Thesis. 1979. M.C.P.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Bibliography: leaves 116-126. / M.C.P.

In 1970, the United States Congress and President Richard Nixon created a federal regulatory regime to meet public demands for improved environmental quality. As it happened, the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the enactment of the first national environmental standards coincided with the disruption of the postwar prosperity that had helped fuel the environmental movement. Valuing the Air provides the first sustained historical study of policy making at EPA during the formative period between 1970 and 1990, when the embattled agency preserved its original mission to protect Americans’ right to clean air. To justify strong regulations in an era of rising inflation and unemployment, EPA officials turned to the new field of environmental economics, funding pioneering research that concluded that the benefits of environmental protection outweighed the costs. Such pecuniary evidence allowed EPA to shield its regulatory interventions from business lobbying and to rebut rhetorical campaigns in which corporate executives threatened communities across the country with the loss of industrial jobs if they supported strong environmental health regulations. While this dollars and cents valuation proved persuasive to policy makers, it ran contrary to environmentalist notions of priceless nature and environmental advocates fought doggedly to prevent EPA from fully adopting a cost/benefit approach to policymaking. As environmentalists recognized, EPA’s embrace of economic measurement elevated the stature of economists at the agency, raising the possibility that recently established natural rights to clean air and water might be undercut by a dehumanized pricing of externalities. Regulatory reforms enacted by the Carter administration, such as emissions trading and the bubble policy, signaled a new willingness among liberals to use economic incentives and markets approaches in place of direct regulations – a development that environmentalists regarded warily. In 1981, the Reagan administration upset a bipartisan consensus for market based reforms with the announcement of drastic budget and staffing cuts at EPA. Reagan’s attack on EPA marked the ascent of a new conservative ideology that held unrestrained free enterprise to be the greatest social good, irrespective of the actual economics of regulatory interventions. Finding environmental economics to be a powerful, if imperfect, ally against such assaults, many environmental organizations softened their critiques of economic valuation and began to borrow the language and logic of economics to make their case. With this growing support from environmental organizations, EPA ushered in the commodification of pollution rights in the era of cap and trade. The inflection of contemporary environmental advocacy with economic measurement and value demonstrates the political utility of economics while also underscoring the foreclosure of an earlier environmentalism’s more radical questioning of the desirability of an unbounded market economy. At the same time, EPA continues to resist economists’ efforts to derive public preferences from market exchange, insisting that fundamental choices about underlying environmental value be made through the democratic process.

