Suchergebnisse

This article examines efforts to improve water quality in the Fox-Wolf River basin in northeastern Wisconsin. It places the history of these efforts within the context of sustainability-based environmental policy, including reliance on broadly inclusive stakeholder involvement and collaborative decision making. Water quality in the area has improved significantly over time, but further improvement will require intensive actions focused on nonpoint sources of pollution and remediation of contaminated sediments. The barriers to such actions require consideration of new policy approaches that can complement conventional regulation. A review of the promise and limitations of collaborative decision making indicates what can be done both in this case and in comparable locations around the nation.

Over the past decade the study of environmental justice has sparked considerable debate, with conflict often exacerbated by conceptual and definitional muddles, scarcity of pertinent data, and disagreement over which methods to employ. This book by the late James Lester and his colleagues is unlikely to diminish the controversy. Yet, as a comprehensive attempt to clear out the conceptual underbrush and bring hard data to bear on difficult empirical questions, the book merits attention by all those concerned with issues of environmental equity. The preliminary findings have been presented at conferences from 1994 on, and many are already familiar with this research. As the authors note, however, they began with a skeptical posture toward the strident assertions made regarding environmental justice. In the end, they reconsidered that position and found much evidence to support concern over environmental inequities in U.S. society.