POLITICAL MODERNISATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT ENVIRONMENT & POLICY VOLUME 24 The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume. Political Modernisation and the Environment The Renewal of Environmental Policy Arrangements Edited by Jan van Tatenhove Department of Environmental Policy Sciences, University of Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands and Department of Political Science, University ofA msterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Bas Arts Department of Environmental Policy Sciences, University of Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands and Pieter Leroy Department of Environmental Policy Sciences, University of Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands .... " SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V. A c.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-90-481-5459-3 ISBN 978-94-015-9524-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1 007/978-94-015-9524-7 Printed on acid-free paper Language edItor: Annemarie Weitsel All Rights Reserved © 2000 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2000 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2000 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner. Contents Preface vii Introduction The Editors J. The Institutionalisation of Environmental Politics 17 Jan van Tatenhove and Pieter Leroy 2. Political Modernisation 35 Jan van Tatenhove, Bas Arts and Pieter Leroy 3. Policy Arrangements 53 Bas Arts, Jan van Tatenhove and Pieter Leroy 4. Dutch Infrastructure Policies: Changing and Contradictory Policy Arrangements 71 Paul Pestman 5. Nature Conservation Policy: Transboundary Arrangements 97 Diana de Jong 6. Global Environmental Policies: Between 'Interstatist' and 'Transnational' Arrangements 117 Bas Arts 7. Green Planning: From Sectoral to Integrative Planning Arrangements? 145 Joan Janssens and Jan van Tatenhove 8. Agricultural Policy Making in the Netherlands: Beyond Corporatist Policy Arrangements? 175 Johan Wisserhoj vi 9. Conclusions and Research Agenda: Political Modernisation and the Dynamics of Environmental Policy Arrangements 199 Bas Arts, Jan van Tatenhove and Pieter Leroy Index 217 Preface The chapters of this book are a result as well as a representation of the research programme carried out by the Department of Environmental Policy Sciences of Nijmegen University in the Netherlands over the last four years. A core element of this research programme concerns the recent renewal of policies in different domains of environmental politics. Here we discuss our theoretical concepts - political modernisation and policy arrangements - and empirical findings regarding the institutionalisation of environmental politics, both at national and at international level. The empirical evidence has been drawn from a variety of sub domains in environmental politics, including infrastructure policies, nature conservation, climate change, biodiversity and agriculture. Through this book we hope to engage in further debate with colleagues who also focus on environmental politics, albeit starting from different theoretical concepts or different levels of analysis, such as for instance policy networks, discourse coalitions and advocacy coalitions. Additionally, the book is intended to be used as a textbook in university education programmes on environmental politics. Jan van Tatenhove Bas Arts Pieter Leroy Vll Introduction TREEDlTORS Since the 1970s environmental problems have been widely recognised as important social and political issues. The soil contamination of Love Canal (from the 1930s), the contamination from a fertiliser plant in Minamata Bay, Kynshu, Japan (from the 1950s), the fire at the Windscale plutonium production plant (1957), the sinking of the Torrey Canyon (1967), and the chemical fire in the Cuyahuga River (1969) are but a few frightening examples of catastrophes which awoke an environmental awareness among scientists and the public. This awareness not only concerned public health, but also became broader in an ecological sense. The destruction of nature by man affected the 'sustenance base of ecosystems' (Schnaiberg, 1980) and through that the living conditions of human beings on earth. Growing public attention, the birth, world wide, of the environmental movement and the results of scientific research. in the early 1970s, have been paralleled by the gradual institutionalisation of environmental politics. The first reaction of almost all Western nation states to the upsurge in environmental concern was the development of environmental legislation, and the creation of ministries and other administrative bodies to deal with environmental problems. In his analysis of the development of environmental politics in seven countries Weale states: 'in the face of growing political and public concern, virtually the first thing that governments did was to establish a council of independent experts (median date 1970) and a branch of the bureaucratic machine (median date 1970) that had the responsibility for the development of environmental policy' (Weale, 1992: 14). No matter which country, the first steps towards institutionalisation were quite similar. During the 1980s and 1990s an organisational and substantive renewal of environmental politics has taken place. This renewal was partly in reaction to the drawbacks of environmental politics in the 1970s, which have been labelled 'implementation deficit', 'fragmented institutionalisation' and 'problems of 2 THE EDITORS cross-media transfer'. This process of renewal, however, was quite dissimilar in Western European countries such as the Netherlands, Germany and Britain (Boehmer-Christiansen, 1991; Weale, 1992; Hajer, 1997; Janicke and Weidner, 1995 and Janicke et aI., 1997). In this introduction we will begin by giving a short overview of the convergence, the divergence and the dynamics of environmental politics in these three countries, as an illustration of the diversity of developments in the substance and the organisation of environmental policy. THE DYNAMICS OF ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY Since the 1980s British, Dutch and German environmental politics have indeed followed divergent development paths. In general, 'Germany has moved from a position of reluctant environmentalism to one in which it is now legislating some of the most stringent pollution control standards in Europe and pressing internationally for more vigorous action on a wide range of issues. The UK, by contrast, has been laggardly in its adoption of environmental measures, and has acquired the reputation in international negotiations of resisting the development of more forceful pollution control' (Weale, 1992: 72). The Dutch example has seen environmental policy develop into a public management concern, relying largely on the internalisation of environmental goals by target groups. Internationally the Netherlands was regarded as a guide-country, especially at the end of the 1980s and in the early 1990s, when the first National Environmental Policy Plan (NEPP, published in 1989) was considered to be the outstanding example of modern environmental policymaking. There are some striking differences between the three countries. Firstly there is a difference in principles guiding the process of institutionalisation. Whereas German and to a lesser extent Dutch environmental politics in the 1980s was influenced by the 'precautionary principle' (Vorsorgeprinzip), British environmental politics was strongly influenced by the 'principle of the scientific burden of proof'. The predominant line of the British discourse implies that the scientific understanding of cause-and-effect or doses-impact relationships in natural systems is a necessary precondition for adequate and rational policy making. As a result, technical experts and scientific advisory committees playa crucial role in British environmental policy. This, combined with scientific scepticism about the effectiveness of measures that could be taken, meant that a vigorous development of pollution control was unlikely. Conversely, the precautionary principle forces policy makers to go 'beyond science' (Weale, 1992:80), because decisions have to be made in situations where the consequences of alternative policy options are not lNTRODUCfION 3 scientifically determinable within a reasonable margin of error, and where potentially high costs are involved in taking action. Examples are soil contamination and cumulative pollution in industrial areas. In this context politicians are forced to take decisions under conditions of scientific uncertainty, open to public debate and leaving considerable discretion to judicial approbation. The evolution of the precautionary principle in Germany and the Netherlands, however, was quite dissimilar. In Germany this principle was implemented as the 'Stand der Technik' (Best Available Technology) principle, which forced industries to apply the most modern technology and allowed the state to judge them according to general principles and standards. This means that the actual implementation relies upon the expertise of lawyers, engineers and others involved, while at the same time providing opportunities for citizens and the environmental movement alike to appeal to the courts. Over the last few years especially the nuclear issue - still very sensitive in German politics - has given rise to some political and judicial conflicts within German society. In the Netherlands, the implementation of the 'precautionary principle' was part of the verinnerlijking (internalisation) discourse and target group policy. The development of this strategy was a reaction to the implementation deficit and to discussions about government regulation, aiming at deregulation and privatisation. New responsibilities were formulated for involved parties, resulting in a shift from direct regulation to market self-regulation and experiments with economic instruments. Because different principles guided the institutionalisation of environmental politics, receptiveness to for example ecological modernisation is quite dissimilar in the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom (Weale, 1992; Hajer, 1997; Boehmer-Christiansen, 1991). In general ecological modernisation refers to an ecological transformation of the industrialisation process towards a direction in which the maintenance of the 'sustenance base of society' can be guaranteed, while also reconciling economic growth and the ecological imperative. The German and the Dutch scenarios provided a relatively hospitable environment for ecological modernisation, since their idea of environmental politics largely relied upon new technologies and the conciliation of economy and ecology. British debates, on the other hand, never escaped from the belief that there was inevitable tension between environmental protection and economic development (Weale, 1992: 88; Hajer, 1997). This may be the reason for the quite different design of environmental politics in Britain as far as basic rules are concerned. British politics, as Weale states, in general does not rely upon broad principles, but upon solving a series of problems, each constituting cases that have to be judged on their own merits. The same also applies to environmental politics. Therefore, in contrast to Germany, general norms must be