ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY GROUP Depatment of Urban Studies and Planning Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Newsletter Fall/Winter 2004
News and Views
Inside This Issue
Lawrence Susskind
News
EPG will initiate a search shortly for a practitioner to teach the Brownfields Policy course and an Environmental Management Practicum on a regular basis. Lavea Brachman is filling in this year (teaching 11.370 Brownfields Policy in the spring), replacing Bill Shutkin who left late last year to become head of the Orton Foundation. While the search will only be for a half time person (because that is all the Department can fund), we hope to find a Boston area practitioner who will be able to involve students in their practice (with the other half of their time) in the way that Bill involved students in the work of New Ecology Inc. The job description and search plan should be available at the end of IAP. We hope to add a student to the Search Committee. Anyone interested in serving as the student rep should contact Lyssia LambMacDonald. The MIT-USGS Science Impact Program (MUSIC) is applying to the federal government for funds to continue the MUSIC program. We hope to be able to admit new MUSIC Fellows in the MCP class of 2007. Given the current battle in Washington over the federal budget, however, we may not know until the spring whether funding for future interns will be secure. Current MUSIC Fellows are assured of tuition support through the end of the second year of their MCP studies. continued on page 3
DUSP Students Volunteer 2 News and Views cont. 3, 4 Rotterdam Practicum 5 MIT-USGS Science Impact 6, 7 Summer in the Nile Basin 8 Summer in the Mekong 9, 11 Interuniversity Water Group 10 New Courses 12, 13 Boston Breathes Better 14 Mexico City Project Update 14, 15 Congratulations J. Martinez 15 Cover Photo 15 Public Dispute Resolution in Japan 16
DUSP Students Volunteer at the Food Project On the damp and overcast morning of the last Saturday of October hundreds of thousands of dedicated people got up and made their way to the Charles River and into Boston to join the route of the Red Sox World Series parade. That same morning a somewhat smaller group of dedicated DUSP students passed largely unnoticed through the crowds as they made their way from Cambridge to Roxbury and a lush parcel of urban farm land run by the Food Project. http://www.thefoodproject.org/ Here we assembled to learn and engage in some hands-on sustainable community-based agriculture. This consisted of an end-of-season clean-up and winter bed preparation. We pulled up everything from corn to kale and cilantro to strawberries, guided by the staff and local youth members of the Food Project. EPG student Carli Paine, the organizer of the volunteer day, and I have both enjoyed a delicious season of fresh organic vegetables from the Food Project, and we encourage you to consider getting your vegetables from a CSA like the food project next season. -Ian Finlayson
Photo: Hui Deng 2
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News and Views News continued from page 1 All second year MCP EPGers have identified faculty to serve as their thesis advisors: Matt Amengual (Laws), Peter Brandenberg (Layzer), Ian Finlayson (Laws), Evan Freund (Susskind), Anne Herbst (Layzer), Carli Paine (Layzer), Justin Pauly (Ben-Joseph), Jen Peyser (Susskind), Lily Pollans (Szold), Brian Robinson (Carmin), Heather Seyfang (Salvucci), as have the MS EPGers Richard Blanchet (Brachman), Randall Coffee (Susskind) and Rudolfo Lacey (Susskind), and. Thanks to Herman Karl for arranging EPG luncheon presentations by Jhon Goes-In-Center and Wil Orr this semester. Jhon presented a Native American approach to information management for environmental resource planning. Wil presented very interesting video examples of new uses of GIS for ecological footprint mapping and other approach to environmental planning. We will have videotapes of both presentations edited by the beginning of the second semester. If you want to view them on disk, see Lyssia Lamb-MacDonald. Larry Susskind has received a grant from the Hewlett Foundation (to the MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program) to organize a workshop in June at which leading political theorists from around the world working on issues of deliberative democracy will meet with some of the country’s best known dispute resolution practitioners. It turns out that political theorists are getting interested in some of the practical problems of broadening and deepening democratic practices at the local level, but haven’t yet heard about the work of public dispute mediators. The products of the workshop should yield interesting documentation of what happens when theory meets practice! Nancy Odeh (First Year PHD) and Larry Susskind are working on an annotated bibliography highlighting the institutional obstacles to
greater reliance on hydrogen as a fuel source. While there is a great deal of work going on at MIT and Harvard exploring the new technologies that would be required to move to a “hydrogen economy,” almost no one is looking at the institutional obstacles that would have to be overcome, particularly related to the infrastructure changes necessary to deliver hydrogen fuel nationwide. If you are interested, contact Nancy Odeh. IAP - The Rappaport Institute (at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government) and the Lincoln Institute are supporting a study of the changing role of planning and planners in managing suburban growth in Massachusetts. An IAP workshop is being organized. There is more info on the IAP web page. Students will help to prepare individual municipal case studies using a common interview protocol. We are particularly interested in trying to isolate what planning, plans and planners have (and have not) contributed to the management of rapid urban growth along Route 495 and on Cape Cod. Tina Rosan (PHD Second Year) will be helping to organize the IAP course along with Ona Ferguson at the Consensus Building Institute. If you are interested in being part of the study team, please contact Larry Susskind or Tina Rosan. Consult the IAP Schedule for more info and apply as soon as possible.
