Environmental Policy Sustainability And Welfare

This comprehensive and accessible textbook addresses important relationships between economics and environmental policy, highlighting in particular the role of taxation. It also connects environmental policy to social accounting by describing how measures of welfare and sustainable development depend on whether policies successfully internalize market failures.

Welfare is commonly conceptualized in socio-economic terms of equity, highlighting distributive issues within growing economies. While GDP, income growth and rising material standards of living are normally not questioned as priorities in welfare theories and policy making, there is growing evidence that Western welfare standards are not generalizable to the rest of the planet if environmental concerns, such as resource depletion or climate change, are considered. Sustainability and the Political Economy of Welfare raises the issue of what is required to make welfare societies ecologically sustainable. Consisting of three parts, this book regards the current financial, economic and political crisis in welfare state institutions and addresses methodological, theoretical and wider conceptual issues in integrating sustainability. Furthermore, this text is concerned with the main institutional obstacles to the achievement of sustainable welfare and wellbeing, and how these may feasibly be overcome. How can researchers assist policymakers in promoting synergy between economic, social and environmental policies conducive to globally sustainable welfare systems? Co-authored by a variety of cross-disciplinary contributors, a diversity of research perspectives and methods is reflected in a unique mixture of conceptual chapters, historical analysis of different societal sectors, and case studies of several EU countries, China and the US. This book is well suited for those who are interested in and study welfare, ecological economics and political economy.

Authoritative and trusted, Environmental Policy once again brings together top scholars to evaluate the changes and continuities in American environmental policy since the late 1960s and their implications for the twenty-first century. Students will learn to decipher the underlying trends, institutional constraints, and policy dilemmas that shape today’s environmental politics. The Eleventh Edition examines how policy has changed within federal institutions and state and local governments, as well as how environmental governance affects private sector policies and practices. There are five new chapters in this edition that examine the public’s opinion on the environment, courts, energy policy, natural resource agencies and policies, and the political economy of green growth. The book has been updated to reflect the Trump administration′s four years of policy changes and students will walk away with a measured, yet hopeful evaluation of the future challenges that policymakers will confront as the American environmental movement continues to affect the political process.

"Tony Fitzpatrick has assembled a very thoughtful collection of chapters which examine the various ways in which social and environmental concerns intersect with one another. At a very general level, sustainability offers a neat and tidy way to reconcile them. But as this book, sustainability offers neat and tidy way to reconcile them. But as this book usefully revels, in practice they interact in ways that are far from straightforward. "Professor Andrew Jordan, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia "The intersection of social policy and environmental policy is strategically and morally vital yet has remained a strangely neglected area. No longer. This comprehensive book covers real world challenges, sustainable ethics, a host of applied policy issues, and some bigger questions about the possibility of a green welfare state." Ian Gough, Emeritus Professor, University of Bath Environmental issues are central to the social and political reforms of the 21st century. Bringing together leading experts, this textbook explorers the social, political, economic and moral challenges that environmental problems pose for social policy in a global context. Combining theory and practice with an interdisciplinary approach, the book reviews the current strategies and provides a critique of proposed future developments. Understanding the environment and social policy guides the reader through the subject in an accessible way using chapter summaries, further reading, recommended websites, a glossary and questions for discussion. Providing a much-needed overview of environmentalism and social policy, the book will be invaluable reading for students, teachers, activits, practitioners and policy markers.

An exploration of contemporary environmental policy. It examines key issues and proposes strategies for environmental problems in the 21st century, and argues that current human activities are not sustainable. It calls for a fundamental change in the way that the environment is perceived.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. It is free to read, download and share on Elgaronline.com. This seminal book addresses the critical and urgent question of ‘what makes welfare states sustainable?’ in the era of climate change. Expert authors challenge traditional perspectives on questions of sustainability which have focused on population ageing, global economic turbulence and on containing current and future public social spending.

​ ​This book argues that social and environmental policy should be synthetically treated as one and the same field, that both are but two aspects of the same coin – if sustainability is the goal. Such a paradigm shift is indicated, important, and timely to effectively move towards sustainability. This book is the first to take this approach and to give examples for it. Not to synthetically merge the two fields has been and will continue to be highly insufficient, inefficient and contradictory for policy and public administration aiming for a transformation towards a sustainable world. In general, social problems are dealt with in one “policy corner” and environmental problems in another. Rarely is social policy (at large) concerned with its impact on the environment or its connection with and relevance to environmental policy. Equally, environmental problems are generally not seen in conjunction with social policy, even though much environmental policy directly relates to health, nutrition, migration and other issues addressed by social policy. This book intends to correct the pattern to separate these very significant and large policy fields. Using examples from diverse academic and applied fields, it is shown how environmental policy can (and should) be thought of as social policy – and how social policy can (and should) simultaneously be seen as environmental policy. Tremendous benefits are to be expected.

Social policies of the future will have to be Green. As environmental problems multiply, and as welfare reform becomes more vital, so the debate concerning ecological social policies grows in importance. Yet what has been missing is a comprehensive review of the main questions, problems and themes that brings together the principal contributors to this debate. Environment and Welfare provides that review and so will be essential reading for all those interested in the welfare policies of the future.