Description: This book explores the complicated interrelationships between freshwater resources and tourism and recreation. The focus is on Australia, but comparisons with the experience of other countries are also made throughout. Yet Australia has been at the forefront of conflicts over drought and water use, particularly for irrigated agriculture, as well as of the design of policies and institutions for water policy, so there are many lessons which can be applied to other parts of the world.

The authors examine in detail the relationships between water economics and supply, and the needs for tourism and recreation. The book discusses water use and access, and the conflict between urban and recreational demands. It considers the institutional arrangements around water and the significance of property rights, including water markets and water pricing. Theoretical and practical models for increasing collaboration and cooperation such as the use of trusts are also developed and water trusts in the USA are examined. Specific chapters highlight the role of interest groups, such as the boating industry, to influence policy thinking and the practical trade-offs between access to urban water supplies and the requirements of recreation. Tourist behavior in relation to water use and pricing is also assessed.

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Description: This book critically examines the reasons behind East Africa's stagnant agricultural productivity over the past forty-five years, using the primary lens of investments in fertilizers, seeds, and sustainable land management technologies. These investments have a tremendous impact on production volume. Thus, they ultimately dictate the income of millions of families throughout the region.

The authors also explore the effects of potentially key barriers such as risk, weak land tenure, limited extension services, social capital, and policy incentives. For example, they find that East African agriculture is characterized by a high level of risk, and risk avoidance on the part of investors appears to play a crucial role in a number of decisions. On the whole, the book provides a remarkably deep and systematic look at the variety of opportunities for and constraints to investments in sustainable agriculture, offering important insights into what works and what should be scrapped in one of the poorest regions of the world.

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Description: Florida's Water poses fundamental questions about water sustainability in the United States' fourth largest state. Florida has long-standing water quality problems. Global climate change threatens to intensify Florida's floods and droughts, make hurricanes more common or more damaging, and eventually submerge much of low-lying Florida, including the Everglades. How can Florida meet these extraordinary challenges? And what lessons does the Florida experience hold for other states?

This book fully integrates the many diverse responsibilities of water management into a readable and compelling combination of interesting narratives and deep analysis. Author Tom Swihart's unique, intimate knowledge of Florida's successes and failures in water management brings out both the novelty of Florida's water situation and the features that it has in common with other states.

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Description: Minnesota has a unique role in U.S. water policy. Hydrologically, it is a state with more than 12,000 lakes, an inland sea, and the headwaters of three major river systems: the St Lawrence, the Red River of the North, and the Mississippi. Institutionally, Minnesota is also unique. All U.S. states use Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) approaches to addressing impaired waters. Every TMDL requires a substantial investment of resources, including data collection, modeling, stakeholder input and analysis, a watershed management plan, as well as process and impact monitoring. Minnesota is the only state in the union that has passed legislation (the 2007 Clean Water Legacy Act) providing significant resources to support the TMDL process.

The book will be an excellent guide for policymakers and decisionmakers who are interested in learning about alternative approaches to water management. Non-governmental organizations interested in stimulating effective water quality policy will also find this a helpful resource. Finally, there are similarities between the lessons learned in Minnesota and the goals of water policy in several other states and nations, where there are competing uses of water for households, agriculture, recreation, and navigation.

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Description: Reflecting its reliance on fossil fuels, the electric power industry produces the majority of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. The need for a revolution in the industry becomes further apparent given that "decarbonization" means an increasing electrification of other sectors of the economy—in particular, through a switch from gasoline to electric vehicles. Of the options for producing electric power without significant greenhouse gas emissions, renewable energy is most attractive to policymakers, as it promises increased national self-reliance on energy supplies and the creation of new industries and jobs, without the safety and political concerns of nuclear power or the unproven technology of carbon capture and storage.Drawing on both economic theory and the experiences of the United States and EU member states, Harnessing Renewable Energy addresses the key questions surrounding renewable energy policies. How appropriate is the focus on renewable power as a primary tool for reducing greenhouse gas emissions? If renewable energy is given specific support, what form should that support take? What are the implications for power markets if renewable generation is widely adopted? Thorough and well-evidenced, this book will be of interest to a broad range of policymakers, the electric power industry, and economists who study energy and environmental issues.