Views There’s a lot of discussion at the moment about EPG thesis prep options and about the EPG intro course. I want to share with you some of the thinking of the EPG faculty on these two issues. This fall, EPG tried an experiment of sorts. Instead of offering a separate semester-long thesis prep course, JoAnn Carmin offered several introductory orientation sessions for second year EPGers in the MCP Program and worked with them to find individual faculty advisors as quickly as possible. Our goal has been to encourage students to connect up with their thesis advisors as quickly as possible so they can use IAP for data gathering. There have been problems at times continued on page 4 FALL 2004
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News and Views Views continued from page 3 in the past when the thesis prep course pushed students off in one direction all fall and newlyacquired advisors found late in the fall or during IAP offered methodological advice pulling them in a different direction. We’ll see whether this year’s MCP 2’s are any farther along in their thesis research by the beginning of the spring semester. We’ll also re-evaluate the costs and benefi ts of a separate EPG fall thesis prep when we see the results in May! Thank you to all who came to support our thesis writers at the EPG Poster Session. It was a great success. With regard to the EPG Introductory course (11.601) we will be making some changes. The MCP Committee wants each Program Group to offer one introductory course that helps all students in the group begin their graduate studies together. We have offered 11.601 in that spirit for the past several years. David Wirth, a Visiting Professor of Law from Boston College, helped us by offering the course this semester because of Bill Shutkin’s departure late last spring. 11.601 has traditionally focused on Environmental Law and Regulation as the basis for environmental policy-making (with a US focus). David, who actually co-authored the text that Bill Shutkin used for several years as a basic course reader, tried to broaden the focus this year to make 11.601 more international in its orientation.
A number of fi rst year EPGers asked, however, to transfer out of the course because it covered much of the same material they had already covered as undergraduate environmental studies majors. The MCP Committee said OK. For the next few years, Larry Susskind will teach 11.601. The title will change slightly to Environmental Policy and Planning. The emphasis will be on environmental planning strategies and begin with a review of the philosophical battles at the heart of the environmental planning challenge. The revised course description is below. For those who want to focus more on regulatory options, Nic Ashford offers a year long sequence in environmental law (based in the Environmental Systems Division of the Engineering School) that covers a portion of what is now offered in 11.601. JoAnn Carmin has re-organized her courses to offer a year long sequence focused on civil society and environmental movements in different parts of the world in the fall and Environmental Justice issues in the spring. (Although, JoAnn will be on leave in the fall next year.) Judy Layzer and Herman Karl are sequencing their existing courses to offer a year-long science and public policy sequence that will transform the Joint Fact Finding course to a one semester spring course. (Note, also, that Judy will be on leave during the spring of 2006.) Contact any of the EPG faculty if you want to talk about curriculum issues. See page 12 for new EPG courses
11.601 Introduction to Environmental Policy and Planning
Susskind First subject in the Environmental Policy and Planning sequence. Begins with a review of the philosophical debates concerning growth and scarcity vs. deep ecology and examines the ongoing policy debate concerning “command-and-control” vs. market-oriented approaches to regulation. Primary emphasis is on environmental planning strategies central to the work of the EPG faculty and the environmental policy-making fi eld including the management of sustainability, the politics of ecosystem management, environmental governance and the changing role of civil society, ecological economics, integrated assessment (combining EIA and risk assessment), global treaty-making and multistakeholder dialogue, environmental technology and public entrepreneurship networks (PENS), joint fact fi nding in scienceintensive policy disputes, environmental justice in poor communities of color, and environmental dispute resolution. 4
