Why Environmental Policies Fail

The real question examined by this book is not the extent of the failure of environmental policy, but exactly why did the policy fail?

Jan Laitos (Author)

9781107121010, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 July 2017

226 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 1.7 cm, 0.46 kg

This book is for those who are not just interested in the ways humans have harmfully altered their environment, but instead wish to learn why the many governmental policies in place to curb such behavior have been unsuccessful. Since humans began to exploit natural resources for their own economic ends, we have ignored a central principle: nature and humans are not separate, but are a unified, interconnected system in which neither is superior to the other. Policy must reflect this reality. We failed to follow this principle in exploiting natural capital without expecting to pay any price, and in hurriedly adopting environmental laws and policies that reflected how we wanted nature to work instead of how it does work. This study relies on more accurate models for how nature works and humans behave. These models suggest that environmental laws should be consistent with the laws of nature.

Prologue
Part I. Nature: Humans and their Environmental Surroundings: 1. The gardener and the sick garden
Part II. Nature: A History and Assessment of Environmental Policies: 2. Four troubled eras of environmental policies
3. An assessment: environmental policies have failed
Part III. Why Environmental Policies Fail I: Faulty Assumptions behind Environmental Rules: 4. A false worldview
5. Failed model #1: how nature works
6. Failed model #2: how to value nature
7. Failed model #3: how humans behave
Part IV. Why Environmental Policies Fail II: A Critique of Existing and Proposed Strategies: 8. A narrative of failed environmental strategies
Part V. Environmental Policy Must Obey the Fundamental Laws of Nature: 9. Nature and symmetry
10. Toward a new legal alignment of humans and nature
Epilogue.

Subject Areas: Conservation of the environment [RNK], Environmentalist thought & ideology [RNA], International environmental law [LBBP]