State of the States (current to 2001)
I. The Imperative for State Leadership on Sustainability

Among the numerous papers presented at the 1999 National Town Meeting on Sustainable Development in Detroit was a report describing how the United States can successfully implement the principles of sustainable development—not in Washington, D.C., but in each of the 50 states. The study concludes, “if the U.S. is going to take sustainable development seriously, states will have to be key players.” The report, which features the sustainability efforts of five leading states, explains why this is so: “States have major control over land use, transportation, energy regulation, and economic development, while they are the front-line implementers of most federal and state environmental laws.”

Amplifying the importance of these basic facts is a well-documented devolution of environmental responsibility from federal to state and local governments that has states shouldering an unprecedented share of the work being done to protect the nation’s environment. This shift is being viewed as both a threat to the status quo and an opportunity for much needed reform of a regulatory system that is realizing its limits. In either case, without decisive action, the changes underway stand to undermine our collective ability to safeguard the nation’s environment.

As a leading advocate for sustainable development, the Resource Renewal Institute (RRI) has recognized the opportunity of this propitious moment and, in these pages, offers the basis for a fresh approach that capitalizes on the ascendancy of states and the steadily expanding interest in applying the principles of sustainable development. The State of the States provides the most comprehensive appraisal yet attempted of states’ capacity for achieving sustainability. It does so through the lens of an innovative environmental management strategy that is proving its value in a growing number of places worldwide. Known as “green planning,” this approach offers the promise of transforming environmental policy in the U.S.—from the short-term, singleissue, conflict-based measures that typify conventional protection efforts to the long-term, integrated, and cooperative policies required for sustainable development to be achieved.

Green plans are long-term environmental management strategies that have the ultimate aim of achieving environmental and economic sustainability—whether for a city, state, region, or nation. Like business plans, green plans guide the efficient use and intelligent investment of resources into the future. Those places with established green plans are demonstrating that a healthy environment, enhanced quality of life, and a vibrant economy not only can coexist, but must coexist to remain viable over time.

Common to all successful green plans are four core attributes:

• a strong management framework;
• the continuous pursuit of innovation;
• an unwavering commitment to the goals of sustainable development; and
• effective governance and leadership.

Indeed, it is these four factors that RRI has inventoried in assessing the capacity of states to develop and implement the green plan model. The details of how this has been done and why these elements are essential to the process follow in the next section.

The State of the States underscores the compelling need for a new generation of environmental policies in the United States that are expressly created to achieve sustainable development. Green planning is the vehicle for getting us there and states are well positioned to take the wheel.

A. The Green Plan Model

Accelerating environmental decline, in this country and around the world, poses one of the greatest problems of our time. Today, despite growing environmental awareness, the United States has become the least sustainable society on Earth. Each year, each one of us generates more than one million pounds of waste— from land-filled carpeting to carbon dioxide. Discarded food alone amounts to 28 billion pounds annually. If everyone in the world lived and consumed as we do, it would take the resources of three planet Earths to support all of us.

In response to the problem—and in growing recognition of the fact that conventional strategies are inadequate to the task—the principles of sustainable development are being learned and spoken like a new language: by communities seeking to improve their quality of life, by companies pursuing benefits to their bottom lines, by entire countries trying to follow through on commitments made at the United Nations’ Earth Summit in 1992, and, indeed, by states trying to solve increasingly complex problems. The momentum created by all of this activity offers extraordinary potential for resolving our environmental dilemma. Yet, without a unifying vision and sense of purpose, the sum of these efforts will not be enough for an enduring recovery. Green plans provide the framework needed to harness the potential that now exists and channel it toward development of a sustainable future.

Green plans are comprehensive and integrated strategies for the deliberate pursuit of sustainable development that involve each sector—government, business, and the NGO community—as partners in developing and implementing a plan’s provisions. Also known as strategic environmental management, green planning applies the business model of “managing for results” to achieve long-term environmental and economic goals and to secure a high quality of life for present and future generations.