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Rotterdam Practicum David Laws
This fall the Rotterdam Practicum is examining innovations in planning practice in the Netherlands. DUSP students are working with colleagues from the University of Amsterdam to explore four cases where citizens, public officials, and others have worked outside of formal governmental processes to securecommon goals. One case examine the efforts of farmers, conservation organizations, water boards, and provincial authorities in North Holland to use mediated consensus building to resolve a twenty year planning conflict and develop a joint framework for managing what has become the national historic landscape “Laag Holland.” In a second case, students are working with Dominic Schrijer, an alderman from the borough of Charlois in Rotterdam, to analyze how to engage other communities and stakeholders in a discussion interests they share as part of the “Ijselmonde.” A third group is looking at the emerging practice of mobility management that has been a catalyst for innovation in transportation planning and regional cooperation. Finally, the Dutch students visited MIT in early December to work on a case study on the Cape Wind development proposal. These cases all contribute to an analysis of emerging practice in regional governance. The results of the study will bepresented to the program on governmental renewal in the Ministry of Interior. Photo: “Ariel B. with map”, by Jen Peyzer. See pg. 13 for more. FALL 2004
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MIT-USGS Science Impact Collaborative and Joint Fact Finding Herman Karl The MIT-USGS Science Impact Collaborative (MUSIC) has engaged in a range of activities since it was announced in the Spring/Summer 2004. To learn more about the research, projects, and activities undertaken by MUSIC highlighted in this article, we invite you to explore MUSIC’s web site at http://scienceimpact.mit.edu. Four EPG graduate students inaugurate the MUSIC internship program. Anna Brown, Lindsay Campbell, and Basilia Yao are first year MCP students and Peter Brandenburg is a second year MCP candidate. Jennifer Peyser, a second year MCP candidate, is the MUSIC project manager. Jennifer helps to coordinate intern projects among MIT, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and the Consensus Building Institute (CBI staff help translate research findings of the interns and other MUSIC researchers into practice). The interns are taking the seminar, “The Role of Joint Fact Finding in Environmental Decisionmaking,” taught by
Dr. Herman Karl, MUSIC co-director, and Dr. Jennie Stephens. Jennie, a research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, is a Visiting Lecturer this year. The interns are working on several projects that will help the USGS, the BLM, and other Department of the Interior (DOI) agencies develop and test collaborative approaches to environmental policymaking and natural resources management decisionmaking. To date they have analyzed and designed a joint fact finding process for four environmental policy and natural resources management issues—(1) the placement of wind farms offshore, (2) the location of Liquid Natural Gas facilities, (3) the restoration of the Everglades, and (4) adaptive management and joint fact finding in resource management planning.
Visit Our Research Online
http://scienceimpact.mit.edu OpenCourseWare Video Lectures
We are pleased to announce that the presentations given by Jhon Goes In Center (Sinte Gleska University) and Wil Orr (Prescott College) will be available for all to see on the 11.941 The Role of Joint Fact Finding in Environmental Decision-Making OCW site. The video presentations will be on our site by the end of January. Lyssia Lamb-MacDonald also has a DVD copy available in her office.
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MUSIC cont.