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Description: Issues of the Day provides an easy way for students, academics, journalists, policymakers, and the public to learn about a diverse range of policy issues affecting the environment, energy, transportation, and public health. Each commentary gives a short assessment of a topic, summarizing in a non-technical way the current state of analysis or evidence on the issue, along with selected recommendations for further reading. The essays are written by world renowned scholars, mostly economists, and provide useful insights on policy problems that are often complex and poorly understood.Some of the topics covered include air pollution, hazardous waste, voluntary environmental programs, domestic (U.S.) and global climate policy design, fishery management, water quality, endangered species, forest fires, oil security, solar power, road and airport, fuel taxes and fuel economy standards, alternative fuel vehicles, health and longevity, smoking, malaria, tuberculosis, and the environment and development.The objective is to disseminate the findings of sound, objective research on the costs, benefits, and appropriate reform of public policies. The book provides a useful supplement for undergraduate- and graduate-level course reading, a reference guide for professionals, and a way for the general reader to quickly develop an informed perspective on the most important policy problems of the day.

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Description: As a water-scarce state with deep cultural attachments to private property rights, Texas has taken a unique evolutionary path with regard to water management. This new resource surveys past and current water policy challenges, telling a comprehensive story of water in Texas and identifying opportunities for improving future governance. Experts from broad disciplinary perspectives describe and analyze the various Texas water law and management agencies, the practices of water marketing in Texas, the unique cases of the Edwards and Ogallala aquifers, the extensive history of formalized water sharing with neighboring states and Mexico, and the opportunities for harnessing new technologies for meeting environmental and estuary goals. This multidimensional, interdisciplinary book will be a valuable resource for water managers worldwide, particularly those working within contexts of water scarcity.RFF Press is now an imprint of Earthscan. Click here to buy this book.

Description: Enrolling over 30 million acres, the U.S. Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) is the largest conservation program in the United States. Under the guidelines of the CRP, the federal government pays farmers to cease farming their land in the hopes of achieving a variety of conservation goals, including reduction of soil erosion, improvement in water quality, and increases in wildlife habitat. In Conserving Data, James T. Hamilton explores the role of information in the policy cycle as it relates to the CRP. He asks how the creation and distribution of information about what is going on across these millions of enrolled acres has influenced the development of the program itself.Of the many CRP stakeholders, each accesses a different set of information about the CRP's operations. Regulators have developed the Environmental Benefits Index as a rough indicator of a field’s conservation benefits and adopted that measure as a way to determine which lands should be granted conservation contracts. NGOs have used data from these contracts to make information about how CRP monies are allocated publicly available. Congress members have used oversight hearings and GAO reports to monitor the Farm Service Agency’s conservation policy decisions. Reporters have localized the impact of the CRP by writing stories about increases in wildlife and hunting in their areas on CRP fields.Conserving Data brings together and analyses these various streams of information, drawing upon original interviews with regulators, new data from Freedom of Information Act requests, and regulatory filings. Using the CRP as a launch point, Hamilton explores on the role of information, including "hidden information" in the design and implementation of regulatory policy.

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Description: The "Precautionary Principle" has sparked the central controversy over European and U.S. risk regulation. The Reality of Precaution is the most comprehensive study to go beyond precaution as an abstract principle and test its reality in practice. This groundbreaking resource combines detailed case studies of a wide array of risks to health, safety, environment and security; a broad quantitative analysis; and cross-cutting chapters on politics, law, and perceptions. The authors rebut the rhetoric of conflicting European and American approaches to risk, and show that the reality has been the selective application of precaution to particular risks on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as a constructive exchange of policy ideas toward "better regulation." The book offers a new view of precaution, regulatory reform, comparative analysis, and transatlantic relations.

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Description: Since the beginnings of the United States oil industry 150 years ago, production activity has been governed by the "law of capture," dictating that a driller owns the oil drilled from his/her propertyeven if the oil has migrated from under neighboring land as a result of the drilling process. This "finders keepers" principle has been excoriated by foreign critics as "theft" and as a "law of the jungle" and has been blamed by American commentators—and the oilindustry itself—as the root cause of the enormous waste of oil and gas resulting from U.S. production methods in the first half of the 20th century. Yet while in almost every other country the law of capture is today of only marginal significance, in the UnitedStates it continues to operate, and indeed to underpin the system of production regulation, with potentially wasteful results. In this meticulously researched and richly documented account, Terence Daintith adopts a historical and comparative perspective to show how legal rules, technical knowledge (or the lack thereof) and political events and ideas combined to shape attitudes and behavior in the business of oil production. He explains both the original adoption of the law of capture—not just in the United States but in other countries as well—and the paths of legal and political development that have led to its consolidation in the United States and its marginalization elsewhere. In contrasting these histories of the law of capture, the book raises the question of whether the U.S. can reduce waste in production without abandoning its deeply-rooted attachment to private property rights in oil and gas.

