Ecologically based policy evaluation: application to ungulate management in New Zealand

Introduced ungulates, e.g., deer and Himalayan tahr, are variously considered as both pests and resources in New Zealand. Much ecological research has occurred into these species and into the ecosystems in which they live. Concurrently, much has been done to develop ‘management’ plans for these species. We reviewed ecological research relevant to these ungulates and developed ecologically relevant criteria to assess the extent to which these have been considered in these plans. Nine criteria were developed within four thematic areas: ecological principles, objectives and outcomes, adaptive management, and use of science information. Four planning documents were then evaluated. All four poorly or at best marginally considered fundamental ecological principles: only the Himalayan thar control plan scored well in terms of having objectives and outcomes that were clearly ecologically based; the thar plan was very strong in terms of its commitment to implementing adaptive management; and, in terms of using the best available science both the thar plan and the deer issues and options paper scored well. Overall, ecological science and principles have not played major roles in the development of some of these plans, probably because ultimately they reflect political choices that are difficult to support with the available ecological research.     

环境影响评价政策的一般理论分析

环境影响评价政策是我国环境政策体系中的重要组成部分，本文在对环境政策的内涵和基本特征阐述的基础上，运用公共政策的一般理论，对环境影响政策的内涵、特征、政策系统、政策过程以及主要政策功能进行了简明的分析，以达到从公共政策的角度来重新认识和了解环境影响评价制度的目的。     

基于政策规律的战略环境影响评价

对政策失误环境危害行为的原因和特点，对政策战略评价产生背景，功能进行深刻透彻分析，根据政策与环境相互作用关系，将政策分为以直接作用于环境的政策，以间接作用于环境为主的政策和直接作用及间接作用兼具并重的政策，对每类政策战略环境影响评价原理和方法予以深刻探讨。     

Policy learning in collaborative environmental governance processes

ABSTRACT

Collaborative governance processes have become a popular mechanism for addressing complex environmental problems. Their success is premised, in part, on the assumption that they promote learning among diverse participants, who are then better equipped to develop creative, consensus-oriented environmental management actions. Significant gaps remain, however, in our understanding of how collaborative governance processes foster learning and what impact increased learning has on policymaking outputs. To investigate these relationships, this study provides one of the first empirical applications of Heikkila and Gerlak's collective learning framework. Key framework concepts are operationalized via interview data and existing literature and then measured via survey data collected from participants in a collaborative environmental governance process in Colorado, U.S. Findings indicate that both internal and exogenous contextual factors affect how much an individual learns within a collective context. Additionally, participants who report more learning also more strongly agree that the process produced favorable outputs and outcomes. These findings advance theories of learning in collaborative contexts and inform process design to maximize learning.     

The effect of low emission zones on air pollution and infant health

This paper investigates the effect of low emission zones on air quality and birth outcomes in Germany. The staggered introduction of the policy measure creates a credible natural experiment and a natural control group for births and air pollution measurements in cities that enact low emission zones. I show that the introduction of the most restrictive type of low emission zone decreases average levels of fine particulate matter by about 4 percent and by up to 8 percent at a city's highest-polluting monitor. Low emission zones also reduce the number of days per year on which legal pollution limits are exceeded by three. However, these reductions are too small to translate into substantial improvements in infant health. My results are not driven by changes in maternal or city specific characteristics, and are robust to variations in specification and to the choice of control group.     

Risks to the stratospheric ozone shield in the Anthropocene: This article belongs to Ambio’s 50th Anniversary Collection. Theme: Ozone Layer

Crutzen (1974) and Crutzen and Ehhalt (1977) presented two key papers in Ambio that in Ambioexemplify how science first revealed to humankind the potential for damage to our ozone shield in the Anthropocene. Crutzen’s (1974) review is a sweeping summary of the risks to the ozone layer from supersonic aircraft, chlorofluorocarbons, as well as nuclear weapons testing and nuclear war. Crutzen and Ehhalt (1977) described how the nitrous oxide produced from fertilizers could pose another threat to the stability of the stratospheric ozone layer. The two papers are part of a body of influential scientific work that led to the pioneering Montreal Protocol to Protect the Earth’s Ozone Layer to phase out production of chlorofluorocarbons (in 1987), as well as national decisions that slowed or stopped production of supersonic planes (in the 1970s). They remain guideposts today for ongoing international negotiations regarding reducing emissions from fertilizer and limiting nuclear testing.     