Jennie Stephens - Visiting Lecturer Hosting a series of guests, each of whom has shared with us their personal experiences related to the challenges of how science is used in environmental decision-making, has been a valuable part of the graduate level course associated with the MUSIC program, 11.941 The Role of Joint Fact Finding in Environmental Decision-Making. Our first visitor to the class was Chris Rascher, an engineer at EPA Region 1 office in Boston, who shared with us his involvement in a multi-participant stakeholder process to develop a plan for a papermill in Bucksport, Maine to meet environmental requirements. Our next visitor was Andrea Rex, the Director of Environmental Quality at the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, who explained the complexities of how scientific information was involved in the Boston Harbor clean-up project. Other guests included John Goes-in-Center from Sinte Gleska University who talked about indigenous knowledge, Rich Whitley the National Stewardship and Jennie Stephens, Jhon Goes In Center, Herman Karl
Partnership Coordinator from the Bureau of Land Management, and Will Orr of Prescott College, who presented his modeling tools that help communities envision how land-use decisions will impact the future land availability of their communities. EPG’s own Professor Judy Layzer and Professor Larry Susskind also visited the class. We also had several visitors from the US Geological Survey (USGS) including the USGS Director, Charles Groat, who discussed the disconnect between scientists and managers and the need for boundary people who are able to understand and communicate with both scientists and managers, and Doug Posson, who outlined a USGS project designed to identify USGS projects that exhibit “best practices” with respect to effectively engaging with the public to ensure that the science being done does have a clear impact. We also spent one class session playing the roleplaying Wind Farm Game that was developed by the students in last year’s class to simulate the different perspectives surrounding the Cape Wind controversy. We welcomed Ginny Welles, a DUSP alumna from the Massachusetts Audubon Society and several other student volunteers to participate in the Wind Farm Game. We are also looking forward to a visit from Lynn Scarlet, the Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management and Budget for the U.S. Department of Interior sometime next semester. We have all learned a lot in our discussions with this diverse group of professionals. These visitors have definitely broadened our view of the challenges associated with the roles of science, stakeholder involvement, and joint fact finding in environmental decision-making.
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Summer in the Nile River Basin Cat Ashcraft Last summer, I conducted field research to investigate the developing cooperation around management of the eastern Nile River, which is occurring within the framework of the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI). International rivers are variable, fluid, and vital to the survival of humans and nations. They cross political boundaries with impunity and are a unifying element in a complex web of international interests. These features, combined with a weak international governance regime, make it difficult for nations to coordinate their management of the river water. Ongoing negotiations are characterized by high levels of scientific uncertainty, a multiplicity of issues “on the table�, long time horizons, changing actors, and complex institutions of governance. These negotiations are important because they have the potential to produce agreements that are mutually beneficial to all parties by improving the lives of their populations and the quality of their natural resources. If they fail, relations among nations could deteriorate into unilateral solutions and international conflict as nations maneuver to protect their resources from perceived competition. The Nile River has been singled out as a volatile system, with a high potential for armed conflict due to historical tensions, the
large number of nations sharing its waters and increasing demands on the system. Ethiopia is the main source of the Blue Nile, or Abbai River. Rainfall on Ethiopian and Eritrean highlands between June and September makes up most of the water flowing in the Blue Nile downstream to Khartoum, Sudan (where the Blue Nile meets the White Nile coming from Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi and Congo), and 86% of the water reaching Egypt. Egypt’s economic success is in large part due its maximal use of its available water resources, which would not be possible if upstream nations used their available water to a similar extent. The entire Nile system has been governed by treaties negotiated during the colonial era. Many Nile countries did not participate in those negotiations on their own behalf and some do not recognize the provisions of the treaties. Aided by external funding agencies such as the United Nations Development Programme, NBI was launched in 1999 to develop a cooperative framework agreement that is acceptable to all ten Nile countries and to promote international support for projects that are designed and operated collaboratively. I traveled through Egypt, Ethiopia and Uganda for two months, conducting interviews with Continued on page 9
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“Nile” continued from page 8 key participants about their motivations for participating in the NBI and their experiences interacting within the framework of the Initiative. In Uganda I interviewed representatives from the intergovernmental NBI Secretariat. Other interview participants included representatives from national governments, international funding agencies, universities, professional organizations, civil society organizations and consultants. While learning about participants’ experiences, I was also identifying features of the negotiation that are critical to building support for implementation of shared water management objectives and fostering cooperation among the countries for the benefit of their populations and their water resources. I focused on how the technical side of the NBI, which is trying to realize “on the ground” projects to demonstrate the benefits of cooperation, is supporting the political and primarily legal process of hammering out a cooperative agreement. For example, Ethiopia is now providing Sudan and Egypt with average monthly rainfall data, which the downstream countries can use to plan for floods and irrigation. The countries are also sharing their national water development plans with each other. These represent significant departures from the past and signal opportunities for the future. However, more skeptical participants pointed out that no projects are being cooperatively planned, and that the cooperative framework is being negotiated in secret and progress on it is unclear. I plan to continue researching the connection between technical cooperation and formal agreements for coordination of international river management in my dissertation research. This research was made possible by generous funding from the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning, the Program on Negotiation at the Harvard Law School, and the Ruth Landes Memorial Fund.