Esta tese parte da problemática das mudanças climáticas como reflexão da relação homem-natureza. Desde final do século passado, transformações, rupturas e evoluções significativas são testemunhadas, assim como tensões entre biológico e social. Diante do crescimento exponencial das atividades humanas e suas pressões sobre os sistemas da Terra, alguns autores reconhecem que o planeta entrou em nova Era Antropoceno. Nesse sentido, impõe-se à humanidade novos padrões de relacionamento com a natureza e seus recursos, que repercute sobre os estilos de vida e de consumo, a ética e a cultura, a dinâmica política social e a organização do espaço. Portanto, a problemática das mudanças climáticas, assim como as questões socioambientais, clama pela mudança da relação homem-natureza. Para além da interpretação geológica, o Antropoceno é uma oportunidade para repensar o comportamento humano e estabelecer as bases de um futuro sustentável. Tais questões estão presentes no cotidiano da cidade de São Paulo. Tomou-se, então, para a análise o grupo Quinta Ambiental, formado, em sua maioria, por residentes e servidores públicos dos Distritos de Jaçanã e de Tremembé, Zona Norte do muncípio de São Paulo, onde localiza-se o Parque Estadual da Cantareira, importante remanescente da Mata Altântica. O objetivo é analisar como um grupo como a Quinta Ambiental possibilita o aprendizado e a mudança dos indivíduos em suas percepções e valores para uma transformação da relação homem-natureza. Trata-se de estudo qualitativo com perspectiva etnográfica. Foram utilizados dados secundários, por meio de pesquisa bibliográfica e documental e dados primários por meio da observação participativa, utilizando o diário de campo e registros fotográficosno como principais ferramentas, no período de fevereiro de 2015 a junho de 2016. Observou-se que a forma transversal o qual foi construída as relações dos participantes, envolvendo diferentes secretarias municipais e estaduais, instituições de ensino e a comunidade, e a convivência semanal proporcionaram maior cooperação entre estes atores, na na administração do bem público o que motiva a continuação das reuniões mesmo frente às diversidades de mudanças políticas e de gestão. Notou-se alterações positivas em relação à participação política e comunitária, na medida que, os participantes do grupo assumem uma postura politizada para as questões ambientais levando a discussão à diversos foruns administrativos. Conclui-se, então, que espaços coletivos, como o da Quinta Ambiental são importantes para possibilitar a convivência e a aprendizagem social e é nessa dinâmica que ocorre a troca de saberes e transformação de valores, sendo o papel do gestor público fundamental para o desenvolvimento de tais espaços / This thesis is based on the problem of climate change as a reflection of the relationship between man and nature. Since the end of the last century, transformations, ruptures and significant evolutions have been witnessed, as well as tensions between biological and social. Against with the exponential growth of human activities and their pressures on Earth systems, some authors acknowledge that the planet has entered a new Age - Anthropocene. Thus, new standards of relationship with nature are imposed on humanity, which has repercussions on lifestyles and consumption, ethics and culture, dynamic social policy and the organization of space. Therefore, the problem of climate change, as well as socio-environmental issues, calls for a change in the relationship between man and nature. In addition to the geological interpretation, the Anthropocene is an opportunity to rethink human behavior and stablish a sustainable future. These issues are present in the city of São Paulo/Brazil. It was taken for analysis the Quinta Ambiental (Environmental Thursday) group, formed, for the most part, by residents and public managers of the Jaçanã and Tremembé Districts, Northern zone of the São Paulo City, where it is located the Parque Estadual da Cantareira, important remnant of the Atlantic Forest. The aim of this study is to analyze how a group like the Quinta Ambiental makes possible the social learning and the change of the individuals in their perceptions and values for a transformation of the relationship between man and nature. It is a qualitative study with an ethnographic perspective. Secondary data were used, through bibliographic and documentary research and primary data through participant observation, using the field diary and photographic records as tools, from february 2015 to june 2016. It was observed that the transversal form, which built the relations of the participants, involving different municipal and state secretariats, educational institutions and the community, and the weekly coexistence provided greater cooperation between these actors, in the governing of a comms, which motivates the continuation of meetings even in the face of diversities of political and management change. There were positive changes in relation to political and community participation, as the group\'s participants took a politicized stance on environmental issues leading to discussion in various administrative forums. It is concluded, then, that collective spaces such as the \"Quinta Ambiental\" are important to enable coexistence and social learning, and it is in this dynamic that the exchange of knowledge and transformation of values takes place, and the role of the public manager is fundamental to development of such spaces

A presente pesquisa discute os mecanismos que orientam a supressão da cobertura vegetal na cidade de São Paulo à luz dos benefícios e custos associados à sua presença em áreas urbanas. A partir de dados fornecidos pela Secretaria Municipal do Verde e do Meio Ambiente do Município foram analisados o número de árvores suprimidas na Cidade com autorização do poder público municipal entre 1997 e 2011 que geraram compensação ambiental e o número de Termos de Compensação firmados no mesmo período. O distrito com maior número de árvores suprimidas, a Vila Andrade, foi objeto de uma análise mais detalhada que incorporou o sensoriamento remoto como ferramenta de avaliação do manejo executado. A avaliação da legislação referente à supressão de vegetação vigente no Município de São Paulo suscita dúvidas sobre os critérios utilizados na definição da compensação ambiental, uma vez que estes parecem não considerar os benefícios e custos associados à presença de tal vegetação. O estudo realizado na Vila Andrade indica que o alto número de compensações ambientais não aumentou a cobertura vegetal existente, sugerindo a necessidade de um Plano que oriente supressões, compensações e plantios e que esteja fundamentado nos benefícios e custos socioambientais associados à presença da vegetação em meio urbano bem como nas necessidades da própria vegetação para um pleno desenvolvimento / This research discusses the system that directs the vegetation clearance in the city of São Paulo regarding the costs and benefits associated to its presence in urban areas. The amount of trees removed from the city of São Paulo between 1997 and 2011 with authorization of the Municipal Government and the amount of environment compensation terms settled in the same period were analysed based on data provided by the government. The district with the largest number of removed trees, Vila Andrade, was the subject of a more detailed analysis, which incorporated the remote sensing as an assessment tool of the vegetation clearance. The assessment of legislation concerning the vegetation clearance in force in the City of São Paulo raises questions about the criteria used in defining the environmental compensation, since these do not seem to consider the costs and benefits associated with its vegetation. The study conducted in Vila Andrade indicates that the large number of environmental compensations did not increase the existing vegetation coverage, suggesting the need of a Plan that guides clearance, compensations and plantations, also based on the social and environmental costs and benefits associated to the presence of vegetation in urban areas as well as the requirements of the vegetation itself to a complete development

