Environmental policy and the pursuit of just sustainability (Conclusion)

in: Chelsea Schelly / Aparajita Banerjee (eds.), Environmental Policy and the Pursuit of Sustainability, London: Routledge

ISBN: 978-1-315-09999-6
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315099996
Information

This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book explores empirical examples of how policy decision-making is navigated and executed and the implications of the decision-making choices for humans and their environments. It demonstrates that non-point source pollution is a geographically deviant environmental issue, as pollution sources cannot easily be pinpointed to a single source but can have widespread impacts across watersheds. The book provides a real life example of the complexities of managing water systems across geographical scales, geopolitical jurisdictions, and the uncertainties of long term change over temporal scales not typically addressed in traditional policymaking. It shows that federal government powers are an essential consideration in the geographical and geopolitical complexities of enacting environmental policy. The book deals with issues of social justice, specifically how distributions of socio-political power shape access to resources that are intended to benefit individual health, global climate health and its well being.