Population viability analysis as a tool in wildlife conservation policy: With reference to Australia

Wildlife conservation policy for endangered species restoration follows a six-phase process. Population viability analysis (PVA) can play a major contributing role in four of these. PVA, as discussed here, is a technique where extinction vulnerabilities of small populations are estimated using computer simulation modeling. The benefits and limitations of using PVA in wildlife decision and policy processes are reviewed based on our direct experience. PVA permits decision makers to set time frames for management, estimate the required magnitude of restoration efforts, identify quantitative targets for species recovery, and select, implement, monitor, and evaluate management strategies. PVA is of greatest value for rare species policy and management. However, a limitation of PVA simulation models is that they are constrained by the amount of biological data available, and such data are difficult to obtain from small populations that are at immediate risk of extinction. These problems may be overcome with improved models and more data. Our experience shows benefits of PVA far outweigh its limitations, and applications of the approach are most useful when integrated with decision analysis and completed within an adaptive management philosophy. PVAs have been carried out for 14 Victorian species and less used elsewhere in Australia. Management and recovery plans are developed from these PVAs. We recommend that PVA be used to guide research programs, develop conservation strategies, and inform decision and policy making for both endangered and nonendangered species because it can significantly improve many aspects of natural resource policy and management.     

Reflections on Foucauldian discourse analysis in planning and environmental policy research

Discourse analysis is becoming an increasingly common approach in planning and environmental policy research. This paper asserts that the generic treatment of discourse analysis obscures distinct approaches in which ‘discourses’ can combine different elements of text, systems of thought and action. Textually oriented approaches have been more prevalent during the 1990s, but this paper explores a different approach, grounded in the theory of Michel Foucault, which broadens discourse to embrace social action. Comparing and contrasting two studies that have utilized this approach, the paper suggests that there is considerable room for variation concerning the subjects of study, the institutional scale of analyses, the methods of investigation and process of analysis. Nevertheless, this paper identifies certain core elements of a Foucauldian discourse analytic approach. The paper concludes that this emerging approach to discourse analysis promises considerable insights if applied more widely in planning and environmental research. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Alberta's oil sands reclamation policy trajectory: the role of tense layering,policy stretching,and policy patching in long-term policy dynamics

As the Canadian oil sands development matures, an increasingly important policy activity is reclamation. Reclamation has received limited attention compared with the broader discussion of oil sands expansion, however, and its past direction and future trajectory are unclear. Recent moves to reform the policy in Alberta have been interpreted simultaneously as a major change and a marginal adaptation to the existing framework. This article employs a historical-institutional perspective to help reconcile this debate and further understanding of changes to Alberta's oil sands reclamation policies over the past half century. It traces the factors and outlines the processes which have driven its evolution since 1963 with special attention paid to the 2011 Oil Sands Progressive Reclamation Strategy, the most recent attempt to reform oil sands reclamation policy. The article reveals a complex long-term pattern of policy development in which processes of ‘tense layering’ of new initiatives on top of old elements resulted in a constantly shifting policy landscape as existing policy instruments and settings were ‘stretched’ to cover new circumstances but failed to resolve tensions between successive policy layers. After 1993, however, a more reflective process was put into place in which policy feedback informed alterations intended to reduce or remove tensions between successive layers. Such a policy ‘patching’ process is shown to have helped resolve tensions associated with earlier stretching of the existing regime and adds to the vocabulary of more general studies of policy dynamics.     

Proportionate and disproportionate policy responses to climate change: core concepts and empirical applications

A fresh perspective on policy-making and planning has emerged which views disproportionate policy as an intentional policy response. A disproportionate policy response is understood to be a lack of ‘fit’ or balance between the costs of a public policy and the benefits that are derived from this policy, and between policy ends and means. This paper applies this new perspective on the proportionality of policy-making to the area of climate change. The first part of the paper discusses the underlying causes of disproportionate policy responses in broad terms and then applies the theoretical reasoning to understand the conditions in which they are likely to appear in relation to climate change. These conditions are hypothesized to relate to four main factors: economic considerations; levels of public demand; focusing events; and strategic considerations. It concludes with the suggestion that societal actors may be able to manipulate these four factors to encourage politicians to adopt policies that mitigate climate change more rapidly than is currently the case in most countries.     

