PSCI 3201 Environmental Policy 112707

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PSCI 3201 Environmental Policy11/27/07

• NEPA, contd
• Historic importance
• Contemporary significance Environmental impact
  statements (EIS)
• Critique of NEPA
• Political bargaining
• Role of Congress in environmental policy

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• National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)
• Major Elements in the Historic Enactment
• Title I, Congressional Declaration of National
• Environmental Policy
• Sec. 101. Policy Statement
• Sec. 102. Environmental Impact Statement
• (EIS) required for all federal
• actions affecting the human
• environment
• Title II, Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ)

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• NEPA Title I
• CONGRESSIONAL DECLARATION OF NATIONAL
  ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
• Sec. 102 42 USC 4331. Environmental Impact
  Statements.
• Required environmental assessments of all federal
  projects
• An EIS would
• utilize a systematic, interdisciplinary approach,
  including natural and social sciences
• consider presently unquantified environmental
  amenities and values (ie, qualitative in
  addition to quantitative)
• Consider a wide variety of impacts and
  alternatives to the proposed action

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• NEPA Title II
• COUNCIL ON ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY
• Establishment of the CEQ
• Sec. 201 42 USC 4341. Environmental Quality
  Report
• Sec. 202 209. Established the CEQ in the
  Executive Office of the President

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NEPA Historically significant for

• National environmental policy statement
• Environmental Impact Statements (EIS)
• Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ)

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Most important aspect of NEPA today?

• Environmental impact statements

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• Contemporary Significance of NEPA
• Environmental impact statements (EIS)
• The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)
  requires federal agencies to integrate
  environmental values into their decision making
  processes by considering the environmental
  impacts of their proposed actions and reasonable
  alternatives to those actions. To meet this
  requirement, federal agencies prepare a detailed
  statement known as an Environmental Impact
  Statement (EIS). EPA reviews and comments on EISs
  prepared by other federal agencies, maintains a
  national filing system for all EISs, and assures
  that its own actions comply with NEPA.
• From the EPA website http//www.epa.gov/co
  mpliance/nepa/index.html

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Assessing NEPA

• EISs designed as an antidote to the lack of
  science in decision making
• However, EISs seen as cumbersome not very
  valuable as decision tools
• Why?
• Interest groups learned to use the process to
  their purposes
• Volumes of information produce with the result of
  information overload
• Science (or the assessment of environmental
  impacts) not decisive

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MODELS OF POLITICAL BARGAINING (Or what we can
learn from arm wrestling) Win-Lose
Model Stalemate Model Win-Win Model
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• Getting to Yes Negotiating Agreement Without
  Giving In
• (Harvard Negotiation Project)
• Arm wrestling positional bargaining
• Participants are adversaries
• The goal is victory
• Demand concessions
• Demand one-sided gains
• Insist on your position
• Try to win a contest of will
• Apply pressure

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• Getting to Yes Negotiating Agreement Without
  Giving In
• (Harvard Negotiation Project)
• Arm wrestling positional bargaining
• Alternative negotiating on the merits (or
  principled negotiation)
• Separate the people from the problem
• Focus on interests, not positions
• Generate a variety of possibilities before
• deciding what to do
• Insist that the result be based on some
• objective standard