Sustainable Business Development: Inventing the Future through Strategy, Innovation, and Leadership. David L. Rainey. 2006. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 734 pp. $85.00 hardcover.

In the introduction to Sustainable Business Development, the author states that sustainable outcomes result from “profound changes in strategic thinking, leadership, and management,” which essentially result from enterprise thinking, visionary leadership, strategic thinking, and product and technological innovation. The book's philosophy is to show how corporations can use these qualities to support their sustainable business development and sustainable progress.

Environmental Citizenship. Andrew Dobson and Derek Bell, eds. 2006. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. 296 pp. $125.00 hardcover; $24.00 paperback.

Citizenship and the Environment. Andrew Dobson. 2003. Oxford University Press, New York. 227 pp. $119.95 hardcover; $39.95 paperback.

Western political culture has proven itself to be remarkably durable. Despite the vicissitudes of the last twenty-five hundred years, many of its core beliefs and philosophical assumptions are still intact and continue to exert considerable influence on our contemporary political discourse. Perhaps the most venerable political construct to have survived from classical antiquity is the concept of citizenship. The ancient Greeks believed that the good life could only be achieved by the direct and active participation of the individual in the public sphere. That the Greeks explicitly privileged the public space of politics over the private space of the home is made clear by their use of the term “idiot” to characterize people who did not participate in the affairs of the political community or polis.

Public participation in natural resource management has been described as paradoxical: citizens want the best science to guide natural resource management decisions, but not to the exclusion of their input; agencies want meaningful citizen involvement in their management decisions, but they also want citizens to trust their scientific expertise. As a result, many studies have focused on developing criteria for designing successful participatory processes. Rather than definitive guidelines, however, studies to date typically indicate broad rules of thumb, which may differ in situation-specific application depending on political and historical context. These observations suggest the need to identify contextual elements that influence the varying success of participatory process designs. One such element is the degree of understanding, or coorientation, between stakeholders and managers. This article expands the concept of coorientation to “coorientation contexts” to describe the real and/or incorrectly perceived barriers and opportunities for communication between natural resource managers and stakeholders. Examining participation philosophies and corresponding techniques reveals that certain types of communication are better suited to certain coorientation contexts. Tailoring participation strategies to the appropriate coorientation context throughout the evolution of public issues, i.e., “matching the forum to the fuss,” may ultimately result in more informed, equitable, and sustainable management decisions. Future empirical testing of this approach may improve natural resource managers' abilities to navigate successfully the paradox of public involvement in natural resource management.

Environmental Practice 9:195–205 (2007)

Uncertainty Underground: Yucca Mountain and the Nation's High-Level Nuclear Waste. A. M. Macfarlane and R. C. Ewing, eds. 2006. Island Press, Washington, DC. 416 pp. $72 cloth, $29 paperback.

What options exist for the safe and reliable disposal of spent high-level radioactive material? From an engineering viewpoint, reprocessing makes the most sense. If such spent material is reprocessed, which is being done in various parts of the world, the volume of waste can be reduced by 80–90%. Many of the radioisotopes can find beneficial uses, and only the remaining long lived, high energy, lower volume residues need to be addressed as wastes. The benefit, of course, is that substantial volume reduction has occurred, which many believe reduces, yet does not totally eliminate, risk. No matter how attractive this volume reduction and the partial beneficial use option definitely are, reprocessing has become a political football in Washington with no practical policy change in sight. As a result only two disposal options remain: (1) store this spent material on site, where it is likely that such long-term storage was not contemplated and facility capacity becomes taxed, or (2) move the spent material to a central repository for long-term storage. Option #2 is the focus of this book, Uncertainty Underground: Yucca Mountain and the Nation's High-Level Nuclear Waste.