输美轮胎特保案对中国贸易的影响及对策

分析了2009年9月26日美国对中国轮胎进口实施的特别保护措施,运用国际贸易和国际经济学的相关理论,对美国轮胎特保法案进行了剖析。在目前中美轮胎贸易情况下,从宏观和微观的角度探讨了轮胎贸易顺差形成的原因,以及长期和短期内对中国经济的影响,并对中国轮胎出口贸易提出了几点政策建议。     

Land rights in Darfur: Institutional flexibility,policy and adaptation to environmental change

With environmental change set to affect the developing world in significant ways, examination of the process of adaptation is increasingly being brought to the fore. Common to all forms of adaptation in rural livelihoods will be a process of change in resource use and the resource rights that will either facilitate or subvert adaptation. This paper looks at Darfur and the repercussions from the multi‐year drought and land degradation that led to forms of adaptation that involved change in relationships between groups over land resources. The analysis looks at how changes in land resource rights relationships have been dealt with historically, as adaptation developed. Approaches involving highly flexible customary institutions were used to effectively manage the change in land resource rights relationships inherent in adaptation, and considerable opportunity existed for positive interaction between customary and statutory law. Initial success at adaptation was followed by interventions by the Sudanese government to manage these relationships for specific objectives that worked against adaptation. This resulted in competition, animosity, confrontation and the subsequent collapse of the institutions, legitimacy, and trust necessary for successful management of land resource rights change. These national policies debilitated the adaptation opportunities and instead led to profoundly negative repercussions in relationships about land in Darfur, eventually becoming a primary driver in the current war. This highlights both the importance of land resource rights relationships to adaptation and how these relationships can be changed (positively and negatively) by specific practices and policies.     

Social Sciences and landscape analysis: opportunities for the improvement of conservation policy design

This article develops a methodology aimed at generating a systematic social diagnosis of social and natural landscapes. The analytical process is divided into six easily replicable and causatively connected steps. The goal is two-fold: first, to present the inextricable connections between physical landscapes and the communities that occupy them. And second, to provide a fundamental tool to public policy designers that should simultaneously improve social acceptability of conservation policies and policy efficiency and effectiveness. Finally, this methodology is consciously heterogeneous from a theoretical perspective. This article puts together, in fruitful dialogue, contributions from varying places on the social theory spectrum: from political economy to poststructural theory.     

Environmental service payments: evaluating biodiversity conservation trade-offs and cost-efficiency in the Osa Conservation Area, Costa Rica

The cost-efficiency of payments for environmental services (PES) to private landowners in the Osa Conservation Area, Costa Rica, is evaluated in terms of the trade-off between biodiversity representation and opportunity costs of conservation to agricultural and forestry land-use. Using available GIS data and an 'off-the-shelf' software application called TARGET, we find that the PES allocation criteria applied by authorities in 2002-2003 were more than twice as cost-efficient as criteria applied during 1999-2001. Results show that a policy relevant assessment of the cost-effectiveness of PES relative to other conservation policies can be carried out at regional level using available studies and GIS data. However, there are a number of data and conceptual limitations to using heuristic optimisation algorithms in the analysis of the cost-efficiency of PES. Site specific data on probabilities of land-use change, and a detailed specification of opportunity costs of farm land, labour and capital are required to use algorithms such as TARGET for ranking individual sites based on cost-efficiency. Despite its conceptual soundness for regional conservation analysis, biodiversity complementarity presents a practical challenge as a criterion for PES eligibility at farm level because it varies depending on the set of areas under PES contracts at any one time.     

Early Development of Systems Analysis in Natural Resources Management from Man and Nature to the Miami Conservancy District

Contemporary approaches to natural resources and environmental decision-making typically draw on a “systems” perspective to assess and improve management strategies. This paper describes the early genesis of the systems analysis approach. It concentrates on a period between the mid-19th to early 20th centuries. During the early part of this period, George Marsh's Man and Nature and related works laid out an approach to problem-solving that recognized the relationship among physically disperse elements in the environment, the need to balance benefits against costs, the potential for using quantitative modeling to understand management options, and the importance of integrating human and natural components into solutions. In the early 20th century, the Miami Conservancy District project brought this approach to fruition with its use of complex simulation and optimization modeling, detailed cost–benefit analysis, and its linking of economics, engineering, science, and law into a far-reaching solution to a complex water resources problem. The objective of this paper is to describe the early development and application of this conceptual approach to problem-solving. An examination of the origins of natural resources systems analysis can broaden one's perspective of the contemporary field to understand its roots as a philosophy for environmental problem-solving.     

