Environmental Policy In Australia Research Articles

Connecting social and environmental policy in Australia: Collateral gains or collateral damage?

AbstractClimate change research relating to “co‐benefits” suggests that the facilitation of social‐welfare outcomes through environmental policy offers a powerful means of incentivising climate change action. Concerns about social‐welfare, however, are often used to undermine climate change policies, typically through political claims that low‐to‐middle‐income households should not shoulder the costs of greater policy alignment between social and environmental objectives. Integrating the social into the environmental can therefore, on the one hand, lead to “co‐benefits” as each agenda promotes the other in political discourse, or alternatively to collateral damage if the policy objectives are framed as incompatible. This article explores both scenarios through two case studies of energy policy in Australia. The findings show that social‐welfare concerns can be a powerful discursive tool with the potential to facilitate political consensus, but also that this potential is not being fully realised, primarily because environmental concerns suffer when attempts are made to integrate the two areas discursively.

The changing nature of the environmental policy agenda in New South Wales, Australia, 1979–2010

ABSTRACTWhile the detail of policy change has been often examined, there is a lack of fine-scale empirical investigation into actual policy agendas over time. This is especially the case for environmental policy in Australia. A time-based trend analysis of 505 environmental policies made by the New South Wales Government between 1979 and 2010 found the most commonly addressed issue was flora and fauna, followed by pollution and climate change. Between 1979 and 1994, policy-making on the coast, forests, rivers, soils and catchments was much more common. Then between 1995 and 2010, policy on climate change, pollution, water quantity, waste and wetlands became more common and the marine and alpine environments were also addressed. These overall trends provide a basis for understanding the changing policy agenda. The simple issue-based categorisation of a large number of policies reveals trends not discernible from a deeper analysis of fewer policies. Using actual policies (rather than proposed policies or positions) provides an understanding of the practical ability of governments to address environmental issues, where intent mixes with political, social and economic constraints.

How Neoliberalism and Ecological Modernization Shaped Environmental Policy in Australia

‘Sustainability’ provides the dominant frame within which environmental policy debate occurs, notwithstanding its divergent meanings. However, how different discourses combine to shape understanding of the environment, the causes of environmental issues, and the responses required, is less clear cut. Drawing primarily on the approach to critical discourse analysis (CDA) developed by Fairclough, this paper explores the way in which neoliberal and ecologically modern discourses combine to shape environmental policy. Environmental scholars have made relatively little use of this approach to CDA to date, despite the significant interest in the discursive aspects of environmental issues, and its wide use in other areas of policy interest. Using the case of environmental policy-making in Victoria, Australia, this paper illustrates how neoliberalism and weak ecological modernization represented sustainability in ways that seriously limited the importance of environmental issues.

Improving environmental decisions: A transaction-costs story

A multidisciplinary team of researchers made efforts to influence the design and implementation of environmental policy in Australia. A focus of these efforts was the development of the Investment Framework for Environmental Resources (INFFER). In addition, the team undertook a range of communication activities, training, user support, and participation in committees and enquiries. Transaction costs were relevant to these efforts in a variety of ways. Environmental managers perceived INFFER to involve relatively high transaction costs. A balance was struck between the system having simplicity (and low transaction costs) and delivering environmental benefits. Transaction costs were factored into the planning and prioritisation processes developed. For example, public and private transaction costs are accounted for in the calculation of benefit:cost ratios and in the choice of policy mechanisms. There are diverse roles that transaction costs play in the processes of developing, implementing and influencing environmental policy programmes. A key observation is that appropriate strategic investment in transaction costs can improve decisions and increase net benefits from an environmental programme. A well-designed decision process can involve incurring transaction costs at one stage in order to save transaction costs at a later stage.

Coase Rules OK? Exploring Prospects for Private Sector Environmental Protection

Environmental policy in Australia, and internationally, has been characterised by taxes, subsidies, regulations and direct state provision. These Pigouvian‐inspired measures have paid little attention to the institutional drivers (Coasian rules) that underpin environmental issues. A re‐orientation towards environmental protection initiatives driven by institutions that are endogenous to society offers the potential to lower transaction costs and release exchange efficiency improvements of the type demonstrated by Ostrom in the context of common property resources and Williamson in the case of firm organisation. Australian examples of private sector nature protection initiatives are used to demonstrate this potential.

Vernacular heritage and evolving environmental policy in Australia: Lessons from the Murray–Darling Outreach Project

The interface between environmentalism and neoliberalism in industrialised nations is dynamic and evolving with each of these significant socio-political movements exerting influence on the other. In the context of Australian environmental policy, ideas of heritage, sense of place and belonging are increasingly invoked to support the current policy emphasis on the role of regional communities for realising goals for land and water conservation and environmental restoration. To explore the broader meaning and consequences of these developments, we focus on the manner in which ideas of heritage are employed and evoked within the Murray–Darling Outreach Project, a collaboration between the Murray–Darling Basin Commission, a key natural resource management agency, and the National Museum of Australia. The Murray–Darling Outreach Project has the aim of increasing community involvement in local environmental issues by promoting ideas of vernacular heritage.

Public interest or private agenda?: A meditation on the role of NGOs in environmental policy and management in Australia

Non-government organisations (NGOs) have come to assume an important role in environmental policy in Australia. This paper considers the institutional impacts of an enlarged and formal role for NGOs in environmental governance. To foreground the analysis that follows, the paper theorises: (i) the structural democratisation of western societies which provides the preconditions for civic approaches to environmental governance; (ii) civil society organisations as political actors; and (iii) the link between non-state associations and democracy. Against this background, the paper surveys some of the ways in which NGOs are being formally involved in environmental policy and management in Australia. The paper proceeds to identify a series of risks associated with these approaches. The paper concludes by calling for a more nuanced and critical appraisal of the role of NGOs in environmental policy so political space might be reserved for the public interest and to ensure that the democratic effects of civil society are not diminished.

Problems, Progress, and Policy

An overview is presented of current environmental policy in Australia. It describes the nature of some of the more significant problems now being addressed by government at the federal and state levels, and it reviews areas of achievement and progress in dealing with these issues.