Qualitative and Quantitative Assessment of Land-Use Managers' Attitudes Toward Environmental Justice

This study examines the outcome of efforts to educate federal land-use managers about their roles in implementing the Executive Order in their respective districts. The managers participated in a 6-h Nominal Group Technique (NGT) workshop where they were instructed to weight environmental justice issues versus others associated with hazardous waste problems in their districts. Participant responses were quantified and analyzed through a series of rounds. After each round, participants received increasing amounts of information on environmental justice issues. It was hypothesized that the managers would come to a consensus that environmental justice is an important issue that should be seriously addressed. Prior to administering the NGT, the managers appeared to have limited knowledge of environmental justice issues and thus assigned relatively low rankings to such concerns. After being “educated” by viewing films on environmental justice and reading related literature, in general, managers' weightings decreased and a narrower consensus developed. The authors conclude that exposure to the issue may not be as effective as expected in convincing land-use managers to become sensitive to justice issues so that they may effectively implement the Executive Order.     

An Analytical Review of Environmental Justice Research: What Do We Really Know?

This article presents a review of major empirical research on environmental justice. Forty-two empirical research studies spanning three decades were evaluated and categorized on the basis of how well they meet reasonable scientific standards. Twelve of those studies are described and critiqued in detail, and an overview of trends in the literature is presented. The author concludes that the empirical foundations of environmental justice are so underdeveloped that little can be said with scientific authority regarding the existence of geographical patterns of disproportionate distributions and their health effects on minority, low-income, and other disadvantaged communities. If environmental managers and policy-makers do not recognize the high levels of empirical uncertainty surrounding the issue, they are apt to attribute an empirically unwarranted level of concreteness to the empirical research findings, thus leading to poorly conceptualized and therefore potentially harmful policy and management decisions.     

Economic Values and Corporate Financial Statements

Corporate financial statements do not include environmental values. This deficiency has contributed to the criticism that company managers do not include environmental impacts in the internal decision-making process. The accounting profession has not developed effective environmental reporting guidelines. This situation contributes to a second problem: the apparent inability of corporate reports to provide useful information to external parties. It has been suggested that by using nonmarket valuation methodologies, financial statements can be used to measure progress toward sustainable development. Nonmarket valuations are not generally accepted by the accounting profession. They are too subjective to support effective decisions, and too costly to obtain. Furthermore, demand for this sort of information appears small. Some of these issues may be resolved over time. The most serious challenge, however, concerns how enhanced financial reports would be used. Financial statements are supposed to help investors assess the amount, timing, and uncertainty of future cash flows. A substantial portion of environmental value is based on nonuse benefits, much of which will never be realized in company cash flows. In other words, the role of financial statements would have to change. Furthermore, since there is no general agreement as to the meaning of sustainable development, efforts to operationalize the term have been fraught with difficulty. Moreover, monetization of environmental values could jeopardize their preservation, leaving some to question the overall objective of this form of reporting. For these reasons, while it is to be hoped that better reporting of environmental impacts will be forthcoming, the greatest advances will likely be outside the financial statements themselves.     

Understanding the Scope of Farmer Perceptions of Risk: Considering Farmer Opinions on the Use of Genetically Modified (GM) Crops as a Stakeholder Voice in Policy

In the beginning, policy debates between critics and advocates of genetically modified (GM) crops focused on scientifically determined risks. Ten years later, the argument between environmentalists or consumers and regulators or industry has changed into a discussion about the implementation of more democratic policymaking about GM farming. A notable omission from the political debate about food biotechnology in the United States, however, is the opinion of farmers who cultivate the GM crops. Policymakers should value practical knowledge based on experiences from farmers, not only scientific industry reports or consumer product opinions. This project uses in-depth interviews to create an original mail survey that uses the practical discourse of farmers in order to explore the relationship of farmer attitudes and GM agriculture. Although national research indicates that larger yields are the most common reason for GM adoption, qualitative information suggest that the potential of GM crops to increase revenue per acre does not truly reflect all the concerns of modern farmers. For example, farmers who use GM seeds indicate that they constantly question the social impacts of their agricultural practices. As such, GM policies should be restructured as a political rationalization of both economic modeling and political theory because this research suggests that farmers’ business decisions are utility calucations that consider economics without ignoring environmental and political contexts. Farmers’ concerns about non-economic risks suggest that they need more information about GM crops and that governmental policies should respond to their interests, as they are more democratic or pluralistic than industry or consumer arguments.     

