Challenges for Environmental Policy Implementation (2021)  

We as Americans continue to face serious social, economic, and environmental challenges.  When we discuss potentials to address these critical challenges, options are often evaluated in terms of their supposed cost/benefit, effectiveness, efficiency, and timeliness.  A combination of rational and moral arguments, as well as emotional and partisan appeals, are presented.  Depending upon the persuasiveness of arguments and appeals, elected or appointed officials endorse or oppose public policy alternatives. Despite a political process that has long been described as akin to sausage making, certain policies and laws are eventually approved and implemented.  Historians and social commentators then speculate on examples of long-term successes and failures in these important policies or laws.    

Our nation confronts diverse environmental and climate challenges.  There will always be advocates and critics for specific environmental policy proposals.  Most of the heated debate, whether coming from the political left or right, has been focused on the selection of more appropriate environmental policies and programs.   

My own concerns extend beyond environmental issue analysis and policy selection though.  As a retired management professor, I’m also very interested in the quality of implementation and the controls or enforcement for whichever policies and programs are selected.  Without adequate controls to monitor and identify actual policy implementation problems, we can’t begin to correct these existing problems or evaluate better policy directions for the future.  Control and enforcement challenges occur beyond just our environmental and climate policies.  We can see similar weaknesses in the monitoring and enforcement of many forms of enacted law or regulation – from taxing to transportation policies.      

The public policy process for enacting our federal, state, and local laws is where deals are struck.  Parties to these deals try to squeeze in preferred amendments or language suitable to their interests.  Legislative representatives of the public who negotiate these laws are lobbied and influenced by diverse and often powerful agents.  Those with “deeper pockets” who are potentially impacted by enacted legal provisions and regulations often have the talent and financial resources to determine how to “get around” the key provisions upon which the law was intended.  There will always be some also who flout laws and regulations with impunity, especially if there is less than effective enforcement and low punishment risks.   

What emerges as actual environmental law or regulation can include provisions that are difficult to implement, monitor and enforce.  Critics can sometimes blame an overall law or policy when its actual weaknesses lie mostly in its implementation, monitoring, or enforcement.  The devil is often in the details of effective policy implementation and controls.  Usually those directly administering or directly impacted by these policies can provide the most realistic feedback information.  Even those direct experiences, though, can lead to judgment biases and only partial insights.  The overall evaluation of our environmental policies and laws is awash, too, with less useful influences.  These certainly include raw inputs derived from very opinionated media sources that provide viewers, listeners, or readers with little other than simple pro or con policy positions.   

Modern societies everywhere depend heavily upon social controls and public acceptance of laws.  These social controls lead much of the public to accept the basic intentions of our laws so that we don’t have enforcement officials spending vast resources and looking over the shoulders of every citizen.  Some people will obviously bend or break laws from time to time and to a limited extent.  Our constitutional and social foundations break down though when a critical mass of the public disobey laws.  Anarchy and later authoritarian responses often result.          

We do have public policy administrators who are attuned to control and enforcement matters.  However, we often don’t have enough dedicated officials and staff to make policy implementation and controls truly effective.  We also can fail to have the appropriate monitoring and enforcement mechanisms to register alarm and communicate just which problems exist.  Controls such as whistleblower protections can be encouraged in theory, but these whistleblowing messages can often be pushed aside, belittled, or ignored. 

President Biden announced his intention soon to appoint an infrastructure chief to implement the recently signed $1.2 trillion package and to prevent fraud.  He appointed Jeff Zients back in March to oversee the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package.   The Biden administration has also placed recent emphasis on anticorruption efforts within federal programs, stating that corruption erodes public trust, deepens economic and political inequality, and degrades the business environment. These anti-corruption approaches are vital to ensure that existing and new programs live up to their potential benefits.   

Part of successful climate policy introduction must be serious attention to implementation, monitoring, and enforcement priorities.   Many individuals, and particularly those with relatively low public profiles, make our world go round.  We learned this during the COVID-19 pandemic in the case of essential workers.  We’re learning this currently with global staffing and supply chain shortages.   

For every czar or top program administrator, we need dozens of conscientious staff members and support personnel to assure high levels of legal and regulatory implementation.  Even if we are smart enough to have these talented individuals where needed, they will never get the attention and respect that they deserve for their critical contributions.