5

Sustainability and Governments: The Importance of Public Policies

Many students, practitioners, and advocates of sustainability focus primarily on the private sector and on individual consumers’ behaviors, as discussed in chapters 3 and 4. Yet even in the earliest discussions of sustainability there were always important roles for governments and public policies. Indeed, much of the work of the Brundtland Commission focused on what governments could do and perhaps should have done in efforts to become more sustainable. There are two reasons for this. First, governments can become more sustainable in the ways they consume resources as they endeavor to provide services to residents and citizens. Governments operate facilities and equipment, and purchase products, that have or promise to have significant effects on the environment. Second, governments and their policies have effects on other institutional and individual behaviors that also affect the environment. For example, governments often have responsibility for engaging in activities designed to promote various kinds of economic growth and development, and depending on whether, how, and how well this function is performed, those activities can influence environmental outcomes. When governments design and build roadways, create local building codes, decide whether and how to provide public mass-transit options, and implement programs for the recycling of solid waste, among many other activities, they influence consumers’ environmentally impacting behaviors. This chapter examines a range of specific public policies and programs that governments have pursued in their efforts to become more sustainable. Whether these policies have actually made the areas under particular governmental jurisdictions or the world more sustainable remains an open question that calls for more “outcomes” research.

There is no shortage of proposals for what governments should do to try to become more sustainable. Yet what governments have actually done inevitably falls far short of these prescriptions. The most important fact about government policies and programs is that there is substantial variation. Some countries have enacted and implemented policies designed to maximize the pursuit of sustainability; some have failed to tackle sustainability at all; still others have enacted policies that undermine the pursuit of sustainability; and many have created a mix of policies, some of which support sustainability goals and others of which thwart them. Within countries, subnational governments sometimes decide to pursue sustainability goals. And in many countries, national policies make subnational government efforts more difficult or impossible. In the United States, the federal government has taken only modest steps to promote sustainability, and many state governments have tried to prevent local governments from pursuing sustainability on their own (as was discussed in chapter 2). This chapter does not try to review the wide array of policies that have been proposed, per se; instead, it discusses the various governmental efforts that have been enacted and pursued around the world, and it provides a review of how national and subnational policies interact in ways that promote or impede the pursuit of sustainability. The focus here is on the national, international, and subnational policies and programs.

At what “level” of government responsibility and authority for policies related to sustainability reside is not a trivial issue. There is no formal legal international organization with such authority; international and cross-national efforts to advance the cause of sustainability rely on various organizations (such as the UN) to influence countries and subnational governments that do have formal legal authority. Within countries, there is usually some sort of division of labor such that some kinds of policies fall to the realm of a national government, and other kinds of policies fall to subnational levels of government. And of course, some issue areas relevant to sustainability may not be the responsibility of, or in the jurisdiction of, any level of government. But beyond the formal legal issues, the larger point is that the level of government that has or seems to have the authority for a particularly policy area may well influence whether sustainability can be pursued at all. Indeed, the political processes associated with different levels of government vary significantly. In the US, it might be possible for the federal government to enact and implement pro-sustainability policies even though this might be possible in very few state governments. During the 1970s, when the US Congress enacted the Clean Air Act of 1970, the Clean Water Act of 1972, and other environmental legislation, few states possessed sufficient political support to do the same. By 2010 it was clear that the tables had turned: political support for sustainability-related legislation in Congress was nonexistent, yet numerous states and municipal governments did possess the requisite political support (Rabe 2013; Portney 2013).

National Policies on Sustainability

Countries’ efforts to promote sustainability have varied greatly. Some countries, including the United States and China, have done very little to comprehensively push for greater sustainability; indeed, some might argue that most national policies have the opposite effect. The Environmental Performance Index, discussed in chapter 1, suggests that the US ranks 33rd and China 118th out of 178 countries in terms of sustainability outcomes and policies related to environmental and ecosystem health, human health impacts, water quality and sanitation, air quality, water availability, and dozens of other indicators. Chinese national policies since 2005 have emphasized economic growth, primarily through expansion of its manufacturing sector and through exportation of manufactured goods. The economic-development imperative has driven exceptional growth in demand for energy, and has required a national commitment to developing, importing, and ultimately burning fossil fuels. The result has been the well-publicized increase in air pollution in major urban areas, especially Beijing. In the face of this, the Chinese government has made policy commitments to large-scale development of sustainable cities and to significant reduction of carbon emissions. In broad brush, some countries have been characterized as being “enthusiastic” supporters of policies and programs to move toward sustainability and to combat climate change, while others might be said to be “reluctant.” Victor (2011) argues that China and India, the two largest countries whose economies are growing rapidly, are reluctant. In those two countries, economic development is heavily dependent on domestic coal as sources of energy. Burning coal, of course, is also a substantial source of carbon emissions, so carbon reductions would threaten the pace of development in China and India. Other countries, particularly many of those in the European Union, are thought to be “enthusiastic.”

