Understanding Values: A Comparative Study of Values in Environmental Policy Making in China, India, Japan, and the United States

Carnegie Council On Ethics And International Affairs, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

This grant provides support to a collaborative team of researchers in the United States, China, India and Japan, to complete fieldwork, data analysis and comparative analysis, and preliminary reports of results from a multisite, multiyear investigation of values and their role in environmental policy making in localities in each country. By examining values in the context of real world environmental struggles, the project aims to understand the relationships between public values and policy, to determine the circumstances in which local values matter, and to assess the way globalization influences the authority and capacity of local actors to guide and manage environmentally sustainable growth. The project aims to assist in the production of more workable and equitable domestic and international environmental policy solutions. The project uses an innovative methodology for comparative analysis of the role of environmental values in such economically and culturally diverse societies. This assessment of values is one distilled from local empirical fieldwork and integrated into an international comparative study. The Carnegie Council is directing the project in conjunction with prominent collaborating institutions in Asia and the United States: the Beijing Environment and Development Institute (PRC), the National Institute for Environmental Sciences and the Lake Biwa Museum (Japan), the Center for the Study of Developing Societies (India), and the Bureau for Applied Research in Anthropology at the University of Arizona. Fieldwork to generate empirical data at local and national levels is being designed, conducted, and analyzed by leading scholars in each country with input from local policy practitioners. A research protocol for the project has been carefully constructed providing the rigor needed for valid comparative analysis, while at the same time allowing teams the latitude to employ the methodological tools that they deem appropriate to their respective societies. Two types of cases serve as the focus of the fieldwork: industrial pollution and resource use. The fieldwork consists of participant observation, open-ended interviews, focus groups, workshops, policy and expert panels, and analysis of media reports, educational materials and policy documents. With initial matching grants from the United States-Japan Foundation and the Henry Luce Foundation, the research teams in China, India, Japan and the United States began conducting preliminary on-site investigations of their cases in August 1998 and to date most cases are well underway. The project creates an important opportunity to support the exchange among Asian and American research communities who have previously had little contact. The comparative dimension provides a map of the role of values in environmental policy across politically, economically and culturally diverse societies. It also enables participating researchers to learn about each other's value discourses and styles of research, which in turn infuses their own studies with new perspectives and creates momentum for further social science initiatives relating to values and sustainable public policy.