Administering the environment
Environmental policy and administration, by Daniel H. Henning. American Elsevier Publishing Co., New York, London and Amsterdam, 1974. Dfl.34.50 (about US$13.30).
This is not the book we were all waiting for. That book has yet to be written. Professor Henning has tried and failed. But it is a gallant failure, and many readers, including general readers with an interest in environmental affairs, as well as students and teachers, are going to be grateful to him.
"The field of environmental policy and administration," states the author, who is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Montana in the United States, "is a relatively new one, emerging in the 1960s: thus, it lacks a body of theory and knowledge. It is my hope that the present volume will supply some of this much-needed theory and knowledge."
How does the author set about his task? In the first chapter he sets out various considerations (including natural resource characteristics and American cultural factors) which he believes "apply uniquely to the environmental administration," and briefly compares and contrasts the present environmentalist movement with the earlier conservation movement. Chapter 2 deals with environmental policy and politics, and is addressed to the value and power context, general policy, multiple use, pressure groups, environmental law, and public land policy. The following chapter describes and comments on the environmental administration, while Chapter 4 discusses problems of environmental personnel.
The next two chapters are devoted to natural resources policy areas: forest and range, water, wildlife, soil, minerals and recreation. Next comes a chapter on pollution control policy areas: disposal of solid and other wastes, air quality, pesticide use, noise abatement, water quality. The author then turns, in Chapter 8, to urban and regional environmental policy, and in Chapter 9 to interdisciplinary environmental administration. A short epilogue, offering some general comments and observations, winds up the book.
This condensed summary of contents indicates the scope of the book. The cases cited and the issues discussed all relate to the American scene, but this does not diminish the book's interest for the non-American reader. The political and administrative jungle in environmental affairs - the author notes that in the United States, on the federal level alone, more than 150 agencies handle over a thousand different programmes - is scarcely less chaotic in other industrialized countries, and the issues which arise are very similar.
A "body of much-needed knowledge" Professor Henning has provided: not so much in the facts adduced in the text as in the ample and wide-ranging references at the end of each chapter, and in a first-rate selected bibliography of the American literature which accompanies the text.
What about the "body of much-needed theory"?
Professor Lynton Caldwell, in his foreword, remarks on the scarcity of singly authored books on environmental politics and administration as compared with the numerous anthologies which exist, adding: "Many of these anthologies were and are very useful but they do not easily provide the coherent view of the subject matter that a book by a single author can provide."
But the reader will search in vain for that "coherent view of the subject matter," for the "body of much-needed theory." What he will find instead is, in nearly every chapter, a potted anthology of views and theories. To give an example, taken at random, in the short four-page subsection of Chapter 2, which deals with the "value and power context," we have, seriatim:
"Phillip Abelson notes..."
"Gordon Allport considers ..."
33 lines quoted from Aldo Leopold.
"David Hume, an eighteenth century Scots empiricist, noted ..."
"Simon, Smithburg and Thompson also note ..."
"Howard Lasswell considers ..."
"Madison said ..."
"According to Norman Wengert ..."
"Livingston and Thompson note ..."
' Griffith describes..."
"According to Griffith ..."
But what does Professor Henning think? We are left in doubt. Since all these quotations and summarized views are presented without critical comment, one might assume that he endorses them all: that he prefers to speak with other men's voices. But many of these views, on close examination, are seen to be in conflict.
Now this treatment is stimulating, even fascinating. It is certainly excellent stuff for the perceptive teacher, whose students will have fun tracking down to source and critically evaluating some of these views and theories. But it does not give us the "coherent view." One is left with the impression that Professor Henning has shopped prodigally in the supermarket of ideas, but having once got them home he has left them all out on the kitchen table and neglected to bake the cake.
Other reproaches can justly be levelled at the author. One of his conclusions - harsh, but doubtless warranted - is that currently, in the United States, "many resource agencies are subscribing to an ecological approach. In reality, however, this orientation is largely confined to superficial treatment and short-range planning. When serious decisions are to be made through the political and administrative process, old values and the vested interests of agencies and clientele groups usually assume paramount importance." In the text, the U.S. Forest Service, and the wider forestry profession in the United States, appear to come in for more than their fair share of strictures. Yet there are ample references in the text which suggest that, in pursuing his researches over the last few years, the author received greater cooperation, more complete information, and more open, frank, even self-critical, expressions of views from various ranks in the Forest Service than from most other agencies. Some readers may consider it a trifle unsporting to concentrate fire on those who have been most generous in providing ammunition against themselves.
The author is rightly critical of the concentration of professional schools on technoscientific competency, with little attention directed toward education in areas of values, people and environment. He is not, of course, alone in this. The issue has been at the centre of debate in United States forestry schools throughout the last decade, and substantial changes (which both he and I would regard as advances) have already come about, though there is still a long way to go. It is therefore a pity that the only curriculum which he sets out in detail, as a typical example of this distortion, is that of the College of Forestry at Syracuse, which he takes from the General Catalog 1963-65 (Syracuse: State University of New York, 1965). But Syracuse today and Syracuse ten years ago are two different things. As most unasylva readers know, the SUNY College of Forestry was some years ago transformed into the College of Environmental Science and Forestry. Nor was this simply a change in nomenclature; it was accompanied by significant changes in curriculum. Moreover, Syracuse is not the only United States forestry college to have responded to the winds of change.
In his discussions of environmental personnel, of the conflict between specialists and generalists, of the problems of the interdisciplinary approach, Professor Henning never addresses himself to the fundamental question of why knowledge is fragmented. This is why, though he recognizes that the intellectual polymath is extinct, he has little that is new to tell us about how to get back to the holistic approach. Like many other writers in this field, he succumbs from time to time to the temptation to use the word "ecological" when what he really means is awareness of the inter-relatedness of phenomena, of the inter-penetrating of disciplines. Indeed, some passages of his book give the impression that he secretly regards ecology as the hegemonic discipline, with the ecologist as the only true integrator and synthesizer. But, of course, ecologists are no less immune than masters of other disciplines from technoscientific bias.
The principal virtue of this book is that it sorts out the main issues into manageable categories, and points to sources which the interested reader may follow up himself. This alone makes the book very well worth while. Moreover, Professor Henning is plainly on the side of the angels. Perhaps in his next book he will be more forthcoming in identifying the devils. Meanwhile, I have no hesitation in commending this book and concurring in Lynton Caldwell's judgement that it "enriches a field of study in which no single work can be expected to be definitive."
Jack C. Westoby
Greve in Chianti, Italy
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