The green plan model is comprehensive because it embraces integrated problem-solving for all environmental and resource issues, across media and across geographical boundaries. Green plans also integrate environmental efforts across institutional and jurisdictional boundaries, providing a framework to coordinate activities among, for example, competing government agencies or industries. Success is not measured by imposing one agenda over another, but by finding solutions that integrate many needs and concerns. Green plans accomplish this complicated task through the use of systems analysis, a discipline that dissects complex problems into basic elements and subsystems. Only in this way can the underlying interrelationships and patterns of change at the root of a problem be properly evaluated for the development of an effective response. Systems analysis sets the stage for crafting a strategic environmental management plan that enables a city, state, region, or nation to move toward a shared vision of the future.

Green plans represent the next generation of environmental policy, a necessary evolution that picks up where conventional measures leave off. Hence, green planning is not an avenue for getting around existing rules and regulations. Fundamental to any green plan is the stand-still principle, meaning that environmental quality must not deteriorate below current levels. Standards that have already been established by regulation should thus be viewed as the floor. Green plans seek to redefine the ceiling by offering the regulated community meaningful incentives for moving beyond compliance. These include streamlining the permitting process, allowing for flexibility in achieving targeted objectives, and creating a long-term—and therefore predictable—regulatory environment. Rather than rejecting the benefits of traditional regulatory approaches, green planning strikes an important balance that better serves all parties involved.

1. sustaining the potential of natural and physical resources (excluding minerals) to meet the reasonably foreseeable needs of future generations;
2. safeguarding the life-supporting capacity of air, water, soil, and ecosystems; and
3. avoiding, remedying, or mitigating any adverse effects of activities on the environment.

Any actions taken under the RMA—in effect, any decisions that may have environmental consequences —must satisfy these requirements. Of key importance is the requirement that while social, economic, and cultural objectives will play an important role in decision-making, they cannot be allowed to threaten the sustainability of ecosystems.

Primary responsibility for implementing this vision of sustainable management lies with the regional and territorial (district and city) councils. Through the development and implementation of policy statements and plans, local authorities strive to achieve sustainable management by managing the environmental effects of activities, rather than the activities themselves. Decision making is integrated across land, air, and water.

While effects-based planning conceptually promises improved environmental outcomes, the approach relies upon good information systems. Unfortunately, when the RMA was adopted in 1991, quality information was not readily available. This resulted in a difficult transition from the old laws and plans to the new, and an inability to accurately measure environmental performance. To address the problem, a national environmental performance indicators program was launched in 1996. Its purpose is to create a standardized “tool-box” of indicators to inform the RMA process and ultimately to track progress toward achieving the goal of sustainable management.

Ten years after its inception, the Resource Management Act is still ahead of its time. Although the transition period has been rough, the RMA provides a sound framework for environmental management and the flexibility to enable program enhancements without eroding its core purpose: the sustainability of this island nation.

B. The Challenge of Achieving Sustainability in The United States

The federal government has never adopted a comprehensive environmental strategy. Nor has it published a comprehensive state of the environment report. Numerous attempts at reinvention of the environmental management framework have been undertaken since the early 1970s, but despite lengthy dialogue and extensive research, the nation’s environmental management system remains fundamentally flawed. Lacking is the forward-looking, cooperative, and integrated process necessary for a unifying environmental vision to be developed and pursued.

A number of studies published over the past 20 years assess the gravity of our environmental predicament and/or recommend specific federal policy and program changes (see Figure 5). However, all have failed to institute the reforms required to place sustainability at the center of the national agenda. In what is perhaps the most thorough assessment of the present situation, the National Academy of Public Administration’s recent report, environment.gov, concludes that:

The nation’s current environmental protection system cannot deliver the healthy and sustaining world that Americans want. Absent significant change in America’s environmental governance, the accumulation of greenhouse gases will continue to threaten the stability of the global climate and all the systems that depend on it; the uncontrolled runoff of fertilizers and other pollutants will continue to choke rivers, lakes, and estuaries with oxygen-depleting algae; smog will continue to degrade the health of millions of Americans. The regulatory programs in place in this country simply cannot address those problems at a price America can afford.

Although an overarching framework for sustainability has yet to be developed, significant progress on environmental quality in the U.S. over the past 30 years deserves to be acknowledged. The air is cleaner, more rivers are safe for swimming, drinking water standards have improved dramatically, the national parks system has been expanded, and a number of critically listed species have been brought back from the brink of extinction. U.S. pollution control legislation has served as a model for governments around the world, particularly in Europe. The U.S. also continues to lead the way on other environmental fronts such as environmental justice campaigns and community “right to know” provisions on toxic releases from industrial facilities.