As was noted in chapter 1, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Australia are identified by the EPI as being the most sustainable countries, and that is not an accident. The EPI doesn’t expressly measure the amount of policy effort made by countries to work toward sustainability, and most of the indicators focus on environmental and sustainability outcomes rather than on policies. Indeed, the EPI (2014) suggests that “ideally, measures of climate change and energy performance will be tied more directly to policy actions … [but] the data for such a global-scale venture does not exist.” But numerous examples of national policies seemingly designed to try to achieve greater sustainability are available. For the most part, identifying policies and programs designed to promote sustainability focuses primarily on climate change and energy policies, and to a lesser extent on other relevant policies. To use Victor’s term, these might be thought of as “enthusiastic” supporters of sustainability and climate protection policies. Switzerland’s sustainability policies are sweeping, starting with language in the federal constitution declaring sustainable development to be a national objective, with policies and programs representing recognition of the need to involve every functional office of national and subnational governments. Moreover, the National Sustainable Development policy outlines the methodologies for assessing progress and success, and makes explicit provision for steps to be taken if sustainability goals are not achieved (Richard and Wachter 2012). Denmark has embarked on a national policy effort to develop a low-carbon society and has set forth numerous specific policies and programs that it has adopted and will adopt to accomplish this. In its 2013 Climate Policy Plan, Denmark outlined the steps to be taken to reduce national carbon emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020, a very ambitious target (Denmark 2013). That plan’s policy outline, which includes reference to the need to “integrate climate change mitigation across other policy areas,” including energy, agriculture, transportation, and others, and to coordinate with the European Union and its member countries, is presented as an appendix to this chapter.

The failure by the United States to adopt much explicit federal legislation to create sustainability or climate protection programs or policies creates the impression that the US government has done nothing in that area. Yet this does not paint a complete picture of federal policies that relate to sustainability. Although the carbon cap-and-trade program that was passed by the House of Representatives in 2009 was never voted on in the Senate, other legislation has either created or supported specific sustainability-related programs. For example, under existing federal Clean Air Act legislation, the US Environmental Protection Agency has moved forward with plans to regulate carbon emissions from electricity-generating facilities, particularly those that burn coal. Indeed, the EPA has developed a number of voluntary and technical assistance programs to work with states and local governments to promote different aspects of sustainability, including sustainable transportation, sustainable communities, and sustainable water infrastructure initiatives. In 2007, Congress enacted the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant program (a program that was folded into the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009) as part of its Energy Independence and Security Act. That program, administered by the US Department of Energy, provided substantial grants to states, counties, cities, and other jurisdictions to help pay for projects that stood to save those jurisdictions considerable money while reducing demand for energy, reducing carbon emissions, and creating “green jobs” (United States Conference of Mayors 2014). Despite significant success in achieving all of these goals, Congress de-funded this program after 2012 and no new block grants for energy efficiency have been made available since then.

International and Cross-National Sustainability Efforts

There is no international institution that has true governance responsibility. No international organization or agency can enact public sustainability policies that are binding on any country. Yet various international processes and events have contributed extensively to national and subnational policy making, and these international sustainability efforts are promoted by numerous non-governmental organizations, and by the United Nations and its various offshoot organizations. For the most part, the activities of these organizations revolve around trying to mediate agreements on voluntary actions by countries. The UN has made a long-term commitment to working with countries to define national sustainability and related policies. Since the mid 1980s, these efforts have taken many forms, and have focused on climate change, carbon reductions, water quality and accessibility improvement, and many other environmental, sustainability, and sustainable-development areas. The efforts of the UN provide a glimpse into how challenging progress toward sustainability has been. Important events in the UN’s efforts have included the creation of the World Commission on Development and Environment (the Brundtland Commission) in 1987, the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, the creation in 1988 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change by the World Meteorological Organization and the UN Environment Programme, the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (the “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro, which produced the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change), the 1997 Kyoto Protocol which extended the UNFCCC and identified specific targets for reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions, the 1997 UN Earth Summit +5 Conference in New York, the articulation of the 2000 UN Millennium Development Goals, the 2001 European Union Sustainable Development Strategy, the 2002 UN World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, the 2005 UN World Summit on the Millennium Goals +5 in New York, the 2009 UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, the 2011 UN Environmental Programme “Green Economy Report,” and the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development” (“Rio +20”). Numerous other international organizations and NGOs have been involved, in various ways, in helping to define the context for sustainability policies; for example, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development released a Green Growth Strategy and the World Bank created a Sustainable Development Program.

