Download Institutional Roadblocks, Norman Myers

GUEST ESSAY
Institutional Roadblocks
Norman Myers
Norman Myers is a tropical ecologist and international consultant
in environment and development, with emphasis on
conservation of wildlife species and tropical forests. His research
and consulting have taken him to 80 countries. A leading
environmental expert, he has consulted for many development
agencies and research organizations, including the U.S. National
Academy of Sciences, the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development, UN agencies, and the World Resources Institute. Among his many
publications are The Primary Source: Tropical Forests and Our Future (1992),
Ultimate Security: The Environmental Basis of Political Security (1996), Perverse
Subsidies (with Jennifer Kent, 2001), and The New Consumers: The Influence of
Affluence on the Environment (with Jennifer Kent, 2004).
Government systems are often blighted by "institutional roadblocks" (IRs). The
phenomenon applies especially to environmental problems, which are plainly growing
worse. After decades of efforts by governments and despite many success stories,
we are losing ground faster than ever. How can we get ahead of the game and
prevent problems from becoming problems in the first place? A key answer is to
tackle the IRs.
Example: climate change. Many experts acknowledge that global warming
could set us back economically and ecologically by at least fifty years and maybe a
good while longer. It is even coming to be regarded as a bigger threat than
international terrorism. Climatologists say that if we ever decide we don't want
global warming after all, it will take at least one thousand years to restore climate to
today's state.
Many political leaders confirm that it is surely the biggest issue of our time—
yet they do next to nothing about it. An IR in the form of the election cycle with its
short-term horizons means it is not in politicians' self-interest to act to prevent fairly
rapid climate change.
IRs include (1) "perverse" subsidies of $2 trillion a year worldwide, that
mobilize taxpayer dollars to trash our environments as well as to deplete our
Copyright ©2005 Brooks/Cole, a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Thomson Learning
is a trademark used herein under license.
economies, (2) using GDP as highly distorted measure of our economies and human
wellbeing, and (3) tax systems that penalizes "goods" such as honest work while
virtually ignoring "bads" such as environmental degradation.
A specially widespread and cryptic form of IR lies with the historic division of
government into rigorously defined sectors—a division that is antithetical to the
types of changes required to integrate environment into policy throughout
government systems. The result is that an Environment Ministry, being a new kid on
the block, finds its policies are effectively set by the more powerful and long
established ministries that determine patterns of resource exploitation, land use, and
pollution that undermine environmental needs.
Further: by courtesy of the lobbying by special interests (which spend a
whopping $100 million a month in Washington, D.C.), the government fiefdoms of
Transport, Agriculture, and Energy often pursue activities that are directly opposed
to their official policies. Transport policy encourages the car culture to the detriment
of alternative modes of transportation. Agriculture policy promotes unsustainable
forms of farming based on over-intensive use of energy. Energy policy amounts to a
fragmented approach to energy supply, instead of offering a coherent framework
with emphasis on reducing both supply and demand. In addition, transport policy
tends to be pursued with indifference to energy policy; agriculture policy with
indifference to land conservation; and both with indifference to climate constraints.
The aggregate impact of all IRs means that environmentalists find themselves
pushing ever-bigger rocks up ever-steeper hills.
Critical Thinking
If you had the power, what are the three most important things you would do to
reduce the influence of institutional roadblocks?
Copyright ©2005 Brooks/Cole, a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Thomson Learning
is a trademark used herein under license.