Toward A New Governance Paradigm

10.1177/0095399703256968 ARTICLE ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / January 2004 Durant et al.
/ NEW GOVERNANCE PARADIGM

TOWARD A NEW GOVERNANCE
PARADIGM FOR ENVIRONMENTAL AND
NATURAL RESOURCES MANAGEMENT
IN THE 21ST CENTURY?
ROBERT F. DURANT
American University
YOUNG-PYOUNG CHUN
Daegu University
BYUNGSEOB KIM
Seoul National University
SEONGJONG LEE
Sungkeunkwan University
Dissatisfaction with conventional regulatory approaches has led to an emerging newgover-
nance paradigm (NGP) in environmental and natural resources (ENR) management. This
NGP is premised on a need to reconceptualize ENR management regimes, reconnect with
stakeholders, and redefine what constitutes administrative rationality in the public and pri-
vate sectors. The ultimate fate of the NGP is in doubt, however. This essay argues that the
NGPis best appreciated as an effort to graft managerial flexibility onto an otherwise inflexi-
ble regulatory regimean effort that has left a halfway, halting, and patchworked regulatory
regime in its wake. ApplyingJohnGauss notionof the ecology of public administrationas an
analytical framework, the essay addresses three questions: (a) What were the sociopolitical,
technological, and economic factors propelling and delimiting the NGPover the last quarter
of the 20th century; (b) how likely are they to endure; and (c) with what consequences for
ENR managers, regulators, and regulatees in the 21st century?
Keywords: environment; natural resources; governance; public management
In her book, Longitude, Dava Sobel (1995) wrote a fascinating account
of John Harrisons 40-year quest to wrest recognition from the British
643
ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY, Vol. 35 No. 6, January 2004 643-682
DOI: 10.1177/0095399703256968
2004 Sage Publications
Crown for inventing a timepiece capable of determining the positions of
ships at sea. Prior to Harrisons efforts in the 18th century, Sobel said, the
dominant paradigmfor sailors was an approach known as dead reckoning.
As she described this process, sea captains relying solely on latitudinal
readings would throw a log overboard and observe how quickly the ship
receded from this temporary guidepost to determine their distance east
and west of home port (Sobel, 1995, p. 13). Then, factoring in ocean cur-
rents, fickle winds, and errors in judgment (Sobel, 1995, p. 14), the cap-
tain determined the ships longitude. The rub, of course, was that captains
routinely missed [their] mark, searching in vain for the island where
[they] had hoped to find fresh water, or even the continent that was [their]
destination (Sobel, 1995, p. 14).
Since the environmental decade of the 1970s, the United States and
other nations have embarked on their own 30-year quest to reckon the reg-
ulatory ship of state toward a destination of effective, efficient, equitable,
and accountable environmental and natural resources (ENR) manage-
ment. Their latitudinal bearings have been ascertained by a so-called first
generation of regulation that is heavily bureaucratic, prescriptive, and
adversarial in nature. What is more, their quest has been animated by a
regulatory philosophy focused on single-pollutant, single-media, single-
pathway, command-and-control, technology-driven, and end-of-pipe
solutions to ENR problems.
More recently, however, reformers have (in effect) argued that these
latitudinal bearings alone are incapable of getting them to their destina-
tion. And what is perhaps most politically significant about this critique is
that it is offered by many of the architects of first-generation approaches
(Fiorino, 1996; Ruckelshaus, 1995). Their argument has been less a prod-
uct of the failure of the earlier regulatory paradigmthat they helped to cre-
ate and more a realization that the environmental problems that remain are
largely beyond its abilities to address efficiently, effectively, equitably,
and accountably. In the United States, after all, air quality has improved
significantly in almost every major city since 1970 with emissions of the
six principle pollutants regulated under the Clean Air Act declining about
644 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / January 2004
AUTHORS NOTE: The authors wish to acknowledge and express their gratitude for the
financial support of the Korea Research Foundation made in the program year of 1999 as
well as the Thailand-United States Educational Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation, and
the John F. Kennedy Foundation (Thailand). They also wish to thank Rosemary OLeary and
Daniel Fiorino for their comments on an earlier draft; Thanit Boodphetcharat of the
Research and Development Institute, Payap University, Chiang Mai, Thailand, for her
research assistance on genetically modified foods in Thailand; and Jennifer Durant for her
technical assistance in the preparation of this manuscript.
25% (Gugliotta, 2003; Portney, 2000). So, too, have modest improve-
ments occurred in aggregate measures or national averages of water qual-
ity with major progress made in various locales (Freeman, 2000). The
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported, for example, that 94%
of Americans in 2002 were getting their drinking water fromsystems that
met health standards (up from 79% in 1992). In addition, although eight
billion pounds of toxic chemicals still were released into the environment
in 1999, there was a 46% decrease in these releases since 1986 (Lazaroff,
2001).
1
Nonetheless, traditional command-and-control approaches are now
widely perceived as ill-suited for ENRproblems caused by small, diverse,
and numerous nonpoint sources of pollution like greenhouse gas emis-
sions, toxic pollution runoff from urban and rural nonpoint sources, and
emissions of ozone-depleting chemicals. The EPA reported in 2003, for
example, that 28%of local lake acreage is under fish consumption adviso-
ries (including the Great Lakes). Similarly, 133 million Americans
breathe unhealthy air during parts of any year, the rate of land develop-
ment is increasing significantly (a 150% increase between 1982 and
1997), and the number of beach closings is rising because of ocean dump-
ing. But when used to address these kinds of second-generation pollution
problems, traditional first-generation approaches can be impractical, inef-
ficient, and unsustainable politically. They also can be problematic
because they fail to recognize that many ENR risks are inherently cross-
border, multimedia (i.e., they arise in or affect air, water, and/or land),
interactive, multiple pathway (i.e., polluters can enter the body from dif-
ferent sources), and cumulative in nature. To treat them otherwise is to
encourage media shifting of problems (i.e., they meet regulatory require-
ments in one medium by shifting waste streams to other media), costly
administrative burdens, and skepticism by the public.
Traditional approaches also tend to discourage behaviors deemed criti-
cal for addressing ENR problems more cost-effectively in the long run.
Most notable among these more virtuous behaviors are innovation, pro-
cess redesign, and pollution prevention strategies.
2
Moreover, even when
first-generation approaches are applicable (e.g., when single point-source
polluters are involved), diminishing marginal returns on technological
investments (e.g., scrubbers on smokestacks) make building on earlier
ENR successes decidedly cost-ineffective.
To cope with these shortcomings, an alternativeor new governance
paradigm (NGP)has emerged to challenge conventional ENRmanage-
ment approaches (Durant, Fiorino, &OLeary, 2004; Durant, OLeary, &
Durant et al. / NEW GOVERNANCE PARADIGM 645
Fiorino, 2001).
3
This NGP can be synthesized into three major challenges
facing ENR management in the 21st century that reformers believe must
serve, in effect, as longitudinal meridians for policy makers. Otherwise,
efficient, effective, equitable, and accountable ENR governance will
elude them. First, success depends on reconceptualizing ENR manage-
ment regimes in ways that better reflect ecological and public health risks
and interdependencies. Second, these reconceptualized regimes must
reconnect with stakeholders in the development, implementation, and
assessment of any policies that are pursued, and they must conscien-
tiously consider vertical and horizontal equity both within and across gen-
erations. Third, not only must ENR management become more cost-
effective, risk-based, and results-oriented, but doing so requires funda-
mentally redefining what constitutes administrative rationality in both the
public and private sectors.
In turn, a set of interrelated concepts have informed and affected the
impact of the NGP to date worldwide. The challenge to reconceptualize
ENR regimes, for example, posits that many pressing ENR problems
emerge or have impacts on a regional or global scale that transcend the
authority of traditional nation-states to solve. Resolving problems like
ozone depletion, deforestation of old growth forests, desertification,
global climate change, depletion of fish stocks, and the spread of long dor-
mant and dangerous tropical diseases like malaria and dengue fever
requires regional or international cooperation. It also requires societies to
promote economic development in environmentally sustainable ways, to
integrate single-media statutes into multimedia approaches to regulation,
to devolve federal ENR responsibilities to subnational governments, and
to promote self-organizing and self-governing grassroots institutions that
regulate the use of common-pool resources (e.g., land, irrigation, and fish-
eries communities in developing nations).
The challenge of reconnecting with stakeholders, in turn, envisions
successful ENR management as dependent on valuing, promoting, and
extending deliberative democracy to the greatest extent possible in the
ENR policy formulation, implementation, and evaluation processes. The
NGP values deliberative democratic models that offer early, informed,
and substantively meaningful stakeholder participation in ENR decision
making. Included among these deliberative approaches are regulatory
negotiations (reg-negs), environmental dispute resolution, effective risk
communication, and cooperative rangeland conservation agreements for
critical habitat preservation. Moreover, participation must include those
previously marginalized by race, class, ethnicity, or gender so that
environmental justice can prevail. Equally valued are collaborative part-
nerships with public, private, and nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs), as well as with ordinary citizens (e.g., partnerships to reduce
perfluorocompound emissions fromthe semiconductor industry, preserve
local open space, protect regional watersheds and ecosystems, and pro-
mote sustainable city initiatives).
Reconnecting with stakeholders also incorporates civic environmen-
talism (John, 1994) and protecting property rights. Proponents of civic
environmentalism argue that top-down, federally driven regulation may
be adequate and appropriate when pollution sources are readily identifi-
able, exhibit relatively uniform behavior, and are few in number. How-
ever, when the opposite of these conditions prevails (e.g., nonpoint-source
runoff from cities and farms), alternative grassroots approaches like eco-
nomic incentives, technical assistance to volunteer groups and citizens,
and public education are likely to be more appropriate and effective. Good
husbandry of the planets ENRheritage to property rights advocates, how-
ever, also means respecting the rights of individuals to profit from and
enjoy the resources they own. Yet critics of this philosophy argue that
property owners, in turn, must appreciate that part of their properties
value comes from public investments. As such, government has a duty to
ensure development consonant with public health, safety, and environ-
mental protection.
Finally, the challenge of redefining conventional notions of adminis-
trative rationality involves giving greater flexibility to both regulators and
the regulated community. Emphasized amid the thrust to create risk-
based, stakeholder-sensitive, and geographically focused ENRregulatory
regimes are market and quasimarket alternatives to command-and-control
regulation (e.g., emissions trading, halon banks, and forestry and habitat
conservation incentive programs). Also favored are information-based
strategies like the Toxics Release Inventory in the United States and inte-
grating environmental accounts into Systems of National Economic
Accounts in Europe.
These are joined by other flexibility enhancing initiatives, including
recognition (e.g., the U.S. EPAs 33/50 program) and ecological labeling
programs (e.g., the U.S. EPAs green lights, Germanys green dot, and
Frances green disk programs). Valued, as well, are pollution prevention
efforts (e.g., the United Nations Development Program for cutting green-
house gases), accountability for results rather than procedural compliance
(e.g., EPAs performance partnership program with states), and certifica-
tion standards for ENR management systems (e.g., the International
Organization for Standardizations 14000 series, the EUs Habitats Direc-
tive, and the Forest Sustainability Convention). Meanwhile, other propo-
nents stressing market solutions to enhance flexibility while preempting
pollution problems emphasize either free-market environmentalism(e.g.,
creating property rights for individuals and groups) or ecological modern-
ization (e.g., nations investing in more efficient and pollution-reducing
technological advances).
The ultimate fate of this emergent NGP, however, is unclear at this
point. Traditional regulatory regimes have proven obdurate in the face of
these external pressures for reform with the NGP best appreciated to date
