Reading Journal in Natural Resource Policy and the Community - Annotated Bibliography Example

The Kyoto Protocol was ratified in 2005 despite rejection from the United States. Before it was ratified, however, U.S. dismissal of the agreement raised a number of issues about lowering costs, particularly for the buyers and sellers of emission permits. The paper examined how the US decision would impact compliance costs for other Annex B countries during the first commitment period. The authors also explored the implications for US emissions. Key findings include: (1) Participating Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries may go through a decline in mitigation costs.

However, because of the banking provision stipulated in the Protocol, the decline may not be as great as some would suggest; (2) If the majority of ‘‘hot air’’ is focused on a small number of countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, these countries might form a sellers’ cartel and extract sizable economic rents; and (3) Even in the absence of mandatory emission reduction requirements, US emissions in 2010 may be lower than their business-as-usual baseline because of expectations on future regulatory requirements.

Although five years have passed since its publication, this paper is still noteworthy because it underscores how, despite intensive academic research and careful scientific treatment of data, forecasting results is still a volatile act that contains many unpredictable variables. For instance, US emissions have not gone lower at present time, contrary to what the paper had concluded.This paper identifies and explores the determinants of actual decisions on environmental programs. Environmental economics has much influence on the design of efficient and effective policy measures for protecting the environment.

However, the authors write that when it comes to actual policy, current measures or institutions do not measure up well in terms of these guidelines. To explain this political failure, the authors focus on the political economy of domestic environmental policy, in particular that of the United States and Western European states. 

The paper underscored the framework in which interest groups vie against one another in a political setting as the approach to a positive theory of environmental regulation. Extensive empirical data on the political economy of environmental policy show that specific interest groups influence environmental measures. The authors then proceed to discuss the vast literature on environmental federalism. The issue of the respective roles of different levels of bureaucracy is controversial on both sides of the Atlantic.

There are key responsibilities for governments at all levels in the design and implementation of environmental programs. And it is crucial to get these functions aligned well in the vertical structure of public decision making. The paper then concludes recent trends on the political economy of environmental decision making show that economic analysis has more weight in shaping environmental policy. REFLECTION It is easy to fall prey in the logic that the inherent value of the environment to human beings should naturally translate into sound policies and programs.

However, in reality it is not just about making the world a better place – about preserving our forests, protecting wild life, or stopping global warming. Just like in any human endeavor, crafting environmental policies is wrought with politics. Often, economics trumps any other factor in designing environmental regulations. To understand the failures and successes of measures, programs, statues, and laws, we must trace the process back into its beginnings: in negotiations between influence groups and private sector members, in the interplay of government leaders and lobbyists.

Environmental regulations are the result of these processes; they are essentially compromises reached by all parties. DATE: 13 April 2009; Entry no. 7 TITLE: Gillespie, Alexander (1996). The Ethical Question in the Whaling Debate, Georgetown International Environmental Law Review, Vol 9:355 ISSUE This paper examines the creation and growing importance of ethics in the whaling debate. SUMMARY This paper shows how governments have created and used a number of devices in an attempt to stop commercial whaling, while increasingly referring to questions of “right and wrong” regardless of the scientific sustainability of such practices.

It begins with the establishment of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in December 1946, which aims to provide the avenue for discussion and mechanisms to conserve whale stocks and make possible an organized development of the whaling industry. However, the author writes that the Commission and its actions, alongside that of other influence groups, are now being forced to withstand accusations of cultural imperialism and demands for cultural pluralism, by which two (or more) countries should be allowed to practice their own ethics, such as the killing and eating of whales.

For instance, countries such as Japan have a centuries-old custom of having whales as part of their staple diet. In an attempt to bypass this problem, the paper justifies a singular philosophical system that would lead to the near absolute protection of whales – the moral considerability of animals. However, as justified as this method may be to individualistic philosophies, it may not coincide with the larger, holistic approaches of environmental ethics. It is, the author explains, within this area, and that secondary question of the role of species within the good of the whole, that the answer to the whaling debate may rely on.

REFLECTION This paper is noteworthy in relation to the recent surge of heated debate on Japanese scientific whaling. Just as discussed in this paper, cultural pluralism is used as one of the pillars of argument for pro whalers. In addition, the proposal of this paper to adopt a singular philosophical system that leads to near absolute protection of whales – moral considerability of animals - is echoed by environmental groups today. However, as also explained by the author, this individualistic philosophy does not sit well with all other holistic approaches of environmental ethics.