Encyclopedia of Global Resources part 47 doc

See Textiles and fabrics Farmland Category: Ecological resources Agricultural soil able to produce sufficient food and fi-ber to feed and clothe the growing human population is one of t

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der the jurisdiction of the coastal state for specific

purposes The convention, the work of more than

fourteen years of negotiation, is a comprehensive

le-gal document that created an ordered system for the

use of ocean space and for the protection of the

natu-ral resources of the oceans

According to customary use of the seas, the area

be-yond the territorial waters of a state had been

consid-ered “high seas,” open to use by all and under no

na-tion’s jurisdiction The territorial waters had been

generally accepted as extending 4.8 kilometers from

the coast into the sea Then, in the Truman

Proclama-tion of September 28, 1945, the United States claimed

the right to extend its jurisdiction over “conservation

zones” in the high seas contiguous to the U.S coast

Other countries followed, establishing their own zones

and extending their economic jurisdiction into the

high seas Many maritime nations feared that the

tradi-tion of open seas and free navigatradi-tion would end Thus

in 1967 the United Nations General Assembly

estab-lished an ad hoc committee to begin studying peaceful

uses of the seas in preparation for convening the Third

United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea

Provisions

A dispute over coastal rights and claims versus the

freedom of all to use the seas erupted at the first

ses-sion of the conference in Caracas, Venezuela The

cre-ation of an economic zone of protection for a coastal

state’s offshore resources was one of the first

agree-ments negotiated at the conference The EEZ part of

the convention was put together as a smaller part

within the overall package, which was a carefully

nego-tiated compromise document The EEZ extends up to

200 nautical miles from a baseline drawn along the

low-water line of a coast

Impact on Resource Use

Within that zone the coastal state acquires sovereign

economic rights over living and nonliving resources

for the purpose of exploitation, conservation, and

re-source management, including the right to establish

the allowable catch of living resources All other states

retain their rights under the freedom of the seas

con-cept and retain access to the EEZ for the purpose of

exploiting those resources that the coastal state does

not use

Should disagreements arise with respect to the EEZ

area, the convention calls for them to be settled on the

basis of equity, and in the interests of all parties and of

the international community as a whole An interna-tional tribunal is provided for the settlement of dis-putes that may arise regarding the use of ocean space and EEZ resources

Colleen M Driscoll

See also: Fisheries; Law of the sea; Marine mining; Oceans; United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea

Exxon Valdez oil spill

Category: Historical events and movements Date: March 24, 1989

The Exxon Valdez oil spill, in which 42 million liters

of crude oil spilled into Prince William Sound off the Alaskan coast, demonstrated the destructive power of oil It contaminated approximately 2,100 kilometers of pristine shoreline, killing and endangering wildlife Twenty years later, oil was still surfacing in some areas and two species had not recovered, while others still struggled to recover.

Background

At 12:04 a.m on March 24, 1989, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez plowed into Bligh Reef about 161 kilometers

off the coast of Alaska The 301-meter tanker had di-verted course out of the narrow shipping lane to avoid icebergs but hit the reef before turning back on course Of the more than 200 million liters of crude oil it carried, 42 million flowed into Prince William Sound The close proximity to the shore, stormy seas, and high winds all contributed to the contamination

of 322 kilometers of shoreline The slick stretched 740 kilometers, reaching the village of Chignik on the Alaskan Peninsula

Response efforts were delayed and inadequate Lit-tle of the oil was scooped from the waters, because a response barge was out of service Not enough skim-mers and booms designed to contain a spill were avail-able Dispersants used to break up the oil for easier cleanup were not effective, because of weather condi-tions Though the seas calmed in the following days, the oil slick spread, lightly coating another 684 kilome-ters of shoreline In all, an estimated 250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters, 250 bald eagles, 22 killer whales, 300 harbor seals, and billions of fish were killed The