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T20:13:42Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2006-Estela Maria Souza Costa Neves.pdf: 1438797 bytes, checksum: 6ef3e1715f7718c7aa41515fc5ef39b5 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006-08-09 / Coordena??o de Aperfei?oamento de Pessoal de N?vel Superior / The thesis investigates the environmental policies of Brazilian municipalities. The starting point is the involvement in environmental action by municipalities mandated by the environmental legislation of 1981 and confirmed by the Brazilian 1988 Constitution. Contrary to the case in education and health, the environmental responsibilities vested on municipalities do not have financial and institutional strengthening mechanisms attached. We focus our study on the environmental mandate of municipalities and the resources available to them to carry out the corresponding environmental agenda. The question leading the research is whether municipalities can face up to their environmental mandate in the absence of regular financial transfers from other levels of government. Using a step-wise approach, the thesis pins down the contents and characteristics of the municipal environmental agenda, the resources required to implement it, and the extent to which those resources are available to municipal authorities. The first part of the thesis demarcates the field of environmental action according to the Brazilian legal and institutional framework. The profile of our main actor, the Brazilian municipality, is then presented. This is done through the mapping of the structural characteristics of municipalities and of their governmental responsibilities under the federal system of the country. The area of work of municipalities in environmental protection and management is identified next by crossing the overall municipal mandate for government action with the national environmental matrix. This allows establishing the contents of the municipal environmental agenda. Resources were examined first from a theoretical perspective and then through empirical study. The latter included both qualitative analyses using case studies and interviews, and the statistical scrutiny of data sets. The question of whether resource availability is a binding constraint to municipal environmental action can be answered as follows: municipalities do much more than expected in the environmental area, much less than they could possibly do under present conditions, and much less than is required from their constitutional mandate. The thesis concludes that, in spite of the institutional and financial restrictions binding their capabilities and limiting their resource mobilization possibilities, municipalities have shown an impressive environmental performance. Nonetheless, resource mobilization for this purpose was under potential. There is hence a wide area of municipal environmental action that remains to be colonized . Considering, however, the breadth of their overall environmental mandate, it is not possible for municipalities to fully respond to their constitutional environmental agenda without a supporting national strategy involving the federal and state governments. / As pol?ticas p?blicas de defesa ambiental promovidas pelos Munic?pios brasileiros constituem o tema da pesquisa. O ponto de partida ? a obrigatoriedade do envolvimento municipal com as tarefas de defesa do meio ambiente, determinada em 1981 pela regula??o da pol?tica ambiental em ?mbito nacional e consagrada na Constitui??o Federal em 1988. Ao contr?rio de outros temas como a educa??o e a sa?de, a atribui??o ambiental outorgada aos munic?pios est? desprovida de mecanismos que assegurassem seu financiamento e a capacita??o de seus promotores. Neste contexto, a tese investiga o campo e conte?do das atribui??es ambientais sob responsabilidade dos munic?pios e os recursos dispon?veis para fazer face ? agenda ambiental. A pergunta-guia da investiga??o indaga se os munic?pios s?o capazes de responder ?s suas atribui??es relacionadas ao meio ambiente na aus?ncia de transfer?ncias regulares de recursos financeiros. O m?todo adotado para a pesquisa consistiu em aproxima??es sucessivas ao tema dos recursos e capacidades municipais para pol?ticas ambientais. A primeira parte da pesquisa foi dedicada a delinear o objeto da a??o ambiental - os contornos do campo de a??o ambiental tal como entendido no marco institucional brasileiro. A seguir, foi delineado o perfil do ator principal, o Munic?pio. Foram analisadas as caracter?sticas estruturais dos munic?pios brasileiros e as atribui??es nas quais se insere a a??o municipal, ? luz do processo de descentraliza??o e das rela??es federativas. O campo de atua??o dos munic?pios para a defesa ambiental foi identificado atrav?s do confronto entre o conjunto de atribui??es municipais e a matriz ambiental nacional, sendo delineada a agenda ambiental municipal. O tema dos recursos foi abordado desde uma perspectiva te?rica e em seguida atrav?s de estudos emp?ricos. Estes conjugaram an?lises qualitativas atrav?s de estudos de caso e entrevistas, e an?lises quantitativas atrav?s de procedimentos estat?sticos de descri??o e an?lise explorat?ria. No que diz respeito ? disponibilidade de recursos, os resultados da pesquisa podem ser assim sintetizados: os munic?pios fazem bem mais do que seria de esperar no campo da defesa ambiental, bem menos do que lhes ? poss?vel fazer com os recursos de que disp?em e muito menos do que lhes ? exigido por suas atribui??es constitucionais. Tendo em vista o panorama institucional e financeiro que enquadra as atividades municipais, suas capacidades e recursos j? mobilizados, a pesquisa conclui que os Munic?pios t?m tido um desempenho not?vel. Entretanto, desde o ponto de vista dos recursos dispon?veis, seu desempenho t?m sido inferior ?s suas possibilidades. H? um amplo territ?rio do exerc?cio da autoridade estatal em benef?cio da qualidade ambiental que est? ainda por ser colonizado pelos munic?pios com recursos e capacidades atualmente dispon?veis. Do ponto de vista do conjunto das atribui??es municipais, sem uma estrat?gia de ?mbito nacional na qual estejam envolvidos os governos estaduais e federal, ? imposs?vel aos munic?pios cumprir integralmente com sua agenda.