Summer in the Mekong Erik Nielsen This summer Erik Nielsen traveled to the Greater Mekong Sub-Region (GMS) to conduct predissertation research and undertake intensive Mandarin language study. Erik is a second year EPG doctoral student and his dissertation research focuses on transboundary environmental governance in the GMS with a particular emphasis on how local and transnational nonstate interests can influence China’s decision and policy-making over transboundary natural resources management. The GMS presents an urgent set of environmental challenges. As it currently undergoes tremendous economic development, the region’s rich natural resource base faces certain threats. Environmental challenges, such as the management of water resources, protection of areas high in biodiversity, and the prevention of air pollution, are key domestic issues that ignore national political boundaries . The countries that make-up the GMS collectively make the area one of the “wealthiest” in the world environmentally, however, this also means they ought to share responsibility for managing their transboundary ecosystems. Overall the opportunity for local communities to participate in transboundary decision-making has been limited or non-existent. The space for civil society to participate in resource decisionmaking constrains effective transboundary environmental governance possibilities. There is a gap among the role of national governments and regional institutions and civil society wanting to take part in the decision-making process over resource governance. Each country in the GMS has limited mechanisms to allow civil society to participate in decision-making. While change is slowly becoming evident, states generally prefer formal top-down approaches. Nevertheless there are growing opportunities for non-state actors Continued on page 11 FALL 2004
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The Interuniversity Transboundary Water Policy Management and Negotiation Group The interuniversity transboundary water management and negotiation group’s mission is to collect, organize, discuss and disseminate ideas and information in the field of transboundary water resources. The group aims to encourage and increase opportunities for research and practice of transboundary water resource management and negotiation. The group also strives to foster interaction among the Boston area university communities interested in transboundary water issues, as well as within the greater water resources community. The group was started by students in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning in the winter of 2004. The group’s participants currently include graduate students from a variety of departments and schools at MIT, Tufts and Harvard, as well as some affiliated interested people. The group meets every two weeks during the academic year to discuss ongoing research, academic articles and contemporary issues. Meetings this Fall have included a presentation by EPG’s own Erik Nielsen on action by civil society to impact transboundary river management in the Nu River in Yunnan Province, China. Erik highlighted the role non-state organizations in China and transnational civil society actors outside of China played in influencing the Chinese Premier’s decision to temporarily halt the construction of the hydroelectric dams on the river (contact nielsen1@mit.edu for more information). The group’s second meeting was co-sponsored by the Program on Negotiation’s Student Group on Religion and Conflict Resolution (contact Rachel Milner rmilner@hds.harvard.edu for information on that group). This meeting featured a presentation by Joshua Newton from the Tufts Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy on how including religion and spirituality in water negotiations may affect outcomes of international water conflicts (contact joshua. newton@tufts.edu). The group maintains a Yahoo Group Site http://groups.yahoo.com/group/transboundary_ water/. This site contains a variety of informational links to institutions working in the water sector, river basin organizations, conferences, and fellowships and grants for students engaged in the water field. The Transboundary Water Policy Group is currently in the process of becoming a student chapter of the American Water Resources Association (http://www.awra.org/ ), and becoming a recognized student association by MIT. The group is hosted by the Program on Negotiation (http://pon.harvard.edu ) at the Harvard Law School, where it also holds its meetings. The group’s faculty advisors are Professor Lawrence Susskind of EPG and Professor Richard Vogel of Tufts Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. For additional information, please contact Catherine Ashcraft, PhD student, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, MIT at catcraft@mit.edu.