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lapse of the Pacific herring fishery, which devastated

local economies, is blamed on this event

Impact on Resource Use

The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council was

estab-lished to oversee restoration efforts in the sound

Cleanup efforts took six months at a cost of about

$2.1 billion to Exxon Corporation Though no longer

listed as one of the top fifty oil spills in terms of the

amount of oil expelled, this event remains one of the

most devastating oil spills in terms of environmental

impact

This incident established changes in response and

recovery Practice response drills are held in Prince

William Sound twice yearly Seven barges are available

in case of a spill, and 64 kilometers of boom and a

stockpile of dispersants are on hand The U.S Coast

Guard now monitors vessels passing through the

nar-row shipping lane in the sound, and two vessels

ac-company fully laden tankers to offer assistance in

emergencies In addition, Congress enacted a law

re-quiring tankers traveling through Prince William

Sound to be double-hulled The oil industry now uses double- and triple-hulled tankers

Despite the devastation and far-reaching effect of the oil spill, the environment was expected to recover within several years Areas of shoreline that were lightly coated did recover In 1994, five years after the

accident, the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council

compiled an official list of resources and services af-fected by the spill Twenty years after the spill, areas most heavily contaminated still showed oil surfacing from beneath rocks and pebbles Only ten, or one-third, of the resources and services listed are consid-ered “recovconsid-ered.” Recovery of many of these resources and services is dependent on recovery of others Oil spills are no longer considered acute, short-term envi-ronmental threats

Lisa A Wroble

See also: Alaska pipeline; American Petroleum Insti-tute; Bureau of Reclamation, U.S.; Ecology; Ecosys-tems; Oil industry; Oil spills; Organization of Petro-leum Exporting Countries; Species loss

Workers use pressure washers to remove oil from a Smith Island beach in Alaska following the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill (Bob

Hallinen/MCT/Landov)

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Fabrics See Textiles and fabrics

Farmland

Category: Ecological resources

Agricultural soil able to produce sufficient food and

fi-ber to feed and clothe the growing human population is

one of the world’s most important natural resources.

Background Land suitable for agriculture is not evenly distributed throughout the world; it tends to be concentrated in limited areas In order to be considered arable, land must be located in an area with the right combination

of environmental conditions First, the land must be located at the proper elevation and slope Because the soil supplies all the mineral nutrients required for plant growth, it must also have the appropriate fertil-ity, texture, and pH level Approximately 64 percent

of the world’s land has the proper topography, and about 46 percent has satisfactory soil fertility Plants require large amounts of water for pho-tosynthesis and access to soil nutrients; therefore, farmland must have an adequate supply of mois-ture, either as rainfall or as irrigation water About

46 percent of the world’s land has adequate and reliable rainfall Because plant growth is dramati-cally affected by temperature, farmland must be located in areas with growing seasons sufficiently long to sustain the crop from planting to harvest Approximately 83 percent of the world’s land has favorable temperatures Plants also require suffi-cient sunlight and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to support the photosynthetic process nec-essary for growth and development Virtually all the world’s land has adequate sunlight and suffi-cient carbon dioxide to support plant growth Crop production requires the right combination

of all these factors, but only about 7 percent of the world’s land has the proper combination of these factors to make the production of crops feasible without additional technological advances

Farmland in the United States With its temperate climate, the United States de-votes considerably more of its land area to agricul-ture than do many other countries About 45 per-cent of the land in the United States is utilized for various forms of agriculture; however, not all this land is devoted to crop production Only about 20 percent of the land is actual cropland Approxi-mately 4 percent is devoted to woodlands, and the other 21 percent is used for other purposes, such

Farmland, like this field in Wyoming, composes a significant portion of

the American Midwest (©iStockphoto.com)