as an effort to graft flexibility onto parts of a[n] inflexible whole
(Fiorino, 1999). Given the economic, social, and political stakes for soci-
ety of ENR issues in a globalized, interdependent, and volatile world of
sovereign nations, perhaps nothing less could be expected. Yet these
developments pose three important questions that anyone trying to dis-
cern the future of the NGPmust answer. First, what sociopolitical and eco-
nomic factors have driven the NGP to date? Second, what forces have
made a fundamental reconstitution of existing regulatory regimes so diffi-
cult, and howlikely are they to continue in the foreseeable future? Finally,
how enduring, as a result, is the NGP likely to be in the future?
To shed light on these questions, this essay adapts John Gauss (1947)
ecological framework to explore the political economy that has both
driven and constrained the adoption of this NGP worldwide. Analysis
suggests that the fundamentals of the political economy that have pro-
pelled the NGPand the perspectives informing it are likely to endure (viz.,
the need to reconceptualize regimes, reconnect with stakeholders, and
redefine administrative rationality). Consequently, the NGP also is likely
to endure and evolve as the 21st century progresses. However, any evolu-
tion that takes place in the future must contend with the same formidable
constraints on reconstituting existing regulatory regimes imposed by the
highly pluralistic (even hyperpluralistic) and conflict-ridden political
context that has characterized ENR management over the last quarter of
the 20th century.
THE POLITICAL ECOLOGY OF THE NGP
Writing perceptively in 1947 about the ecology of public administra-
tion, political scientist John Gaus argued that changes in people (e.g.,
aging), place (e.g., urbanization), physical technology (e.g., automobiles),
social technology (e.g., corporations), and philosophy (i.e., wishes and
ideas), as well as catastrophes or crises, explained the ebb, flow, and sub-
stance of activist government in the United States.
CHANGES IN PEOPLE
Three profound demographic changes have affected, and will continue
for the foreseeable future to affect, the political economy of ENRmanage-
ment everywhere. As such, they portend the continuing salience of the
NGP and the politics that have propelled and constrained its evolution to
date. These changes are (a) exponential growth in the worlds population,
(b) expected declines in work-age populations in many nations, and (c)
demographic changes in class, partisan, and ecological divides in the
United States.
The global population explosion. It took all of humankinds history for
the Earths population to reach a billion persons in 1800. It then took an-
other century for the worlds population to top 1.7 billion persons. Yet
only 100 years later, sweeping mortality declines caused by penicillin and
other antibiotics catapulted the worlds population past the 6 billion mark
as the 21st century dawned (U.S. Census Bureau, 2001). Not surprisingly,
these exponential growth rates triggered Malthusian alarms that reached
their apex in popular culture in 1972 with publication of the Club of
Romes Report, The Limits to Growth (Meadows, Meadows, Randers, &
Behrens, 1972).
Partisans stridently disagree about the ultimate validity of Malthusian
claims like these. Uncontested, however, is the havoc that the distribution
of this exponential growth has had on the Earths ecosystems, public
health and safety, and ethnic, regional, and national conflicts. To be sure,
the Census Bureau reports that population growth is slowing. Yet the
world still is adding the equivalent of a new Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and the
West Bank plus Gaza each year (U.S. Census Bureau, 2001). Moreover,
world population is expected to soar to 8 billion persons by 2025 and to
9.3 billion persons by 2050. In addition, 90% of the global natural
increase in population (the difference between birth and deaths) is antici-
pated to occur in the worlds poorest countries. In turn, the poor health and
sanitation conditions rampant in these less-developed countries (LDCs)
mean higher rates of infant mortality, more appeals for international aid, and
increasing political resistance by their governments whenever they expect
that international ENR agreements will stunt economic growth (e.g.,
LDCs reactions to the Kyoto Protocols limits on carbon emissions).
Nor in a global economy will the ENR problems spawned by condi-
tions like these be confined locally. Absent alternatives, for example, sub-
sistence farmers left to eke out livings on marginal croplands will continue
to entertain burning as a way to enrich soils and clear forest lands. So, too,
are cash-strapped governments and profit-seeking private companies
likely to find legal and illicit clear-cutting of tropical rainforests attractive
and profitable. As such, threats like soil erosion, deforestation, and deser-
tification will continue apace to energize national and international bodies
and NGOs to pressure governments and private actors for redress.
In their wake, otherwise, may come further alteration of weather pat-
terns and water supplies, the spread of disease-carrying insects into new
climes, the melting of polar ice caps at unprecedented rates, and the trans-
port of choking smoke and haze into neighboring regions and nations
(e.g., smoke wafting from Indonesian forest fires into Southeast Asia in
1997 and 1998). Equally consciousness raising and conflict engendering
will be the continuation of brown hazes like those afflicting the entire
Asian continent and Indian subcontinent during the tropical dry season
each year. Amixture of pollutants generated by fossil fuel combustion and
rural biomass burning (e.g., soot, nitrates, sulfates, organic particles, fly
ash, and mineral dusts), brown haze is linked to profound negative effects
on regional health, crop yields, and rainfall patterns affecting half the
worlds population.
In the process, a continuing sense of global interdependence should
grow apace, along with crossborder, crossregional, and international ten-
sions over the negative externalities these activities occasion. In response,
resentment by LDCs of outside interference into their domestic affairs
(e.g., with regard to halting deforestation in the tropics) and threats to their
economic or food security will continue apace (e.g., over perceived
threats of corporate patenting of genetically modified [GM] cash crops
like Thai jasmine rice and Indian basmati rice, as well as over indigenous
plants discovered during bioprospecting by pharmaceutical companies).
These feelings can be attenuated to an extent by programs linking debt
relief to ENR reforms (e.g., the U.S. Tropical Forest Initiative). Other
promising ways to reduce tensions on the food security front include shar-
ing patent rights with affected LDCs; sharing agrobiotechnological infor-
mation with them(e.g., the International Rice Research Institutes sharing
of the rice genome); and building public-private partnerships with LDCs
to improve their capacity to play a role in biotechnological research, to
enter these markets, or to protect their export markets from competitors
with more advanced biotechnology abilities (e.g., the International
Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications). Yet, as long as
these types of negative externalities continue, national and international
NGOs and organizations (e.g., the U.N. Environmental Program, the U.N.
Food Program, and the Rockefeller Foundation) are likely to continue
putting pressure on governments, regional bodies (e.g., the EU), and com-
panies to end them.
Among other things, Green reformers are likely to continue pursuing
direct command-and-control regulation, a better integration of environ-
mental values into international trade agreements, economic boycotts,
calls for sustainability, and nonregulatory alternatives (e.g., subsidies for
crop diversification, protection of tropical and old-growth forests, and
education). Meanwhile, at a microlevel, indigenous, self-organizing, and
self-regulating institutions are likely to remain attractive in some situa-
tions for protecting common-pool resources. This is likely to be the case
whether governments help provide resources and incentives to encourage
these efforts (or at least to not hinder their development) or if political
stalemates preclude national or subnational efforts.
Declining work-age populations. A second set of aging, fertility, and
mortality trends also promises to continue putting additional, albeit some-
times indirect, stress on the protection of ecosystems worldwide. These
trends include the existence of a global age wave known as the gray dawn,
below replacement fertility rates in more than half of the worlds nations,
and mortality spikes. Together, these are likely to undermine the financial
abilities of governments to rely extensively on conventional command-
and-control ENRmanagement approaches, even if they want to. With effi-
ciency and effectiveness more critical than ever, approaches stressing
partnerships, shifts to market-based alternatives, devolution, flexibility,
certification standards, and results are likely to remain options that gov-
ernments will consider, industry will lobby for, and many regulators and
environmentalists will look on askance as these approaches are grafted on
existing regulatory systems.
The gray dawn refers to the aging of populations. Over the next several
decades, demographers project that countries in the developed world will
experience an unprecedented growth in their elderly populations and a
precipitous decline in the number of their youth. By 2003, for example,
20%of Italys population will exceed age 65, whereas Japan hits that mark
in 2005 and Germany in 2006. They are followed by France and Britain in
2016 and the United States and Canada in 2021 and 2023, respectively. An
aging population, of necessity, means increasing health care and pension
costs. Experts estimate, for example, that developed nations will have to
pay anywhere from 9 to 16% of their respective gross domestic products
(GDPs) over the next quarter century just to meet existing pension com-
mitments (Durant, 2000).
Meanwhile, low and declining fertility rates prompted by trends
toward smaller families in many countries further render tax bases short of
funding for health care costs and pensions. Demographers project
subreplacement fertility patterns in 83 nations as disparate as the United
States, Guadeloupe, Japan, Thailand, Tunisia, and most of Europe
(Eberstadt, 2001). Affecting nations with nearly 44%of the worlds popu-
lation, these depopulation trends mean a precipitous decline in the work-
ing age populations (viz., 15- to 64-year-olds) necessary for funding pro-
grams as the gray dawn accelerates over the next 25 years. In China, for
example, 200 million Chinese will reach age 65 by 2025, making its
median age slightly higher than that projected for the United States.
Perhaps the most ominous trend that demographers see stretching into
the 21st century is a downward spike in life spans in more than 50 nations
and territories worldwide. Affected by this mortality spike is approxi-
mately one sixth of the worlds populationmany of whom live in sub-
Saharan Africa and suffer from the HIV-AIDS pandemic (Joint Efforts
Needed to Fight HIVand TB, 2001). But this mortality spike is not solely
the result of the HIV-AIDS pandemic. As Gro Harlem Brundtland, direc-
tor general of the World Health Organization, stated, poverty, homeless-
ness, ethnic conflicts, poor nutrition, and overcrowded living conditions
are culprits, as well (Joint Efforts Needed to Fight HIV and TB, 2001).
Nor, like subreplacement fertility rates, is the mortality spike limited to
sub-Saharan Africa. The HIV-AIDS pandemic is afoot in other nations,
especially on the Asian continent. Whatever their cause, however, declin-
ing life spans signal both deteriorating ENR conditions in nations as well
as deteriorating abilities to pay for the remedial and prospective costs of
ameliorating them.
Class, partisan, and ecological divides. Practitioners and researchers
also suggest that citizensgeneral value orientations toward ENRmanage-
ment are affected by their income and educational levels. One of the most
prominent yet controversial theoretical perspectives on public opinion
formation in this regard is political scientist Ronald Ingleharts (1990)
postmaterialism thesis. Inglehart argued that a silent revolution in value
orientations has occurred that corresponds to levels of the economic afflu-
ence and physical security of nations. As a rule, the higher the income and
education levels of a nation, the greater the level of concern that its citizens
have about ENRrisks and the more prone they are to support initiatives to
reduce them.
Many have applied Ingleharts (1990) postmaterialism thesis to
account for ENRpolitics around the world. In the United States, for exam-
ple, Jeffrey Berry (1999) employed it to explain what he called the rising
power of citizen groups pursuing a newliberalismagenda. His analysis of
congressional voting at three different time periods revealed that these
groups increasingly have enjoyed success in getting Congress to incorpo-
rate quality-of-life concerns like the environment into legislation. Also
reflecting postmaterialist values is the participation of Green parties in
governments and the impact of NGOs on government policy throughout
Europe, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
Consider recent trends in the United States. For decades, conventional
political wisdom in the United States was that the higher the educational
and income levels of Americans, the more likely they were to vote Repub-
lican. Yet a new fault line differentiating voters in the 2000 elections was