Most of the aforementioned efforts involve behind-the-scenes discussions with representatives from dozens of participating countries, culminating with major conferences with pre-determined agendas and goals. Sometimes these events and activities produce binding international agreements and treaties (which usually must be ratified within individual signatory countries), or non-binding commitments to achieve specific sustainability-related results. Particularly with respect to climate change and climate protection, these actions and events have produced surprisingly few tangible policies and programs. Typically, agreements are achieved over global goals or goals set for signatory countries, such as the goal of reducing global carbon emissions by a certain amount by a certain date, but individual countries fail to enact and implement policies that will produce that result (Victor 2011). Actual agreed-upon targets vary considerably, with some countries only agreeing to slow the increase in emissions of greenhouse gases rather than achieving actual reductions (Selin and VanDeveer 2013: 283–284). Moreover, when binding agreements are involved most participating countries must go through some internal political process to formally ratify the agreement. In the US, any international treaty must be ratified by the U.S. Senate, which has the final say regardless of whether a particular president or presidential administration wishes to enter into such a treaty. In late 2014, however, the Obama administration announced that it had engaged in bilateral negotiations with China over carbon emissions, and had reached an agreement calling for the US to reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases by 27 percent from 2005 levels by 2025 and for China to commit to not allowing its emissions of greenhouse gases to grow at all after 2030. The agreement also calls for extensive cooperative ventures to develop technologies that will enable both countries to achieve their agreed-upon goals sooner (White House 2014). This agreement had two unusual characteristics. First, it bypassed any UN or other multi-lateral processes. Second, as a two-nation agreement, it does not require action by Congress. In contrast with a formal treaty, ratification by the Senate is not required in order to represent official US policy.

The process of achieving broader international agreement on sustainability-related issues typically pits developed countries against developing countries. The central issue is which countries will be required to curtail their unsustainable economic-development behaviors. The challenge, in a nutshell, is as follows: Developed countries, which traditionally have been major polluters of the environment, advocate that developing countries commit to engaging in less polluting economic development. Developing countries, or countries whose economies are “in transition,” see this as an effort by developed countries to thwart their development efforts, taking the position that the “rich” countries got rich by degrading the environment and that they should be afforded the same opportunity. Many of the UN’s events have accepted the idea that the responsibility for addressing climate change, for example, is shared among all countries, but responsibilities for addressing this issue is “differentiated,” placing greater responsibility on industrialized countries to take actions. This, of course, is a conclusion that many industrialized countries do not readily accept (Selin and VanDeveer 2013: 283).

Perhaps the most successful cross-national effort on sustainability is that pursued in the European Union. As part of the emergence and evolution of a relatively new system of governance, the EU has enacted a variety of sustainability-related programs affecting all of its member countries (Wurzel et al. 2013). In fact, with respect to the environment, the EU operates “like a quasi-federal state” where member states retain many policy authorities. With respect to most environmental and sustainability-related policies, however, the EU possesses the “ability to adopt binding legislation (so-called Directives) that require no review or ratification at the national level, [although] the member states firmly retain implementation of EU laws” (ibid.: 66). That authority has been used to create an array of sustainability programs and policies, including a policy requiring eco-labeling, and the carbon emissions trading system program where the Directorate-General Environment and Directorate-General Climate Action are the designated EU administrative implementing organizations.

Despite the efforts of the EU to create sustainability policies that are fairly uniform across most of Western Europe, it has no authority over energy and other taxation policies, either of which could be used to create incentives for greater sustainability activities and behaviors. As a result, there is significant variation in the sustainability policies and programs among member countries. For example, Wurzel et al. demonstrated that there is considerable variation in the use of “eco-taxation,” or taxes imposed based on the negative impact of activities on the environment. The idea, of course, is that if polluting costs more, greater efforts will be made to reduce the costs by polluting less. Even among the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, and the United Kingdom, there is little uniformity in terms of when such taxes have been imposed, what environment-impacting activities they have been imposed, how much revenue they generate, and how the generated revenue is used (Wurzel et al. 2013: 133–157).