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as pastures and grasslands Of the farmland devoted

to crop production, only 14 percent is used at any given

time to produce harvestable crops Approximately 21

percent of this harvested cropland is used to produce

food grains for human consumption Another 31

per-cent is used to grow feed grains for feeding livestock,

and the remaining 48 percent of harvested cropland

is devoted to the production of soybeans, oil, seed,

fiber, and miscellaneous crops

Seven major agricultural regions exist in the

United States The dairy region is located in the

North Atlantic states and extends westward past the

Great Lakes and along the Pacific coast The wheat

belt is centered in the central and northern Great

Plains and in the Columbia basin of the Northwest

The general and self-sufficient regions primarily

made up of small, family-owned farms are found

mostly in the eastern highlands region, which

in-cludes the Appalachian Mountains—a few hundred

kilometers inland from the Atlantic Coast—and the

Ozark-Ouachita mountains west of the Mississippi

River The corn and livestock belt is found

through-out the midwestern states The range-livestock region

of the western United States stretches in a band from

800 to 1,600 kilometers wide and extends from the

Ca-nadian border to Mexico The western specialty-crops

area is primarily composed of irrigated land in

seven-teen western states and produces the vast majority of

the nation’s vegetable crops The cotton belt, located

in the southern states (most notably Georgia,

Ala-bama, and Mississippi), contains more counties with

more farmers than any other region While this area

has been known historically for its cotton production,

many other goods—including tobacco, peanuts, truck

crops, livestock, and poultry—are also produced in

the South In addition to these major regions, smaller

farming areas are located throughout the country

To-bacco is produced in localities throughout Kentucky,

Virginia, Tennessee, and North and South Carolina

Apples and other fruits are grown in a variety of places,

including the Middle Atlantic seaboard, around the

Great Lakes, and in the Pacific Northwest Potatoes

are produced in Maine, Minnesota, Idaho, North

Da-kota, and California Citrus is grown in southern

Texas, Florida, and California Sugarcane is grown in

southern Louisiana and Florida

Canada

In addition to the rich farmland of the United States,

good farmland exists in neighboring Canada

Al-though the arable land percentage in Canada is only 4.57, that amount is sufficient to produce large yields

of wheat, barley, oilseeds (including flax and sun-flower), tobacco, fruits, and vegetables Canada also is

a large producer of dairy products from its many dairy farms and seafood products from both Atlantic and Pacific fisheries

Eurasia

On the Eurasian continent, important farmland re-gions are found in the Ukraine, Russia, China, and In-dia Ukraine has one of the largest areas of arable land

in the world, with 53.8 percent of its land total consid-ered suitable for farming However, only 1.5 percent

of the country’s production is in permanent crops, a possible indication that more farming might occur in the country if economic conditions are more stable Ukraine is a large producer of sugar beets, sunflower seeds, vegetables, beef, and milk

Neighboring Russia, which has long been consid-ered one of the world’s “breadbaskets,” grows the same crops as Ukraine, but on only 7.17 percent of its area Some of Russia’s farmland has been lost to devel-opment and desertification as well as rendered unsafe

by excess and improper uses of agricultural pesti-cides

China owes more than 43 percent of its gross do-mestic product to agricultural production and is a leading producer of rice, wheat, potatoes, corn, pea-nuts, and tea Millet, barley, apples, cotton, and oil-seeds are produced in China in smaller amounts but are nevertheless important to the country’s economy China has only 1.27 percent of its land in permanent crops, and 14.86 percent of the country’s land is con-sidered arable However, China is facing a very serious problem in that at least one-fifth of its agricultural land has been lost since the 1950’s, primarily because

of soil erosion and economic development China has therefore passed laws that exact severe penalties for the conversion of farmland to any type of develop-ment in an attempt to conserve remaining agricul-tural lands

India, like Ukraine, has one of the highest propor-tions of arable land in the world, with 48.83 percent of usable farmland in the country Rice, wheat, oilseeds, cotton, jute, tea, sugarcane, potatoes, and livestock are produced on 2.8 percent of land devoted to per-manent agricultural use A rapidly growing popula-tion and severe water pollupopula-tion are two problems detrimental to farming in India