consonant with Ingleharts (1990) postmaterialism thesis (Edsall, 2001).
Following a decade-long and accelerating realignment trend, well-edu-
cated, higher income, and non-church-attending White professionals
(e.g., academics, doctors, lawyers, and scientists) are now among the
Democratic Partys most reliable voters. In contrast, lower income Whites
without college degrees who attend church regularly are among the most
reliable Republican voters.
4
Moreover, among the postmaterialist con-
cerns animating this reversal of partisan fortunes (e.g., gun control, abor-
tion, and gay rights) are ENR issues.
Former vice president Gore, for example, enjoyed a 38% advantage in
support among voters who were concerned about ENR protection. Also
significant was the strength of candidate George W. Bush in rural areas
and in oil, gas, timber, coal, and other hard rock mining states in the Sun-
belt, the Rocky Mountains, and Alaska. Not surprisingly, the new Bush
administration almost immediately took a variety of pro-use and develop-
ment ENR actions designed to reconsider the more aggressive
proconservation stance taken by the Clinton administration in the logging,
mining, and utility industries. Various of these actions, in turn, were pillo-
ried by congressional Democrats vowing to fight them, by many Green
NGOs as evidence of perfidy, and by environmental ministers in the Euro-
pean Union (EU), Japan, Indonesia, and the Southern Pacific who were
worried over the fate of the Kyoto Protocols.
With a nation increasingly divided demographically and politically on
the basis of postmaterialist values like ENRpolicy, the political stage is set
in the United States for a continuation of conflict and the political econ-
omy that both has propelled and constrained the NGP to date. Moreover,
when these developments are contrasted with the evolving political econ-
omy of ENR management globally and regionally in the world, the prog-
nosis is similar for the international arena, as well. In Germany, for exam-
ple, the Greens have been junior partners in a coalition dominated by
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeders center-left Social Democrats, with the
Greens holding the important foreign policy portfolio in the government.
Likewise, in France, they have been part of a Socialist-Communist-Green
coalition and have held the environmental portfolio in that government.
International political tensions, as such, are likely to continue over
issues like sustainability, international governance regimes, environmen-
tal justice, and market-based solutions to ENR management problems.
So, too, are disputes over property rights and regulatory takings likely to
remain salient in the Western United States, in suburban and pastoral areas
slated for development, and whenever the U.S. Congress is reauthorizing
statutes like the Endangered Species Act. At the same time, both
postmaterialist and materialist values are likely to continue arousing the
passions of NGOs to incorporate environmental (and labor) values into
trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) and the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Meanwhile, at the
local level, both sets of valuesplus political stalemates at the national
levelare likely to stimulate the furtherance of self-organizing and self-
regulatory institutions so that indigenous peoples already calling for polit-
ical empowerment can better manage common-pool resources for
sustainability.
CHANGES IN PLACE
Gauss (1947) framework also suggested that changes in place create
demands for government intervention or changes in philosophy. Some of
the most salient changes in place that shed light on the past and future of
the NGP include changes in the location of populations, industries,
workplaces, energy demands, and anthropogenic impacts on food pro-
duction. Present indications are that trends in these factors will continue to
put political pressure on governments worldwide for ENR intervention,
render conventional command-and-control solutions problematic, and
continue to energize pluralist (and often polarizing) conflicts over how
best to address them.
Suburbanization. Automobiles and superhighway development have
allowed persons worldwide to live far from their jobs in suburban,
exurban, and country settings. Yet the internal combustion engines that
run automobiles produce carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, and nitrogen
oxides that pollute the air, threaten public health, and diminish the aquatic
vitality of waterways. In South Korea, for example, 85% of Seouls air
pollution is attributed to automobile exhaust (85 PCTof Seouls Air Pol-
lution, 2001). Likewise, on the other side of the globe, commuters from
23 surrounding incorporated cities and 32 unincorporated areas adjacent
to Phoenix, Arizona, commonly experience air pollution alerts (Murphy,
2000).
Relatedly, the highways built for these automobiles not only promote
suburban sprawl but prompt higher gasoline consumption, traffic conges-
tion, critical habitat destruction, and fragmentation of ecosystems.
Together, these negative externalities of otherwise positive technoscience
advances induce battles between developers, environmentalists, and
NGOs over what constitutes prudent land-use planning. They also reveal
howexisting single-pollutant, single-media, and single-pathway statutory
approaches pose formidable obstacles to resolving metropolitan land-use
issues that require holistic approaches (Larence, 2001). Consequently,
calls for integrating these kinds of statutes and pollution prevention are
unlikely to abate in many U.S. cities (California Unified Environmental
Statute Commission, 1997). These approaches help avert the media-
shifting that todays fragmented statutory regime promotes by creating
perverse incentives for polluters to transfer pollution from water to air to
land and vice versa. For example, the greatest source of airborne volatile
organic compounds in the Philadelphia region in the mid-1980s was a
wastewater treatment plant.
Further complicating matters, even innovative mass transit systems
developed decades ago to shuttle workers into downtown areas more effi-
ciently are finding their systems inadequate for todays more common
suburb-to-suburb commute to work (e.g., the Metro system in Washing-
ton, D.C.). As a result, newsuburb-to-suburb transit lines and carriers are
needed. Indeed, the American Public Transit Association says that more
and more cities in the United States are turning to rail systems with
approximately 262 systems nowin operation or in various planning stages
(Murphy, 2000). Yet choosing transit routes often pits preservationists,
neighborhood groups, developers, property rights proponents, and envi-
ronmental justice groups against each other as they joust to protect their
respective interests.
High population densities in metropolitan areas also mean solid and
hazardous waste disposal problems as well as ever-increasing demands
for new energy power plants. Nuclear power plants to meet these energy
needs offer the promise of clean power productiona promise that sev-
eral nations are seizing. In Japan, for example, power companies envision
cutting carbon dioxide (CO
2
) emissions by 18% below 1990 levels by
2010 (Japan Power Companies to Cut Emissions, 2001). They will do
so by increasing the nations reliance on nuclear power from34%to 40%.
Even in Great Britain, where the Blair government plans to develop 18
wind farms to help meet CO
2
reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol,
the chairman of the Royal Society says these goals cannot be met without
new nuclear power plants (UK to Get 18 Wind Farms, 2001).
In the United States, of course, nuclear power has long been anathema
to most environmentalists for a variety of reasons, including the techni-
cally and politically formidable dilemma of nuclear waste storage. More
recently, resistance has also mounted in Europe as Green parties and
NGOs have rallied against nuclear power with some success. In Germany,
for example, NGOs held major and sometimes violent demonstrations in
2001 against the rail shipment of nuclear waste from France after Ger-
many had shipped it to La Hague for reprocessing (Anti-Nuclear Protes-
tors Attack German Railways, 2001). The protestorsaimwas to pressure
the German government to accelerate its policy to phase out nuclear
power plants by 2025. Meanwhile, in both Japan and Great Britain, the
cause of nuclear power has suffered serious setbacks recently after a spate
of accidents and scandals (e.g., see Six Sentenced Over Japans Worst
Nuclear Accident, 2003; UKBalks at Building NewNuclear Reactors,
2002).
Even when nonnuclear sources of energy are involved, controversies
over site locations can produce the same passions and not-in-my-backyard
reactions that controversies over solid, toxic, and hazardous waste dis-
posal have occasioned (Gerrard, 1994). Produced among electedofficials,
in turn, are strong predispositions to locate these plants in lower income
and minority areas. They anticipate that the political wherewithal and eco-
nomic incentives to resist are lower in these areas. These efforts, however,
frequently run pell-mell into an increasingly resistant, vocal, and some-
times litigious environmental justice movement. When the New York
Power Authority, for instance, announced plans to buy or install 11 natural
gas-fired turbines at seven plants near NewYork City, NewYork Lawyers
for the Public Interest filed suit to halt these plans on (among other things)
environmental justice grounds (Disavino, 2001).
Energy conservation, of course, is an obvious approach to resolving
supply dilemmas, especially if the true social costs of producing electric-
ity can be incorporated into prices (e.g., carbon taxes) or if precepts of the
ecological modernization movement become widespread in business. But
carbon taxes like those proposed in the United States by the Clinton
administration in the early 1990s proved politically unpalatable and have
faded in salience on political agendas in America. Moreover, with excep-
tions in some corporations, conservation efforts in the United States typi-
callyebb and flowwith crises. For example, when rolling power blackouts
occurred during the summer of 2001 in California, high-tech companies
in Silicon Valley immediately found ways to become more energy effi-
cient. Still, this commitment dissipated, as is typical in the United States,
once energy pressures were off (Kahn, 2001).
Government financing for energy efficiency and renewable energy has
varied sharply over the last 2 decades. Highest at the end of the Carter
administration when the nation faced a severe energy crisis, funding for
these purposes reached its nadir during the Reagan administration. Fund-
ing then increased during both the George H. W. Bush and Clinton admin-
istrations, but it is again facing cuts by President George W. Bush (albeit
with an emphasis on hydrogen power that has yet to be followed by signif-
icant funding commitments for research). Presently, total federal govern-
ment spending for energy efficiency and renewables (in constant 1998
dollars) is still only about one third of what it was in 1980. Consequently,
the future of conservation efforts, as well as the larger ecological modern-
ization movement in the United States and abroad, depends on whether
political leaders persistently embrace, NGOs promote, and business lead-
ers see competitive advantage in such efforts.
Crossnational and subnational regional migration. Regional popula-
tion migration occurs both within (e.g., migration into the Sunbelt and out
of Frostbelt states in the United States) and across borders (e.g., refugees
fleeing warfare or oppressive governments or workers seeking economic
opportunities in other countries). Nor are these migrations likely to abate
in the future. The end of the Cold War unleashed a variety of pent-up eth-
nic struggles that span hundreds of years (e.g., in the Balkans, Eritrea, and
the Middle East). Moreover, struggles over the control of natural re-
sources often are marbled within these conflicts. When combined with
factors like subreplacement fertility rates in Europe and elsewhere, it
seems likely that migratory impacts on the political economy that have
helped drive the evolution of the NGP will continue apace.
The ethnic diversity that results from immigration in many countries
today in the long run affords the kinds of new skills, talents, work ethic,
and cultures that always have leavened and advanced economic and
national security interests in countries like the United States. In the short
run, however, migration places unaccustomed tax, service delivery, envi-
ronmental, sanitation, and regulatory burdens on governments that can
strain their ability to respond effectively. These shortfalls, in turn, can
have dour political consequences. In countries such as France, Germany,
Austria, the Netherlands, and Australia, right-wing political forces have
ebbed and flowed in their electoral prospects depending on their ability to
stoke nativist worries about the effect of immigration on jobs. These par-
ties also incite neopopulist opposition to globalizationopposition
shared by many Green Party members who oppose trade agreements that
do not protect environmental values.
Nor are the political implications of within-nation population move-
ments limited to the regions affected. Population migration, for example,
from the countryside into London and its suburbs is already diminishing
the landed gentrys political power in Britain as the governments han-
dling of the countrys bout of hoof-and-mouth disease scandal reflects.
Likewise, migration into the Sunbelt in the United States has enhanced the
electoral and policy clout of politicians from that region in presidential
