Innovation, Learning, and Environmental Policy: Overcoming "A Plague of Uncertainties"

Beginning of article

The "Environmental Era" arrived in the United States unanticipated, surprising Congress, the White House, and even the emerging environmental movement as much by its form as by its abruptness. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the first and least anticipated among the many environmental laws that redefined the nation's policy priorities within a decade, was passed on January 1, 1970; it intended nothing less than a reconstruction of national public policymaking. It was, in the words of one of its most influential drafters, "an effort to restate the priorities and responsibilities of government (Caldwell, 1982, p. 28)." Not coincidentally, this first major onslaught of legislative environmentalism was directly aimed at the administrative process.

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was created by a small cadre of environmentalists drawn from Congress, private organizations, and academic life who then successfully enlisted the support of the growing environmental movement to assure its passage. Nonetheless, the NEPA was the first, overt legislative expression of an ideological priority inherent in American environmentalism from the inception of the "Environmental Era": to compel more environmentally benign public policy by reconstructing the policymaking process itself (Andrews, 1976; Caldwell, 1982, chap. 1). While this has never been an explicit goal of all national environmental movements, where national regimes elsewhere have seriously accepted environmentalism as a policy priority, substantial procedural changes have usually followed. In the United States, this attention to the design of policymaking itself as much as concern for environmental quality standards dictated an early strategy of persistently pressing for fundamental instituti onal reform.

It has become increasingly evident, moreover, that a major problem in Western societies--perhaps the most strategic in the design of all environmental policymaking--has been to reconcile the procedural democracy that legitimates public policy with the creation of resources essential for policy effectiveness under conditions of great uncertainty. This symposium focuses upon this uncertainty, and its impact upon the process of making environmental policy, in different Western national contexts.

Uncertainty and Environmental Policy: Symposium Themes and Organization

The sweeping transformation of the national policy agenda in the wake of environmentalism also unleashed, in the words of a leading member of the National Academy of Sciences, a "plague of uncertainties" into public policymaking (White, 1993, p. 4). The articles in this symposium illustrate that institutional change and innovation--a form of cultural learning--has become a major national and international governmental response to these uncertainties. To understand the significance of these responses, this introduction begins by examining briefly the qualities of uncertainty characteristic of environmental policymaking with particular attention to the interplay of science and politics as a fundamental contributor. Next, we illustrate this interaction in such important aspects of environmental policy as pollution regulation and promotion of "sustainable development." The introduction concludes with an overview of the symposium articles and a description of their relationship to the theme of learning and innova tion in environmental policymaking.

Politics, Science, and Uncertainty

Why should the National Academy of Sciences pronounce uncertainty a "plague" to environmental policymakers? A modern thesaurus lists more than 150 synonyms for "uncertainty" most of which--say "unsure," "variable," or "tentative"--could plausibly be applied to any domain of public policy. Uncertainty in some form is, in fact, intrinsic to public policymaking. Still, scholars and policy advocates quite frequently characterize environmental issues to imply that they confront policymakers with a distinctive, perhaps unique, mix of imponderables. Elective officials, beginning with Congress, are usually glad to sidestep environmental disputes when possible, finding them most often perplexing and politically intimidating. And, as the subsequent discussion of the Dutch experience in planning "sustainable development" illustrates, these large uncertainties are not peculiar to the United States.

An explanation begins with scientific uncertainty. Science and politics, an unstable combination in any policy forum, are especially volatile in environmental policymaking. Many of the most formidable difficulties confronting environmental policymakers arise from the pervasive interplay of uncertain science and political judgment at virtually every stage of the policy process. So much of the scientific research essential for resolving policy conflict and for crafting appropriate policy is unavailable, ambiguous, or preliminary that scientific judgment frequently becomes highly contingent and tentative, almost inevitably contentious--so much that a few years ago the National Academy of Engineering was prompted to convene a national symposium specifically to discuss how the scientific and technical indecision and irresolution characteristic of environmental regulation could be ameliorated (Uman, 1993). When, additionally, the policy grounded on this problematic science must also be designed with little, if any , prior experience to guide policy design, foresight becomes especially difficult, and policy inexperience enlarges the unknowns.

Confronting Uncertainty: Three Constructive Responses

What seems to render environmental policy uncommonly problematic is the concatenation of uncertainties generated by the interaction of scientific and policy unknowns, their magnitude, and the historical context in which policymakers confront them. The symposium articles suggest that three constructive solutions, at least, have evolved in response to these uncertainties. First, policymakers have been open to learning and innovation when crafting policy and institutional responses--in effect, have been able to educate themselves through experience. It has become apparent--for example, in the evolution of "emissions trading" as a strategy for regulating regional and international air pollution--that learning and innovation are increasingly important governmental responses to the uncertainties posed by environmental issues. Environmental management has often become an involuntary policy education for officials who learn, frequently by the repeated failure of traditional policy instruments, that environmental pro blems frequently require more creative resolution. Thus, the articles to follow illustrate various ways in which learning and innovation have developed in national and international environmental policymaking in recent decades.

Additionally, decisionmakers now recognize that policy instruments must include opportunities for democratic participation while also providing the resources necessary for effective policy implementation. Meeting the double standard of substantive capability and procedural equity--in effect, achieving both political legitimacy and policy effectiveness--can be daunting when these dual standards seem incompatible. One malaise common to environmental regulation in many nations, for instance, has been chronic obstruction of governmental permitting for hazardous facilities as a result of public involvement in the administrative procedures, an impasse critics often blame on procedural democracy. Moreover, contemporary policy discussions increasingly raise issues, such as sustainable development or the management of high-level nuclear waste, whose resolution will apparently require the dependable implementation of policy and institutional management over literally hundreds or thousands of years--in effect, the deve lopment of policy arrangements with which no civilization has yet had any experience (LaPorte & Keller, 1996). The emergence of these conflicting expectations, and their management, will be evident in many of the symposium articles.

Finally, policy innovation continues despite large and pervasive uncertainties. In the symposium's opening article, Leslie Thiele concludes his discussion about the impact of environmental ethics of policy with a cautionary admonition: "The laws of ecology inform us of the need for more knowledge and, at the same time, of the uncertainties that will remain despite any growth of knowledge." Here is a final theme throughout the articles to follow. Dealing with uncertainty involves not only finding solutions through the acquisition of knowledge, policy innovation, institutional redesign or other strategies. It requires a determination of "press ahead" with policymaking despite uncertainty, to avoid the temptation to inertia, or an unfettered retreat into "further study," when uncertainties inevitably arise in environmental policymaking. The symposium articles suggest that the appropriate response has often been to take action that seems …