International Networks

An evolving issue with respect to sustainability and environmental policy concerns more informal processes and their effects. In short, with all the international organizations and activities surrounding the pursuit of sustainability, have informal networks or constellations of organizations developed? If so, is there reason to believe that such networks influence national and subnational policies? Although this is a relatively new avenue of research, efforts to examine such informal networks or “regime complexes” suggest the possibility that such networks do exist and that they do exert influences of various kinds. For example, Keohane and Raustiala (2010) and Keohane and Victor (2011, 2013) argue that, with respect to willingness of specific countries to adopt and implement aspects of climate-change policies and energy policies, informal “loosely coupled” groups of countries and institutions have emerged and promise to produce sustainability results where other international efforts have failed.

Subnational Policies

Although it is very tempting to simply focus on the policies and programs of countries, it is not uncommon for jurisdictions within countries to be rather aggressive in their public-policy pursuit of sustainability. The precise limits of what such subnational jurisdictions might be able to do are determined by national policies and laws. Cities in some Western European countries, for example, have much more autonomy and local authority to pursue sustainability policies than cities in the United States (Beatley 2000). Some of the Canadian provinces have shown much more enthusiasm about adopting and implementing sustainability and related policies than others (Pembina Institute 2009). And in the US, states, which have a great deal of authority and a great deal of autonomy from the federal government, follow that same varied pattern. As was noted in chapter 2, a number of states have decided that their authority should be used to block sub-state jurisdictions, including cities, from adopting and implementing sustainability-related programs.

Nevertheless, some states have shown much greater proclivity to define their own aggressive environmental and sustainability policies. Under the US Constitution, states possess significant legal authority to engage in such activities, and many seem to be willing to do so—especially in view of the federal government’s inaction. Many policy issues (including land use, regulation of electrical and other utilities, and management of water, wastewater, and storm water) are traditionally thought to reside under the authority of state governments, and, by delegation, that of local governments. In the case of energy, particularly with respect to policies or regulations affecting availability of electricity from renewable sources, state governments have extensive authority and responsibility. In general, states seem more likely to use what authorities they have to keep the costs of resources and services low rather than pursue sustainability. Although states have the authority to levy gasoline taxes at the pump for the purpose of discouraging driving, they rarely if ever use gasoline taxes for that purpose. More commonly, states levy the tax and use the revenue to build more roadways, creating more rather than less incentive to drive (Rabe 2013: 37). To get a sense of how much variation there is across states in terms of “receptiveness” to environmental policies in the states, Rabe (ibid.) analyzed data collected by the Brookings Institution. He looked at twenty state programs intended to reduce carbon emissions, produce greater energy efficiency and use of renewable energy sources, and protect and improve the environment that were enacted and implemented by states as of 2010. He reported that California had adopted all twenty of the programs, Connecticut had adopted nineteen, and Oregon and Rhode Island each had enacted eighteen. At the other end of the spectrum, Alabama and Alaska had each adopted five, Nebraska and South Dakota four, and Mississippi three. The overall average number of environmental programs adopted by the states was about eleven and a half (ibid.: 35).

Below the state or province level, cities have become important places where sustainability policies and programs have been adopted and implemented. Many cities in the US and around the world have made significant commitments to trying to become more sustainable as a matter of public policy by affecting land use, enhancing public transit and engaging in transit-oriented housing development, adopting green building programs, promoting community gardens and sustainable food systems, replacing fleet vehicles with hybrid and biodiesel-fueled vehicles, ensuring that consumers have the option of purchasing electricity generated from renewable sources, and dozens of other specific programs. Such city efforts will be examined in more detail in chapter 6.

Multilevel Governance and Sustainability Policies

The preceding discussion may give the impression that sustainability policies and programs can be neatly separated according to the level of government or governance where the policies originate. Yet increasingly there is a clear recognition that in practice the creation of sustainability policies involves multiple levels of government sometimes collaborating and sometimes dividing the labor. Although there are many examples in which such collaboration and division of labor working toward achieving great sustainability did not happen, when multiple levels of government do cooperate there seems to have been great success. Indeed, if lower levels of government have difficulty dealing with cross-boundary environmental effects and other negative externalities, involvement and cooperation by higher levels of government seem imperative. When Betsill and Rabe (2013) studied climate protection policies in the US, they found that there was an increasing need for collaboration between state and municipal governments, particularly in states where cities had not been given the legal authority by state legislatures to take policy actions. When New York wanted to imposed a London-style congestion fee for driving in certain part of the city, the city council approved the measure. But the policy required approval from the state legislature, which never materialized, although city-state cooperation is evident in other sustainability-related areas (ibid.: 214–216).