and congressional politics. It also has joined with the demands of the
global economy (see below) to catapult a more socially conservative and
economically neoliberal philosophy to national and subnational promi-
nence. That philosophy is partially manifested in a desire to address social
ills with market and quasimarket rather than bureaucratic solutions by
deeming the latter less efficient, effective, responsive, and accountable.
Financial scandals in 2002 involving ENRON, WorldCom, Xerox,
Arthur Andersen, and other corporations may take some of the luster off
proposals for business self-certification of environmental management
systems (like ISO 14001). But even where progressive ENR philosophy
still prevails, the vehicle most popular for realizing policy ends tends to be
the Third Way movement championed by leaders like Bill Clinton in the
United States, Tony Blair in Great Britain, and Gerhard Schroeder in Ger-
many during the 1990s (Giddens, 1998). This movement still seeks an
activist role for government in issues like ENR protection but one that is
less prescriptive, centralized, and bureaucratic than conventional progres-
sive strategies. Moreover, with the most politically viable opposition to
this philosophy coming from center-right parties in recent elections (e.g.,
in Germany), the turn to market and quasimarket solutions to social prob-
lems seems enduring.
Ironically, in the United States, this postbureaucratic agenda also
reflects a regional migratory success story that the administrative state
helped foster: the migration of minorities into the suburbs (or ethnoburbs)
(Booth, 1999). Public opinion pollsters persistently identify a more cen-
trist and postmaterialist orientation in suburban residents than that which
propelled the rise of the administrative state (Berry, 1999). Meanwhile, as
corporate workplaces, state legislatures, and government agencies in the
United States have begun to reflect this diversity in their own leadership
positions and membership, management and ENR issues related to fair-
ness have grown more salient. For example, some of the strongest sup-
porters in Congress for former president Clintons ENR initiatives were
members of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Anthropogenic changes in place related to food production. As noted
earlier, demographers and scientists see tremendous strains being placed
on food supplies over the next 30 years. The conundrum, however, is that
yields must soar at the same time that arable land, agricultural labor, and
water supplies are diminishing, as are yields from the green revolution of
the 1960s (Vidal, 2001). Scientists thus see six major and accelerating
anthropogenic impacts as cause for great food security concerns and con-
flicts in the 21st century (Lubchenco, 2002). First, ecological systems on
which societies worldwide depend (e.g., clean air and water) for food pro-
duction are being damaged as a result of large-scale transformations of the
earths landscapes. Second, carbon emissions fromhuman activities (e.g.,
from power plants and automobiles) are contributing to global warming,
which can lead to shifts in food production potential. Third, because of ag-
ricultural runoff fromfactory farms, the amount of fixed nitrogen has dou-
bled since 1992 leaving (among other things) approximately 50 dead
zones of algae blooms that have stifled other life forms. Fourth, human-
kinds consumption of the water needed for food production is now ap-
proaching 50% of available supplies with agriculture accounting for
nearly 70% of consumption. Fifth, anthropogenic habitat degradation
(e.g., from logging, farming, and dam building) and overpopulation are
resulting in a loss of biodiversity (including food diversity) with some
claiming that we are entering the sixth mass extinction event (Leakey &
Lewin, 1996). Finally, two thirds of the worlds fisheries are now catego-
rized as either depleted, overexploited, or fully exploited.
CHANGES IN PHYSICAL TECHNOLOGY
Changes in physical technologies have also affected, and are likely to
continue affecting, the political economy underpinning the evolving NGP
of ENR management. Nor, given the stakes involved, are they likely to
attenuate the value conflicts that have driven and constrained the reconsti-
tution of ENR management to date. A long and fabled history exists of
technical and scientific advances that either have or may yet bring positive
ENR benefits to humankind. Other advances create additional problems.
These either require governments to attenuate or to remedy them, or they
test their will, resources, and acumen to exploit. Among these trends are
technological breakthroughs for assessing ENR risks globally as well as
for finding and extracting natural resources fromthe planet. Important, as
well, are advances in communications technology that can reduce the
costs of information sharing and NGO mobilization nationally and inter-
nationally. Neither can one ignore the technological advances that have
allowed global financial markets to constrain the taxing and spending
capacities of governments worldwide. These put additional strains on
individual nations abilities to meet ENR responsibilities solely on their
own.
Advances in risk identification. Without question, technological abili-
ties to detect toxic carcinogens improved immensely during the last quar-
ter of the 20th century. Research from the human genome project is also
identifying toxicity mechanisms that have long baffled scientists. It also
may help them discern whether endocrine disrupters really are affecting
reproduction rates and whether electromagnetic force fields from high-
voltage wires really are threats to public health, safety, and the environ-
ment. Advances in technological prowess also allow more accurate data
readings to go into global modeling and ecosystem tracking efforts. For
example, satellite data covering changes in the Earths outgoing long-
wave radiation spectrum over a 27-year period suggest that a greenhouse
gas effect has accelerated in recent decades (Greenhouse Effect Con-
firmed Over 27 Years, 2001). Made easier, as well, by improvements in
computer technology and microprocessing is the modeling of complex in-
teractions of natural processes like these.
Yet a paradox frequently accompanies technological advances. The
greater the improvements in risk identification that these advances afford,
the more heated the political controversy surrounding their findings.
Many NGOs, for example, condemn the statistical standards of proof
informing modern risk analysis as too conservative (i.e., they make it too
difficult to prove adverse effects from epidemiology studies) (Brown,
1993; Mazmanian & Morell, 1988). They also assert that clusters of can-
cer outbreaks are sufficient to prompt regulatory relief. Conversely, skep-
tics and proponents of deregulation in the United States excoriate as too
conservative the default standards that regulators use to informrisk analy-
sis (e.g., see Breyer, 1993; Foster, Bernstein, & Huber, 1994), and they
lament that costs do not play a role in these determinations. Meanwhile,
proponents worry about, and opponents criticize, the lack of understand-
ing of true causal mechanisms in explaining the etiology of, for example,
cancerous tumors. Both, in turn, are uncomfortable for different reasons
about making inferences from animal studies about health threats to
human populations. Other skeptics want to see regulators shift their focus
from risk reduction to risk tradeoffs (Graham & Wiener, 1995).
Further fostering political conflict, critics wanting more aggressive
ENRmanagement complain that risk analysis focuses inordinately on the
effects of single agents. They want legislation requiring regulators to
focus more on the interactive (or synergistic) and cumulative effects of
multiple agents over time. They also want regulators to consider more
than the direct (or primary) effects of hazardous and toxic agents on the
present generation. Deemphasized too facilely, they argue, are the indirect
risks and costs to both present and future generations. Nor are these critics
content with studies that focus on single rather than multiple pathways for
agents to enter the body or when risk from low-level exposures is
downplayed. Especially problematic for them are studies that do not
assess multiple exposures to the same chemical agent from multiple
sources such as air and water or food, as well as studies that do not investi-
gate the relative source contribution of each of these pathways.
It is also possible, of course, that the future will bring technoscientific
advances that might address these risk assessment and management con-
cerns. Arguably, however, these will only raise a new set of challenging
legal, ethical, and scientific questions that will become the grist of politi-
cal conflict among various stakeholders. Perhaps the most promising yet
potentially conflictive advance in this vein today is the nascent but emerg-
ing field of toxicogenomics. As defined by the National Institute of Envi-
ronmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), toxicogenomics strives to take
advantage of recent research on gene sequencing fromthe genome project
to study scientifically howgenomes respond to environmental stressors/
toxicants (NIEHS, 2001, p. 1).
Regulators relying on toxicogenomic research might be able to con-
duct toxicological studies that identify and profile gene expression in a
cell or tissue (NIEHS, 2001, p. 1) based on various exposure levels to
pollutants and other toxicants. Here, two of the most promising sources of
genome data to date involve gene expression and identification of
polymorphisms related to either decreased or increased susceptibility to
environmental toxicants. With these data, regulators might be able to
determine the precise mechanism causing harm (e.g., tumors) and thus
predict whether particular exposures in humans will result in health prob-
lems in particular subpopulations (e.g., children with particular gene traits
rather than children as a whole). Conversely, genomic data showing char-
acteristic gene expression changes from stressors could facilitate decid-
edly less expensive, more effective, and much earlier toxicity screening
than conventional screening today.
All of this, however, only raises additional questions fraught with chal-
lenges for ENR management (see Marchant, 2002, for an excellent and
more extensive treatment of these issues). For example, should ENRregu-
latory standards apply to those subpopulations that are genetically most
susceptible to harm? Should disproportionate genetic risk replace dispro-
portionate exposure as the criterion for evaluating environmental justice
claims? Should todays generic regulatory standards (e.g., x-parts-per-
million or billion exposure levels) be replaced partially by more informa-
tion-based regulatory approaches predicated on individuals knowing their
genotype for relevant genes and avoiding exposure to products (e.g.,
chemicals) that express (i.e., turn on or off) that gene? Might citizens with
particular genetic disorders (e.g., a genetic disorder known as Alpha-1
makes persons more highly susceptible to emphysema and other lung dis-
eases when exposed to smoke or dust) go to court demanding more strin-
gent regulation (e.g., of particulate matter)? Could toxicogenomic studies
create political pressure to eliminate present assumptions that there is a
threshold level of exposure below which no harm occurs?
Certainly, these questions only begin to scratch the surface. But
whether toxicogenomic research becomes the wave of the regulatory
future or not, the nature of risk assessment means continuing conflict for
ENRmanagers. Science, of course, is an inherently iterative process with
controversy and uncertainty doggedly prodding advances in knowledge
throughout history (for an excellent summary of the inherent uncertainties
of risk analysis, see Bates, 1994). For laypersons paying only fleeting
attention to complex ENRissues, however, controversy often begets con-
fusion, skepticism, and polarization. Nor is this tendency helped as propo-
nents and opponents of aggressive ENR protection selectively use com-
peting findings to advance their disparate policy ends.
Those touting deregulation, for example, frame controversy as a signal
to go slow lest polluters make unnecessary financial investments. Con-
versely, those touting more aggressive ENRefforts frame disparate results
as signals for applying the precautionary principle: Whether harmful
effects of activities are demonstrable or not with scientific certainty, the
harm that could result from them, if proven true, requires immediate pre-
ventive action (e.g., global warming). Or, put differently, activities (e.g.,
GM food production) are presumed harmful to public health or the envi-
ronment until proven otherwisethe obverse of traditional regulatory
approaches. Regardless of the validity of either argument, however, pres-
sure continues to mount on ENR agencies to weigh the costs versus the
benefits of regulations, examine their interactive and cumulative effects at
low and high doses, make tradeoffs among risks based on local circum-
stances and costs, and press for the integration of statutes that make trade-
offs difficult in practice.
Advances in mass production and transportation. With the historical
lessons of the Great Depression firmly in mind, the United States and its
allies were determined after World War II to advance international trade
on an unprecedented scale. The results of these efforts in pure economic
terms were striking, producing a five-fold increase in international trade
over the next 20 years (Madrick, 1995, p. 65). They also had profound im-
plications for the international distribution of wealth. With mass produc-
