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The Three Gorges Dam, located 1,200 miles upriver from the Chinese port city of Shanghai, has been described as a modern engineering marvel, a source of clean electricity, and an environmental catastrophe in the making. One of a handful of man-made structures that can be seen from space, the 1.4 mile long dam towers 607 feet over the Yangtze River. The reasons for building the dam are monumental. Flooding along the river routinely kills individuals and displaces communities. Second, the dam is expected to generate one-tenth of the electricity needed for the country, as well as creating better ports further inland. Finally, the dam has been seen as a symbol of the country's "emerging engineering prowess." Yet, these benefits come with human, cultural, and economic costs. Close to 1.5 million people will be displaced by the project; cultural and archaeological sites will be lost to the new reservoir; and the hydrology of the river will be changed. Furthermore, the dam has affected the habitat for the critically endangered Siberian Crane and has lead to the functional extinction of the Baiji, otherwise known as the Yangtze River Dolphin. In this paper, I will conduct a public policy analysis that looks at, among other things, the dynamics of the rural-urban divide, the role of focusing events in the creation of environmental policies, and the problems of bounded rationality and negative externalities. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Civic environmentalism is gaining popularity as a model of second generation environmental policy. With its focus on civic engagement, market-based tools, and private-public partnerships, civic environmentalism has enjoyed some successes at the local, state, and regional levels. Yet, the question remains: Does civic environmentalism work when applied to more complex, large scale environmental problems? This paper applies the civic environmentalism model of environmental governance to the Mississippi River/Gulf of Mexico Task Force?s efforts to control the ?dead zone? located off the coast of Louisiana. I find that civic environmentalism does have its limits when applied to large geographic areas and temporally complex environmental problems. A lack of government funding and various barriers to collective action also play a role. In the end analysis, policy makers must be leery about relying too much on voluntary programs and the tyranny of individual decisions when dealing with the Gulf of Mexico?s dead zone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Each year, more and more college courses are embracing “service-learning” as an educational tool. But does service learning have additional side effects? Is it possible that a service learning project can impact student values as well as the broader knowledge base? More normatively, should we – as educational professionals – be concerned about changing values? This study is part of a pilot project which looks at service learning and its impacts on environmental values. During the first and last weeks of Fall Semester 2003, a survey was administered to students in an environmental politics course at the University of Southern Indiana. Questions drawn from the NEP (New Environmental Paradigm), the GSS (General Social Survey), and an Environmental Values survey were used to develop an environmental attitude measure. Traditional indicators of environmentalism are also controlled for and include age, political party, gender, race, and occupation. This paper will discuss the findings of this research, along with broader implications of value-driven education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does a policy subsystem adapt to conflicting policies? What happens when the negative externalities of distributive policies are in conflict with regulatory policies? Will such conflict trigger subsystem change? These questions are important to our understanding of the "inner life" of policy subsystems. This paper examines the structural changes that occur in a policy subsystem when the negative externalities of distributive policies conflict with the goals of regulatory policies. Set against the backdrop of the Mississippi River watershed, the paper examines the region's navigation and flood policies; the negative externalities of wetland loss in Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico's seasonal "dead zone"; and the regulatory policies that address these externalities. This study is longitudinal in nature with baseline data spanning six decades. Data is complied from congressional hearings, Environmental Impact Statements, and federal court records. I propose that the conflict between distributive policies and regulatory policies leads to an expansion of the policy subsystem, causing the system to mimic an issue network as opposed to the iron triangle model that characterizes the politics of distributive policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Every spring off the coast of Louisiana, a large area of hypoxic water develops in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Oxygen levels in the bottom waters plummet to below two milligrams per liter, making it impossible for most marine species to remain in the area. Similar hypoxic zones have been created in at least 50 other marine areas. Human actions - filling in wetlands, converting forests to cities, using fertilizers in excess and burning fossil fuels have doubled the amount of nitrogen, one of the primary nutrients that can lead to eutrophication and hypoxia, in the atmosphere. This paper serves as a comparative institutional analysis of the Gulf of Mexico and the Baltic Sea regions where two of the earth's largest hypoxic areas are located. The Baltic region has been dealing cooperatively with various aspects of marine pollution since 1974 when the Convention on the Protection of the Marine Environment in the Baltic Sea Area was developed. The international regime created by this convention is considered to be one of the most successful examples of transnational environmental cooperation on record. In the United States, however, public policies dealing with the Gulf's "dead zone" date back to 1998 and have been ineffective in dealing with the problem. This paper focuses on three questions: (1) What policy solutions have been developed to deal with these hypoxic zones? (2) How similar are the policy responses developed to address the transboundary pollution problems in the Baltic Sea and the domestic pollution problems in the Gulf of Mexico? (3) What lessons can the U.S. learn from the Baltic Sea paradigm? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When Hurricane Katrina hit the Louisiana coast on August 29, policy makers were witnesses to the worst-case scenario that had been discussed for decades. With a battered and broken levee system, inoperable pumping stations, and limited protection from the damaged wetlands, New Orleans became a modern American Atlantis. In the aftermath of the two hurricanes, authors and researchers have provided readers with personal narratives about "why New Orleans matters," (Piazza, 2005; James, 2006); have discussed the inadequate response of government officials (Daniels, Kunreuther & Kettl, 2006); and have dissected the politics of race (Dyson, 2005). This project, however, is different. It focuses on the role of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita as focusing events, and then asks a specific research question: How will these focusing events affect the structure of the policy subsystem which deals with coastal wetland restoration? Are new political players introduced into the policy subsystem? Do existing players change strategies? Are new political relationship established? To analyze this question, I have used content analysis to develop a dataset that extends from 1970 through August 2006. The dataset covers four different venues for political action - congressional hearings, bureaucratic and executive reports, court documents, and media reports. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]