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South America

Brazil is the third largest agricultural producer in the

world behind the United States and the European

Union On approximately 6.93 percent of its total

land area and with less than 1 percent devoted to

per-manent crops, Brazil is number one in the world in

ex-ports of coffee, frozen orange juice, and sugar It is the

world’s second largest producer of soybeans, tobacco,

beef, and poultry Brazil’s problems with habitat

frag-mentation, water pollution, and non-farm

develop-ment plague this important South American nation

in terms of its ability to continue to be a major

agricul-tural producer

Argentina is another important producer of crops

in South America It produces soybeans and cereal

grains, including corn and wheat The country has

been a major producer of beef for many years Cereal

crops and cattle are produced on about 10 percent of

the country’s land area

Farmland Degradation

All of the developed and developing countries

around the world are encountering many of the same

problems involving the loss or degradation of

farm-land Within developed countries the most serious

problems are outright destruction of farmland by

de-velopment Urban, suburban, and residential

devel-opments destroy thousands of hectares of farmland

daily, and unless governments act to preserve

farm-land within their countries, it is unlikely that

agricul-tural production will be able to keep pace with the

ex-ploding world population

In the United States, both the amount of land

de-voted to farming and the number of farmers began

decreasing after 1965 The amount of good farmland

worldwide has also decreased Most of this decrease is

attributed to a combination of urbanization and poor

agricultural methods that have led to loss of topsoil

through water and wind erosion Historically, large

tracts of farmland have been located near major

met-ropolitan areas In recent times, these urban centers

have grown outward into large suburban areas, and

this sprawl has consumed vast areas of farmland

Ero-sion destroys thousands of hectares of farmland every

year, and desertification—the conversion of

produc-tive rangeland, rain-fed cropland, or irrigated

crop-land into desertlike crop-land with a resulting drop in

agri-cultural productivity—has reduced productivity on

more than 80 million hectares since the 1960’s In

many cases, the desertified land is no longer useful as

farmland Because most of the world’s available farm-land is now in production, steps must be taken to pre-serve this valuable resource, or the world could suffer mass food shortages in the future

Degradation of world farmland is occurring at a rapid pace Desertification of formerly fertile areas is taking place on every continent that has farmland Water pollution, from both industrialized areas and agricultural runoff, is a serious concern in most coun-tries In addition to water pollution, the loss of water available for irrigation is affecting many farming ar-eas Global climate change is altering rainfall patterns throughout the world, with some areas receiving too much rainfall and others too little Throughout many parts of the United States, for instance, the water table has fallen drastically, as too much water has been with-drawn for both urban and agricultural uses Govern-ments, whether national or local, must continue to search for reasonable ways to balance water use among competing interests in order for agricultural produc-tion to continue

D R Gossett, updated by Lenela Glass-Godwin

Further Reading

Acquaah, George Principles of Crop Production: Theory, Techniques, and Technology 2d ed Upper Saddle

River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005

Beattie, Bruce R “The Disappearance of Agricultural

Land: Fact or Fiction?” In Agriculture and the Envi-ronment: Searching for Greener Pastures, edited by

Terry L Anderson and Bruce Yandle Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 2001

Caldwell, Wayne, Stew Hilts, and Bronwynne Wilton,

eds Farmland Preservation: Land for Future Genera-tions Guelph, Ont.: Ontario Farmland Trust, 2007 Daniels, Tom, and Deborah Bowers Holding Our Ground: Protecting America’s Farms and Farmland.

Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1997

Fish, Robert, et al Sustainable Farmland Management: New Transdisciplinar y Approaches Cambridge,

Mass.: CABI, 2008

Ho, Peter Institutions in Transition: Land Ownership, Property Rights, and Social Conflict in China New

York: Oxford University Press, 2005

Johnston, Robert J., and Stephen K Swallow Econom-ics and Contemporary Land Use Policy: Development and Conservation at the Rural-Urban Fringe

Washing-ton, D.C.: Resources for the Future, 2006

Kipps, M S Production of Field Crops: A Textbook of Agronomy 6th ed New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970.

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Metcalfe, Darrel S., and Donald M Elkins Crop

Pro-duction: Principles and Practices 4th ed New York:

Macmillan, 1980

Millington, Andrew, and Wendy Jepson, eds Land

Change Science in the Tropics: Changing Agricultural

Landscapes New York: Springer, 2008.

Olson, Richard K., and Thomas A Lyson, eds Under

the Blade: The Conversion of Agricultural Landscapes.

Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1999

Web Sites

American Farmland Trust

http://www.farmland.org

U.S Department of Agriculture

Conservation Policy: Farming Land and Grazing

Land Protection Programs

http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/

ConservationPolicy/farmland.htm

U.S Department of Agriculture

Major Uses of the Land in the United States, 2002

http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/EIB14

See also: Agriculture industry; Argentina; Brazil;

Canada; China; Department of the Interior, U.S.;

De-sertification; Erosion and erosion control; Food

shortages; Horticulture; India; Land ethic;

Monocul-ture agriculMonocul-ture; Rangeland; Russia; Seed Savers

Ex-change; Slash-and-burn agriculture; Soil; Ukraine;

United Nations Convention to Combat

Desertifica-tion; United States

Federal Energy Regulatory

Commission

Category: Organizations, agencies, and programs

Date: Established 1978

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission regulates

a number of aspects of energy, including hydroelectric

power, oil and natural gas, and wholesale sales of

elec-tricity, in which interstate commerce is involved.

Background

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)

was established in 1978 At that time, as part of the

new cabinet-level Department of Energy (established

in 1977), the responsibilities of several different agen-cies dealing with energy issues were combined and given to one independent regulatory commission The Federal Power Commission (FPC), the most di-rect predecessor to the FERC, had been responsible for overseeing interstate issues involving the genera-tion and transmission of electricity and the develop-ment and regulation of hydroelectric facilities The FERC continues to regulate electricity, but it also over-sees a variety of other energy resources if interstate commerce is involved

The FERC’s regulation of hydroelectric develop-ment is historically the oldest component of the agency’s responsibilities The Federal Water Power Act of 1920 centralized authority for federal oversight

of water power development in one agency, the FPC The agency as originally established was both small and weak, consisting of only one permanent em-ployee, an executive secretary Support staff were borrowed from other agencies, and engineering re-views of proposed projects were performed by con-sulting engineers Still, the FPC managed to establish guidelines that prevented wildcat speculations and conserved federal wilderness areas

Congress reorganized and gradually strengthened the FPC several times in the following decades In

1935, the Federal Power Act added regulation of the interstate transmission and wholesale sale of electric-ity to the FPC’s responsibilities, while the Public Util-ity Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA), passed during the energy crisis of the 1970’s, added provisions to encourage cogeneration and alternative energy re-source development More recently, the Energy Pol-icy Act (2005) clarified regulation of natural gas and oil transported across state lines

Impact on Resource Use The FERC’s responsibilities include regulating the transmission of natural gas and oil by pipeline in in-terstate commerce and the transmission and sale of electricity in interstate commerce FERC licenses and inspects private, municipal, and state hydroelectric projects and oversees related environmental matters The FERC’s mission in overseeing wholesale sales

of electricity is to ensure that utilities charge reason-able rates and that federal public utility regulations regarding officers and directorships of utility compa-nies are obeyed Rates set by federal power generating agencies, such as the Bonneville Power Administra-tion, are also reviewed by the FERC The retail rates

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paid by consumers are regulated within the individual

states by public utilities commissions

The FERC consists of five members appointed by

the president Members serve for five years When the

commission was established, terms of office were

stag-gered so that only one member’s term would expire

each year The president of the United States

desig-nates the chairperson for the FERC, and, in the event

that a vacancy occurs on the commission, anyone

ap-pointed to fill that vacancy serves only the remainder

of that particular term Although no specific

qualifi-cations were set for commission members, the

legisla-tive mandate does require that the president appoint

to the commission persons who are familiar with

en-ergy issues and procedures

In overseeing natural gas and oil, the FERC

regu-lates the construction of pipelines and other methods

used in interstate transportation of these resources as

well as the facilities at wellheads and at distribution

points At one time, the FERC was required to

estab-lish ceiling prices for natural gas, but the Natural Gas

Wellhead Deregulation Act of 1993 eliminated that

practice

Nancy Farm Männikkö

Web Site

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

http://www.ferc.gov/

See also: Dams; Department of Energy, U.S.;

Elec-trical power; Energy economics; Energy politics;

Hydroenergy; Oil industry

Federal Water Quality Act See Clean

Water Act

Federalism and resource

management

Categories: Environment, conservation, and

resource management; social, economic, and

political issues

Natural resources management plays a key role in

con-serving and enhancing those goods and services

pro-vided by nature Management practices in the United States are guided by the federalism model, providing

an integrated mode of management structured around the needs and capabilities of local, state, and national efforts.