Rapid, human-forced climate change as a result of greenhouse gases is threatening the fabric of human civilisation itself. It is clear that we need to alter our development and poorer countries will need to develop while limiting their emissions, but it is not clear what sustainable development would entail. Climate change policy solutions have pivoted on carbon trading, under the auspices of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), but this too has failed to limit growth in carbon emissions. This report looks at the operations of the CDM in South Africa as a source of climate finance meant to facilitate sustainable development. Though South Africa has emphasised its commitment towards a low-carbon transition, in practice its national planners seek to preserve energy-intensive mineral and industrial sectors. This research draws on both primary and secondary documents as well as interviews with carbon professionals to conclude that CDM projects have played a limited role in South Africa, but has tended to reproduce the existing minerals and energy complex within the country.

“Supply-side structural reform” (SSSR) has been the most important ongoing economic reform in China since 2015, but its important environmental health effects have not been properly assessed. The present study addresses that gap by focusing on reduction of overcapacity in the coal, steel, and iron sectors, combined with reduction of emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxide (NOx), and fine particulate matter (PM2.5), and projecting resultant effects on air quality and public health across cities and regions in China. Modeling results indicate that effects on air quality and public health are visible and distributed unevenly across the country. This assessment provides quantitative evidence supporting projections of the transregional distribution of such effects. Such uneven transregional distribution complicates management of air quality and health risks in China. The results challenge approaches that rely solely on cities to improve air quality. The article concludes with suggestions on how to integrate SSSR measures with cities' air quality improvement attainment planning and management performance evaluation

