Environmental policy is the pledge by governments or organizations to adopt laws, regulations, and other policy tools aimed at addressing environmental issues. These typically involve air and water pollution, waste management, ecosystem management, biodiversity conservation, the management of natural resources, and safeguarding wildlife and endangered species. For example, concerning environmental policy, the implementation of an eco-energy-oriented policy at a global level to address the issue of climate change could be addressed.
Policies concerning energy or regulation of toxic substances including pesticides and many types of industrial waste are part of the topic of environmental policy. This policy can be deliberately taken to influence human activities and thereby prevent undesirable effects on the biophysical environment and natural resources, as well as to make sure that changes in the environment do not have unacceptable effects on humans.
Definition One way is to describe environmental policy is that it comprises two major terms: environment and policy. Environment refers to the physical ecosystems, but can also take into consideration the social dimension (quality of life, health) and an economic dimension (resource management, biodiversity). Policy can be defined as a "course of action or principle adopted or proposed by a government, party, business or individual".Concise Oxford Dictionary, 1995. Thus, environmental policy tends to focus on problems arising from human impact on the environment, which is important to human society by having a (negative) impact on human values. Such human values are often labeled as good health or the 'clean and green' environment. In practice, policy analysts provide a wide variety of types of information to the public decision-making process.
The concept of environmental policy was first used in the 1960s to recognise that all environmental problems, like the environment itself, are interconnected. Addressing environmental problems effectively (such as air, water, and soil pollution) requires looking at their connections and underlying and common sources, and how policies addressing particular problems can have spill-over effects on other problems and policies. "The environment" thus became a focus for public policy and environmental policy the term to refer to the way environmental issues were addressed more or less comprehensively.
Environmental issues typically addressed by environmental policy include (but are not limited to) air and water pollution, waste management, ecosystem management, biodiversity protection, the protection of natural resources, wildlife and endangered species, and the management of these natural resources for future generations. Relatively recently, environmental policy has also attended to the communication of environmental issues.A major article outlining and analyzing the history of environmental communication policy within the European Union has recently come out in The Information Society, a journal based in the United States. See Mathur, Piyush. "Environmental Communication in the Information Society: The Blueprint from Europe," The Information Society: An International Journal, 25: 2, March 2009, pp. 119–38. Environmental policies often address issues in one of three dimensions of the environment: ecological (for instance, policies aimed at protecting a particular species or natural areas), resource (for instance, related to energy, land, water), and the human environment (the environment modified or shaped by humans, for instance, urban planning, pollution). Environmental policy-making is often highly fragmented, although environmental policy analysts have long pointed out the need for the development of more comprehensive and integrated environmental policies.
In contrast to environmental policy, ecological policy addresses issues that focus on achieving benefits (both monetary and non monetary) from the non human ecological world. Broadly included in ecological policy is natural resource management (fisheries, forestry, wildlife, range, biodiversity, and at-risk species). This specialized area of policy possesses its own distinctive features.
History As documented by environmental historians, human societies have always impacted their environment, often with adverse consequences for themselves and the rest of nature. Their failure to (timely) recognise and address these problems has been a contributing factor to their decline and collapse.
Concerns about pollution and its threat to humans as well as nature has provided major stimulus for the development of environmental policies. In 1863, in the United Kingdom, health problems arising from the release of harmful chemicals led to the adoption of the Alkali Act and the creation of the Alkali Inspectorate.Reed, Peter (2012), "The Alkali Inspectorate 1874–1906: Pressure for Wider and Tighter Pollution Regulation", Ambix, Vol.59, No.2, pp.131-151. In 1956, the Clean Air Act 1956 was adopted in the wake of London's Great Smog of 1952 that is believed to have killed 12,000 people. Concerns about the effects of pollution fuelled notably by the publication, in 1962, of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, sparked the beginning of the modern environmental movement. It also marked the start of "the environment" becoming a concern of public policy, as pointed out by Caldwell in 1963.Caldwell, Lynton K. (1963), "Environment: A New Focus for Public Policy", Public Administration Review, Vol.23, pp.132-139. These growing concerns, as well as the growing publicity about environmental problems and accidents, forced governments to introduce or strengthen laws and policies aimed at enhancing environmental protection.