Overall, the U.S. has applied media-specific measures to address environmental problems, a segregated approach that has had the effect of shifting problems from one medium to another. This has created new (and often more complex) issues in need of resolution. Having evolved from a very similar system of environmental management, the Netherlands and New Zealand are demonstrating the tangible benefits of moving beyond these limitations. As observed by Karl Hausker of the Center for Strategic and International Studies:

The challenge for the United States and for all nations is to protect and restore the natural environment while providing for the economic needs of a population that will grow by at least several billion more people. This will require, among other things:

that pollution be limited not by the “best available technology” or some variant thereof but by limits determined by human and ecological health;

that industry undergo a “green revolution” resulting in products and processes that generate dramatically less waste and that channel remaining wastes back into production rather than into the environment; and

that society find far more effective means of reducing the environmental impact of the day-to-day decisions of billions of people in their roles as consumers, workers, drivers, farmers, etc.

According to Hausker, “We will fail in these tasks unless the environmental protection system evolves” in the following ways:

• toward a more performance-based, information- rich, technology-spurring, flexible, accountable regulatory system;
• toward a broader array of policy tools that promote continuous environmental improvement, including environmental taxes, subsidy reform, emissions trading, and information disclosure; and
• toward stronger private sector management systems that internalize the same stewardship ethics embodied in environmental statutes.

There are recent examples of federal progress on governance and government efficiency that offer a glimpse of the kind of systemic change called for. This includes the National Performance Review, a reinvention effort commenced in 1993 under the direction of then Vice President Al Gore. Through this program, the EPA produced more than 40 management innovations. According to Norman Vig, who has written extensively on environmental policy in the U.S. and abroad, “essentially these programs invite states, industries, individual companies, and communities to collaborate with EPA to develop new performance-based management systems in return for greater regulatory flexibility. Although it is too early to evaluate their success, it appears that they have begun to create a new, more cooperative relationship between government and business while improving environmental quality.”

In the second half of the 1990s, “smart growth” and “livable communities” emerged on the political agenda, as states and localities joined together to battle suburban sprawl. During this time, the President’s Council on Sustainable Development completed its process for pursuing sustainability nationally, but with no legislative action and little fiscal support to propel the effort forward.

The increasingly complex nature of environmental problems demands a more responsive approach. Challenging issues that will influence our future quality of life include: climate change, the controversial impacts of endocrine disruptors on human and animal fertility, and the uncertain effects of releasing genetically modified organisms into the nation’s ecosystems. Such problems underscore the need for strategic environmental management (i.e., green planning) in the U.S. with a reach that extends from local to global, involving government, business, and community interests as active partners in the process.

However, as observed by Vig and Kraft, “Perhaps the greatest obstacle to more rational and effective environmental policymaking at present is the absence of any mechanism for coordinating and integrating policy actions on the basis of an overall strategy or set of priorities ... To achieve sustainable development in the future we will need to move beyond policy coordination to policy integration—that is, to making environmental protection an essential part of the mission of all federal agencies” (original emphasis). They are not optimistic about the near-term prospects for change: “Policy integration on this scale will require both more comprehensive environmental legislation and transformation of the institutional cultures within many agencies. Such major changes are not likely in the near future.”

At the start of a new century, the future direction of environmental management in the U.S. is uncertain. While an enhanced federal role will ultimately be required, the promise of achieving meaningful progress in the short-term now resides with the states.

The Case for State Action

Showcased in this report are several states—New Jersey, Minnesota, and Oregon—that have begun to adopt the principles of green planning and, in the process, improve upon a regulatory structure that cannot keep pace with increasing environmental demands. Compelling these and a growing number of other states to act is an acute awareness of the limitations inherent in conventional environmental management.

As characterized by Beardsley et al., “The United States does not really have an integrated system for tackling environmental pollution but rather a potpourri of ad hoc, media-specific environmental laws enforced by the states and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. These laws overlap and frequently conflict ... Given the current state of affairs, the U.S. federal government and almost all of the states have recently (and understandably) begun to look for better ways of doing business ... ”Nowhere have these problems been more sharply felt than by the state agencies charged with implementing federal environmental statutes.

