Environmental Science & Policy

Edited by:
  • Joe Wisniewski
>Elsevier. 6/yr. $477, DFl 940

The objective of this journal is to “build bridges among and between scientists, policy makers and decision-makers in industry”. In practice, as this journal shows, that worthy goal is difficult to meet.

Of the journal's strongest articles, most are written for specialists and build few bridges with other disciplines or decision-makers. Policy implications are left latent or are stated so broadly as to be of little use for real decision-making. Such studies belong in traditional disciplinary journals. Glaring in its absence from the four numbers provided for this review was the discipline of economics, which is a vital guide as policy makers struggle to allocate scarce resources. Also scant is attention to the implications of uncertainty for policy choices.

About half the articles reviewed are brief surveys or comments on existing research. They lack the depth needed to push the frontier of policy research or to synthesize research across disciplines to create new insights and bridges. Perhaps such articles would appeal to readers who have a broad interest in policy and environmental science, but few general readers are likely to glance at this journal — not least because the publisher has put the cost of subscriptions in the stratosphere.

However, a few gems shine. Among them is the study of carbon that is accumulating in the Canadian forest products sector (FPS) such as in wooden buildings, landfills, pulp and paper (vol. 2, no. 1, 25–41). Most forest carbon is in the forests themselves, but the authors show that FPS carbon is a large part of the net flux of Canadian forest carbon and a growing fraction of the FPS flux crosses political borders because forest products are increasingly traded overseas.

Such studies underscore how tricky it will be to create an accurate and comprehensive system for tracking carbon. This year, Environmental Science & Policy devoted a whole issue to this problem. The Kyoto Protocol, which limits fluxes of carbon dioxide and other gases that cause global warming, makes the issue urgent. The papers identify the technical hurdles and show that countries will be unable to assure their compliance with the protocol until an accounting system is agreed.

This journal has not yet found its voice, but its goals are important and there are hints as to how they can be met.