The Outcomes of Sustainability Policies and Programs

The most important unanswered question concerning the role of governments and public policies is this: Do these policies and programs actually produce sustainability-related outcomes? These programs are adopted and implemented with the expectation that they will produce specific results thought to be directly related to sustainability. When a government creates a policy to increase the use of renewable energy, such as solar, wind, or geothermal, it does so with the expectation that carbon emissions will decline. When a government decides to conserve water by encouraging conservation at the household level, it does so with the expectation that water supplies will last longer. Yet there is surprisingly little research and evidence to support these expectations. This is not to say that these programs are ineffective; it is simply to say that the research needed to examine the effects of these programs has yet to be conducted.

The modest research that has been conducted suggests that creating sustainability programs is not enough to produce sustainability results. Much of the efficacy of public programs hinges on how, and how well, the programs are implemented and managed. Moreover, research suggests that programs designed to be voluntary—that is, to encourage rather than mandate particular consumption behaviors— are far less effective at producing sustainability results than mandatory programs. Of course, mandatory programs are far less popular than voluntary ones, and the political support necessary to create a mandatory program may simply not be there.

Sustainability and the Importance of Government Policies and Programs: A Summary

This chapter has examined the role of governments and their public policies in promoting and sometimes impeding sustainability. Most of the public-policy efforts on sustainability have been rooted in international processes, particularly those spearheaded under the auspices of the United Nations. Since neither the UN nor any other international organization or institution has authority to impose sustainability on any country, these processes have been based on the idea that individual countries can be encouraged to pursue sustainability through participating in a negotiated agreement. Yet such processes have met with only limited success. Particularly with respect to climate change, getting agreements that produce national policies has proved difficult, and agreements are usually limited to vague goals and intentions without firm commitments. Some less-developed (poorer) countries want the responsibility for pursuing sustainability to fall to the developed (wealthier) countries. Developed countries want developing countries to act sustainably as they work toward economic growth. In spite of relative gridlock at the international level, the European Union has made significant strides in getting its member countries to engage in sustainability-related policies and programs, such as Denmark’s national climate-protection plan.

Within countries, government policies and programs have tackled sustainability. Many countries have experienced, and some have promoted, subnational sustainability efforts. Some Canadian provinces and some US states have made such efforts. More prominently, cities around the world are active in trying to become more sustainable. This is the focus of chapter 6.

Appendix: The Danish Climate Policy Plan in Brief (source: Denmark 2013)

How can we achieve the reduction target most efficiently?

• Some mitigation initiatives can be implemented with subsequent economic benefits, while others can only be implemented at considerable socioeconomic costs.

• Generally, the most socioeconomically beneficial reductions can be achieved with mitigation measures that have synergy effects with other policy goals and priorities. Therefore, it is generally most cost effective to integrate climate change mitigation across other policy areas.

• The world is not static. Technologies, the economic framework, and knowledge about mitigation opportunities are developing all the time. Consequently, constant follow-up on efforts to reduce emissions and assessment of the specific measures are crucial in reaching the 40% target.

• A well-functioning European emission trading system, and consequential higher allowances prices, could contribute considerably to meeting the national target. And, just as importantly, it could ensure reduces emissions in the rest of Europe. Tightening the EU CO₂ requirements for cars and the reform of the EU Common Agricultural Policy could also entail important reductions.

• The Danish government’s climate policy therefore has two strings; national and international.

What is the next step?

• The Danish government will ensure that the necessary initiatives are taken in the future by integrating climate change mitigation measures into different sector policies.

• For example, there will be follow- up in agriculture, among other things on the basis of recommendations from the Nature and Agriculture Commission, which has carried out an extensive review of the agricultural sector and proposed recommendations on nature, environment and climate related policies in the agricultural sector.

• The Danish government will also present a Climate Change Act at the next session of the Danish Parliament (the Folketing). The Act will form the framework for the future climate policy.

• In the EU the Danish government will strive for agreement on initiatives for structural improvements of the European emission trading system and thus a better and more effective climate policy at EU level. Similarly, the Danish government will work for tighter EU CO₂ requirements for cars and vans and for a greening of the EU Common Agricultural Policy.