Environmental management in an international consumer goods company

Many management processes and tools can provide companies with information to support their environmental decision making. Risk assessment, environmental auditing, life cycle assessment and environmental reporting are but a few examples. Each of these has typically evolved independently as the need for it has arisen. Today, however, this abundance of tools can lead to confusion: What is the exact objective of each tool? How do they differ? Are some ‘better’ than others? Should they be used in parallel, sequentially or in place of each other? More importantly, how do they fit together into a coherent environmental management framework that will ensure sound environmental and economic decision making in a company? This paper seeks to answer these questions. It describes the overall environmental framework that has been developed internally within Procter & Gamble and which allows the company to make coherent economically and environmentally sound decisions, in both the short- and long-term.     

Environmental impact assessment: An international evaluation

Experiences with environmental impact assessment (EIA) in a number of countries are discussed in the light of both explicit and implicit goals and objectives. Adequate environmental information is not always available to decision makers because of failure to apply EIA to all relevant decisions, the continuing inadequacies of prediction and evaluation techniques, the failure to consider alternatives adequately, and the bias of some EISs. EIA frequently results in changes to proposals and may result in stricter environmental management conditions in some cases, but some people regard it as a failure because it has not stopped development. Generally, EIA leads to better integration of environmental factors into project planning. Open procedures and freedom of information encourage responsiveness to EIA procedures, which can be weakened by discretionary powers and lack of access to the courts by public interest groups. However, legal standing may have side effects that offset its advantages. EIA can encourage cooperation and coordination between agencies but does not ensure them. Similarly, it can have a limited role in coordinating interstate and international policies. In the long term, the success of EIA depends on adequate monitoring, reassessment, and enforcement over the life of the project. EIA has generally opened up new opportunities for public participation, and may help to reduce conflict. EIA procedures need to be integrated with other environmental protection and development control programs, and various means exist for reducing its cost to developers and the public.     

Teaching Agricultural Ethics

A survey was conducted in the United Statesin 1998 and 1999 to determine what members of theNational Association of State Universities and LandGrant Colleges (NASULGC) and of the AmericanAssociation of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU)offered agricultural ethics as an undergraduatecourse. Of the 59 responses, the survey found 15 USuniversities that have a course on agricultural ethicsor one that includes the topic. This paper willdiscuss the survey's findings and offer six reasonsthat explain why so few universities includeagricultural ethics in their curriculum. The sixreasons are: 1) lack of education in ethics andphilosophy on the part of agricultural scientists; 2)lack of institutional or disciplinary incentives foragricultural scientists to reflect on their work andits effects; 3) lack of administrative leadership incolleges of agriculture due to their failure tounderstand the benefits of agricultural ethics; 4)continuance of the prevailing assumption thatagriculture is inherently ethically correct; 5) thefelt necessity by agricultural scientists to defendthemselves against what are perceived to be unjust andinaccurate criticisms of agriculture; and 6) areluctance to engage in ethical reflection because itmay raise more problems than it solves. The paper'scentral question is why ethics is not taught in morecolleges of agriculture. Those who teach know thattheir students are tomorrow's farmers, businesspeople, professors, and policy makers. If we who nowteach and administer fail to include true ethicalstudy in our student's education, our students willstill be defensive when confronted with an ethicalissue and unable to respond except with assertionsbased on the production paradigm, the correctness ofwhich, although unexamined, we taught them. If theagricultural faculty does not recognize theopportunity and the obligation to participate in theshaping of values, then the values of agriculture willbe shaped elsewhere in the institution and insociety.     

Environmental Auditing and the Role of the Accountancy Profession: A Literature Review

This review of the literature on environmental auditing and the potential role of accountants distinguishes between compliance audits and audits of the environmental management system. After an extensive introduction to the concept, this review focuses on the similarities and differences between an environmental audit and a financial statement audit. The general approach to both types of audits is similar, except that environmental audits are largely unregulated. Both audits place an emphasis on the evaluation of control systems, which is an argument in favor of external auditors playing a role in environmental audits. Another argument for including external accountants is their code of ethics. However, these professionals seem to be reluctant to enter the field of environmental auditing. It is argued that this reluctance is because of a lack of generally accepted principles for conducting environmental audits. If external accountants are engaged in environmental auditing, they should be part of multidisciplinary teams that also include scientists and engineers to avoid a too strong focus on procedures. Rather than treating these audits as totally different, it is proposed that there be a move towards integrated, or even universal, audits.     