The Post-war era resulted in the 'Great Acceleration', which saw a dramatic increase in industrialization, agriculture, and consumption of resources leading to a new geological era of environmental deficit. The development of environmentalism in the United Kingdom emerged in this period following the great London smog of 1952 and the Torrey Canyon oil spill of 1967. This is reflected by the emergence of Green politics in the Western world beginning in the 1970s.
Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson, then a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, after witnessing the ravages of the 1969 massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California, became famous for his environmental work. Administrator Ruckelshaus was confirmed by the Senate on December 2, 1970, which is the traditional date used as the birth of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Five months earlier, in July 1970, President Nixon had signed Reorganization Plan No. 3 calling for the establishment of EPA. At the time, environmental policy was a bipartisan issue and the efforts of the United States of America made it an early environmental leader.Bührs, Ton (2022), A Planetary Tragedy. Why Humanity Fails the Environmental Challenge. Tauranga: Fantail Publications. During this period, legislation was passed to regulate pollutants that go into the air, water tables, and solid waste disposal. President Nixon signed the Clean Air Act in 1970.
In many countries, governments created environment ministries, departments or agencies, and appointed ministers of or for the environment. The world's first minister of the environment was the British Politician Peter Walker from the Conservative Party in 1970.
In the European Union, the very first Environmental Action Programme was adopted by national government representatives in July 1973 during the first meeting of the Council of Environmental Ministers.Knill, C. and Liefferink, D. (2012) The establishment of EU environmental policy. In: Jordan, A.J. and C. Adelle (ed.) Environmental Policy in the European Union: Contexts, Actors and Policy Dynamics (3e). Earthscan: London and Sterling, VA. Since then an increasingly dense network of legislation has developed, which now extends to all areas of environmental protection including air pollution control, water protection and waste policy but also nature conservation and the control of chemicals, biotechnology and other industrial risks. EU environmental policy has thus become a core area of European politics.
Despite commonalities between countries in the development of environmental policies and institutions, they have also adopted different approaches in this area. In the 1970s, the field of Comparative Environmental Politics and Policy emerged to compare the environmental policies and institutions of countries aimed at explaining differences and similarities.Lundqvist, Lennart J. (1974), Environmental Policies in Canada, Sweden, and the United States: A Comparative Overview. London: Sage Publications.Lundqvist, Lennart J. (1974), "Do Political Structures Matter in Environmental Politics? The Case of Air Pollution Control in Canada, Sweden, and the United States", Canadian Public Administration, Vol.17, No.1, pp.119-141.Enloe, Cynthia (1975), The Politics of Pollution in Comparative Perspective. New York: David McKay.
Although particular environmental problems like soil erosion, growing resource scarcity, air and water pollution increasingly became the subject of concern and government regulation in the 19th century, these were seen and addressed as separate issues. The shortcomings of this reactive and fragmented approach received growing recognition during the 1960s and early 1970s, the first wave of environmentalism. This was reflected in the creation, in many countries, of environmental agencies, policies and legislation with the aim of taking a more comprehensive and integrated approach to environmental issues. In 1972, the need for this was also recognised at the international level at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, which led to the creation of the United Nations Environment Programme.Gray, Mark Allan. 1990. "The United Nations Environment Programme: An Assessment." Environmental Law 20:291-319. Notably, the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm marked the entry of environmental politics into the international agenda, giving rise to new environmental political thought and its incorporation into policymaking.Carter, Neil. The Politics of the Environment: Ideas, Activism, Policy. Cambridge University Press, 2018. Since then, environmentalism has taken shape as its own political ideology and has had numerous variations, from more radical theories like 'deep ecology' which seeks to prioritize environmental needs to more reformist ideologies which view environmental damage as an externality.Heywood, Andrew, and Andrew Heywood. "Global Environmental Issues." Global Politics, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2011, pp. 383–411.
Rationale Growing environmental awareness and concern provided the main rationale for the adoption of environmental policies and institutions by governments. Environmental protection became a focus of public policy.