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Description: Over the past decades, considerable debate has emerged surrounding the use of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) to analyze and make recommendations for environmental and safety regulations. Critics argue that CBA forces values on unquantifiable factors, that it does not adequately measure benefits across generations, and that it is not adaptable in situations of uncertainty. Proponents, on the other hand, believe that a well-done CBA provides useful, albeit imperfect, information to policymakers precisely because of the standard metrics that are applied across the analysis. Largely absent from the debate have been practical questions about how the use of CBA could be improved. Relying on the assumption that CBA will remain an important component in the regulatory process, this new work from Resources for the Future brings together experts representing both sides of the debate to analyze the use of CBA in three key case studies: the Clean Air Interstate Rule, the Clean Air Mercury Rule, and the Cooling Water Intake Structure Rule (Phase II). Each of the case studies is accompanied by critiques from both an opponent and a proponent of CBA and includes consideration of complementary analyses that could have been employed. The work's editors - two CBA supporters and one critic - conclude the report by offering concrete recommendations for improving the use of CBA, focusing on five areas: technical quality of the analyses, relevance to the agency decision-making process, transparency of the analyses, treatment of new scientific findings, and balance in both the analyses and associated processes, including the treatment of distributional consequences.

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Description: Nanotechnology promises to transform the materials of everyday life, leading to smaller and more powerful computers, more durable plastics and fabrics, cheap and effective water purification systems, more efficient solar panels and storage batteries, and medical devices capable of tracking down and killing cancer cells or treating neurological diseases. Policy analysts predict a radical change in the industrial sector, and at present, the U.S. government spends nearly $2 billion annually on nanotechnology research and development. Yet the nanotechnology revolution is not straightforward. Enthusiasm about nanotechnology’s future is tempered by recognition of the hurdles to its responsible development, including the capacity of government to support technological innovation and economic growth while also addressing potential environmental and public health impacts. This is the first volume to engage scholarly perspectives on environmental regulation in light of the challenges posed by emerging nanotechnologies.Contributors focus on the overarching lessons of decades of regulatory response, while posing a fundamental core question: How can government regulatory systems satisfy the desire for scientific innovation while also taking into account the direct and indirect effects of 21st emerging technologies, particularly in the face of scientific uncertainties? With perspectives from economics, history, philosophy, and public policy, this new resource illuminates the various challenges inherent in the development of nanotechnology and works towards a reorganization of government regulatory approaches.

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Description: Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) play a vital role in addressing complex environmental challenges such as climate change, persistent bio-accumulative pollutants, and habitat protection at local, national, and international levels. Yet NGOs remain poorly understood. Although much has been written by economists, political scientists and sociologists on interest groups and their role in the policy process, scholarly literature has had little to say about how NGOs choose which battles to fight, differentiate themselves from one another in order to attract membership and funding, or decide when to form alliances and when to work separately. This book brings together contributions from academics as well as senior executives representing NGOs and corporations, including Rainforest Action Network, BP America, and Ford Motor Company. While building a foundation for theories on NGO strategies and management, the authors further examine the possibilities and the limitations of NGOs in the environmental policy-making process and address the foundational question of how NGOs make decisions about whether to engage, confront, or cooperate with industry.

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Description: Ocean and coastal management regimes are increasingly subject to competing demands from stakeholders. Regulations must not only address fishing, recreation, and shipping, but also sand and gravel mining, gas pipelines, harbor/port development, offshore wind and tidal energy facilities, liquefied natural gas terminals, offshore aquaculture, and desalinization plants. The growing variety and intensity of ocean and coastal uses increases the call for a more holistic, comprehensive, and coordinated management approach that recognizes the often complex relationships between natural and human systems.For both economist and non-economist audiences, this book describes ways in which economic analysis can be an important tool to inform and improve ecosystem-based management (EBM). Topics include modeling economic impacts; benefit-cost analysis; spatial considerations in EBM; understanding incentives and human behaviors; and accounting for uncertainty in policy analysis. Throughout the course of the book the authors also elucidate the different kinds of insights which can be gained from the use of different economic tools.

