Summer Course
Course
title: Comparative Environmental Politics: United States and
Canada.
How do different
societies address environmental problems? Answering this question requires
cross-national comparisons of political institutions, regulatory styles, and
state-society relations. This course relies on the theoretical tools of
comparative politics to analyze different areas of environmental management,
such as protection of natural resources, wilderness preservation, contamination
and transboundary pollution management, global warming, renewable energy, and
sustainability, among others. The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness provides
an ideal location to explore how Canada and the United States address their
environmental challenges at different levels of analysis, from the local to the
international. Students engage in discussions on nature conservation with
members of the local community and take canoe trips to places of key
environmental significance. The course is designed for undergraduate students
with an interest in environmental studies, especially those pursuing
environmental studies majors or minors, but no previous knowledge of political
science is needed. While grounded on a comparative politics methodology, the
course also draws from the natural sciences, economics, history and ethics to
help students develop an interdisciplinary approach to environmental
studies.
Senator Howard Metzenbaum as he looked down at the BWCA
The Boundary
Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCA) was the subject of one of the most heated
environmental debates in recent U.S. history. Between 1975 and 1978, those
advocating mining, logging and motorized use clashed with environmentalists, who
called for the preservation of this area as a wilderness. The BWCA Wilderness
Act of 1978 designated the area as a wilderness, banned mining and logging and
restricted motorized use to only a few entry lakes, but tensions still remain
today. Pressures to open up surrounding areas for mining continue to split the
local community and many still advocate motorized use within the
wilderness.
The conflict
around the BWCA Wilderness illustrates what political ecologists call a
“politicized environment”, or how the environment becomes the site of struggles
over resources. This course
examines environmental politics at various levels, from the global to the local,
taking the BWCA Wilderness as a case study. The wilderness borders Quetico
Provincial Park on the Canadian side of the border. Logging has been banned in
Quetico since 1971 and motorized use restricted to a single lake since 1979. The
proximity and parallel histories of the BWCA Wilderness and Quetico Provincial
Park in Ontario provide a valuable opportunity to develop a comparative approach
to our study of environmental politics. The course compares environmental
politics in the U.S. and Canada and reviews the role of key actors involved in
green politics in both countries, including Congress, the states and local
governments, the party system, and civil society groups, especially native
American communities (known primarily as “first nation peoples” in Canada) and
businesses. This course pays close attention to the differences and similarities
that exist between both countries and explores how they try to reconcile
economic development with environmental protection. This tension is particularly
serious today in the area surrounding the BWCA Wilderness and Quetico Provincial
Park due to the pressure from logging, mining and tourist interests.
This course has
three major goals. The first is to understand the relationship between
development (in its myriad forms) and protection of the environment. By
comparing the United States to Canada we can identify best practices. The second
goal is to prepare the students for environmental activism. The course teaches
them how the main actors further their economic and political interests within
the framework provided by the decision-making institutions in each country. The
third goal is to teach the students to conduct fieldwork by using the BWCA
Wilderness as our laboratory. We interact with some local community leaders as
well as representatives from some of the main interest groups. We also take
canoe trips to visit some of the historical places where the history of the BWCA
Wilderness was written.
The course is
structured along three major areas, policy-process, actors, and themes. First we
compare policy instruments in the U.S. and Canada at the local, state and
federal level, including the role of environmental agencies and the court
system. Then the course focuses on the key actors involved in environmental
policy-making in both countries, especially the role of science and the
scientific community, native American/First Nation communities, businesses and
environmentalists, as well as government. Finally, students analyze the main
environmental themes affecting the BWCA Wilderness and Quetico Provincial Park,
such as wilderness protection, forest, mining and tourist policies, protection
of species, water pollution, pesticides, sustainability and, most importantly
today, climate change. The expiration of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012 will put an
end to the only global binding treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG).
The course ends with an analysis of the impact of climate change on the BWCA
Wilderness and Quetico Provincial Park ecosystems. We study the inability of the
current international political institutions to address global environmental
challenges, focusing on U.S. and Canada’s climate change policies and the role
they play at the international climate change summits.
This course is
particularly useful to students with an interest in environmental studies,
especially those pursuing environmental studies majors or minors, but no
previous knowledge of political science is needed. While grounded on a
comparative politics methodology, the course also draws from the natural
sciences, economics, history and ethics to help students develop an
interdisciplinary approach to environmental studies.