Natural resource development has tremendous potential to create inclusive economic growth in countries well-endowed with oil, mineral, and agricultural resources. At the same time, natural resource development can cause negative environmental externalities, and, in several cases, extractives companies can engage in labor abuse. The intersection of the government’s and the corporation’s interest can lie in Corporate Social Responsibility Projects.This thesis will analyze an alternative model of CSR: community development agreements (CDAs). CDAs are voluntary, or sometimes government mandated, agreements between the project developer and the project affected community that define company commitments to issues such as environmental impact mitigation, benefit sharing, and local employment, for example. The objective of this thesis is to review the theoretical underpinnings of CDA process, analyze the application of CDAs in several case studies, and develop a framework of best practices for CDAs based on those analyses.

Environmental goals such as urban water conservation and pollution control regulations are typically achieved through price and non-price methods. This dissertation offers an analysis of the non-price approaches, including the rationing of water for particular users, installation of particular technologies, and adoption of particular certifications to achieve environmental goals. To begin, an analysis of California’s 2015 urban water conservation mandate was performed. Results indicate that the average welfare loss of the mandate is $6,107 per acre-foot of restriction in Northern California and $2,757 per acre-foot of restriction in Southern California. In terms of monthly household-level willingness-to-pay (WTP) to avoid the mandate, results illustrate that households have a WTP between $5 and $200 per month. Northern Californian utilities were generally in compliance with their mandated conservation targets, while Southern Californian utilities tended to fall short. The second essay focuses on analyzing how web-based Home Water Use Reports (HWURs) affect household-level water consumption in Folsom City, California. The HWURs under study, offered by the company Dropcountr (DC), share social comparisons, consumption analytics, and conservation information to residential accounts, primarily through digital communications. We found that there is a 7.8% reduction in average daily household water consumption for a typical household under treatment of the DC program. Results suggest that the effect of DC varies by the baseline consumption quintile, the number of months in the program, the day of the week, message type, and enrollment wave. Furthermore, we find that indicate these responses to DC program likely come from the information channel rather than moral suasion. The final essay studies the effectiveness of ISO-14001 on pollution reduction as a non-price pollution control approach. Manufacturers have been increasingly relying on environmental management systems (such as ISO 14001 based ones) to comply with government regulations and reduce waste. In this essay, we investigated the impact of ISO 14001 certification on manufacturers’ toxic release by release level. Results show that ISO 14001 had a negative and statistically significant effect on the top 10% manufacturing sites regarding the on-site toxic release, but it did not reduce off-site toxic release. Therefore, one should not expect ISO 14001 to have a uniform impact on manufacturing sites’ environmental performance. For large firms, encouraging voluntary adoption of ISO 14001 might be an effective government strategy to reduce on-site pollution.

Transnational networks are growing in prevalence and importance as states, nongovernmental, and intergovernmental organizations seek to meet climate change goals; yet, the organizations in these networks struggle between the global, technical and local, contextual sources of power, authority, and knowledge used to influence decision-making and governance. This dissertation analyzes these contestations in Pacific Islands climate change diplomacy and governance efforts by asking: i) What do power relations look like among the Pacific Islands' networked organizations? ii) To what authority do organizations appeal to access sources of power? iii) What sources of knowledge are produced and reproduced by these organizations? and iv) How do these patterns fit within the broader history of the Pacific Islands and climate change? I draw from interviews, document analysis, event participation, and social network analysis of Pacific Island climate change diplomacy and governance. This examination leads me to propose the concept of "Climate Empire," which can be understood as the network of knowledge and communicative services that imagine, build, and administer the globe through a decentralized and deterritorialized apparatus of rule. In the Pacific Islands, Climate Empire upholds technical bureaucratic and scientific approaches to overcoming climate challenges; however, the global spaces in which these approaches are produced are reconnected with the spaces of local resistance through data collection networks and efforts to relocalize knowledge. Thus, the local/global divisions found in diplomacy and governance in the Pacific Islands collectively produce and reform Climate Empire as organizations interact in the network. Further research is necessary to understand the extensiveness of Climate Empire, as well as to ensure the inclusion and empowerment of Pacific Island voices in climate governance for both justice and efficacy.