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Description: As a low-lying delta region with a high population density, the Netherlands has long focused on the prevention of flooding catastrophes and the reclamation of valuable land. The evolution of Dutch water governance, beginning with the creation of local “water boards” in the Middle Ages and growing into a complex infrastructure of polders, dams, and controlled waterways offers a compelling study of pitfalls and successes within one of the world’s most challenging regions for water management.Water Policy in the Netherlands traces the arc of water governance in the country, from technological innovations to prevent wide-scale flooding, to strategies focused primarily on improving water quality, to an integral water management approach which brings together perspectives from economics, hydrology, ecology, water law, and water technology. The contributions in this book demonstrate how both the technical and social sciences must play key roles in crafting policy in the face of serious environmental challenges including climate change, sea level rise, and increasing soil subsidence. Innovative themes explored in the work include: how economic models and pricing structures might improve efficiency in the distribution of water resources, how the competing uses for water—including for recreation, arable agriculture, fisheries, and natural preservation—create demands on both the quantity and quality of water resources, and how public participation, cogovernance, and the balance of public and private interests will be necessary to meet the goals of the EU’s Water Framework Directive.This resource serves as both an invaluable case study and as a text to develop the analytical tool of integral water management for students, policy-makers, and NGO professionals in developed and developing regions.

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Description: In this thought-provoking new book, career U.S. State Department negotiator Richard J. Smith offers readers unprecedented access to the details about some of the most complex and politically charged international agreements of the post Cold War era. During his nine years as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, Smith led U.S. negotiations on many significant international agreements. In Negotiating Environment and Science, Smith presents first-hand, in-depth accounts of eight of the most high-profile negotiations in which he was directly involved.

The negotiations Smith covers are wide-ranging and include the London agreement to amend the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, the international space station agreement, the U.S.-Soviet (eventually, U.S.-Russian) agreement on scientific cooperation, the U.S.-Canada acid rain agreement, the negotiations in Sofia, Bulgaria that established a first link between human rights and the environment, and a contentious confrontation with Japan over driftnet fishing. Smith chronicles the development of these negotiations, the challenges that emerged (as much within the U.S. delegations as with the foreign partners), and the strategies that led to substantive treaties.

Smith infuses his narrative with unique historical insight as well as astute observations that can guide U.S. strategies toward productive international agreements in the future. His book also highlights the shift in diplomatic focus over the past 25 years from arms control and other security-related agreements to international and trans-boundary agreements that address global environmental threats and promote cooperative approaches in science and technology.

Written for an audience with a general interest in environmental issues as well as internationalrelations, Negotiating Environment and Science will also be an important resource for historians, political scientists, and students in international law and diplomacy.

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Description: This book is the first systematic attempt to address emerging land markets and their implications for poverty, equity, and efficiency across a number of African countries. The high incidence of poverty and the need for increased agricultural productivity remain acute in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa, where a lack of secure land rights and a growing scarcity of land relative to the size of the population are becoming increasingly critical issues. Indeed, land issues in the region are high on the international policy agenda. Yet our knowledge about land tenure security and other rural factor markets (such as labor, oxen, manure, purchased inputs, and credit) is far from adequate to formulate sensible policies.

The case studies in the book show that, while land markets and especially informal markets have been rapidly emerging in densely populated parts of Africa—and have generally been to the benefit of the poor--their functions remain imperfect. This is due to policy-induced tenure insecurity and the fragmentation of agricultural land. Applying rigorous quantitative analyses, the book provides a basis for taking into account the role of land markets in national land policies. All too often, the authors argue, land policies have been extreme, either prohibiting all land transactions or giving unrestricted freehold rights to a small elite at the expense of the poor. From the long experience in Asia, it is known that such policies are detrimental to both production efficiency and equity of land use. The authors argue that future policies in Africa should work with the markets. Regulations should be imposed only with careful testing that they are having the intended effects.

The Emergence of Land Markets in Africa is a resource for teaching in developed and developing countries, as it provides both comprehensive reviews of the literature and detailed case studies. It is intended to facilitate the dialogue between researchers and policymakers, as well as inspire researchers to go further in their investigations and build an even stronger basis for good policies.The Emergence of Land Markets in Africa is the first publication in the new Environment for Development (EfD) book series. EfD books focus on research and applications in environmental and natural resource economics as they are relevant to poverty reduction and environmental problems in developing countries. The EfD book series is part of the EfD initiative.(www.environmentfordevelopment.org )

About the Environment for Development Initiative
The Environment for Development (EfD) initiative supports poverty alleviation and sustainable development through the increased use of environmental economics in the policymaking process. The EfD initiative is a capacity-building program focusing on research, policy advice, and teaching. The editor of the series is Thomas Sterner, Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Gothenberg.

