1.3 Structuring “the” environment: Policy Fields

Any comparative analysis of political issues needs some sort of structuring, “clustering” of the issues discussed. National environmental policy plans, for example, normally have a list of “themes”, “issues” etc. that serves to distinguish e.g. between global issues like the greenhouse effect and local ones such as noise or waste. Typically, such lists have between 5 and 20 items (when designing the Pressure Indices list, we looked at a variety of international and national lists and found an average number of 9.6 items).

One of the most important tasks of such lists is to allow comparisons and relative assessments of environmental problem fields. In the following paragraphs, some rules for constructing such lists will be formulated.

First, the items of the list should not show a direct cause-effect relationship (for example, "economic growth" as such is not an environmental problem - its consequences however will appear in the list).

Third, the list should include only environmental problems: where there is no problem, there is no need for political action. A description of "neutral" phenomena, e.g. land use or forestry statistics, may serve a variety of planning purposes, but will not be a priority for environmental policy. This definition is not always clear. Problems arise usually when the causer of a problem does not bear the costs. Example I: The European farmer owns his land and will take care of it, the Sahel zone farmer moves every year to a new place. Accordingly, we have a very serious soil and desertification problem in the Sahel zone, but not in Europe. Example II: Smoking causes more early deaths than the whole set of environmental problems. It is an environmental phenomenon (we breathe smoke, we breathe smog), it is certainly a serious problem, but most people would agree that smoking is not an environmental problem, simply because “victim” and “polluter” are the same person.

1.3.1.1 Classification by media: air, water, soil

Although this criterion is very simple and plausible (and still widely used), it seems to be a bit obsolete. Most experts would agree that the media classification alone cannot give an adequate description of the problem pressures. Putting Climate Change, Ozone Depletion, Air Pollution and Urban Air Pollution all under the heading Air Problems simply does not reflect the important differences between these problems. For example, the Dispersion of Toxic Substances affects air, water and soil, but a major part of the problem also arises from the in-house use of chemicals or their use in the working environment.

1.3.1.2 Classification by source of the problems

One could imagine a classification by economic sectors which cause problems, e.g. energy, agriculture, transport, industry, tourism, waste management (the “target sectors” of the Fifth Environmental Action Programme). However, this would lead to serious analytical difficulties, since most of the commonly described problems, e.g. Climate Change, Resource Depletion , are obviously caused by several sectors. An evaluation of policy priorities based on economic efficiency considerations would be impossible with a purely sectoral approach (on the other hand, all approaches starting from the side of the environmental effects and impacts lead immediately to the question "who caused these effects?", thus automatically including the sectoral aspects).

1.3.1.3 Classification by toxicity of emissions

CO₂ is a harmless gas - we could breathe concentrations a hundred times higher than the actual atmospheric level. On the other hand, one gramm of Plutonium can cause lung cancer for a million people. Many problem lists take implicitly care of these differences. The Eurostat list, for example, sees Waste and Dispersion of Toxic Substances as separate problems, although hazardous waste may be a major cause for the dissipation of chemicals. Most lists keep Climate Change and Air Pollution separate, but put NO _x, SO ₂, VOC etc. in one group, indicating the similar degree of toxicity of these substances.

1.3.1.4 Classification by type of political instruments

Whereas some types of problems are accessible with Command-and-Control policy (e.g. Dispersion of Toxic Substances , Noise), partly on a global level ( Ozone Layer Depletion ), others require economic incentives ( Loss of Biodiversity, Climate Change ) or moral suasion (separate waste collection). For politicians, this criterion becomes increasingly important.

1.3.1.5 Classification by type of experts and institutions involved

The analysis and the handling of environmental problems are often dominated by certain groups of experts. Water pollution is the domain of chemists, Waste is handled by engineers, Loss of biodiversity is the sphere of biologists and philosophers, Climate Change is particularly interesting for political scientists and sociologists (since the economists reached long ago a consensus about the type of instrument needed to solve that problem).

Whereas "ordinary" air and water pollution are in the hands of the environment ministry, Climate Change will often be a major concern for the economic affairs department (those dealing with competitivity questions). Biodiversity will sometimes be dealt with in the agricultural ministry. Since environmental data often come from the administration (e.g. the Commission's environment directorate DG XI, environmental ministries), the process of data collection can also be simplified by keeping administrative units together.

1.3.1.6 Classification by regional level

There are global, regional, national and local problems. This classification reflects at the same time a decreasing level of externality and therefore a decreasing need for political intervention. The hotel owner will clean his beach without needing orders from Brussels, but he will not install solar heating, because he does not bear the full external cost of his CO ₂ emissions. This criterion is partly included in the classifications “by instrument” and “by institution”. A good reason to have a close look at the regional dimension is the difference in perception between experts (focus on global problems) and general population (focus on noise & odours and other local problems, although partly also on global issues).

