EXAMINING POLICY CAPACITY INITIATIVES WITHIN CLIMATE CHANGE FRAMEWORKS IN THREE US AND CANADIAN SECTORS USING NVIVO CONTENT ANALYSIS

The climate change narrative has changed from one of mitigation to one of adaptation. Governments around the world have created climate change frameworks which address how the country can better cope with the expected and unexpected changes due to global climate change. In an effort to do so, federal governments of Canada and the United States, as well as some provinces and states within these countries, have created detailed documents which outline what steps must be taken to adapt to these changes. However, not much is mentioned about how these steps will be translated in to policy, and how that policy will eventually be implemented. To examine the ability of governments to acknowledge and incorporate the plethora of scientific information to policy, consideration must be made for policy capacity. This report focuses on three sectors: water supply and demand; drought and flood planning; and forest and grassland ecosystems, and the word ‘capacity’ as related to nine different forms of policy capacity acknowledged in these frameworks. Qualitative content analysis using NVivo was carried out on fifty four frameworks and the results obtained show that there is a greater consideration for managerial capacity compared to analytical or political capacity. The data also indicated that although there were more Canadian frameworks which referred to policy capacity, the frameworks from the United States actually considered policy capacity to a greater degree.

EPA's Council for Regulatory Environmental Modeling : a case study of science policy implementation

As environmental problems became more complex, policy and regulatory decisions become far more difficult to make. The use of science has become an important practice in the decision making process of many federal agencies. Many different types of scientific information are used to make decisions within the EPA, with computer models becoming especially important. Environmental models are used throughout the EPA in a variety of contexts and their predictive capacity has become highly valued in decision making. The main focus of this research is to examine the EPA’s Council for Regulatory Modeling (CREM) as a case study in addressing science issues, particularly models, in government agencies. Specifically, the goal was to answer the following questions: What is the history of the CREM and how can this information shed light on the process of science policy implementation? What were the goals of implementing the CREM? Were these goals reached and how have they changed? What have been the impediments that the CREM has faced and why did these impediments occur? The three main sources of information for this research came from observations during summer employment with the CREM, document review and supplemental interviews with CREM participants and other members of the modeling community. Examining a history of modeling at the EPA, as well as a history of the CREM, provides insight into the many challenges that are faced when implementing science policy and science policy programs. After examining the many impediments that the CREM has faced in implementing modeling policies, it was clear that the impediments fall into two separate categories, classic and paradoxical. The classic impediments include the more standard impediments to science policy implementation that might be found in any regulatory environment, such as lack of resources and changes in administration. Paradoxical impediments are cyclical in nature, with no clear solution, such as balancing top-down versus bottom-up initiatives and coping with differing perceptions. These impediments, when not properly addressed, severely hinder the ability for organizations to successfully implement science policy.

ISO 14001 in India: More than a certificate on the wall?

The growth of ISO 14001 certificates worldwide has led to much research on the role of voluntary standards in improving the environmental impacts of industry. Most of this research, however, has focused on industrialized countries, with very little research examining the effects of ISO 14001 and other voluntary initiatives in the developing world. This is especially unfortunate because it is in these very countries that proponents of ISO 14001 claim the largest benefits of the standard will occur, by helping polluting industries improve performance and by assisting environmental regulators in enforcing laws more effectively. Indian industries have begun adopting ISO 14001 at an accelerating pace, but there is little available information on what this means for the environmental performance of Indian firms. The research described here closes this gap by exploring the reasons for the increasing popularity of ISO 14001 in India, the ways in which firms use the standard and the benefits they obtain from it. Findings suggest that while the processoriented approach of ISO 14001 does offer important benefits, changing market demands towards cheaper certification and away from rigorous EMS implementation have devalued the standard for those interested in using it as an indicator of a firm’s environmental performance.