tion boosting productivity rates immensely in industrialized countries like
Germany, Japan, France, and the United States, gaps in national wealth
grew ever more pronounced between the developed and developing
worlds.
LDCs also grew increasingly dependent on cash rather than subsis-
tence crops for feeding their people and on allowing either state-owned
enterprises or multinational corporations to mine and export their miner-
als. In the process, they also grew increasingly dependent on economic
development loans from the World Bank and the International Monetary
Fund (IMF)loans that tended to favor large-scale infrastructure projects
that considered environmental impacts only marginally, if at all (Hamil-
ton, 2001). Moreover, because these nations did not have ENRregulatory
regimes that were anywhere near as developed or stringent as in the indus-
trialized world, practices that would not be tolerated in the latter were pur-
sued in the former (e.g., poisoning local water supplies with arsenic and
cyanide runoff from gold-mining operations). This is not to suggest that
positive benefits did not accrue from many of these consumptive
initiatives. It is to suggest, however, that these benefits were inordinately
slanted toward the developed world at the expense of developing nations
and that the latter bore a disproportionate share of the ENR costs.
Today, the results of these technological advances continue to produce
both positive and negative externalities that are distributed unevenly
across humankind and that simultaneously offer challenges, choices, and
opportunities to international regulatory regimes. For example, 10 global
companies dominate the worlds wood and wood-fiber industry.
Although concentrations of capital in this market may disturb some, they
also offer tremendous opportunities for saving the worlds forests. The
World Wildlife Federation, for example, estimates that if those 10 compa-
nies adopted the Forest Stewardship Councils process standards for
effective management, growing world demands for forestry products
could be met by approximately one fifth of the worlds forests (Just Ten
Companies Can Help, 2001). Embracing certification standards gener-
ally, however, has not proven easy.
Nor is an end in sight to ENR challenges like these. The U.S. Energy
Department, for example, projects that world oil demand will increase
56% by the year 2025 with most of that demand related to transportation
costs (Doggett, 2001). Consequently, the drilling and transportation of
carbon-based fuels is likely to continue to produce oil accidents and spills
like those occurring in 2001 off the coasts of Brazil (by Petrobras) and
Denmark (e.g., see Oil FromHoled Tanker Hits Danish Beaches, 2001;
Rocha, 2001). Meanwhile, Russia considers taking advantage of new
technology to build a floating nuclear power plant in the turbulent White
Sea, whereas a Norway-based environmental group (Bellona) monitoring
Russias energy industry trumpets the risks internationally (Russia Plans
Floating Nuclear Plant, 2001). All this, and more, forebodes continuing
confrontations between consumptive users and conservationists or
preservationists the world over.
Technological advances in food production. Technological advances
affecting the worlds food supply are also Janus-faced. In rural areas, for
example, pesticides have helped to multiply crop yields thus raising hopes
of attenuating hunger and nutrition problems worldwide. During the first
35 years of the green revolution, global grain production doubled. Yet that
increase in chemical agriculture worldwide comes at a high price. For ex-
ample, researchers at the University of Essex have demonstrated how
costly farming can be to the environment (Pretty, 2001). They found that
subsidies from the British government tend mostly to support methods of
farming that rely on chemicals. Yet the negative externalities that British
chemical-based agribusinesses produce cost approximately 2.34 billion
pounds annually in water pollution, soil erosion, and habitat loss. With the
identity of polluters frequently unknown, obvious ENR damage delayed
for years, and farm prices not internalizing these negative externalities,
calls for revamping market incentives should continue to mount.
Relatedly, so-called factory farms (e.g., poultry farms) or concentrated
animal feed operations (CAFOs) offer economic and supply advantages
to farmers and citizens. Yet the inordinate amounts of fetid waste runoff
from these farms prompt calls for regulatory relief from those living
downwind and downstreamfromthem. Other critics contend that CAFOs
are much too conducive to outbreaks of disease. Thousands of genetically
uniform animals are raised in unhygienic warehouses where dangerous
microbes can breed. Factory farms then recycle animal manure and
slaughterhouse waste as feed for the animals. Meat processing done at
breakneck speed follows, often in the presence of blood, feces, and other
contagions. Long-distance transport of food then offers additional oppor-
tunities for contamination.
Nor, many critics claim, does it help that farm animals consume
roughly 10 times as many antibiotics as do humans. Antibiotic overuse in
factory farms has led to drug-resistant microbes, including Salmonella, E.
coli, and Campylobacter. Still, industrial animal farming is the fastest
growing formof animal production worldwide, increasing by a third since
1990 and contributing to nearly half of the worlds meat production.
Though concentrated in North America and Europe, feedlots are sprout-
ing up near urban centers in Brazil, the Philippines, China, India, and else-
where in the developing world where demand for meat and animal prod-
ucts is soaring.
Building up, as well, is strong resistance to bioengineered (i.e., GM)
food production among Europeans, various Arab nations, the Japanese,
and some Americans. This promises continuing political conflict among
leading GM-food producing nations (e.g., the United States, Canada, and
Argentina) and potential GM-food importing nations (e.g., in the EU and
many LDCs) as increasing shares of many vital food crops are
bioengineered.
5
Indeed, acts of civil disobedience involving destruction
of GM-crop field tests have occurred in such geographically dispersed
nations as Great Britain, Scotland, New Zealand, France, and the
Philippines.
To proponents of bioengineered foods (including seven national acad-
emies of science, the UN Development Programme, the UN Food and
Agriculture Organization, and a slew of Nobel Prize winners), GM foods
are a necessary component in meeting the food security challenges noted
earlier. They see it as offering the promise of vastly higher and more nutri-
tionally enriched food yields. For example, studies in India and China
show crop yields improving two to three times over conventional meth-
ods, and scientists talk of bioengineering nutraceuticals to deal with mal-
nutrition in LDCs (e.g., enriching rice with higher levels of iron and beta-
carotenea precursor of vitamin Ato prevent premature births and
blindness in children, respectively). Proponents also cite research show-
ing that GM food production will be more environmentally benign than
conventional methods. The former, they argue, requires significantly less
use of pesticides and herbicides, requires less land, produces less soil ero-
sion than conventional tillage, and preserves more biodiversity because it
is less land-intensive. They also tout the potential of biotechnology for
reducing some of the LDCs most pressing health threats, including
malaria and dengue fever, through the production of edible vaccines (e.g.,
vaccines in bananas) or genetic reengineering of mosquitoes and other
disease carriers.
But opposition to bioengineering, as well as GM food production and
commercialization (led by France and Italy in the EU but with strong
resistance elsewhere), has placed the future of GMfood in jeopardy. Still,
by mid-2002, five of the seven leading agribusinesses originally involved
in biotechnological research either had abandoned these efforts or had
been merged into other companies. And by mid-2003, the United States
had filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO) chal-
lenging as illegal a de facto ban since 1998 on imports of GM products
into the EU. In a still evolving situation in 2003, the EU prepared to drop
this ban but only as it had proposed earlier after tightening its labeling
requirements. It also imposed regulations on traceability (reporting
requirements), segregation (of GM from non-GM products), and pro-
cessed foods (previous regulations had not applied to these) that the
United States considered unacceptably costly, unrelated to health con-
cerns, and protectionist in motivation.
6
As of this writing, the United
States expects EU markets to open to GM products that are labeled but
worries that EU countries will implement these regulations in unaccept-
able ways (e.g., by labeling GM foods with words that imply they are
unsafe in the absence of scientific proof).
In the extreme, and despite millions of their citizens facing starvation
by the end of 2002 as the result of 2 years of severe drought and (some-
times) agricultural mismanagement, several sub-Saharan nations (e.g.,
Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Mozambique) initially refused to accept
shipments of grain from the United States because of their GM content.
Less extreme, a host of fears and motives animate this growing worldwide
resistance to genetically engineered products. Included among these are
the potential that opponents see them posing for genetic pollution, dam-
age to food webs, economic harm to small farmers, the creation of new
allergies or toxins, and the global domination of world agriculture by a
small group of multinational corporations (Paarlberg, 2001).
The validity of these fears and motives aside, countries like Japan,
Australia, and New Zealand, as well as the EU, are now passing (or have
passed) legislation setting zero tolerance for imports containing unap-
proved GM products (Japans New Rules for Biotech Crop Imports,
2001). Others, like Thailand, have reversed earlier policy and currently
ban the field-testing of GM crops despite efforts by the nations Agricul-
ture and Science and Technology ministries to lift the ban in 2003. Only
allowed by the Thais is the importation of GMplants for research, for ani-
mal feed, or in products where outright bans on import would either hurt
domestic industries or be nonimplementable (e.g., corn and soy). Mean-
while 24 nations presently use GMfood labeling for various levels of GM
content across all or certain products.
Although recognizing legitimate health concerns, the United States
nevertheless sees most of these efforts as attempts to use the precautionary
principle as a nontariff trade barrier. Depending on the nation involved,
trade rivals are trying to protect domestic products and producers, buy
time for their own scientists to catch up with the United States in biotech
research, or impose such heavy costs on corporations that they will aban-
don commercialization altogether (S. Sriwatanapongse, interview,
August 7, 2002; J. Y. Yun, interview, August 8, 2002; A. M. Zola, inter-
view, August 7, 2002). Nor is there any question that opponents of GM
foodsprincipled or otherwiseare using the Cartagena Protocol on
Biosafety, the Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures
of the WTO, and the Codex Alimentarius Commission to make the
precautionary principle the basis for international biosafety and trade
regulations.
Consequently, political pressures on governments to block GM foods
from entering their countries are not likely to ebb soon. Greenpeace, for
example, has mounted an international campaign to warn nations like
Wales, NewZealand, and the Philippines that they will lose world markets
if they pursue a pro-GM policy. Nor are they likely to abate on the propo-
nents side as the demands on food supplies noted earlier spiral. Some sci-
entists project, for example, that feeding the world will require the
conversion of natural ecosystems covering an area larger than the size of
the United States including Alaska (Tilman et al., 2001). Some even esti-
mate that harvesting these lands to meet supply needs will rival the effect
that greenhouse gases have on global environmental change unless a
switch is made frompetroleum-based (chemical pesticides) to gene-based
agriculture (Tilman et al., 2001). Yet biotechnology research is rapidly
taking root in only a few LDCs (e.g., Brazil, China, Egypt, India, and
South Africa) with most research being done by a handful of market-
driven private corporations that focus largely on agricultural benefits in
industrial countries where profits can be maximized (Andersen, 1999).
Joseph Yun, economic counselor at the U.S. embassy in Bangkok, puts
the dilemma for LDCs in geopolitical perspective: They will continue to
be a battleground as the U.S. and Europe sort out their battle over the pre-
cautionary principle for yearsif not decadesto come (interview,
August 8, 2002). Some countries may decideor already have decided
to declare themselves GM-free countries to avoid boycotts of their prod-
ucts and (hopefully) to gain competitive advantage in world markets. But
most must hedge their bets by pursuing research on biotech because
they fear a loss of markets and competitiveness to their neighbors and
trade rivals who are pursuing GMresearch and commercializationaggres-
sively (most notably, China) (J. Donavanik, interview, June 26, 2002;
B. Poocharoen, interview, July 29, 2002; Sriwatanapongse, 2002; J. Y.
Yun, interview, August 8, 2002; A. M. Zola, interview, August 7, 2002).
Meanwhile, within LDCs, governments are likely to be split over the issue
with agricultural and scientific technocrats favoring continuing develop-