A Framework for Fully Integrating Environmental Assessment

A new framework for environmental assessment is needed because no existing framework explicitly includes all types of environmental assessments. We propose a framework that focuses on resolving environmental problems by integrating different types of assessments. Four general types of assessments are included: (1) condition assessments to detect chemical, physical, and biological impairments; (2) causal pathway assessments to determine causes and identify their sources; (3) predictive assessments to estimate environmental, economic, and societal risks, and benefits associated with different possible management actions; and (4) outcome assessments to evaluate the results of the decisions of an integrative assessment. The four types of assessments can be neatly arrayed in a two-by-two matrix based on the direction of analysis of causal relationships (rows) and whether the assessment identifies problems or solves them (columns). We suggest that all assessments have a common structure of planning, analysis, and synthesis, thus simplifying terminology and facilitating communication between types of assessments and environmental programs. The linkage between assessments is based on intermediate decisions that initiate another assessment or a final decision signaling the resolution of the problem. The framework is applied to three cases: management of a biologically impaired river, remediation of a contaminated site, and reregistration of a pesticide. We believe that this framework clarifies the relationships among the various types of assessment processes and their links to specific decisions.     

Principles and processes for effecting change in environmental management in New Zealand

In New Zealand environmental management is essentially the responsibility of land managers. Management decisions affect both production/productivity and the environment. However, responsibility for ensuring positive environmental outcomes falls on both local (Regional) and Central Government, and both they and international agencies such as the OECD would wish to monitor and report on changes. In terms of policy, strong links have been established via Central and Regional Government to land managers. Consumers in the market place are also, increasingly, requiring responsibility for positive environmental outcomes of those who purchase and process primary products. Strong links for responsibility have been established between our international markets and processing businesses and there is a noticeable strengthening of the links from the processors to the land manager/producer. In New Zealand a range of initiatives has been developed and implemented over recent times, whereby land managers are taking increasing responsibility for accounting for the environmental outcomes of their production activities. The range covers the spectrum from voluntary to compulsory (e.g., in order to meet market requirements) and from those initiated by customers to processor and/or producer initiatives. This paper follows the evolution of the principles that drove the predominant activities of the period and the processes that initiated the changes in environmental management. As the focus of agriculturalists changed from pioneering in a new world, to establishing a production base, to economic reality, and finally to environmental responsibility, the processes of extension adapted to meet the new challenge.     

Environmental audit: III. Improving the management of environmental information for toxic substances

Environmental programs have been commonly driven by a preoccupation with the collection of data in the mistaken belief thatdata is synonymous withinformation. The distinction between data (that is, the quantified and qualitative attributes of a particular environment) and information (specifically, data processed so as to focus upon a particular environmental problem) will become far more important to environmental managers. They will increasingly manage their information through use of what has become known as information resource management (IRM) and the attendant use of critical success factors methodology. Environmental managers will thereby move away from concerns about data and specific EDP hardware and applications toward managing information as a valuable agency resource. In applying IRM, they will find it helpful to include a number of planning elements and to resolve early a number of issues critical to its successful use.     

可持续发展与环境伦理的思考

面对环境问题与资源危机,人类社会正面临发展的文明转型.为此我国提出科学发展观,力求全面的可持续发展.我们要转变认识自然的价值观,走出“人类中心论“,构建环境伦理体系.发挥环境伦理的作用和功能,正确处理人与自然的关系,尊重与善待自然,坚持公正补偿、节约、平等和慎行等原则.社会各群体都要负担起环境责任,共同努力,实现可持续发展.     

Environmental strategies: A case study of systematic evaluation

A major problem facing environmental managers is the necessity to effectively evaluate management alternatives. Traditional environmental assessments have emphasized the use of economic analyses. These approaches are often deficient due to difficulty in assigning dollar values to environmental systems and to social amenities. A more flexible decisionmaking model has been developed to analyze management options for coping with beach erosion problems at the Sandy Hook Unit of Gateway National Recreation Area in New Jersey. This model is comprised of decision-making variables which are formulated from a combination of environmental and management criteria, and it has an accept-reject format in which the management options are analyzed in terms of the variables. Through logical ordering of the insertion of the variables into the model, stepwise elimination of alternatives is possible. A hierarchy of variables is determined through estimating work required to complete an assessment of the alternatives for each variable. The assessment requiring the least work is performed first so that the more difficult evaluation will be limited to fewer alternatives. The application of this approach is illustrated with a case study in which beach protection alternatives were evaluated for the United States National Park Service.Portions of this paper have been excerpted from Sherman and Garès (1978).     