The EfD is managed by the Environmental Economics Unit of the University of Gothenburg. Financial support is provided by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). The six EfD centers in Central America, China, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa, and Tanzania are hosted by universities or academic institutions in each respective region or country. Resources for the Future and RFF Press are partners in EfD through research collaboration, communications support, and publications, including the EfD book series. (www.environmentfordevelopment.org)

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Description: When a new federal regulatory program conflicts with an existing state-level system, whose approach should prevail? During the 1990s, the federal government sought to implement the Clean Air Act Amendments and resolve previous problems that it had with compliance. This lead to an intense conflict between U.S. EPA regulators and the state of California. The disagreement involved a federally mandated auto emissions program with centralized testing and California’s existing program that was implemented through local garages (service stations)—a program that was popularly called “Smog Check.” The dispute over Smog Check grew into a clash that had national significance and was further complicated by a recession, the politics of a gubernatorial election, a transition between presidential administrations, and California’s possible loss of nearly $1 billion in federal funds if the state failed to comply with EPA mandates.

The debate over Smog Check ended when EPA finally granted California, and the rest of the nation, greater regulatory flexibility. Fundamental to the Smog Check controversy were questions about federal versus state authority as well as battles between colorful personalities. In his new book, Smog Check, Douglas S. Eisinger presents these struggles in fascinating, first-hand detail. Eisinger, an EPA official at the time of this conflict, probes deeply into the issues and explores broader questions including: when does it become imperative for agencies to bargain with one another, when should regulatory flexibility and performance-based regulations be favored over command and control approaches, what should be done when decisions need to be made in the face of scientific disagreement about both the scope of a problem and the effectiveness of different solutions? He concludes the book with commentary from other former EPA officials who were witnesses or participants in the Smog Check controversy.

Smog Check is engaging reading for students interested in intergovernmental relations and regulatory reform. It provides insight for policy professionals involved in environmentalprotection whenever it involves coordination between federal and state or local agencies.

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Description: In 1947, British India—the part of South Asia that is today’s India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh—emerged from the colonial era with the world's largest centrally managed canal irrigation infrastructure. However, as vividly illustrated by Tushaar Shah, the orderly irrigation economy that saved millions of rural poor from droughts and famines is now a vast atomistic system of widely dispersed tube-wells that are drawing groundwater without permits or hindrances. Taming the Anarchy is about the development of this chaos and the prospects to bring it under control. It is about both the massive benefit that the irrigation economy has created and the ill-fare it threatens through depleted aquifers and pollution.

Tushaar Shah brings exceptional insight into a socio-ecological phenomenon that has befuddled scientists and policymakers alike. In systematic fashion, he investigates the forces behind the transformation of South Asian irrigation and considers its social, economic, and ecological impacts. He considers what is unique to South Asia and what is in common with other developing regions. He argues that, without effective governance, the resulting groundwater stress threatens the sustenance of the agrarian system and therefore the well being of the nearly one and a half billion people who live in South Asia. Yet, finding solutions is a formidable challenge. The way forward in the short run, Shah suggests, lies in indirect, adaptive strategies that change the conduct of water users.

From antiquity until the 1960's, agricultural water management in South Asia was predominantly the affair of village communities and/or the state. Today, the region depends on irrigation from some 25 million individually owned groundwater wells. Tushaar Shah provides a fascinating economic, political, and cultural history of the development and use of technology that is also a history of a society in transition. His book provides powerful ideas and lessons for researchers, historians, and policymakers interested in South Asia, as well as readers who are interested in the water and agricultural futures of other developing countries and regions, including China and Africa.

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Description:

The connections between communities and forests are complex and evolving, presenting challenges to forest managers, researchers, and communities themselves. This book examines the responses of forest communities to changing forest values, changing federal policy, timber industry restructuring, and concerns about forest health. Focusing primarily on the United States, the book examines the ways that social scientists work with communities--their role in facilitating social learning, informing policy decisions, and contributing to community well being.

As dependency on timber extraction is no longer a universal characteristic of forest communities, residents are increasingly diverse in the cultural, economic, and aesthetic values that they attribute to forests. Remoteness also no longer applies, as technology and workforce mobility increasingly connect rural to urban places. And forest communities are more than just full-time residents; they include seasonal workers, part-year vacation residents, and urban dwellers who regularly return to forests for recreation. Forest communities are both place and interest-based; they are linked geographically, culturally, and economically to forest lands, and also politically. Forest Community Connections, synthesizes available research on the changing characteristics of forest communities. Bringing perspectives from sociology, anthropology, political science, and forestry, the authors examine the factors that contribute to strong and resilient connections between communities and forests and those that undermine them. They explore a range of management issues, including wildfire, forest restoration, labor force capacity, and the growing demand for forest amenities, and consider a range of governance structures to positively influence the well being of both communities and forests, including collaboration and community-forestry.

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