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“Summer in Mekong” continued from page 9 from the region and abroad to influence Chinese government environmental decision-making. Erik spent the summer traveling throughout Yunnan Province in Southwest China, Beijing, Cambodia, Lao PDR and Thailand. He interviewed over 40 non-state representatives to better understand the context of transboundary environmental problems in the GMS and to examine the strategies and tactics the different groups utilize to address transboundary environmental challenges. Erik also began to identify transboundary case studies for his dissertation research. Potential cases may include the Nu Jiang, an international river flowing from Yunnan Province into Burma
and Thailand that the Chinese government wants to construct hydroelectric dams on; illegal timber trade from Burma into China; trade of wildlife and wildlife products from lower GMS countries to China for medicinal use; and a massive Chinese rubber plantation situated in Northern Laos developed to export latex to satisfy China’s growing demand for car tires. Erik’s summer research and language study was generously supported by the MIT-China Program. In addition, in May 2004 Erik was awarded a Government of Canada Doctoral Fellowship from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to support his doctoral research at MIT over the next three years.
Erik Nielsen in the Greater Mekong Sub-Region FALL 2004
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New EPG Courses Course 11.367 Disaster, Vulnerability, and Resilience This spring Professors JoAnn Carmin from DUSP and Jennifer Leaning from the Harvard School of Public Health are offering a new course entitled, Disaster, Vulnerability and Resilience. The primary objective of the course is to provide students with a basis for understanding and managing the social and political processes associated with natural and technological disaster policy, planning, and management. The course will begin with a global perspective on disasters and then consider institutions, policy, and politics at the national and local levels. Consideration also will be given to organizational and individual behavior in the disaster context. Throughout the semester, the linkages among different levels of the policy process and different societal actors will be examined, with particular attention paid to how disaster reduction efforts taken by one entity can increase vulnerability of other populations. This course is designed for people interested in disasters from a research or policy perspective and for those who may be charged with responsibility for on-the-scene intervention. In addition to lectures from faculty members representing a variety of disciplines at MIT and Harvard, a number of distinguished visiting scholars will present their work to the class. Some of the topics that will be addressed during the semester are: global risk and disaster, disaster policy and institutions, risk and public trust, disaster politics, resilient cities, governance and community resilience, and individual and group decision-making under stress. The course is offered on Monday afternoon from 2-5:00 in Room 3-401. For further information, contact Professor Carmin by email at jcarmin@mit.edu.
Course 11.370 Brownfields Policy and Practice Brownfields Policy and Practice, taught by Lavea Brachman, will focus on the redevelopment challenges posed by brownfields and other vacant properties and teaches the formulation of property redevelopment plans and strategies. Since the presence of these vacated properties often implies an underlying loss of community and more widespread institutional disinvestment with the associated problems of racial and/or economic inequity, students will learn how to approach property redevelopment as a cornerstone of community revitalization and construct redevelopment strategies in that larger context. Through cases, the Course focuses on the crucial role of community-based organizations (CBOs) in addressing and eradicating these 12
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11.370 “Brownfields” cont.
“blighting” properties, and the importance of partnerships with private and public sector stakeholders. Using case studies that represent different redevelopment paradigms, students will be exposed to specific problems facing redevelopment of these properties such as: the quagmire of title flaws and gaining site control; frustrations arising from recalcitrant property owners; barriers posed by multiple sites and site assembly; challenges of redevelopment in weak markets; working with ineffective local governments; and unmitigated liability risks. Students will learn problem-solving skills and tools to address these challenges and overcome such barriers. Students also will have an opportunity to apply these problem-solving skills and use innovative strategies working with clients on real-life properties. The Course will teach students how to conduct redevelopment using a four-stage approach: planning, assessing, managing and implementing redevelopment. Finally, students will also learn about emerging policies and the changing redevelopment landscape -- exposing them to current policy gaps and encouraging them to become advocates for policy reform and change that improve the potential for property redevelopment and thus for long-term, sustainable community revitalization. The Course will meet in the spring term on Tuesdayʼs and Thursdayʼs from 10:30 to 12:00.