1.3.1.7 Classification by time horizon

Some problems reveal their importance immediately, e.g. Noise & Odours. Others are caused today but will cause headaches to our children and grandchildren. This has important effects e.g. on economic evaluation (discounting rate), political resistances (lack of information and imagination) and the type of societal response to the problem.

1.3.1.8 Classification by reversibility

Some problems are reversible ( Noise, Air Pollution, Depletion of Renewable Resources ), others are not ( Climate Change , Loss of Biodiversity , Depletion of Mineral Resources ). Similar to the criterion of time horizon, this has implications for the societal evaluation and response.

1.3.2 For better communication: natural or political science clustering?

Last but not least, the indicator developers must decide whether they want primarily to provide a tool to experts (in particular natural scientists), or to the policy-makers and the general public. Air Pollution , for example, is a term that most experts would wish to replace with something more specific (more “technical”) like “tropospheric ozone precursors”, “acidification” or “dispersion of particles”. The advantage would be that experts would know immediately what is meant, without needing further definitions; the disadvantage that neither policy-makers nor the public would understand it.

Any indicator system that is intended to communicate trends to non-experts must use the public’s language, that is, words that have been coined by environmental journalists to make complicated things more digestable. Natural scientists will bitterly complain about such simplifications, but will still be able to work with Air Pollution , especially if there is a precise underlying definition and a sufficient number of indicators covering the various aspects of Air Pollution . However, a person who has studied economics or law (typical profile of the kind of people who decide on budget allocations for environmental purposes...), and who really wants to understand the consequences of various political options with the help of objective indicators, needs to be informed in a non-expert language.

1.3.3 The 5th Environmental Action Programme and the policy field list used for the PIP

In the context of the Pressure Indices Project, a list of ten policy fields was developed on the basis of the “themes” of the Fifth Environmental Action Programme (in front the two-character abbreviation used in this handbook):

AP	Air Pollution	RD	Resource Depletion
CC	Climate Change	TX	Dispersion of Toxic Substances
LB	Loss of Biodiversity	UP	Urban Environmental Problems
ME	Marine Environment & Coastal Zones	WA	Waste
OD	Ozone Layer Depletion	WP	Water Pollution & Water Resources

“Policy fields” are clusters which serve to summarize and structure the debates between the actors of environmental policy. Common elements can be similar impacts (LB, OD, CC, WP, RD), geographical areas affected (UP, ME), orders of magnitude of toxicity of emissions (TX : AP : CC+OD), common political management (WA, TX, LB). These clusters have developed historically. The “themes” of the Fifth Environmental Action Programme, on which the policy fields used in the Pressure Indices project are based, give a fairly realistic representation of the EU’s environmental policy structure.

For each of these ten policy fields, a set of five to ten indicators is to be developed. The graph demonstrates that this will not be an easy task, given obvious overlaps and linkages between the policy fields, for example:

- Air Pollution is a “traditional” policy field, typically encompassing pollutants such as NO _x, SO ₂, particles and VOCs. However, these pollutants can also be seen as specific problems of urban environments , or as active substances influencing Ozone Layer Depletion ; and toxicologists may wish to include particles and VOCs in “their” policy field.

- Waste is an independent policy field, but many aspects can be treated as typically Urban Problems (waste management, planning of treatment capacities etc.), under Dispersion of Toxic Substances (hazardous waste), Water Pollution & Water Resources (leaching from landfills to groundwater), or even Loss of Biodiversity (area required by landfills).

- Marine Environment & Coastal Zones may overlap with Loss of Biodiversity (e.g. endangered coral reefs), and major threats to the sea come from inland Water Pollution . However, the public debate sees it as a separate domain, and usually the experts dealing with marine problems have a different background than those concerned with terrestrial biodiversity or water pollution.

- Resource Depletion is perhaps at the roots of environmental history. The first Club of Rome report “Limits to Growth” highlighted the economic risks of using up the fossil fuel reserves (nowadays seen more often as a threat to the global climate). Today, parts of the scientific community see biodiversity as an economic resource, and the focus of the debate has shifted from fossil fuels and other sub-soil assets towards renewable resources, including also groundwater resources (which are claimed by the experts for the policy field Water Pollution & Water Resources , of course).

The list of ten policy fields used by the Commission is a compromise which tries to reflect as closely as possible the clusters of the societal debate, and to be useful to the majority of participants in this debate in all 15 Member States of the European Union. With minor modifications (e.g. the split of Climate Change into a “greenhouse” and an “ozone” part), the Fifth Environmental Action Programme has been taken as the basis for this list, in order to allow a direct link of the Pressure Indices to European policy.