2000 |
| Report Number |
RL30760 |
| Report Type |
Report |
| Authors |
John E. Blodgett, Resources, Science, and Industry Division |
| Source Agency |
Congressional Research Service |
Summary:
In recent years, the interest in alternatives to the nation's "command-and-control" approach to
environmental protection has heightened. Driving this interest are concerns that the current approach
is inefficient and excessively costly, and that it is ineffective in addressing certain problems such as
nonpoint source pollution and global climate change. Several blue-ribbon panels have issued reports
on environmental protection needs for the next century, including one headed by former two-time
Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, William D. Ruckelshaus -- The
Environmental Protection System in Transition: Toward a More Desirable Future (1998) --
and one
by the National Academy of Public Administration -- environment.com: Transforming
Environmental Protection for the 21st Century (2000).
Alternative environmental protection approaches range from proposals that would replace the
current system to ones that would supplement it. Elements of the proposals include enhanced
information processes, greater reliance on market mechanisms, devolution of federal responsibilities
to state and local decisionmakers, and substitution of private markets for public actions. The
proposals for the most part represent a mix of techniques, and few are really new. Most of the ideas
have been developed and promoted for some time; many have been incorporated to some degree in
existing programs.
This report summarizes briefly a number of "new approaches," grouped under the following
categories:
Information: Approaches to improve the quantity and quality of
information
to enhance the knowledge base underlying environ-mental decisions (e.g., risk assessment, cost-
benefit analysis).
Public Sector Processes: Approaches to restructure governmental
processes
for making environmental decisions (e.g., devolution).
Incentives: Approaches that emphasize incentives as opposed to
regulatory
or financial penalties for achieving environmental ends.
Market Mechanisms: Approaches that rely on markets and common
law for
environmental decisions to the extent possible.
Management Principles. Approaches to inculcate environmental
values in
public or private managerial decisions (e.g., sustainability).
Each approach seems to have some useful applications. Each has some disciplinary,
ideological,
or institutional proponent; but none commands the multi-stakeholder commitment necessary for truly
transforming environmental programs. There may be consensus that environmental protection
programs could and should be improved, but beyond modest iterative steps, there is as yet no
consensus on what that would entail nor on how to achieve those steps. Critical to this lack of
consensus is an apparent split in proponents' goals -- those most focused on improving the efficiency
of the current process, versus those most focused on finding new ways to address so-far intractable
environmental problems such as global climate change.