Spring Practicum This spring the Sustainability Practicum (11.366) will continue its work with the City of Cambridge on implementing its climate change protection plan. Cambridge is one of a group of cities in the U.S. that have undertaken local initiatives to address this global problem. This year the class will focus on the relationship between MIT and the city and explore strategic initiatives for changing building energy use. - David Laws
Photo: David Laws with students from the fall Rotterdam Practicum. Credit, Jen Peyser.
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Greater Boston Breathes Better Evan Freund, MCP 2 Throughout New England, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) has long promoted innovative air quality and environmental management programs aimed at reducing harmful emissions and improving public health. While effective, Boston – among other New England cities – is still close to violating EPA’s health-based air quality standard for fine particles. In addition, the entire state is currently in violation of EPA’s health-based air quality standard for another pollutant, ground-level ozone. As a result, in 2003 EPA launched Greater Boston Breaths Better (GB3), a collaborative effort among government, the private sector, institutions, and non-profit organizations to improve Boston’s air quality by reducing air pollution and air toxins from transportation vehicles in the greater Boston area through a host of voluntary programs. Similar efforts, such as Breathe Better Rhode Island, are also growing in other New England cities. In partnership with EPA, the Consensus Building Institute (CBI) works with schools, colleges and universities, construction companies, shipping and transport agencies to help them identify opportunities to retrofit high-polluting diesel vehicles and equipment (including school busses, shuttle fleets and off-road construction vehicles) and to switch to clean fuels and new technologies such as ultra low sulfur diesel (ULSD), biodiesel, natural gas and electric. In identifying these opportunities, many organizations have realized considerable cost savings, enhanced their public image and developed robust environmental programs and strategic planning initiatives for better environmental management. As a second-year Graduate Associate at CBI, I have had the unique opportunity to work across sectors – with members of EPA’s Air Quality task 14
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force, environmental innovators at universities and private corporations and policy-makers in promoting smart, safe and “green” transportation strategies throughout the region. While both personally and professionally fulfilling, in the year that I have been working on this initiative with CBI, many organizations have also made considerable changes to their transportation strategies which have, in turn, positively impacted public health, safety, and their “bottom line.” Looking forward to 2005, CBI and EPA have identified opportunities to work closely with local construction companies, hospitals and regional colleges and universities to implement additional strategies to help them meet – or exceed – EPA’s goals for emissions reduction and pollution prevention.
Mexico City Project Update Dong-Young Kim, Tina Rosan, and Rebecca Dodder (PhD Candidate in Technology Management and Policy) have been working on an Issue Assessment for Mexico City (reported in the last newsletter) to bring together stakeholders involved in environmental policymaking in the megacity. They have assembled a team of Mexican and U.S. researchers and are in the process of conducting interviews with 80 key stakeholder representatives regarding measures for improving metropolitan air quality. The results of the interviews will be compiled into a document which will describe the current situation and assess whether or not a future consensus building process would improve air pollution management in the region. The project is sponsored by the Mexico City Project run by Drs. Mario and Luisa Molina. This summer, Tina Rosan worked with Mara Hernandez (PhD Student in Sloan)and SERAPAZ (a Mexican NGO that works to promote dialogue and other peaceful means of social change) to design and teach a collaborative workshop on continued on page 15
“Mexico” continued from page 14 negotiation to Mexican social movement leaders. This work was sponsored by a grant from the Harvard Program on Negotiation (PON). Following his work on the Issue Assessment, Dong-Young has begun a comparative study between Mexico City and the Seoul metropolitan area in terms of the relationships between stakeholder participation and policy adoption in long term air quality management. This further work will be part of his dissertation. Anjali Mahendra has joined the group this fall as a doctoral student. She completed her Masters thesis research on exploring the policy of congestion pricing for Mexico City to control the rapid growth in private car ownership and use. One of the most serious causes of the city’s bad air quality is the pollution from motor vehicles. Anjali is now extending that study to assess the impacts of congestion pricing on low and middleincome car owners not only in Mexico City, but in comparison with three other Latin American cities - Sao Paulo, Santiago de Chile, and Bogotá.
