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Resource Renewal Institute |
Publications Green Plans: Greenprint for Sustainability |
What are we to do about these problems? |
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| Our approaches to resource management and the environment in general have been fragmented. Forestry is an example: most nations have traditionally been concerned solely with the economics of forestry, whether in India one thousand years ago or the United States over the last hundred years. From the point of view of economics, forestry means cutting trees, creating finished wood products, building homes and businesses, and carrying on trade. As forest resources rapidly depleted, some concern was shifted to the idea of harvesting trees sustainably, but even this approach generally failed to take anything but trees into consideration. Recently, however, some regions have realized that their fisheries are dying out, in part because silt from eroding clear-cut slopes has affected spawning streams. This discovery has led to the realization that forestry and fisheries are linked. We have also, in recent years, discovered links between forests and air pollution. The trees in some of the world’s great forests, including Germany’s Black Forest, are dying because of air pollution. When the trees die, so do the songbirds and all the other life forms that depend on them, from microbes to elk. This has made us understand that if we want to have forests, we have to be concerned about the ways in which we are diminishing the quality of the air, from the toxics spewed from smokestacks to the exhaust belching from tailpipes. A third of the forests of Europe are suffering from the effects of air pollution, and it is increasingly affecting those of Canada and the United States. Yet government efforts are still rarely organized to manage resources as a system; instead, they are typically fragmented among dozens of different agencies, each dealing with a single issue. In order to survive they engage in turf wars, fail to coordinate their policies, and fight over scraps of funding. Looking at a dozen agencies of government dealing with the environment wildlife, parks, forestry, soil, water quality, and so on - reveals that they are rarely managed by one administrator, nor are they operated as a cohesive unit, functioning together the way a clock works. Politics and power decide how various environmental issues are ranked. In most state or federal agencies in the United States today, agriculture, oil, and water are probably ranked at the top. Soil, energy, wildlife, parks, and recreation get little attention or funding. The powerful agencies guard their privileged positions jealously, while the less powerful are left with the crumbs. They are fighting each other needlessly, and often not managing their affairs very well. When we leave behind an issue that is underfunded, like soil, we undermine all our efforts over the long term. We are wasting our money whenever we deal with forests and air quality and don’t deal with the other issues. Often we are just pushing problems around from one realm to another, cleaning the water only to bury or incinerate the contaminants that have been removed, thereby polluting the soil or the air. If we were to compare our attempts to understand and improve environmental quality to our concern about the health of our own individual bodies, we might say that to date we have been looking at one foot and little else. We know, of course, that there are other problems, of bones and blood and diet and much more. When we look beyond the primitive approach we have taken to the environment, we see living concepts that are part of the earth, all inter-connected and interrelated. The government of the Netherlands has put its finger on the problem very concisely: “The difficulty with this fragmented approach is that it addresses a succession of new issues without necessarily resolving the previous one, thereby creating the impression that it no longer matters. Attention focuses on one subject, overshadowing others which are no less important. This approach also fails to treat the environment as a single system, which makes it virtually impossible to show people how their behavior affects the environment.” By contrast, the Netherlands’ comprehensive program aims to make environmentally friendly behavior second nature to its people. To achieve environmental recovery, we need to accept complexity and operate in a systems environment, making systems decisions. Green plans are able to address this complexity, first of all because they are comprehensive, embracing all environmental and resource issues, across media and across geographical boundaries. Second, green plans are integrated throughout human society as it relates to the environment, from industry and government to social groups and individuals. Green plans look at the interconnections and relationships between different environmental issues and between natural and human systems, and create similar links between those responsible for creating and implementing environmental policies. |
Politics and power decide how various environmental issues are ranked. In most state or federal agencies in the United States today, agriculture, oil, and water are probably ranked at the top. Soil, energy, wildlife, parks, and recreation get little attention or funding. | |||||||||||||||||||
| Comprehensive, integrated approaches to environmental planning bring cohesiveness to government efforts, encouraging coordination and cooperation. They also make government and the management of environmental quality understandable and sensible to the public. The green plans of the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Canada are comprehensive, ecosystem-based initiatives designed to save the forest, not just the trees. Instead of passing laws that attack each problem one by one in isolation, these countries have created approaches that cut across traditional lines in ways that make sense for their resources, population, and industry. And within government itself, they have pulled together all the major ministries and agencies into one coordinated effort to achieve environmental quality. Implementing such plans is obviously a challenge for each country. However, their comprehensiveness has in some ways made implementation easier, allowing all three nations to move away from the layering of regulatory and legal approaches that had developed over the years. They have replaced this old system with a refined, more efficient, broader strategy that gives businesses and individuals greater latitude to meet and maintain environmental quality goals. This means far less frustration, particularly for businesses that have tried to cooperate in the past, only to become mired in overlapping or outdated regulations. An important element in this sort of comprehensive planning is to bring together all interested groups, including environmentalists, industry, and citizens, to carefully review existing laws and regulations and develop a new approach. The objectives must be clearly established and the limits clearly defined; once that is done, it is no longer necessary to pile regulation on top of regulation. It is interesting to compare what is happening in these three countries to the policies of California, a state that has a reputation for being very modern and efficient, and which has adopted strong, farsighted policies on a number of environmental issues. For example, California led the energy revolution, and as a consequence the state has a steady stream of visitors from all over the world who come to study its energy efficiency model. It also has strict air quality standards. But because California has not made the leap to the broader, comprehensive approach, its policies in other areas are severely lacking. The state’s water policy is backward and poorly managed, and soil policies scarcely exist at this point. The same is true for rapid transit and growth policies. Until California links its policy and regulatory programs together, it will not come close to providing a livable future for its citizens. The same flaw is also evident in nations such as Germany and Japan, which are very efficient with some issues but fall short in others. Until a nation or city or state embraces the comprehensive approach, anything it does will be less efficient and more expensive. Environmental strategies for the future will have to be comprehensive in order to cope with the complexity of the environment and of the problems we face. And comprehensive plans will work, because they have the power of mass behind them. An environmental idea has a better chance of success if it is part of a larger whole; single issues are far easier to block or defeat. |