There has been a rapid increase in knowledge regarding the importance of the external environment to our health. Eight characteristics of the outdoor environment (serene, wild, lush, spacious, the common, the pleasure garden, festive/centre, and culture) have been identified as fulfilling recreational needs through a number of environmental psychology studies carried out at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Alnarp, Sweden, between 1995 and 2005. The external environment has become an increasingly decisive factor in people's choices regarding where to live and work; the landscape has become a competitive factor in attempts made by companies and local authorities to attract well-educated, mobile manpower and housing. Knowledge-based companies predominate in the Öresund Region of Sweden and Denmark, which at present has substantial recreational values making it an attractive area in which to live and work. The region's annual population growth is approximately 20,000 to 25,000 inhabitants. The prime ministers of Sweden and Denmark have expressed a common objective that the Öresund Region be one of Europe's cleanest metropolitan regions. The objective of this article is to present methods for implementing the eight characteristics as indicators for impact assessment in planning projects. The article presents case studies of the application of environmental impact assessments in the municipalities of Malmö and Svedala, which are situated in the immediate vicinity of the Öresund Bridge. Development plans are being evaluated through impact assessment. Mitigation and compensation measures are being created to achieve the environmental quality goals defined by the eight characteristics. The case studies referred to in this article are in very early planning phases, either the feasibility or pre-feasibility phase. This article does not present complete investigations of balancing, but discusses some principal ways of defining values and suggests measures for mitigating and compensating for negative impacts on existing values.

Environmental Practice 9:206–217 (2007)

Precautionary Tools for Reshaping Environmental Policy. Nancy J. Myers and Carolyn Raffensperger, eds. 2006. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. 400 pp. $62 cloth, $25 paperback.

It is telling that this otherwise useful and informative overview of the principles and application of the precautionary principle would include a chapter entitled “Answering the Critics.” The problem is that the authors have overlooked the answering of questions raised by their allies and supporters.

Coexisting with Large Carnivores: Lessons from Greater Yellowstone. T. W. Clark, M. B. Rutherford, and D. Casey, eds. 2005. Island Press, Washington, DC. 290 pp. $60.00 hardcover, $30.00 paperback.

Large mammalian predators form a basis for much conservation research for several reasons. As a group, they are land dependent and thus more extinction prone than most other organisms, can frequently serve as both flagship and umbrella species, and they are scary. The last has inspired mythologies from cultures worldwide. For any conservation issue and any species of concern, it is well accepted that science alone, while essential, will not solve the core of the problem. The crux of decline and endangerment lies in species' interactions with humans and thus, solutions will necessarily involve input from the social and policy sciences. Tim Clark has built his professional career on the last point, and it is an important one. Yellowstone National Park itself is a symbol, as are the three large predators that inhabit its vastness: grizzlies (Ursus arctos), wolves (Canis lupus), and cougars (Felis concolor). For some, these species are symbols of a healthy wilderness and an irreplaceable natural heritage; for others, they are symbols of horror and death. To many Americans, they may symbolize both. To an unfortunately large degree, previous federal eradication policies were so successful that the first two of the species are federally listed in all areas except Alaska, and the third (the cougar) is listed in Florida, the only Eastern state with a remnant wild population. Predators color our fears and inspire our hearts, but they also present unique and fascinating issues for conservationists and conservation research.

Environmental Due Diligence: A Professional Handbook. Kenneth S. Tramm and Ernest C. Crosby. 2006. Infinity Publishing, West Conshohocken, PA. 434 pp. $67.95 paperback.

This book is a concise and comprehensive summary of information needed by professionals conducting evaluations to determine whether a location is contaminated and in need of cleanup. Since the USEPA has recently established clarified expectations in the form of its All Appropriate Inquiry Rule (40 CFR Part 312, pursuant to the 2002 Small Business Liability Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act), this book is timely. It is an extremely useful text not just for anyone conducting or seeking to perform this aspect of environmental consulting, but also for those in organizations owning or dealing in real property who use (or should use) the services of environmental professionals. This is because the law places responsibility on many parties for cleaning up contamination, and that responsibility has been interpreted by courts to be strict, joint, and several, and, for the most part, retroactive and perpetual. The only way to manage responsibility for cleanup is to go into commercial property deals with your eyes open—by conducting a thorough pre-purchase evaluation. You either learn that you don't want the property because it will come with a likely cleanup, or you take your chances because one seems unlikely. In the latter case you want to be able to take advantage of the defenses for innocent landowners, or “brownfields” developers, in case you are wrong and it turns out the place is indeed contaminated. These defenses are, with few exceptions, only afforded to those who have conducted such evaluations with “due diligence.”