Frustrated by the “inefficient, intrusive, and fragmented” nature of federal environmental laws, a growing number of states are challenging the role they are expected to play. Fanning the flames of discontent have been “decreases in funding from the federal government, political currents favoring decentralization, and actions by EPA and Congress that impose expensive obligations on states and localities without providing funding to meet the obligations (‘unfunded mandates’).”

The changing face of environmental regulation in the United States has then, by default and not by design, thrust states into an expanded role that will likely have historic consequences. According to the Environmental Council of the States (ECOS), “States have become the primary environmental protection agencies across the nation. Whether the yardstick is delegation, fiscal, enforcement, information gathering or policy making, the states are responsible for an increasing, and perhaps surprising, amount of the work done to protect the nation’s environment.”

One telling indicator of an evolving state role is the volume of state environmental legislation not tied to federal statute. The Brookings Institution reports that approximately 70 percent of environmental laws now being enacted at the state level have “little or nothing to do with federal policy.” In a similar vein, of the billions of dollars spent by states on environmental protection each year, only 20 percent comes from federal sources.

According to Brookings, “State and local governments are responsible for nearly all the enforcement of national environmental laws and continue to dominate decisions in areas like land use and waste disposal.”

A “Race to the Bottom” or a “Race to the Top”?

As states take on greater environmental management responsibilities, concern has been expressed that this may precipitate a “race to the bottom” in establishing standards for environmental quality. Indeed, a number of states have put in place laws stipulating that state environmental standards should be no more stringent than federal standards. Other states have pursued “beyond compliance” voluntary agreements with industry that have been criticized for lax enforcement. 25 Many states, however, have enacted environmental laws that are “more stringent than or different from federal laws (e.g. groundwater protection and/or wetland statutes that go beyond the requirements of the Clean Water Act).” And many of the “beyond compliance” projects, such as those facilitated by the Multi-State Working Group (MSWG), include nongovernmental organizations to help oversee the process and ensure public involvement.

Mary Graham argues that the “race to the bottom is far too simplistic a notion to describe state environmental politics in the 1990s.” She makes several important observations, among them that: 1) “State policies have been transformed by three decades of national regulation and increased public consciousness;” 2) “Evidence is by now overwhelming that businesses rarely decide where to locate or expand based on the strength or weakness of state environmental laws;” and 3) “Most important, public attitudes have changed. After 30 years of government action and scientific progress, state officials, business executives, and voters find that some environmental measures have economic value.”

Graham writes of the strong link between environmental protection and economic vitality—with cause and effect flowing both ways:

Assuring safe drinking water, limiting growth, or preventing sewage from polluting public beaches ... may produce benefits that residents and businesses can appreciate and are sometimes willing to pay for. More often, though, support for environmental protection follows, rather than precedes, state economic success ... Today, states compete to gain prosperity in a fast-changing economy. In that race, some states lead in economic performance and environmental protection, while others lag behind in both.

Both the following and concluding sections of The State of the States consider this assessment in greater detail.

State Innovation in Environmental Management: An Initial Glance

Individual states have become incubators for an array of innovative new strategies, often self-funded, to address environmental priorities. Pollution prevention, regulatory integration, and economic incentives for improved environmental performance are three areas in which states are making strides to increase their effectiveness —with or without help from the federal government. They are also examples of new implementation tools that are being used successfully in green plan nations to achieve sustainable development goals.

Today, all 50 states have, to varying degrees, implemented pollution prevention programs30 with notable standouts including Minnesota’s Toxic Pollution Prevention Act of 1990. Moving from pollution control to pollution prevention is a guiding tenet of green planning.

Another necessary component of a green planning framework is regulatory integration, a process designed to prevent the cross-media transfer of pollutants that too often results from standard media-specific protection efforts. By employing an integrated approach to industrial permitting, inspection, and enforcement, some states—New Jersey, in particular—are achieving emissions reductions that exceed previous best efforts.

Improving environmental performance through economic incentives is yet another component of green planning that more and more states are incorporating into their environmental programs. This approach is viewed as one of the best ways to transcend the limitations of command-and-control regulation and enable market forces to influence environmental outcomes. By one recent count, states have adopted more than 250 environmental charges and tax incentives that are intended to stimulate superior performance.31 Once again, New Jersey, Minnesota, and Oregon have been national leaders with successful tax programs to facilitate recycling and reduce solid waste.