The green plans of the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Canada are comprehensive, ecosystem-based initiatives designed to save the forest, not just the trees. | |||||||||||||||||||
| A Large-Scale Commitment by Government The other critical element of green plans is their scale: the size and scale of the project must match that of the problem. In the past, we have not really comprehended just how big and complex environmental problems are, so we have not responded appropriately. Scale is one reason that green plans place responsibility for environmental planning at the national or state level; only government can manage something of this size efficiently and effectively. For instance, just the amount of money that is required - billions in the case of existing national plans - is far beyond what an organization or institution would be able to provide. There are other green plan functions that only government can do, such as managing the taxes and environmental quality regulations, and enforcing the laws. Only government has the resources and the scope required to handle a project this immense. If it is efficiently run, the government has a tremendous advantage when it comes to the delivery of certain services. In the United States in the last few decades, it has become fashionable to think that government is useless, and that only private enterprises can handle problems efficiently. But it is a mistake to view the two as necessarily opposed. Privatization can be an important part of the way a government functions, but it should not be seen as a panacea that absolves the government of responsibility. For example, it may be most efficient to have a private firm collect a city’s trash, but it is still the government’s responsibility to make sure that the trash is picked up, and disposed of properly. So while green plans may well include roles for private enterprises, they will require, first and foremost, government leadership and commitment to the goals to be achieved. We have always underestimated the environmental problem, but we come closer to understanding its size and scale when we see the size and scale of the response from a nation like the Netherlands. The Netherlands’ green plan is an ex ample of technical excellence, a multifaceted and detailed approach. To achieve its goal of recovering environmental quality in twenty-five years, the government has enlisted hundreds of people, including some of the country’s best minds. What is happening now in the Netherlands reminds me of the preparation for the Normandy invasion during World War II. I remember well the pictures of thousands of ships sitting offshore - the largest armada in history, all coordinated, all waiting to act in concert. It is that kind of human endeavor that a nation undertakes with these green plans: a massive commitment to a purpose. Looking back in U.S. history for a comparison, perhaps the best is with the soil conservation effort intended to stop wind erosion of the Great Plains at the end of the Depression. For a very short time, soil was understood as the key to civilization’s survival, and great passion went into the effort to save the Plains from devastation. But the effort was not maintained over the years, and in any case fell short of what was needed. It cannot be compared to the complexity and size of what is happening in the Netherlands today. The scale of our funding commitment has to match the size of the problem, too. We have a habit of putting a symbolic amount toward an issue, rather than enough to really have an effect. In trying to determine whether an institution is committed to a particular policy, one of the best questions to ask is what portion of the total amount it spends is devoted to implementing that policy. A government or corporation can say that it has the best health program in the world, but if it has yet to commit any money, then all it has is a piece of paper, not a program. Using this measure, the Canadian example is quite remarkable. At a time when its economy was battered by recession, the Canadian government pledged to spend $2.2 billion over the next six years. The Dutch estimate they will spend $9.5 billion on the environment in 1994; this is almost twice what they spent per year before the green plan was adopted. These amounts, large as they are, are even more remarkable for coming from rather small treasuries. The immensity of the commitment on the part of these countries gives their plans an integrity and seriousness of purpose that smaller efforts simply cannot match. In the past, we have rarely been able to think far enough ahead to adequately fund a project. As a result, we often end up wasting money and falling short of our goals. One example is the case of Redwood National Park in California. When the government first started buying property for the park, a few hundred acres at a time, the land was available for $500 million. But it took about ten years to purchase the amount desired, and over that time the cost increased to more than $1 billion. The park cost at least twice as much as it would have if it had been properly financed from the beginning, and the land bought all at once. The scale of the problem was creating Redwood National Park, with its tens of thousands of acres, and the government approached it a tree at a time. Had it not been for the efforts of the nonprofit Save the Redwoods League, which had been buying and preserving land for decades prior to the creation of the park, it would have been even more costly. The partnership between the government and the nonprofit worked well in the end, but much money could have been saved had the government had the foresight to commit enough funding to begin with. If a national environmental recovery strategy is to be successful, it must incorporate and build upon the three main principles of comprehensiveness, integration, and a large-scale commitment by government. The precise methods used to implement these principles will be different for each nation, and will probably change over time, but a program that fails to include any one of them will not be a true green plan, and its chances for success will be fewer. The examples provided by the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Canada are especially important now that the world is shifting into a new phase in environmental planning. The adoption of Agenda 21 by more than 170 nations attending the UN’s Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 indicates widespread recognition that our old ways of responding to environmental problems are no longer sufficient. By adopting Agenda 21, those nations agreed to follow a comprehensive, integrated, green plan approach to managing their environmental affairs. The pioneer green plans will be extremely useful models for the nations now starting down this track. © Resource Renewal Institute 1995 Available from Amazon.com |
In the past, we have rarely been able to think far enough ahead to adequately fund a project. As a result, we often end up wasting money and falling short of our goals. | |||||||||||||||||||
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