Earthly Politics: Local and Global in Environmental Governance. Sheila Jasanoff and Marybeth Long Martello, eds. 2004. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. 376 pp. $27 paperback.

Environmental governance today usually involves negotiations—often lengthy and complex—between scientists, policy makers, and other stakeholders such as business leaders and citizens' groups. Although full inclusion and democratic participation in such negotiations is a lofty goal held by many involved, the decisions about who should be included as a stakeholder, and what influence their experience and perspective should be given in comparison to that of scientists, are ultimately political. These decisions are the subjects of Earthly Politics and, as the editors strive to show, they are highly placed-based and variable.

Useless Arithmetic: Why Environmental Scientists Can't Predict the Future. O. H. Pilkey and L. Pilkey-Jarvis. 2007. Columbia University Press, New York. 230 pp. $29.95 paperback.

Humankind has a long history of seeking definitive answers to explain the complex systems operating on our home planet. Our tremendous success in calculating phenomena like atomic behavior and planetary movement has given us a false sense of confidence in our ability to calculate any and all phenomena. Our quest for definitive solutions to perceived problems has generated a sense of “physics envy” and driven many disciplines toward math-based predictive models. Orrin Pilkey and Linda Pilkey-Jarvis thoroughly discuss that our confidence in such models is misplaced. As a result, we are potentially increasing risk from natural hazards and have created a venue for ludicrous policy-based demands, such as certifying safety for tens of thousands of years at the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.

Global Environmental Governance. J. G. Speth and P. M. Haas. 2006. Island Press, Washington, DC. 180 pp. $40 cloth, $19.95 paperback.

In their 2006 text, Global Environmental Governance, James Gustave Speth, Dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and Peter M. Haas, a professor at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst, attempt to deconstruct what they define as the ten major global environmental threats: climate disruption, loss of biodiversity, acid rain, depletion of the ozone layer, deforestation, desertification, shortages of suitable fresh water, the overall decline of the fish population, toxic pollutants, and nitrification. The authors postulate that two “categories of change of enormous consequence for the natural environment” have occurred as a corollary to global economic expansion. The first is the dramatic increase in the consumption of natural resources, and the second is the “exponential” growth of pollution.

What's Toxic, What's Not. Gary Ginsberg and Brian Toal. 2006. Berkley Books, the Penguin Group, New York. 376 pp. $15.00 paperback.

“Get the Facts—and Guard Your Family's Health” … “Everything You Need to Know about: Mold, Lead, Radon, Asbestos, Food Additives, Power Lines, Cancer Clusters, etc.”. Wow! If the descriptors on the covers are to be believed, this is the be-all and end-all of reference books. Yet this is a 376-page paperback with no mathematical or chemical equation in sight, not even an appendix of technical information or tables. In reality, the objective of this text is not to educate the technical specialist per se (although I did pick up a few interesting facts and some information that will be useful in my adult education outreach courses), but instead to cater to the average, non-technical person. It is this latter, target audience that requires factual, solid, non-jargony information presented in a competent, logical, and easy-to-comprehend manner.

Contributors.

Contributors.

The Si'lailo Way: Indians, Salmon and Law on the Columbia River. Joseph C. Dupris, Kathleen S. Hill, and William H. Rodgers, Jr. 2006. Carolina Academic Press, Durham, NC. 450 pp. $40 paperback.

It is impossible to work in the environmental field in the Pacific Northwest without knowing something of salmon: their epic journeys from river to sea and back; the legendary runs of the nineteenth century, before the arrival of dynamite, fish wheels, dams, and hatcheries; the near-symbiotic relationship between the Northwest Indian tribes and the fish that were the backbone of their diet and culture. Those who pay any attention at all to the area's history are aware that serious injustice was done to the native people and fish of the Columbia River. The Si'lailo Way makes that injustice tangible by adding lavishly illustrated characters and a narrative that viscerally connects the reader to the people and places that fell victim to what the authors depict as a 150-year campaign to rid the Columbia of its native human and piscine inhabitants.

Contributors.

Contributors.