ment and commercialization, and environmental and public health tech-
nocrats urging caution. But whatever direction individual LDCs pursue
on the issue, a multistakeholder participatory process involving
governments, technocrats, NGOs, and academics will be a critical
element for making progress (N. Damrongchai, interview, August 7,
2002; Damrongchai, 2002; S. Prasartporn, interview, July 26, 2002;
S. Sriwatanapongse, interview, August 7, 2002; A. M. Zola, interview,
August 7, 2002).
Advances in telecommunications. Advances in telecommunications
also are likely to continue trends that in the past have advanced the NGP
agenda worldwide. Three of these advances are especially salient: the role
of telecommunications in advancing the globalization of markets,
prompting 24-hour news cycles and the so-called CNN effect, and reduc-
ing the costs of ENRinformation gathering, sharing, and political mobili-
zation.
Globalization of markets. By permitting the nearly instantaneous mon-
itoring of production processes in faraway markets, telecommunications
have allowed multinational corporations to move their production lines to
wherever they can take advantage of labor rate differentials or lax environ-
mental protection standards. Multinationals and transnationals, of course,
also can help raise environmental quality in developing nations. They do
so whenever they agree to meet the stricter environmental standards of
their home nations, meet international process standards, or invest volun-
tarily in pollution prevention or renewable energy development. British
Petroleum, for example, has invested heavily in renewable fuels and solar
power (Millar &Macalister, 2001). Still, the propensity to become Green
has varied greatly across different corporations as they weigh the costs
and benefits of doing so (e.g., see Graham & Hartwell, 1997).
Internationalization of product lines can also render competitive
advantages to cities and regions trying to retain and recruit businesses to
their jurisdictions. Higher quality of life, including environmental quality,
is increasingly important to workers in the knowledge economy. High-
tech firms, as such, consider amenities like environmental quality when
pondering where to locate or relocate. Yet providing these amenities also
can place significant financial strains on the political jurisdictions offer-
ing them because of other incentives that governments offer to recruit or
retain firms for their jurisdictions. Specifically, they often offer significant
and long-term tax breaks and subsidies that otherwise might help pay for
quality-of-life investments like ENR improvements.
Conversely, smokestack and other industries have also threatened
(implicitly or explicitly) to move their operations to other states or abroad
where ENR protections are less stringent. Internationally, these kinds of
threats are likely to continue to engender NGO pressures (some peaceful
and others violent) on governments and international bodies like the WTO
to incorporate both environmental and labor protections in their decisions.
They also will lend continuing support to arguments for advancing vari-
ous aspects of the NGP, especially for pollution prevention, flexibility,
and international standardization of ENRmanagement processes like ISO
14000.
24-hour news and the CNN effect. A key component of advances in
communication technologynamely, the electronic news mediaaffects
the political economy of ENR management in major ways. Partially in
their quest for balance, but also in their hope of filling24-hour news cycles
and garnering larger market shares, the electronic media often use a duel-
ing expert format. With guests representing extreme positions on an issue,
heated and polarized rather than measured and informed debates ensue.
Typically underrepresented, if not lost, in these dueling expert formats is
the consensus position of the scientific community on the issues dis-
cussed.
Neither does the rise of advocacy research help this situation, espe-
cially when it is represented in the media as objective research. Typically,
the findings of these studies are not disseminated unless they reflect the
interests of those paying for or sponsoring the research. Nor is the
research usually peer-reviewed, whether it is done in-house by interest
groups (e.g., the World Wildlife Federation, Friends of the Earth, or
Greenpeace), contracted out by them, or produced by think tanks spon-
sored by the combatants (e.g., the Competitive Enterprise Institute).
Indeed, so dysfunctional to ENR policy deliberation has this tendency
become that the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine has called
for scientists, the media, legislators, and regulators to distinguish
between scientific evidence and hypothesis, and not allow a paparazzi
science approach to [resolving] these problems (Safe, 1997, p. 1303).
At the same time, funding for primary and peer-reviewed research
done or contracted out by ENRagencies as an antidote to these tendencies
has not been well-funded by Congress or state legislatures (for a list of
resources making this point, see Durant, 1995). Nor does it help good sci-
ence that various agencies have tended to downplay funding for different
aspects of ENR research. Although trying to broaden its focus in recent
years, for example, the U.S. EPA has focused largely on public health
rather than on natural resource management issues (Landy, Roberts, &
Thomas, 1994). Nor did the EPA release its first guidance document on
doing ecosystem risk assessments until 1998. Similarly, the overwhelm-
ingly prodevelopment cultures of the U.S. Energy, Interior, and Agricul-
ture departments have focused their research efforts on advancing the
consumptive uses of farmlands, timber, oil, gas, and coal.
Reduced costs of information sharing and political mobilization. Tele-
communication advances have also dramatically lowered the costs of
gathering and sharing ENR information, communicating concerns, and
organizing political movements the world over (Berry, 1999; Wilson,
1989). In 2001, for example, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization
used its Forest Information System to assess the overall health of the
worlds silviculture. Likewise, advances in direct-mail solicitation,
telemarketing, the Internet, and CNN permit the sending of vivid mes-
sages and riveting images almost instantaneously to targeted or mass au-
diences around the world. These, in turn, have helped to create newNGOs
or helped existing ones communicate their concerns worldwide at little
cost.
The Internet and other telecommunication advances also allowcontin-
uous interaction among widely scattered audiences once they are aroused.
This facilitates the arranging, planning, coordination, and implementa-
tion of grassroots strategies, movements, and demonstrations. Protesters,
for instance, coordinated activities via cell phones, pagers, and instant
messaging devices in demonstrations against the WTO in Seattle and
Washington in recent years. So, too, was the Internet effective in the anti-
GMO campaign mounted by Greenpeace (noted earlier), in demonstra-
tions in Quebec involving the Free Trade for the Americas Treaty, and in a
successful international campaign to boycott lumber fromBritish Colum-
bia unless the Canadian province preserved large areas of the Great Bear
Rainforest from harvesting (Canadian Rainforest Saved After Timber
Deal, 2001).
On a less confrontational yet no less important scale, the Internet also
allows government agencies and private companies to report and fre-
quently update toxic release inventories, air and water quality measures,
wetlands assessments, desertification measures, and other ecosystemand
watershed quality efforts (Citizens Can View Refinery Emissions Data
Online, 2001). As such, the use of information reporting strategies by
ENRagencies and private companies is quite attractive as an alternative to
command-and-control regulation. Moreover, with no end in sight to tele-
communication advances in general, pressures from NGOs for progres-
sively greater transparency of corporate operations are unlikely to abate
soon. These, in turn, are likely to continue eliciting calls fromthe business
community for more flexibility to produce improvements more cost-
effectively. As such, future struggles between these protagonists can be
expected over pollution prevention, accountability for results, and market
and quasimarket alternatives to regulation. So, too, are calls likely to
accelerate for equity in the sharing of the benefits and burdens of eco-
nomic development as these data are analyzed in both the developed and
developing worlds.
CHANGES IN SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY
In addition to those globalization changes that have directly affected
ENR management, changes in financial markets also have helped shape
the political economy of ENR management indirectly. Critical among
these changes are a growing dependence by nations on financial markets
to carry their debt or finance their investments. Further fostering these
trends have been the deregulation of these same financial markets, as well
as deflationary prices and tax migration.
These trends, in turn, have interacted with the changes in physical tech-
nology noted earlier to erode further the power of most national govern-
ments relative to markets. As Sir John Browne, chairman of British Petro-
leum, noted recently, Globalization has certainly increased the scale and
reach of companies. The 20 largest companies in the world have market
capitalizations greater than the GDPs of all but 20 of the members of the
UNGeneral Assembly (Millar &Macalister, 2001, p. 1). Moreover, pre-
cisely because of the financial size and power of multinationals relative to
many governments, Browne argued that the corporate world has to take
on responsibilities formally in the hands of government (e.g., ENR pro-
tection) (Millar & Macalister, 2001, p. 1). Although his comment was a
plea for companies to become more socially responsible, many Greens
worry that such trends are precisely the problemand can be counted on to
resist them (sometimes violently) as blueprints for dystopia.
As noted, nations need investments in physical and social infrastruc-
ture to expand their economies and meet their social needs, including
ENRprotection. But with many governments either saddled with national
debt (e.g., the United States) or under pressure to balance budgets from
international lenders (e.g., the World Bank and the IMF) or regional
economic or political bodies (e.g., the EU), financial markets have
become a major source of investment capital. These changes in interna-
tional finance, in turn, have placed relentless pressures on nations to
reduce the size of their public sectors (e.g., see Friedman, 1999).
Nations, to be sure, have an unprecedented opportunity to capitalize on
the economic, social, and cultural opportunities that international finan-
cial markets offer. However, they first must convince international inves-
tors that their economy is healthy. This, in turn, means balancing budgets
and reducing national debt to prescribed proportions of GDP before
investments flow or admission to trade associations is allowed. Break-
throughs in telecommunications then allow financiers to, in effect, vote
daily on the performance of governments by electronicallyshifting capital
across borders. As such, the low inflation and slower growth agenda of
these financiers is propelled around the globe, 24 hours a day, to inform
investment and policy judgments.
Nor are the downward pressures on the size of the public sector helped
by the abilities of multinational and transnational corporations to engage
in income tax shifting (Greider, 1997). The globalization of product lines,
for example, has afforded opportunities for corporations to claim deduc-
tions for any costly production expenditures they incur against the taxes
they owe to countries with higher corporate income tax rates. Conversely,
they can assess high profits to production facilities in other nations that
have lower corporate tax rates. Importantly, income shifting need not
occur for nations to feel downward pressures on the corporate tax rates
they legislate. Merely the potential for taxes to migrate to other nations is
sufficient.
Under these circumstances, national governments around the world
have embraced devolution of responsibilities to subnational actors, part-
nerships with other public- and private-sector actors, and calls for more
integrated, flexible, collaborative, and market-oriented approaches to
governance. To be sure, inherently good reasons exist for nations to pur-
sue these elements of the NGP as alternatives to centralized, bureaucrati-
cally driven, command-and-control ENR management. Yet the political
economy driving the evolution of the NGP is also animated by fundamen-
tal and enduring changes in the social technology of international finance.
Thus, these changes in social technology also afford a paradox of sorts:
The greater the power of international financial markets to place down-
ward pressures on the size of the public sector, the more important politi-
cal elections will become for ENR protection. Governments envisioning
the virtues of ecological modernization, for example, will continue to try
to leverage public investments to facilitate these efforts (e.g., subsidies
and other public-private collaborations like those discussed earlier).
Those that see zero-sumtradeoffs between ENRprotection and economic
development will do decidedly less.
Relatedly, globalization can also affect the discussion of environmen-
tal issues more generally, making themeven more conflictive and vulner-
able to switches in political regimes. As political ecology theory predicts,
