British Environmental Policy Research Articles

The changing role of space and time in British environmental policy since 1945

Après 1945, les dimensions du temps et de l’espace, qui caractérisaient les questions environnementales, connurent des changements. Dans l’espace, elles s’élargirent du local au global. Dans le temps, on se préoccupa davantage de la prise en compte d’un futur plus ou moins lointain. Ces questions attirèrent de plus en plus l’intérêt croisé des économistes et des philosophes. En Grande-Bretagne, le gouvernement, après avoir encouragé les autorités locales à apporter une solution au problème du smog, s’intéressa aux pluies acides et commanda le Rapport Stern sur le changement climatique global et les devoirs des générations présentes envers les générations futures. En s’efforçant de répondre aux problèmes environnementaux de plus en plus vastes, le gouvernement s’est trouvé confronté à des questions telles que le free-riding, le taux d’actualisation pour la société et l’équité entre les générations.

Review: On Global Aging: Old-Age Income Systems in the EU and other Major Parts of the World, Bringing Society Back in: Grassroots Ecosystem Management, Accountability, and Sustainable Communities, Megaprojects and Risk: An Anatomy of Ambition, the Europeanization of British Environmental Policy: A Departmental Perspective, Economic Voting

Review: On Global Aging: Old-Age Income Systems in the EU and other Major Parts of the World, Bringing Society Back in: Grassroots Ecosystem Management, Accountability, and Sustainable Communities, Megaprojects and Risk: An Anatomy of Ambition, the Europeanization of British Environmental Policy: A Departmental Perspective, Economic Voting

A. Jordan, The Europeanization of British Environmental Policy: A Departmental Perspective, 2002, 236 pp., 45

A. Jordan, The Europeanization of British Environmental Policy: A Departmental Perspective, 2002, 236 pp., 45

Book Review: British Environmental Policy and Europe: Politics and Policy in Transition

Book Review: British Environmental Policy and Europe: Politics and Policy in Transition

Cost benefit analysis and environmental policy

The use of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) in British environmental policy has gone through several stages. Early applications of CBA tended to ignore environmental impacts altogether, leave them for a subsidiary impact analysis, or provide only a partial monetization of impacts. Currently, CBA is the subject of renewed interest in government departments, in the Environment Agency, and among other agencies providing guidance and advice to government. While the amount of CBA being undertaken has increased, its influence on policy making is open to question. Obstacles remain. Much CBA is expensive and this means that is widely regarded as essential. Currently, however, the validity of much benefits transfer is questionable. Other problems arise from misunderstandings about the nature of economic values and the links to individuals' self interest, and from concerns that CBA results will crowd out flexibility in decision-making, especially the likely context of multiple political objectives over and above economic efficiency. None the less, CBA has begun to have influence in the setting of environmental taxes and alternative decision rules appear to suffer as many, if not more, shortcomings as those faced by CBA. Copyright 1998 by Oxford University Press.

The assessment: environmental policy objectives, instruments, and institutions

The article provides a critique of British environmental policy, focusing in particular on the role of sustainable development as an organizing principle, the use of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) and economic instruments, and the design of the institutions responsible for implementing policy. It is argued that, while considerable progress has been made in the theoretical literature to define sustainable development, successive governments in the UK have widened the definition to the point where it provides little guidance for policy. Obstacles to the use of CBA are discussed, as are the political constraints on implementing economic instruments--in particular, the income effect. Finally, it is argued that the institutional design of the Environment Agency and the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions partly explains the overwhelming reliance on command-and-control regulation.

Reviews: Energy Policy in the European Union, Developments in West European Politics, British Environmental Policy and Europe: Politics and Policy in Transition, Battery Park City: Politics and Planning on the New York Waterfront, Comparative Housing Policy, Government and Housing in Advanced Industrialized Countries

Reviews: Energy Policy in the European Union, Developments in West European Politics, British Environmental Policy and Europe: Politics and Policy in Transition, Battery Park City: Politics and Planning on the New York Waterfront, Comparative Housing Policy, Government and Housing in Advanced Industrialized Countries

Pragmatism, effectiveness and institutional judgement in the british control of major accident hazards

This paper focuses on the regulation of environmental hazards—with a particular emphasos on the British style of policy-making. Following a literature review, the case of major hazard policy and the Advisory Committee on Major Hazards in explored in some detail. The relationship of this case to the BRitish policy style is noted. The stress of the committe on pragmatism is discussed as is the linkate between this regulatory philosophy and the use of technical expertise as a source of legitimation. This claim to legitimation is made despite technical limitations in the selected criteria for hazard control. The paper concludeds with a discussion of pragmatism, effectiveness and the emergence of new demands for a change in the British environmental policy process. In particular, it is argued that whilst the proponents of the current system may place great stress on its pragmatism, critics are likely to be more sceptical of the regulatory process and its consensual assumptions.

Interpreting Environmental Policy: A Social Scientific Approach

Any discerning participant in the environmental debate very quickly realises that there is more at issue than the question of how to solve environmental problems. There are underlying disagreements over how problems are defined, their degree of seriousness, who is responsible for solving them, and how amenable they are to solution. These disagreements run deep; they are based on different moral principles, different values, different assumptions about how the world operates, and they are found not only at the international level, where cultural diversity is to be expected, but at all levels, within a single society or organization, and within the actions and policies of a single corporate group. The current debate over British environmental policy provides plenty of evidence for this kind of diversity. The Government claims that its concern for the environment is genuine, that it takes seriously the threat of global warming, that it places high priority on the conservation of wildlife and countryside. But many of the Government's policies appear to contradict these claims; the nuclear industry receives government support despite the dangers of toxic waste, important wildlife habitats continue to be destroyed by development, international efforts to tighten environmental controls are resisted. In everyday life we make sense of such apparent contradictions in the same way as we interpret all our actions, by placing them in context; by identifying them as part of a wider complex of strategies, motives, and ideas. One important function of social science is to assist this process of interpretation by identifying the appropriate context, that in which the actions concerned make the most sense. In this paper, I use a model of cultural diversity developed originally within social anthropology, to throw light on some of the apparent inconsistencies within current British environmental policy.

British Environmental Policy: Towards the Best Practicable Environmental Option

British Environmental Policy: Towards the Best Practicable Environmental Option