Background Federalism refers to the institutional framework that divides decision-making power between the national government and individual states In this framework, both national governments and states develop laws and public policies

Before the United States ratified its constitution, the states acted autonomously In the immediate af-termath of the signing of the Constitution in 1787, thenational government dealt primarily with national issues, such as defense Over time, changes in this bal-ance of power occurred directly in the form of amend-ments to the Constitution and legislative actions As an example of an explicit allocation of decision-making power, the Tenth Amendment to the U.S Constitu-tion declares, “powers not delegated to the United States are reserved to the States .” The U.S na-tional government has increased its power over time, especially in response to large national events, such as the Civil War and the Great Depression

As a subset of federalism, environmental federal-ism refers to a dynamic balance of power between the states and the federal government, which is deter-mined by the nature of the role played in establishing environmental protection and managing natural re-sources Natural resources include both renewable and nonrenewable resources: soil, minerals, forests, water, fisheries, and energy In response to natural re-source scarcity and the degradation of environmental quality, Congress has designed environmental pro-grams that allow for implementation of policies to manage and protect these resources on the federal, state, and local levels

History of Natural Resource Policy and Management

William Lowry describes the evolution of natural re-source policies as divided into the following three eras: an era from colonial times to the end of the nine-teenth century in which government did not get involved in resource extraction and most viewed re-sources as abundant; an ongoing era in which govern-ment determines natural resource policies; and a new era in which policies are determined by synthesizing

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the preferences and perspectives of different, often

competing, stakeholders

Before the shift to government involvement in the

allocation of natural resources, a majority of the

pub-lic perceived natural resources to be abundant As the

public began to utilize the expansive resources of the

United States, it became evident that a lack of natural

resource and public land management was leading to

the exploitation of numerous types of natural

re-sources, including wildlife, rangelands, and forests In

response to this exploitation, the federal government

increased its role in the management of these

re-sources

For much of the twentieth century and into the

twenty-first century, natural resource policy and

man-agement focused on the manman-agement of individual

resources rather than taking a more holistic view of

public resources As a result of this segmented

ap-proach, management responsibilities are divided

among an array of state and federal agencies The

division of management between the federal

govern-ment and state and local governgovern-ments is often

de-scribed as a vertical division Within the U.S

govern-ment, the largest land and resource management

agencies are the Bureau of Land Management, the

U.S Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park

Ser-vice, and the U.S Forest Service These four agencies

manage roughly 250 million hectares of land Other

federal agencies also play key roles in managing

natu-ral resources, including the U.S Army Corps of

Engi-neers, the Minerals Management Service, and the

Na-tional Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration State

and local governments also play an important role in

land management, with roughly 23 million hectares

under management These estimates do not include

the 11.7 million square nautical kilometers of ocean

under U.S jurisdiction

Public Policy and Natural Resources

Management

Public policy refers to government action or inaction

in response to some type of social problem

Manage-ment either involves day-to-day efforts on the ground

(or water) or the efforts to control agencies that

over-see those day-to-day efforts Management represents

a distinct form of policy implementation It can be

conceptually divided into two separate categories:

strategic management and operational management

Strategic management refers to those efforts that

de-termine the organizational/institutional structure;

op-erational management refers to on-the-ground ac-tions of the agencies

Natural resource management is not a science Ideally, natural resource management will be guided

by both natural and social sciences but influenced by a host of other factors, including the values and the sub-jective processes of managers and resource stake-holders Managers have the difficult task of bridging gaps between management, policy, and science

General Issues in Environmental Federalism One topic garnering continued discussion is the proper way to evaluate the balance of power between the federal government and the state governments This requires determining how the vertical divisions

of decision making influence the management of nat-ural resources Which level of government has the best claim on the management of the resource and which level of government can manage the resource most efficiently are two factors that must be deter-mined