the environment under these circumstances can become a legitimating
discourse consisting of a whole host of issues that otherwise might not be
discussed. In the process, debates over environmental issues become sur-
rogates for issues previously off-the-table, especially in LDCs: the states
role in determining with economic interests who has control over natural
resources and the wealth they create, destroy, or redistribute. In turn, they
can become surrogates in LDCs for battles over Western-versus-
European-versus-Asian models of economic development (Phongpaichit
& Baker, 1998); for long-standing rural versus urban tensions and con-
flicts; and for protracted cultural battles between forces of the community
self-reliance and the forces of modern nationalism, internationalism, and
globalization. Each of these factors is visible, for example, in the politics
and administration of Thailands GM-food regulatory policy in the after-
math of the 1997 financial crisis (C. Boonrahong, interview, July 10,
2002; P. J. Corcoran, interview, August 8, 2002; J. W. Dayton, inter-
view, August 8, 2002; P. Hongthong, interview, August 6, 2002; T.
Osius, interview, June 26, 2002; K. Sukin, interview, August 6, 2002; J.
Y. Yun, interview, August 8, 2002; A. M. Zola, interview, August 7, 2002).
CHANGES IN PHILOSOPHY
Major shifts in broader philosophy also promise to continue reinforc-
ing elements of the political economy that have propelled the NGP. Prom-
ised as well is a continuation of the political clashes that have both
prompted the NGP and constrained its ability to reconstitute first- genera-
tion command-and-control ENR management regimes. Especially note-
worthy among these are evolving philosophical shifts related to gover-
nance, the privatization of regulation, and the potential renaissance of
community.
Changes in governance philosophy. At least four analytically distinct
yet interrelated models of governance exist today that challenge estab-
lished administrative arrangements worldwide. These are the market, par-
ticipatory state, flexible government, and deregulated government models
(Durant, 1998; Hall &OToole, 2000; Kettl, 2000; Milward, 1996; Peters,
1996). Nor are these tendencies toward devolution, deliberation, and col-
laboration likely to abate soon. In the United States, for example, presi-
dents and congressmembers face perverse credit-claiming incentives to
take on new federal obligations but without increasing the visible size of
the federal governments workforce (Durant, 2000; Kettl, 2000; Light,
1999). Public agencies, however, are still finding their bearings within this
newpublic management model in the United States. For example, in ENR
management, many states with devolved federal responsibilities are rush-
ing to embrace the environmental indicators movement as a means for be-
coming more outcomes- or results-based. As James Bernard, project man-
ager of the State Environmental Goals and Indicators Project, observes,
however, the cultural and bureaucratic shift to fully integrating [sic] envi-
ronmental indicators into management systems is just beginning (Ber-
nard, 1996, p. 27; also see Metzenbaum, 2002).
Privatizing regulation? The international standards movement also
gained substantial momentumby the end of the 20th century. Whether de-
signed for polluters to meet minimum international ENR standards (e.g.,
to become a member of the EU), to comply voluntarily with environmen-
tal management systemstandards developed by international bodies (e.g.,
ISO 14000), or to embrace as principles developed by NGOs in conjunc-
tion with business, the salience of this approach is likely to remain. Many
polluters feel that standardizing environmental regulations is necessary
for global markets to function effectively, whereas many regulators antici-
pate that standards can ease their enforcement and compliance costs.
Policy debates nonetheless rage over the wisdom of pursuing these
kinds of accountability mechanisms. On one hand, international stan-
dards may be useful in breaking down protectionist barriers to trade in a
global economy. Moreover, they ultimately may have a leavening effect
on lax product and environmental standards in both developed and devel-
oping countries by making regulatory compliance a marketing advantage.
On the other hand, critics argue that there are inherent risks in this
approach. Most prominent among these are that (a) a lack of regulatory
vigilance may harmpublic health, (b) a tendency may develop to compro-
mise standards to the lowest common denominator of quality or safety,
and (c) a strategy may develop to drive smaller competitors out of business
by setting standards that are too costly for them to meet. Moreover, ques-
tions of efficacy aside, shifting regulatory standard-setting responsibili-
ties to supranational bodies while devolving many regulatory responsibil-
ities to states and localities also raises the specter of a loss of democratic
accountability and state sovereignty to firms and international bureau-
cratic elites (Dahl, 1999).
A rebirth of community? Public confidence in many national govern-
ments has fallen dramatically. Between 1933 and 1999 in the United
States, for example, belief that too much power is concentrated in Wash-
ington rose in public opinion polls from one third agreeing with the state-
ment to two thirds routinely agreeing (Nye, Zelikow, &King, 1997; Penn,
1999). Relatedly, approximately 60% of respondents in a 1999 survey
agreed that the best government is that which governs least compared to
only 32% agreeing in 1973. Indeed, of those voting in the 2000 election,
53% surveyed said that government should do less, not more (From,
2001). Since 1973, trust in the federal government to do the right thing has
also dropped by half. Meanwhile, as judges across the world began con-
fronting corruption on massive scales within their countries, governments
have fallen (e.g., in Indonesia, Thailand, and Mexico) after years and
sometimes generations of one-party control. And although trust in gov-
ernment increased dramatically in polls taken in the aftermath of the trag-
edy of September 11th, it (along with trust in institutions, generally) de-
clined fairly rapidly as time passed.
Yet evidence also abounds in surveys that citizens wish to reframe gov-
ernments role in meeting societys needs, not to cut it back significantly.
Respondents also tend overwhelmingly to be unconvinced that either
business or volunteerism (individually or in cooperation) are capable by
themselves of meeting societys needs (Durant, 2000; Galston, 1999;
Penn, 1999). Nearly three quarters of respondents agree, for example, that
social problems facing Americans are addressed best when government
and voluntary associations (be they secular or faith-based) cooperate with
business. Nor are these attitudes limited to the United States. Grassroots
networks in developing countries have linked NGOs and peoples organi-
zations to form powerful extraconstitutional political movements linking
environmental and social activists in a common cause (e.g., BIOTHAI and
the Assembly of the Poor, respectively, in Thailand). As such, the funda-
mentals underpinning the civic environmentalism, collaboration, and
deliberation elements of the NGP seemstrong, albeit controversial, in the
absence of crises.
CONCLUSION
This article has adapted Gauss framework to explore the political
economy that has helped drive the evolution of the NGP in ENRmanage-
ment during the last quarter of the 20th century. Chronicled have been
many of the protean changes in people, place, physical technology, social
technology, and philosophy that combined to both propel and dilute
efforts to reform the first generation of ENR management approaches
worldwide. Analysis suggests that the secular trends underlying this polit-
ical economy show few signs of abating. The rub, of course, is that the
political economy propelled by these secular trends has stymied a funda-
mental reconstitution of conventional ENR regimes despite broad-based
consensus on the need to reconceptualize ENR regimes fundamentally,
reconnect with stakeholders, and redefine conventional notions of admin-
istrative rationality. Awash in these political dynamics, elements of the
NGP have been grafted on existing regulatory regimes but largely on the
margins. Absent fundamental changes in those aspects of this political
economy that have bred resistance to change, reformers rightly may iden-
tify with John Harrisons 40-year quest for recognition. Yet they also
might rest assured that Harrisons paradigmatic shift ultimately was suc-
cessful. What is more, and much like British fleets of old bent on dead
reckoning, it is unlikely that ENR managers can reach their destinations
without more faithfully incorporating the longitudinal coordinates of the
NGP in the 21st century.
NOTES
1. To be sure, first-generation approaches are not totally responsible for any progress
identified at given points in time. Responsible, as well, are such factors as technological
advances, economic variations, shifts in use patterns, naturally occurring variations in back-
ground levels, and various weather events.
2. Present statutes discourage experimentation because of their ambiguity when it comes
to the legal consequences for regulators and regulatees when experiments push legal limits.
They also do so by not stretching those limits far enough. Likewise, because pollution pre-
vention is inherently multimedia, the current single-media focus of most ENRstatutes poses
a basic impediment to prevention strategies (e.g., see California Unified Environmental Stat-
ute Commission, 1997).
3. The following discussion of the new governance paradigm relies heavily on Durant,
OLeary, and Fiorino (2001).
4. However, African Americans, Hispanics, and White union members in the bottomhalf
of income levels remain firmly wedded to the Democratic Party. Likewise, small-business
persons, corporate executives, and managers remain loyal to the Republican Party (Edsall,
2001).
5. For example, in 2001, 63%of the worlds soybean crop and 24%of the corn crop were
genetically engineered (Brasher, 2001).
6. With the United States leading the world in the production of GM foods, officials fear
that labeling will unnecessarily stigmatize GM crops by implying that there is something to
fear fromthemin the absence of scientific proof that they are harmful to public health or the
environment. The government also opposes the segregation of crops throughout the food
chain as adding inordinate costs to food production; essentially, two separate food supply
chains (i.e., growing, storing, shipping, and marketing phases) would have to be established,
thus making this cost prohibitive.
REFERENCES
85 PCTof Seouls Air Pollution Blamed on Automobile Exhaust [electronic version]. (2001,
March19). The Yahoo! Daily News Finance, Asia. RetrievedMarch19, 2001, fromhttp://
www.asia.biz.yahoo.com/news/ asian_markets
Andersen, P. P. (1999, October 27). Biotech and the poor [electronic version]. Washington
Post. RetrievedOctober 27, 1999, from http://www.agbioworld.org/biotech_info/topics/
agbiotech/poor.html
Anti-Nuclear Protestors Attack German Railways [electronic version]. (2001, March 21).
BBC News. Retrieved March 21, 2001, from http://www.news.bbc.co.uk
Bates, D. V. (1994). Environmental health risks and public policy: Decision making in free
societies. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Bernard, J. R. (1996, June 3). Environmental indicators: An integral tool for the future of
environmental management. State Environmental Monitor, 1(4), 27.
Berry, J. M. (1999). The newliberalism: The risingpower of citizengroups. Washington, DC:
The Brookings Institution.
Boonrahong, C. (2002, July 10). Interview. Director, Institute for a Sustainable Agriculture
Community (ISAC), ChiangMai, Thailand.
Booth, W. (1999, June 27). The battle for California: With a new script, the actions in the
middle. The Washington Post, p. A01.
Brasher, P. (2001, March 29). Farmers to increase biotech crops. Austin360.com. Retrieved
March 29, 2001, fromhttp://www.austin360.com/shared/news/technology/ap_story. html/
Science/AP.V9155.AP-Biotech-Fo
Breyer, S. (1993). Breaking the vicious circle: Toward effective risk regulation. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Brown, P. (1993, October). When the public knows better: Popular epidemiology challenges
the system. Environment, 35, 16-20 & 32-34.
California Unified Environmental Statute Commission. (1997, January). Unifying environ-
mental protectioninCalifornia: Final report. Sacramento, CA: CooleyGodward, LLP.
Canadian Rainforest Saved After Timber Deal [electronic version]. (2001, April 5). BBC
News. Retrieved April 5, 2001, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/Americas/
newsid_1261000/1261688.stm
Citizens Can View Refinery Emissions Data Online. (2001, March 21). CNN Online.
Retrieved March 21, 2001, from http://www.commodities-now.com/news/pr_technol-
ogy/pr_20010321a.shtml
Corcoran, P. J. (2002, August 8). Interview. Counselor for Public Affairs, Embassy of the
United States of America, Bangkok, Thailand.
Dahl, R. A. (1999). On democracy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Damrongchai, N. (2002a, August 7). Interview. National Center for Genetic Engineeringand
Biotechnology (BIOTEC), National Science and Technology Development Agency,
Bangkok, Thailand.
Damrongchai, N. (2002b, June). Stakeholder dialogue in GM debate: A stepwise approach
toward consensus. Paper presented at the 10th International Conference of the Greening
of Industry Network, Gteborg, Sweden.
Dayton, J. (2002, August 8). Interview. Deputy Counselor, Economic Affairs, Embassy of
the United States of America, Bangkok, Thailand.
Disavino, S. (2001, March 16). Environmentalists rally to stop NYCpower plants [electronic
