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Environmental Policyand

Political Geography

Domestic Environmental Issues

• Strip mining and mountaintop removal• Water rights and distribution• Fisheries management• Waste disposal: urban oceanic nuclear• Waste disposal: urban, oceanic, nuclear• Wetlands designation and management• Offshore drilling leases• ANWAR• Cap and trade• How should public lands (BLM, NFS) be used?• Is the E.P.A. necessary?

Strip Mining Diagram

Mountaintop Removal, WV

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Mountaintop Removal, Appalachia In 1984 the NY/NJ Bight was named “The Ocean Dumping Capital of the World”

New York City sludge boat Corporate farm animal waste being dumped at sea

Ocean dumping comes ashore

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Yucca Mountain, NevadaProspective U.S. Nuclear Waste Repository

Workers riding tramway inYucca Mountain access tunnel

A wetland is an area of land whose soil is saturated by water seasonally or year-round. Standing water may also characterize the area in whole or part.

Because they are so ecologically diverse and provide prime habitat for many species – including those officially designated as endangered wetlands may beofficially designated as endangered – wetlands may be protected by state and federal laws or official decree.

Controversy results when private property is officially designated as wetland, which deprives owners of the freedom to use their lands as they wish.

Everglades National Park Big Cypress National Preserve, FL

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Okefenokee Swamp N.W.R. The Prairie Pothole Region

Prairie potholes A Prairie pothole

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Alaska’s oil fields

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Caribou HerdArctic National Wildlife Refuge

Caribou, Pipeline and Oil Rig

Cap and Trade: an approach to controlling pollution by means of economic incentives

• A branch of government sets a limit (or cap) on the amount of a pollutant firms may emit.

• The limit is allocated or sold to firms in the form of emission permits, which represent their right to discharge a certain amount of a pollutant.

• Firms are required to hold “permits to pollute” thatFirms are required to hold permits to pollute that cannot exceed their cap – and are heavily fined if they do.

• Firms that need more permits must buy them from other firms that do not need more permits.

• The transfer of permits is a trade, which profits a firm that has reduced pollution.

• Theoretically, this leads to a lowering of pollution.

One goal of emissions

trading is to make coalmake coal plants less competitive than others.A coal-based

power plantIn Germany

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International Environmental Issues

• Geographic differences in environmental law

• Geographic differences in enforcement Geog ap c d e e ces e o ce e tof environmental law

• Trans-boundary resource management• Trans-boundary pollution• Global warming

Pacific Salmon migration routesThe 1985 Canadian – U.S.

Pacific Salmon Treaty• Concerns fisheries management related to several

species of salmon, which are extremely important to the region’s provincial and state economies, and to the cultural heritage of native peoples.

• Different migratory patterns often result in Canada-Different migratory patterns often result in Canadabound salmon traveling through U.S. waters where they can be “intercepted” before reaching Canadian waters, and vice versa.

• Also involves trans-boundary rivers, like the Yukon.• Establishes an international commission that makes

recommendations aimed at equitable use of the fishery.

Columbia River watershed Yukon River

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The Northwest

Atlantic Fisheries

Organization(NAFO)

ConventionArea

The Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO)

• An international organization that seeks to allocate and regulate the annual catch of several species of fish in the NW Atlantic so as to guarantee their long-term viability.

• Has the power to recommend a moratorium on the l h t f i di id l i d l iti iannual harvest of individual species and legitimize

enforcement if need be.• Requires that fishing vessels accurately record and

communicate their catches.• Resulted in the 1995 “Turbot War,” which followed

the boarding in international waters of a Spanish trawler and arrest of its crew (charged with over-fishing a variety of halibut) by a Canadian warship.

The Grand Banks (of Newfoundland)

• Extensive continental shelf (underwater plateaus) south and southeast of Newfoundland.O f th ld’ t• One of the world’s most productive fisheries, now threatened by over-fishing.

• Juxtaposition of two very different marine ecosystems and associated upwelling.

Fishing Trawlers, New Bedford, MA

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The effect of acid rain on a forest in Eastern Canada

Major global centers ofAcid Deposition

Acid Deposition and Soil Quality

Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air pollution

passed in 1979 by the UN Economic Commission for Europe

Kyoto Protocol participation as of 2009

Green = signed and ratified the treatyGrey = not yet decided

Blue = Ratification rejected

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Population Policiesand

Political Geography

• Internal migration• International migration• Land tenure

Internal Migration

• To populate sparsely populated areas (Amazonia)

• To relieve population pressure (Java and Kalimantan)and Kalimantan)

• To dilute and pacify the population of an annexed area (South Tirol)

• To displace a population (Native Americans, Trail of Tears, Darfur)

Trans-Amazon Highway Indonesia population density

Trail of Tears International Migrations

• Expulsions• Partitions• Gastarbeiters – foreigners admitted on

k itwork permits• Immigration policy (promotion and

exclusion)• Expatriots and returnees• Refugees

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The Partition of British India

• Involved the relocation of as many as 12.5 million people.

• Sporadic violence claimed the lives of many migrants Estimates range frommany migrants. Estimates range from several hundred thousand to a million.

• The violent nature of the partition helped create tense relations between Pakistan and India that have endured.

Partition of British India

intoIndia and

Pakistan (East (and West)

- - -Effective

15 Aug. 1947

Scenes from the partition of India Refugee Camp in Darfur