These are just three examples of state-level innovations that are contributing to a sea change in the way protection of the nation’s environmental health is being pursued. Highlighted in this report are many other equally encouraging indicators of state progress. As important as the shifting roles of federal and state government are the wide variations of effectiveness and commitment among the states themselves. Our findings are consistent with other comparative analyses that have revealed a predictable pattern of environmental achievement that ranks certain states high and others low. Given the increasing receptivity to new solutions by most states, there has never been a better opportunity to break this pattern and advance the capabilities of all states.

State-Federal Partnerships

To create consistency, balance, and a unifying vision across state boundaries—one that fully embraces the goals and objectives of green planning—the federal government must be involved. Given that many of the nation’s environmental laws are federally based, this is in fact an inescapable priority.

To be a full-fledged partner with states, the federal government must facilitate needed innovations and policy improvements. One of the most promising developments on this front was the establishment of the National Environmental Performance Partnership System (NEPPS) in 1995. Set up by the U.S. EPA and ECOS, the program is an acknowledgement of current shortcomings and offers a major opportunity to advance green planning state-by-state, with the federal government serving as chief facilitator. Its aim is to grant states flexibility in administering federal environmental statues. The degree of flexibility is determined by the strength of a state’s environmental programs, thus creating an incentive for ongoing improvement.

The NEPPS program possesses features actually derived from the green plan model. Most important, like green plans, the program emphasizes management for results through its use of long-term goals and measurable indicators to track progress. What started as a pilot program of six states just five years ago now involves 38 states,32 with strong interest being expressed by other states, through both the MSWG and ECOS.

Having launched its Sustainable State initiative in 1999, New Jersey is among the leaders in taking advantage of the program, with the year 2000 marking its third NEPPS agreement with EPA. As is discussed in subsequent sections of this report, New Jersey has excelled because of its groundbreaking work to incorporate the principles of green planning. With strong leadership and direction, the NEPPS program has the potential to redefine the roles of federal and state government and, in the process, foster broad public involvement and partnerships across sectors. As facilitator of this evolution, the federal government is responsible for providing the necessary resources, training, and technical support to ensure long-term success of the program.

There has never been a more opportune time for strengthening the capacity of states to serve as principal stewards of the nation’s environmental heritage. Ultimate success, however, hinges on the commitment, framework, innovation, and governance brought to this pursuit. It is the combined performance in all of these areas that determines a state’s potential to achieve sustainable development. Section II of this report identifies the leaders and the laggards on each of these four fronts, offering a snapshot of how far states have come and how much further they must go.

Long-term. All green plans represent a society’s ongoing commitment to the goal of sustainable development, as defined in the Brundtland Report of 1987.

Comprehensive. Green plans are management solutions that address the full array of priority issues, across media (e.g., air, water, land) and their impacts on the environment, economy, and society as a whole.

Dynamic. Green plans are capable of adapting to evolving problems, ideas, goals, and information without radical changes to their structure and function.

Cooperative. To develop a green plan, all facets of the community, all types of businesses, and all branches of government participate in a process of developing trust, identifying common values, and working toward a shared vision of the future.

Integrated. Green planning enables a fusion of economic, environmental, and societal needs by accounting for the many complex interrelationships that together determine quality of life. This process is made possible through systems analysis, a discipline that dissects complicated problems into basic elements and subsystems that form the basis for successful solutions.

Informed. Policy decisions are guided by a reliable information base that aggregates environmental, economic, and societal conditions in order to accurately depict significant trends (past, present, and future) and devise a responsive set of new programs.

Flexible. In exchange for a commitment to realizing targeted environmental goals and objectives, green plans provide participants with more freedom in developing the necessary technical and/or institutional improvements. The longterm nature of this arrangement creates a more stable and predictable regulatory environment that benefits all parties.

Strategic. Like business plans for companies, green plans apply a strategic management approach, with a continuous process of setting goals, developing timelines, and monitoring and reporting on results.

Results-Oriented. Green plans demand the level of focused and resolute initiative necessary for the deliberate pursuit of sustainable development.

Investment-intensive. To be effectively implemented, green plans require adequate funding from both government and industry, recognizing that the stakes of a sustainable future could not be higher and that success mandates a substantial long-term investment.