Improving corporate environmental performance through economic value added

These days, corporate annual reports are full of references to shareholder wealth creation. In today's highly competitive capital markets, most chief executives understand that unless they are seen as value creators, investors will place their scarce capital somewhere else. Clear evidence of the growing importance, even dominance, of shareholder wealth creation is the growing use of a performance measure known as economic value added (EVA®).¹ Within ten years, it is almost certain that most large, publicly traded companies in the United States will be using EVA or something like it as a primary performance evaluation tool. Recently, many non-American companies have also adopted it to better align the incentives of managers with shareholders and to signal their commitment to value creation. EVA is not widely known or understood among environmental specialists, and those who have heard about it often fear it. We find this attitude unfortunate. In this article, we discuss EVA and how its use can aid corporate environmental managers in promoting more proactive environmental investments, and in funding capital investments on environmental improvement, waste reduction, and pollution control in their companies. The use of EVA and other shareholder value measures can also improve general capital investment decisions by integrating environmental factors that affect the long-term interests of the corporation into the managerial decision-making process.     

Game theory and environmental disputes

The courts have provided the traditional battleground for conflicts between environmental interest groups and those whose actions in some way have an adverse impact on the environment The judicial process is a time-consuming one in which all sides usually must concede to some points. Environmental disputes involve complex scientific issues which the court system is not set up to comprehend, so that the process gives the parties to a dispute the sense of having lost control of their own destinies. An increasing number of parties to environmental disputes are turning to negotiation, or mediation, as an alternative in which they can be active parties in the settlement-making process rather than the victims of a court-imposed solution When do the parties to a dispute choose a negotiated settlement over a court battle? To what extent does each party make the concessions necessary to reach an agreement? These questions can be answered by the game theory that provides a model for analyzing the negotiation process. This paper will apply game theory to two environmental conflict cases A series of questions pertinent to the analysis of all environmental disputes will be raised     

The Ethical Values in the U.S. Agricultural and Food System

Many segments of society have systems of values arising from collective beliefs and motivations. For agriculture, and our food system, increasing production to feed the growing human population clearly is a core value. However, a survey we conducted, together with a previously reported survey, showed that the curricula of most U.S. colleges of agriculture do not offer ethics courses that examine the basis of this core value or include discussion of agriculture’s ethical dilemmas such as misuse of pesticides, not progressing rapidly enough toward sustainability goals, relative lack of involvement in addressing diet-related health issues, and lack of commitment to reducing agriculture’s role as a contributor to global climate change. These surveys provide strong evidence that few students have an opportunity to learn ethical concepts and apply them to issues of importance to the agriculture/food system. We suggest that such issues are both growing societal concerns and serious ethical problems that demand attention if our agricultural/food system is not see its relationship with the public further imperiled. Further, we suggest that there is a need for, indeed an obligation of, the faculty of colleges of agriculture to embrace a thorough analysis and discussion of agriculture’s values and their ethical foundation. We offer our thoughts on why curricula of colleges of agriculture do not provide such opportunities and on the importance of agricultural faculties providing leadership in ethical analysis and discussion.     

Environmental Values and Popular Conflict over Environmental Management: A Comparative Analysis of Public Comments on the Clinton Forest Plan

/ Public participation in environmental management decisions has frequently led to conflict. This paper examines the role of environmental values in fueling these conflicts, based on a data base and sample content analysis of written public comments solicited in 1994 regarding the highly contentious Clinton Forest Plan (also known as Option 9) proposed for management of federal forests in the US Pacific Northwest. The analysis considered whether those respondents favoring more versus less environmental protection than was offered in Option 9 held entirely different values, identifying which antagonistic values appeared to be most fundamental and where (if at all) values consensus occurred. It also compared values emanating from respondents within and outside the affected region, although few major differences were detected in this regard. Results suggest that strong values differences did exist among those preferring greater versus less environmental protection, in particular as concerned the extent, form, and spatial and temporal scope of justification of their positions, their ideas of forests, and the appropriate role of people in forest management. Disagreement concerned far more than purely environmental values: a major point of difference involved human benefits and harms of the proposed forest plan. Indeed, both sides' positions were overridingly anthropocentric and consequentialist-a values orientation that almost inevitably spells conflict in light of the commonly differentiated social impacts of environmental management decisions. Although public involvement in environmental management thus cannot be expected to lead to a clear and consensual social directive, the Pacific Northwest case suggests that viable environmental management solutions that take this range of values into account can still be crafted.KEY WORDS: Environmental values; Public participation; Clinton Forest Plan; Pacific Northwest     