From Environmental Ethics to Nature Conservation Policy: Natura 2000 and the Burden of Proof

Natura 2000 is a network of natural sites whose aim is to preserve species and habitats of relevance in the European Union. The policy underlying Natura 2000 has faced widespread opposition from land users and received extensive support from environmentalists. This paper addresses the ethical framework for Natura 2000 and the probable moral assumptions of its main stakeholders. Arguments for and against Natura 2000 were analyzed and classified according to “strong” or “weak” versions of the three main theories of environmental ethics – anthropocentrism, biocentrism, and ecocentrism. Weak (intergenerational) anthropocentrism was found to underlie the Natura 2000 network itself and the positions of environmentalists, while strong (traditional) anthropocentrism pervaded the positions of economic developers. Land users seemed to fall somewhere between weak and strong anthropocentrism. The paper discusses the relation between ethics and different attitudes towards Natura 2000, highlighting some of the implications for the network’s ongoing implementation. It is shown that Natura 2000 achieves a strong reversal of the burden of proof from conservation to economic development and land use change under anthropocentrism. It is argued that the alleged theoretical divide between anthropocentrism and non-anthropocentrism in relation to the burden of proof does not seem to hold in practice. Finally, it is predicted that the weak versions of anthropocentrism, biocentrism, and ecocentrism, are likely to converge extensively in respect to nature conservation policy measures.“Charting the depths of law and policy disputes yield an understanding of ethical differences.” Paul B. Thompson (2002, p. 189).     

Return to the River: Environmental Flow Policy in the United States and Canada1

Abstract: This paper provides an overview and summary of United States and Canadian federal, state, and provincial laws that offer some form of legal protection for environmental flows. Special attention is given to the new “second generation” law established in Texas and to ways western states are beginning to encourage transactions that help restore dewatered streams. Progress in the eastern states and some Canadian provinces to provide environmental flow protection is addressed. Based on this review, this paper presents recommended elements of a “model” environmental flow policy.     

Local air pollution and global climate change taxes: a distributional analysis for the case of Spain

Global climate change measures are difficult to implement. In this context, local air pollution measures may play an important role in the political agenda since their effects are felt more immediately by citizens. Distributional implications are one of the main barriers for implementing environmental policies. This paper explores the distributional implications of air pollution taxes and compares them to climate change taxes. For the comparison, both tax schemes were set to yield the same revenue. Methodologically, the study uses a top–down approach linking a macro model to a micro model. We find that taxes on local air pollutants are more regressive than those levied on CO₂. This is because the goods implicitly taxed have a greater weight in the consumer basket of low-income groups, even if the tax revenues are recycled. Furthermore, the revenue-neutral recycle scheme increases both taxes efficiency, but, at the same time, can increase regressivity.     

Incentives and regulations to reconcile conservation and development: thirty years of governance of the Sami pastoral ecosystem in Finnmark, Norway

Incentive-based mechanisms are regarded as efficient instruments to reconcile conservation and development. This win-win objective has been difficult to accomplish; cross-compliance has, therefore, been suggested as a mechanism to ensure sustainability. Cross-compliance, which requires producers to conform to production regulations and environmental standards to qualify for direct payments, has been a popular instrument in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform. Since 1990, cross-compliance has been the main characteristic of policy design in Sami reindeer husbandry in Finnmark, Norway. All direct transfers to the Sami pastoralists have been connected to harvesting demands to decrease the number of reindeer and to conserve pastures. The content of these incentive-based mechanisms are decided through negotiated agreements with the Sami Reindeer Herders' Association of Norway (NRL), and the regulation of reindeer numbers and access to pastures are delegated to co-management boards. Despite the participation of the Sami pastoralists in shaping these policies, win-win objectives have not been achieved. Although the cross-compliance program could have been improved by payment for graded results, the lack of regulations by the administration or co-management boards is more likely to be the cause of failure to reach sustainability. Despite the long-term failures of the cross-compliance program, policies have been slow to change. We might attribute this delay to the NRL's strong position in the negotiated agreements. In general, we argue that the success of the cross-compliance program depends on a well-functioning governance system that can implement regulations and sanctions if incentives do not work as intended.     

Embracing sustainability: the incorporation of sustainability principles in municipal planning and policy in four mid-sized municipalities in Ontario,Canada

The issue of planning for sustainability is becoming more established within Canadian municipal planning. As municipalities begin to align their planning policy to reflect a more sustainable approach, there is an increased interest in how sustainability is being operationalised within municipal documents. This research aims to better understand how principles of sustainability are imbedded within Ontario municipal documents, with a specific focus on the Integrated Sustainability Community Planning approach that has emerged in Canada. Drawing on a nested comparative case study of four mid-sized municipalities, we uncover the language and strategies employed by the municipalities as they relate to the principles of sustainability developed by Gibson [2006a. Sustainability assessment: basic components of a practical approach. Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal, 24 (3), 170–182]. The findings suggest that current policy-based approaches to sustainability are considering more socially oriented strategies focused on promoting community involvement, inclusive decision-making, equity, socio-ecological civility, long-term integrative planning, and responsibility through stewardship. However, there are potential limitations that will require future research to examine policy outcomes associated with sustainability uptake. The ICSP approach must still overcome the issues relating to lack of regulatory authority and the incorporation of policies based on popular trends rather than empirical evidence.     

Effects of Riparian Areas,Stream Order,and Land Use Disturbance on Watershed‐Scale Habitat Potential: An Ecohydrologic Approach to Policy1

Abstract: Spatio‐temporal linkages between hydrologic and ecologic dimensions of watersheds play a critical role in conservation policies. Habitat potential is influenced by variation along longitudinal and lateral gradients and land use disturbance. An assessment of these influences provides critical information for protecting watershed ecosystems and in making spatially explicit, conservation decisions. We use an ecohydrologic approach that focuses on interface between hydrological and ecological processes. This study focuses on changes in watershed habitat potentials along lateral (riparian), and longitudinal (stream order) dimensions and disturbance (land use). The habitat potentials were evaluated for amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and birds in the Westfield River Watershed of Massachusetts using geographic information systems and multivariate analysis. We use a polynomial model to study nonlinear effects using robust regression. Various spatial policies were modeled and evaluated for influence on species diversity. All habitat potentials showed a strong influence along spatial dimensions and disturbance. The habitat potential for all vertebrate groups studied decreased as the distance from the riparian zone increased. Headwaters and lower order subwatersheds had higher levels of species diversity compared to higher order subwatersheds. It was observed that locations with the least disturbance also had higher habitat potential. The study identifies three policy criteria that could be used to identify critical areas within a watershed to conserve habitat suitable for various species through management and restoration activities. A spatially variable policy that is based on stream order, riparian distance, and land use can be used to maximize watershed ecological benefits. Wider riparian zones with variable widths, protection of headwaters and lower order subwatersheds, and minimizing disturbance in riparian and headwater areas can be used in watershed policy. These management objectives could be achieved using targeted economic incentives, best management practices, zoning laws, and educational programs using a watershed perspective.     

Source resolution and risk apportionment to augment the Bubble Policy: Application to a steel plant “bubble”

Source resolution and risk apportionment of emission source categories for risk reduction purposes can be used to enhance the Bubble Policy of the Clean Air Act. This is performed by incorporating receptor modeling techniques of factor analysis and chemical mass balances to assess noncarcinogenic and carcinogenic inhalation risks to a target population for certain pollutants coming from major emission source categories in a steel plant air shed. Source resolution, using factor analysis, statistically interprets a “source” from ambient data. By subsequently quantifying risks from identified metal emission sources using chemical mass balances and risk apportionment, a total additive risk from main source contributors in the steel plant is estimated. From this methodology, the Bubble Policy can be enhanced by targeting only main risk sources or by “risk-trading” with minor impact sources to reduce the total risk (if deemed significant) without arbitrarily reducing risk for all sources in an industrial source complex’s “bubble.”