Several benefits of lower-level, or local (state, city, and county), government jurisdiction exist Local governments promote citizen involvement in self-governance, are often more responsive to the needs and preferences of local citizens, and tend to be more cost-effective Skeptics of local government effective-ness point out that they often do not have the neces-sary resources to perform well In addition, detractors also assert that some environmental issues are larger than local jurisdictional boundaries For example, air pollution is not likely to stay in certain geographical boundaries, because of natural shifts in global wind patterns

One of the ongoing debates over environmental federalism concerns the correct balance of power Re-searchers have found that different levels of govern-ment produce different policies One major cause can be attributed to the perceived consequence of localized versus national decision making In some instances, lower levels of government are more likely

to encourage developmental policies, like economic growth, over redistributive policies This can be traced

to fears that residents may move to nearby locations with more pro-growth policies On a national level, redistributive policies, such as those protecting envi-ronmental quality and natural resource abundance, can be more effective because individuals and firms are less likely to move beyond national boundaries Theorists have described this localized tendency to

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favor development, as it affects environmental quality

and natural resources, as a “race to the bottom.” This

refers to situations in which state and local

govern-ments favor development over environmental quality,

allowing for lower environmental standards This

per-ception has been disputed in academic literature In

some cases, states have exceeded existing federal

stan-dards In practice, states and local governments have

actually developed a whole host of innovative policies

On the localized level, state and local governments

benefit from having the ability to tailor policies to

meet the specific needs of a given area Local levels of

government also tend to be more cost-effective than

the federal government

The federal government has played a key role in

the development of laws protecting the environment

and natural resources However, the federal

govern-ment does not always have the ability or the

knowl-edge to tailor policies to meet regional or localized

needs The federal government is well suited to

ad-dress issues that are large in scale or that cross more

lo-calized jurisdictional boundaries

Collaborative Outputs of Natural Resource

Policy

In application, there are numerous cases in which

states and the federal government collaborate in the

management of natural resources One example of

this occurs via the management of marine fisheries

in the United States Marine fisheries represent a

unique natural resource requiring both state and

fed-eral attention, because some fish exist locally, but

other fish have large migration patterns crossing

nu-merous jurisdictional boundaries Marine fisheries

are a type of common-pool resource which, without

oversight, are often depleted In most cases, states

control waters out to 5.6 nautical kilometers (the

ex-ceptions are Texas, Florida’s Gulf coast, and Puerto

Rico, which control waters out to 16.7 nautical

kilo-meters), and the federal government controls waters

out to 370 nautical kilometers Of course,

environ-mental systems do not adhere to these types of

juris-dictional boundaries, thus necessitating collaborative

efforts

In response to these challenges, Congress passed

the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and

Management Act of 1976 (amended in 1996 and

reauthorized in 2006) to outline principal goals in

conservation and management of fish, while

simulta-neously promoting safety and efficiency

The Magnuson-Stevens Act relies on collaboration between state and federal governments The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) acts as the lead fed-eral agency for the management of fisheries in fedfed-eral waters The act also designated regional management councils to advise the NMFS in this management effort These management councils are composed

of representatives from state fisheries management agencies, mandatory appointees from coastal states, at-large appointees from states in the region, and the regional directors of NMFS The fisheries manage-ment councils have the vital responsibilities of creat-ing Fisheries Management Plans (FMPs), which desig-nate fish in need of management, analyze factors (both natural and social) influencing the fishery, and prepare the FMP to balance environmental, social, and economic goals In the case of fisheries, states have the important role of managing fish in their jurisdic-tion as well as participating in regional management responsibilities, such as educating commercial and rec-reational fishermen and promoting the safe, legal fish-ing practices outlined in the Magnuson-Stevens Act

Context Federalism is the operating system used by the United States to manage its natural resources Considering the goals for resource management, such as conserva-tion and protecconserva-tion, good working relaconserva-tionships be-tween federal and local agencies are necessary to en-sure the most efficient and most effective supervision Goals at the local and national levels are intertwined, creating opportunities to work together to maximize benefits to and from the natural resources available

Joelle D Godwin

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