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| Transnational Environmental Activist Groups (Green Peace, WWF, Friends of the Earth,etc) are the focus of Paul Wapner's idea of World Civic Politics, and they work with civil society be working with the public, around the government to achieve their environmental goals. These groups are central to env policy because they are the way in which environmental groups get policies passed by changing public values, pressuring corporations, and empowering local communities. |
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| Direct action is one of three strategies that TEAGs use to change public values about a policy that they want passed, such as TV interviews. This is important to our class because it is a commonly the first step in environmental policy making because changing public ideas about a policy is often the first step to getting it passed. |
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| World civic politics are Paul Wapner's idea that TEAGs work around the government through civil society to change public values and pressure corporations to support their policy. This idea is important to environmental policy because it is a common method that activist groups use to get environmental policies passed. |
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| ID: Environmental Justice |
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| Environmental justice is the idea that all people, regardless of race, color, income, etc, are entitled to fair treatment with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. This is an important subject to environmental policy because impoverished or minority areas often live in the most polluted areas of the world, and environmental policy is now working to ensure environmental justice for everyone. |
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| ID: Tuna-Dolphin Conflict |
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| The US tried to put a ban on tuna imported from Mexico who does not use "dolphin safe" practices in harvesting their tuna, however this created much uproar in the WTO because it was found to violate Process and Production Methods rules, and now the US uses a dolphin-safe label to allow consumers to choose what tuna to buy. This conflict is important to environmental policy because it not only represents the implications of the World Trade Organization on environmental policy, it also represents the important of green consumerism and eco labeling in resolving environmental disputes. |
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| 1999 protest of the WTO meetings in Seattle that centered around labor and environmental concerns of trade liberalization and mutual advantage, and ended in chaos and police violence. This is important to environmental policy because it represented the local implications of global environmental policy, and the problems associated with creating a public policy that is acceptable worldwide. |
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| policy requiring development agencies to include women in the planning of their projects bc women play the most central role in use of env resources. This is important to environmental policy because the problem of women not being included in env policymaking in undeveloped countries is central to current environmental policy concerns. |
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| (env) Impact = Population x Affluence (consumption) x Technology is the equation used in sustainable development to represent the role of each of these factors on environmental quality, and in determining which of these factors are most important. This idea is important to environmental policy because it represents many of the main ideas of env policymaking and helps policymakers decide how to best approach sustainable development problems: whether to work on inventing more technology, reducing population growth, or evening consumption across the nations. |
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| Mutual advantage involves creating an environmental policy that benefits everyone involved. This is important to environmental policy because it is thought to be the only way to make a successful policy at the international level because there is no governing body that can force a country to comply with such a policy. |
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| The UN conference on environment and development (AKA - RIO Conference) was held in 1992 and was where the UNFCCC was signed and the sustainable development ideas of "our common future" were put together. This was an important turning point in environmental policy because it was the first time that sustainable development was really discussed as an important environmental issue and it also represents the importance of international gatherings in order for global env problems to be assessed. |
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| The climate change policy that required that, inorder for a developed country to obtain emissions credit under the clean development mechanism (CDM), they had to help developing countries build a clean plant that was not already planned to be built - something in addition to the emission they had already planned to cut. This is important to environmental policy because it represents an attempt to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, but it also represents one reason that the US has failed to ratify the Kyoto protocol, a decision that has been hotly debated since then. |
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| ID: Environmental Kuznets Curve |
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| A graphical representation of the idea that income inequality should first increase and then decrease with rising wealth, but also that poor societies have little impact on the env but as they industrialize, their impact is great but shoul decrease when they become affluent. This idea is important to environmnetal policy because it is the underlying thought behind international policymaking - that poorer societies should not be as responsible for env damage because they have not created as much, and that they should be expected to pay for their damage once they become industrialized. |
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| The Clean Development Mechanism is the way in which, under the Kyoto Protocol, developed countries can obtain GHG emissions credits for building clean power plants in undeveloped countries. It is important to our class bc it is currently being used as a way to reduce worldwide GHG emissions, and it represents the need for international cooperation in solving this problem because it is international in scale. |
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| Production Process Methods standards, under the WTO, establish the fact that countries cannot prevent the import of a product based on how the product is made (as in the dolphin-tuna case) but only based on the quality of the product itself. It is important to environmental policy because it is an example of trade liberalization under the WTO and an attempt to create fair trade environmens for underdeveloped nations, a side effect of international environmental policymaking. |
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| ID: United Church of Christ Report |
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| 1987 report funded by the UCC that found that race is the best predictor for location of hazardous waste sites, even moreso than class or wealth. This is importnat to env policy because it illustrates the lack of env justice even in america and the need for policies to be made reflecting this discrepency. |
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| ID: Executive order 12898 |
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| 1994 order for the OEJ to make sure that federal agencies must develop a strategy to identify and prevent EJ problems and that made small grants for community EJ projects. This is important to env policy bc it was a big step for american env policy in recognizing and trying to correct the problem of EJ. |
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| ID: Paradox of environmentalism |
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| ramachandra guha's idea that the people who are most vocal about protecting nature are usually the ones who have done the most to ruin it, in other words the industrialized countries are want to "protect" the env by driving natives out of the places they've lived (and haven't harmed) forever. This is central to env policy because it represents a disconnect between industrialized and developing countries and their different ideas about how the env should be protected. |
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| UN framework convention on climate change was a treaty negotiation that distinguished annex I (developed) and annex II (Undeveloped) countries and established goals to reduce the annex I country emissions due to their common by differentiated responsibilities. This is important to our class because it was a huge step forward in climate change policy by recognizing the need for common but differentiated responsibilities between developed and undeveloped countries |
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| intergovernmental panel on climate change is a fact-finding panel put together to provide a synthesis of scientific info and put it all together as an unbiased opinion for international governments. It is important to env policy because it represents an international effort to attack climate change. |
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| report by the brudtland commission that first put sustainable development in the public view and called for action on the issue. This is important to our class because it was a pivotal point in international environmental politics when sustainable development first became apparent, and has since become a major part of the environmental policy in many countries and international politics. |
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| 1997 COP that called for a 5% reduction from the 1990 levels of GHG emission in developed nations by 2012 and created emissions trading and CDMs. This is important to env policy because it is an example of an international effort to create a cleaner env but also represents the challenges that come wtih unifying the entire world for the cause, as the US did not ratify it. |
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| putting state control over village commons and forests in rural nations. it is important to env policy bc it represents a common, although unfortunate mechanism of env policy in developing nations that takes the control out of the hands of the people who deserve it (the people who live/work the land) and puts it into the hands of the state who often just use it for their own economic advantage. |
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| ID: Demographic transition |
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| shift in a population during the time when death rates plummet but birth rates remain high during the development of a country and results in rapidly increasing population growth rates. This is important to env policy because overpopulation is a critical problem in sustaining the environment for the future, and is often a main concern in env policymaking. |
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| coercive policies that force people to accept the policy or face the consequences. These policies are important to env policy because they are often used, such as at the beginning of the UN's policy meetings, but are now begining to be replace by more collaborative ideas. |
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