Congratulations Janet Martinez! Janet Martinez, currently a Lecturer at the Stanford Law School, completed her DUSP dissertation defense on September 9, 2004. Her dissertation committee included Professor Kenneth Oye from Political Science at MIT, Professor Joseph Weiler from New York University Law School, and was headed by Professor Larry Susskind at MIT. The title of the dissertation is: International Dispute Settlement System Design: Analysis of the World Trade Organization. Jan looked at the way the World Trade Organization handles disputes over global policy as well as trade disputes between and among member countries. She proposed a number of very important reforms in the WTO’s dispute handling system and offered them as a more general examination of the prevailing theory of dispute systems design.
Cover Photo: Patrick Zephyr
www.patrickzephyrphoto.com This beautiful photograph was taken right here in Massachusetts. This is a view of Sunderland, MA from Mount Sugarloaf.
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“Exporting” Public Dispute Resolution to Japan by Masahiro Matsuura* There seems to be a growing interest around the world in learning from the experience of public participation and dispute resolution in the US. In Japan, which is my country of origin, both public officials and researchers are highly interested in public dispute resolution processes that have been practiced in the US for more than thirty years. Last summer, I organized a two-day seminar on consensus building techniques in Takamatsu, in cooperation with PI-Forum (not-forprofit) and the Japan Society of Civil Engineers. Twenty entrepreneurial consultants and junior scholars attended the seminar to learn theories of negotiation and dispute resolution and to practice participatory process design. With a grant from the Matsushita International Foundation, I will prepare a qualitative evaluation of the seminar in 2005 with help of scholars at University of Tokushima. Following the seminar, a field office of the national government in Tokushima has been working with several notfor-profit organizations to embark on a fieldbased trial. I am working with local officials, practitioners, and scholars to conduct conflict assessment and organize a stakeholder dialogue. Central government agencies in Tokyo are also interested in learning from the experience of public dispute resolution in the US. In
November, three delegates from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport came to meet Professor Susskind to further their understanding of the process, particularly the relationship between public involvement requirements and ad-hoc public dispute resolution processes. Those lessons by Japanese entrepreneurs will eventually be crystallized into various institutions for public dispute resolution in Japan. For those institutions to be sustainable, however, they should fit with various Japanese contexts, including its culture of interaction, organizational structures of stakeholding groups, and formal decisionmaking procedures. On the other hand, new institutions may change the way people perceive legitimacy and democracy of policymaking processes. Professor Susskind and I, with number of practitioners and scholars in the US and Japan including University of Tokyo, are currently organizing an exciting research project called “US/Japan Public Disputes Project.” Through interviews and field-based trials of new approaches, we will explore the adaptation of public dispute resolution processes in Japan, using the framework of structuration. For more information, please visit http://www.usjpdp.org/. *Masahiro Matsuura (masam@mit.edu) is a Ph.D. candidate at Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For more information about Masa, please visit http:// www.mmatsuura.com/. Photo: Kazuyuki Komatsu (PI-Forum)
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To Contact Our Faculty
Lavea Brachman Visiting Lecturer brachman@mit.edu
Jennie C. Stephens Visiting Lecturer jennie_stephens@harvard.edu
JoAnn Carmin Assistant Professor of Environmental Policy jcarmin@mit.edu
Lawrence Susskind Ford Professor of Urban Studies and Planning EPG Head susskind@mit.edu
Herman Karl MIT-USGS Science Impact Collaborative Co-Director hkarl@mit.edu
Terry Szold Adjunct Associate Professor of Land Use Planning tsszold@mit.edu
David Laws Research Scientist, Lecturer dlaws@mit.edu
David Wirth Visiting Professor of Law wirthd@mit.edu
Judith Layzer Assistant Professor of Environmental Policy jlayzer@mit.edu
Lyssia Lamb-MacDonald EPG Administrator lyssia@mit.edu
Anne Whiston Spirn Professor of Landscape Architecture and Planning spirn@mit.edu
Environmental Policy Group Department of Urban Studies and Planning, MIT 77 Massachsetts Ave., 9-312 Cambridge, MA 02193 Fax 617.253.7402 Phone 617.253.1509
web.mit.edu/dusp/EPG/