version]. Environmental News Network. Retrieved March 16, 2001, from http://www.
enn.com/news/wire-stories
Doggett, T. (2001, March 29). World oil demand seen up 56 percent by 2020 [electronic ver-
sion]. Environmental News Network. Retrieved March 29, 2001, from http://www.enn.
com/news/wire-stories/2001/03/ 03292001/reu_oil_42787.asp
Donavanik, J. (2002, June 26). Interview. Chief Attorney, Jade Donavanik Law Office, and
Consultant, BIOTEC, Bangkok, Thailand.
Durant, R. F. (1995). The democratic deficit in America. Political Science Quarterly, 110(1),
25-47.
Durant, R. F. (1998). Agenda setting, the third wave, and the administrative state. Adminis-
tration & Society, 30(3), 211-247.
Durant, R. F. (2000). Whither the neoadministrative state? Toward a polity-centered theory
of administrative reform. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 10(1),
79-109.
Durant, R. F., Fiorino, D. J., &OLeary, R. (Eds.). (2004). Environmental governance recon-
sidered: Challenges, choices, and opportunities. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Durant, R. F., OLeary, R., & Fiorino, D. J. (2001, July). A new governance paradigm. PA
Times, 24(7), 3-4.
Eberstadt, N. (2001, March18). The newtrend: Apopulationbust. WashingtonPost, p. B7.
Edsall, T. B. (2001, March 26). Voter values determine political affiliation. Washington Post,
p. A1.
Fiorino, D. J. (1996). Toward a new system for environmental regulation: The case for an
industry sector approach. Environmental Law, 26, 457-488.
Fiorino, D. J. (1999). Rethinking environmental regulation: Perspectives on law and gover-
nance. Harvard Environmental Law Review, 23, 441-469.
Foster, K. R., Bernstein, D. E., &Huber, P. W. (Eds.). (1994). Phantomrisk: Scientific infer-
ence and the laws. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Freeman, A. M., III. (2000). Water pollution policy. In P. R. Portney & R. N. Stavins (Eds.),
Public policies for environmental protection (2nd ed.; pp. 169-213). Washington, DC:
Resources for the Future.
Friedman, T. L. (1999). The Lexus and the olive tree. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.
From, A. (2001). Building a new progressive majority. Blueprint, Special Issue: Election
2000, 4-11.
Galston, W. A. (1999, Spring). Where we stand. Blueprint, 3, 6-13.
Gaus, J. (1947). Reflections on public administration. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama
Press.
Gerrard, M. B. (1994). Whose backyard, whose risk: Fear and fairness in toxic and nuclear
waste siting. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Giddens, A. (1998). The Third Way: The renewal of social democracy. Cambridge, UK: Pol-
ity Press.
Graham, J. D., &Hartwell, J. K. (Eds.). (1997). The greening of industry: Arisk management
approach. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Graham, J. D., &Wiener, J. B. (Eds.). (1995). Risk vs. risk: Tradeoffs in protectinghealthand
the environment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Greenhouse Effect Confirmed Over 27 Years [electronic version]. (2001, March 20). The
LYCOS Network: Environmental News Service. Retrieved March 20, 2001, from http://
www.ens.lycos.com/ens
Greider, W. (1997). One world, ready or not: The manic logic of global capitalism. New
York: Simon & Schuster.
Gugliotta, G. (2003, June 24). EPAissues environmental overview: Critics describe report as
overly politicized. Washington Post, p. A19.
Hall, T. E., &OToole, L. J., Jr. (2000). Structures for policy implementation: An analysis of
national legislation, 1965-1966 and 1993-1994. Administration & Society, 31(6), 667-
686.
Hamilton, M. S. (2001, March). Multilateral development banks and sustainable develop-
ment: Learning to finance environmental assistance programs. Paper presented at the
National Conference of the American Society for Public Administration, Newark, NJ.
Hongthong, P. (2002, August 6). Interview. Reporter, The Nation, Bangkok, Thailand.
Inglehart, R. (1990). Culture shift. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Japan Power Companies to Cut Emissions by 18%Below1990 in 2010 [electronic version].
(2001, March 30). Yahoo Finance Asia. Retrieved March 30, 2001, from http://www.
asia.biz.yahoo.com/news/asian_markets/article.html
Japans New Rules for Biotech Crop Imports. (2001, March 28). Agriculture Online News.
Retrieved March 28, 2001 fromhttp://www.agriculture.com/default.sph/AfNews.class?
FNC=sideBarMore__ Anewsindex_html
John, D. W. (1994). Civic environmentalism: Alternatives to regulationin states and commu-
nities. Washington, DC: CQ Press.
Joint Efforts Needed to Fight HIV and TB, UN Health Agencies Say [electonic version].
(2001, March 23). U.N. Newservice. Retrieved March 23, 2001, fromhttp://www.un.org/
News/dh/latest/page2.html#49
Just Ten Companies Can Help Save the Worlds Forests, a New WWF Report Shows [elec-
tronic version]. (2001, March 14). WWF International Newsroom. Retrieved March, 14,
2001, from http://www.panda.org/news/ press/news.cfm?id=2241
Kahn, J. (2001, April 5). Energy efficiency programs are set for Bush budget cut [electronic
version]. NewYork Times. Retrieved April 5, 2001, fromhttp://www.nytimes.com/2001/
04/05/politics/05BUDG.html
Kettl, D. (2000). The transformation of governance: Globalization, devolution, and the role
of government. Public Administration Review, 60(6), 488-497.
Landy, M. K., Roberts, M. J., & Thomas, S. R. (1994). The Environmental Protection
Agency: Asking the wrong questions from Nixon to Clinton. New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press.
Larence, E. R. (2001, March). Do federal environmental laws help or hinder localities who
want to curb urban sprawl? Paper presented at the National Conference of the American
Society for Public Administration, Newark, NJ.
Lazaroff, C. (2001, April 12). Toxic release report highlights progress, setbacks [electronic
version]. Environment News Service. Retrieved April 12, 2001, from http://www.
ens.lycos.com/ens/apr2001/2001L-04-12-06.html
Leakey, R., &Lewin, R. (1996). The sixth extinction: Patterns of life andthe future of human-
kind. New York: Anchor Books.
Light, P. C. (1999). The true size of government. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution.
Lubchenco, J. (2002, May 13). State of the planet 2002: Science and sustainability. Paper
presented at the Earth Institute, Columbia University, NY. Available from http://www.
earth.columbia.edu/sop2002/sopagenda.html
Madrick, J. (1995). The end of affluence: The causes and consequences of Americas eco-
nomic decline. New York: Random House.
Marchant, G. (2002, March 7). Ten ways genomics couldchange environmental policy. Paper
presented at the Environmental Law Institute Associates Seminar, Washington, DC.
Mazmanian, D., &Morell, D. (1988). The elusive pursuit of toxics management. The Public
Interest, 90, 81-98.
Meadows, D. H., Meadows, D. L., Randers, J., & Behrens, W. H., III. (1972). The limits to
growth. New York: Universe Books.
Metzenbaum, S. H. (2002). Measurement that matters: Cleaning up the Charles River. In D.
F. Kettl (Ed.), Environmental governance: A report on the next generation of environ-
mental policy (pp. 58-117). Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
Millar, S., & Macalister, T. (2001, April 19). Tibetan pipeline row dents BPs new image
[electronic version]. Manchester Guardian. Retrieved April 19, 2001, from http://
www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,475001,00.html
Milward, H. B. (1996). Symposiumon the hollow state: Capacity, control, and performance
in interorganizational settings. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory,
6(2), 193-314.
Murphy, P. (2000, March 14). Public rails against urban traffic [electronic version]. Environ-
mental News Network. Retrieved March 14, 2000, from http://www.enn.com/enn-
features-archive/2000/03/03142000/rails_9940.asp
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. (2001, June 1). NIEHS toxicogenomics
research and environmental health introduction. Retrieved June 1, 2001, from http://
www.niehs.nih.gov/dert/rograms/tgintro.htm
Nye, J. S., Jr., Zelikow, P. D., &King, D. C. (1997). Why people dont trust government. Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Oil From Holed Tanker Hits Danish Beaches. (2001, March 30). Australian Broadcasting
Company News Online. Retrieved March 30, 2001, from http://www.abc.net.au/news/
newslink/nat/newsnat
Osius, T. (2002, June 26). Interview. Regional Environmental Affairs Officer, Economic
Section, Embassy of the United States of America, Bangkok, Thailand.
Paarlberg, R. L. (2001). The politics of precaution: Genetically modified crops in developing
countries. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Penn, M. J. (1999, Spring). The community consensus. Blueprint, 3, 44-56.
Peters, B. G. (1996). The future of governing: Four emerging models. Lawrence: University
Press of Kansas.
Phongpaichit, P., & Baker, C. (1998). Thailands boom and bust. Bangkok, Thailand: Silk-
worm Books.
Poocharoen, B. (2002, July29). Interview. President, PayapUniversity, ChiangMai, Thailand.
Portney, P. R. (2000). Air pollutionpolicy. In P. R. Portney &R. N. Stavins (Eds.), Public pol-
icies for environmental protection (2nd ed.; pp. 77-123). Washington, DC: Resources for
the Future.
Prasartporn, S.. (2002, July 26). Interview. Faculty of Agriculture, Plant Biotechnology
Research Center, ChiangMai University, ChiangMai, Thailand.
Pretty, J. (2001, March 16). The real costs of modern farming [electronic version]. Agricul-
tural Systems Journal. Retrieved March 16, 2001, from http://www.gn.apc.org/resur-
gence/issues/pretty205.htm
Rocha, J. (2001, March 16). Brazil oil spill company in spotlight [electronic version]. BBC
News. Retrieved March 16, 2001, from http://www.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/Ameri-
cas/neswid_1225000/1225749.stm
Ruckelshaus, W. D. (1995). Stopping the pendulum. Environmental Forum, 12(6), 25-29.
Russia Plans Floating Nuclear Plant, Environmentalists Express Concerns About Safety
[electronic version]. (2001, March24). MSNBCEnvironment News. Retrieved March24,
2001, from http://www.msnbc.com/news/544138.asp
Safe, S. H. (1997). Xenoestrogens and breast cancer. NewEnglandJournal of Medicine, 337,
1303-1304.
Six Sentenced Over Japans Worst Nuclear Accident [electronic version]. (2003, March 4).
Planet Ark. Retrieved March 4, 2003, from www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/
newsid/20020
Sobel, D. (1995). Longitude: The true story of a lone genius who solved the greatest scientific
problem of his time. New York: Penguin Books.
Sriwatanapongse, S. (2002a, August 7). Interview. Director, Thailand Biodiversity center,
Bangkok, Thailand.
Sriwatanapongse, S.. (2002b, January). Biotechnology development in Asia and food secu-
rity. Paper presented at the Export-Import Bank of India National Conference on Agri-
cultural Product Export, Pune, India.
Sukin, K. (2002a, August 6). Interview. Reporter, The Nation, Bangkok, Thailand.
Tilman, D., Fargione, J., Wolff, B., DAntonio, C., Dobson, A., Howarth, R., et al. (2001,
April 13). Forecasting agriculturally driven global environmental change. Science, 292,
281-284.
UKto Get 18 Wind Farms [electronic version]. (2001, April 5). BBCNews. Retrieved April 5,
2001, from http://www.news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk_politics/newsid_1261000/1261759.stm
UK Balks at Building New Nuclear Reactors [electronic version]. (2002, December 20).
Planet Ark. Retrieved March 26, 2003, from www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/
newsid/19148
United States Census Bureau. (2001, March 19). World population profile: 1998 highlights.
Retrieved March 19, 2001, from http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/wp98001.html
Vidal, J. (2001, April 19). Geneticist proposes Third Way on GM crops [electronic ver-
sion]. Manchester Guardian. Retrieved April 19, 2001, from http://www.guardian.co.
uk/uk_news/story/ 0,3604,474893,00.html
Wilson, J. Q. (1989). Bureaucracy. New York: Basic Books.
Yun, J. Y. (2002, August 8). Interview. Counselor, Economic Affairs, Embassy of the United
States of America, Bangkok, Thailand.
Zola, A. M. (2002, August 7). Interview. President, MIDASAgronomics Co., Ltd., Bangkok,
Thailand.
Robert F. Durant is a professor of public administration in the School of Public
Affairs at American University. In 2003, he received the Charles H. Levine Award
fromthe American Society for Public Administration and the National Association of
Schools of Public Affairs and Administration. His latest book, Environmental Gover-
nance Reconsidered: Challenges, Choices, and Opportunities, will be published by
MIT Press in 2004 (co-edited with Daniel Fiorino and Rosemary OLeary).
Young-Pyoung Chun is a professor and dean of the College of Public Administration
at Daegu University. His main research interests are environmental policy, social
policy, and nongovernmental organizationpolicy. Amonghis articles is Comparing
the Employment Policies for the Disabled: America and Korea.
ByungseobKimis aprofessor of public administrationat Seoul National University.
Seongjong Lee is a professor at Sungkeunkwan University.

Toward A New Governance Paradigm

Transféré par

Informations du document

Titre original

Copyright

Formats disponibles

Partager ce document

Partager ou intégrer le document

Options de partage

Avez-vous trouvé ce document utile ?

Ce contenu est-il inapproprié ?

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Toward A New Governance Paradigm

Transféré par

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

10.1177/0095399703256968 ARTICLE ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / January 2004 Durant et al.

/ NEW GOVERNANCE PARADIGM

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi