The role of expectations and visions of the future in the development of targetbased environmental p

1
The role of expectations and visions of the
future in the development of target-based
environmental policies the case of the UK Air
Quality Strategy

• Vanessa McKean
• SPRU DPhil Day 2008

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Background Particulate Matter

• A broad class of chemically and physically
  diverse substances which exist as particles in
  the air.
• Recent policy focuses on regulation of particles
  10 micrometers or smaller PM10
• Diesel vehicle emissions the most significant
  urban source (28 nationally).

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Background Effects on Health

• 1952 London smogs 4075 deaths in 5 days.
• 1950s-1980s programme to clear up the smog
  problem believed to be successful.
• Early 1990s further problems uncovered by
  epidemiologists believed to be caused by
  smaller particulates.
• Government estimates for short-term effects of
  PM10 exposure in the UK for 2002
• 6,500 deaths brought forward.
• 6,400 extra hospital admissions.
• (Source AQEG 2005 p29)

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Uncertainties and gaps in understanding

• Is there a threshold a level of pollution
  carrying no measurable effects?
• How is health affected?
• Who is affected?
• How serious are the effects?

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Air Quality Strategy

• How did this come to be developed?
• What would the strategy seek to achieve?
• Aim
• to render polluting emissions harmless (DoE
  1997 p18)

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STANDARDS Precautionary baseline aim for
health protection
METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS
Current Scientific Understanding
EXPECTATIONS by DoE Economic feasibility Technolog
ical feasibility Cultural feasibility Social
feasibility
OBJECTIVES Medium-term ambient pollution targets
POLICY MAKING Direct policy for source-specific
pollution reduction
RESULTS New ambient pollution concentrations
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Air Quality Strategy

• New form of regulation
• Effects-based.
• Aimed to unite previously separate policy domains
  transport, industry, local government practice,
  health, the environment through a common aim.
• Institutional changes.
• One of the first target-setting policies.

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Air Quality Strategy

• The Strategy set a challenging objective for PM10
  but there were a number of problems
• No new policies to achieve it except local air
  quality management for hotspots.
• Reliance on European vehicle and fuel
  regulations.
• Local air quality measures focus on improvement
  of vehicle emissions but few other measures
  focusing on technologies themselves, or
  innovation and adoption.

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Air Quality Strategy - revisions

• Second and third Strategies (2000 and 2003) PM10
  Objective set on what was expected to happen with
  no new policies, no technical development, no new
  action.

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Predicting the future?

• AQS is based on judgements about what the future
  will look like covering
• Policy
• Technological developments
• Individual and social behaviour
• Industry and commerce
• Problem much of this is, of necessity,
  uncertain.
• How are expectations arrived at, and then used?

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Expectations Theory

• How do expectations of the future affect the
  present?
• Assumption the future is contested between the
  actors, and their preferred versions of it.
• Agenda setting to enable the preferred future
  becoming a reality.
• Convincing others thereby attracting resources
  and support.
• Reducing uncertainty (Van Lente 1993)
• Direct actions and focus resources (Berkhout,
  2006).
• Hype creating expectations / excitement amongst
  other actors.

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Expectations of the future

• Policy Making

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Key Research Questions

• How do expectations and promises of future
  technologies, policies and their impacts on
  stakeholders affect the creation of target-based
  environmental policies, and how do these policies
  subsequently shape expectations? Can the
  development of networks based on expectations
  explain the changes in the AQS between 1997 and
  2006?
• Why were some expectations regarded as more
  credible than others by policy-makers?

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Expectations of the future

• Policy Making

Technologies esp. Diesel Vehicle
Technologies New Policies Compliance with policy
/ behaviour
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Expectations of the future

• Policy Making

• Stakeholders
• Government departments
• Vehicle and fuel industries
• Alternative vehicle / fuel industries
• Industry groups
• Local government
• Environment NGOs
• Health NGOs

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Method

• Identification of expectations in text
• Written or spoken (public) statements about the
  future
• Metaphors of the future
• Modelled scenarios of the future, graphs,
  pictures.
• Tracking change over time.
• Interviews with policy-makers and stakeholders

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Progress and Findings

• 1st time period 1994-97 formation of the first
  AQS.
• Confirmation 1 statements of expectation were
  made.
• Confirmation 2 many different visions of the
  future often competing.

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Findings Stakeholders Expectations

• Expectations were articulated
• Protection in the future to protect and promote
  their interests in the present and for the
  future.
• Driving the future to gain support for their
  favoured future from policy-makers.
• Expressing opinion / expectation of other
  policies voicing expectations about the effects
  of other policies on technologies and industries
  especially European vehicles and fuel
  regulation.

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Findings Policy-Makers Expectations

• The policy-makers in DoE made statements in the
  AQS in order to
• Encourage others to action
• Other government departments
• Local government initiatives
• Businesses / individuals voluntarism.
• Gain support for the Strategy
• Positive expectations of success of new policies.

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Negative Expectations

• Use of expectations of a negative future to
  promote action / inaction now.
• If no additional improvements were undertaken
  from road transport, levels of airborne
  pollutants would be expected to continue to
  decline into the next decade. Eventually,
  traffic growth would overtake the benefits which
  arise from the measures already in place.
• (DoE 1997 p48)

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Credibility

• Why are some expectations regarded as more
  credible than others?
• Sometimes acceptance of expectations appears
  somewhat arbitrary
• Status of experts
• Local / national opinions / approaches
• Means of presentation appears important the
  role of computer modelling etc.
• Interpretive flexibility.

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What does the study of expectations reveal?

• Dynamics of agenda setting in the policy making
  process.
• However, expectations of interest groups did not
  necessarily change policy makers own expectations
  in this time period.
• Clashes not partnership expectations sometimes
  just reveal competition between actors, and not
  the resolution of this.
• Expectation used by DoE to encourage others to
  take action, rather than to actually direct
  action. A key discrepancy.

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Why the discrepancy?

• Government departments failing to integrate their
  interests and policies
• Disagreements
• Public presentation
• Relative departmental weight.

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The next step

• Analysis of how the expectations change over time
  and why (more recent history of the AQS).

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More general conclusions

• Expectations are used in policy making to
  encourage others to support your vision of the
  future, and thereby to help realise that future.
• Expectations used when policy outcome is
  uncertain.
• Expectations of the future are not just
  predictions, they are also aspirations and, most
  significantly, tools by which goals will be
  achieved. To generalise, they are almost attempts
  at a self-fulfilling prophecy.