Emissions trading systems with cap adjustments

Emissions Trading Systems (ETSs) with fixed caps lack provisions to address systematic imbalances in the supply and demand of permits due to changes in the state of the regulated economy. We propose a mechanism which adjusts the allocation of permits based on the current bank of permits. The mechanism spans the spectrum between a pure quantity instrument and a pure price instrument. We solve the firms׳ emissions control problem and obtain an explicit dependency between the key policy stringency parameter—the adjustment rate—and the firms׳ abatement and trading strategies. We present an analytical tool for selecting the optimal adjustment rate under both risk-neutrality and risk-aversion, which provides an analytical basis for the regulator׳s choice of a responsive ETS policy.     

Policy strategies to foster the resilience of mountain social-ecological systems under uncertain global change

Globalization and climate change threaten the sustained provision of essential ecosystem services (ES) for people living in and downstream of mountain regions. The increasing evidence of the many vulnerabilities of mountain social-ecological systems has highlighted the urgent need for policy-relevant research into ways of coping with these trends. In this context, resilience has been emerging as a concept for both understanding and managing the complex social-ecological systems in which ES are provided and consumed. Yet, literature on resilience of social-ecological systems is mainly theoretical with limited application in real-world mountain case studies. In this paper, we present a comprehensive quantitative assessment of the social-ecological resilience of a case study in the Swiss Alps under global change. We model and evaluate an indicator for resilience that shows the capacity of the mountain social-ecological system to provide a set of demanded ES. In a first step, we model the development of this indicator in different scenarios of global change. In a second step, we test the effect of a rich set of policy strategies under all these scenarios to identify types and timing of interventions that are robust under multiple global change settings. Results indicate that the resilience of the mountain social-ecological system is endangered in all scenarios, especially if strong globalization is assumed. Robust strategies that buffer the system against these pressures require early spatial planning action in combination with more targeted direct payments to support the current regional structure and traditional mountain farming practices. Such information is crucial to guide decision-making processes in the era of highly uncertain future global change.     

Bridging the gap between ecosystem service assessments and land-use planning through Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA)

Land-use planning is an important determinant for green space policy in cities. It defines land covers and hence the structure and function of urban ecosystems and the benefits these provide to humans, such as air purification, urban cooling, runoff mitigation, and recreation. The ecosystem service approach has helped to attract policy attention to these benefits but the concept remains poorly implemented in urban policy and governance. To address this gap, we advance a framework to bridge ecosystem services into policy processes through Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) as decision support tool. The paper is organized in three main parts. First, we conduct a systematic literature review to assess state-of-the-art knowledge on ecosystem service assessments through MCDA. Next, we build on insights from the literature review to develop the ‘ecosystem services policy-cycle’, a conceptual framework that merges the ‘ecosystem service cascade’ and ‘policy cycle’ models to reinforce the link between ecosystem service assessments and practical applications in urban policy and governance. Next, we illustrate the applicability of the proposed framework along an example about conflicting interests on land use and green space planning following the closure of the Airport Tempelhof in Berlin, Germany. Our results highlight the scope of MCDA as a decision support tool for integrating ecosystem service assessments in green space governance. We discuss advantages and disadvantages of different methodological choices in the use of MCDA in ecosystem service assessments and note that a key strength of this tool in informing green space policies lies in its capacity to accommodate conflicting stakeholder perspectives and to address trade-offs between ecological, social and economic values.     

Sustainability through system transformation: lessons from Finnish efforts

This special issue of the Journal of Cleaner Production addresses system transformation by examining progress, stumbling blocks and opportunities for sustainable consumption and production in a specific country, Finland, set within a global context. The articles present and analyse top-down policy efforts, bottom-up efforts by municipalities, activities by companies and actions by consumers. They provide material for discussions on the shift from sustainability planning to enhancing system transformation, on the implications of globalisation for system boundaries, on the transformation of complex systems, on learning processes and on methods of assessing transitions. Without providing a singular solution, the articles show that issues of sustainability should be explored in different ways within different contexts, and experimented with. There is a continuous need for transformations and reflexive learning, since conditions are likely to become very different, not least due to climate change. The notion of change and transformation will be high on the agenda of the Rio+20 conference, as will similar efforts to promote large-scale transformations of consumption and production.