Carrying capacity as "Informed Judgment": the values of science and the science of values

Contemporary park and wilderness carrying capacity frameworks rely on formulation of standards of quality, which are defined as minimum acceptable resource and social conditions. Formulation of standards of quality involves elements of both science and values, and both of these elements must be integrated into informed judgments on the part of park and wilderness managers. That is, managers must ultimately make value-based judgments about the maximum acceptable level of visitor-caused impacts to the resource base and the quality of the visitor experience. However, such judgments should be as informed as possible by scientific data on the relationships between visitor use and resulting impacts and the degree to which park and wilderness visitors and other interest groups judge such impacts to be acceptable. Such information represents the “values of science” to managing carrying capacity in parks and wilderness. A growing body of literature has begun to address the corresponding “science of values,” and how this type of information might be integrated in park and wilderness management. Visitor-based research has employed normative theory and techniques to explore the acceptability of a range of resource and social impacts related to visitor use, and findings from these studies are being integrated into a body of knowledge and applied in management decision-making. Conceptual and methodological extensions of the normative approach are currently being explored in a variety of park and wilderness contexts, and new theoretical and empirical approaches are being adapted to address trade-offs inherent in carrying capacity. In these ways, the science of values is progressing to meet the opportunities and challenges of the values of science to park and wilderness management. The concept of carrying capacity, along with the theoretical and methodological approaches described in this paper, can be extended to a large number of natural resource and environmental issues.     

The effects of perceived conflict,resource scarcity,and information bias on emotions and environmental decisions

The failure to anticipate the public's response to environmental problems can lead to expensive delays, bad public relations, and litigation, as well as environmental decisions that do not represent public values and preferences. This study examines the influence of conflict between management goals, perceived resource scarcity, and information bias on evaluations of the importance of management goals; the perception of conflicts among the goals; and the emotions evoked in an urban forest management problem. Environmental problem scenarios were systematically manipulated as to the level of conflict between development and natural preservation goals, the scarcity of urban nature, and the bias of the presented information. Evaluations of the importance of urban nature and economic development were susceptible to manipulations of scarcity. The importance of urban nature was also higher when information was biased toward pro-preservation issues. Negative emotions were associated with high conflict and scarcity and with the propreservation information bias. Both evaluations of goal importance and conflict among goals appeared to be based on an underlying economics-versus-amenity dimension. These results are similar to previous studies of environmental decision making with regard to nonurban environmental problems. This research offers a beginning in understanding and anticipating the way members of the public may respond to information about environmental problems.     

Developing an Environmental Indicator System for Sustainable Development in China: Two Case Studies of Selected Indicators

Environmental indicator systems are a fundamental tool in quantifying the environmental component of sustainable development. They are useful because they quantify the status and trends of key environmental parameters and provide information on the environment that allows authorities and communities to make informed decisions. This article analyzes the basic framework for Chinese environmental indicator systems and presents a “core” set of environmental indicators. In our research, we used a theme approach to develop the environmental indicator systems. We performed two case studies of selected indicators. In the first, we used an urban ambient air pollution composite index and an urban ambient air pollution indicator for three main pollutants to examine trends in urban air pollution in China from 1990 to 2000 at regional and national levels. The results indicate that China has made some progress towards controlling urban air pollution, but must do more in order to reach acceptable pollution levels. We think that an aggregated index and disaggregated indicators have important complementary roles in the policy-making processes. In the second case study, we developed and constructed a grassland degradation index that aggregates information on the extent and severity of grassland degradation. Taking the Xilinhaote region of Inner Mongolia as the study area, we calculated this index by combining remote-sensing data, a geographical information system (GIS), and field investigation. Based on these results, we provide recommendations regarding further development and measurement of environmental indicators in China.