Ian's Thesis Outline
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NOTE: This online version of the thesis uses different fonts than the printed version held in Griffith University Library, and the pagination is slightly different. The content is otherwise exactly the same. ESSENCE AND DECISION. The Case of Coronation Hill. Ian Hamilton Holland B.Sc.(Hons) Syd. U., Grad.Dip.Pub.Pol. UNE. Australian School of Environmental Studies, Faculty of Environmental Sciences, Griffith University. Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, January 1999. ii Abstract The rise of environmental issues has presented a challenge to decision-making in the area of natural resources policy. This challenge has met with diverse responses, ranging from neo-liberal attempts to incorporate environmental values into economic calculus, through ‘ecological rationalist’ arguments for the special nature of environmental issues, to radical theories of the state’s role in controlling the impact of environmental concerns on capitalist profitability. From this plethora of ideas about how to address environmental concern should emerge some directions that are more promising than others. But which? The Coronation Hill mine case, presented in this thesis, exemplified the complexities of natural resources decision-making in an environmental era. By analysis of the Resource Assessment Commission’s Inquiry into the Coronation Hill proposal, this thesis examines the strengths and weaknesses of the claims of different theoretical approaches. Such use of the single case to explore theory is exemplified by Allison’s work Essence of Decision. The RAC, as a neo-liberal institution, attempted to utilise both Pigouvian and Coasian strategies to address environmental issues. Both types of strategy emerge in the application of contingent valuation to preservation values. Private property rights allocation strategies, derived by public choice theorists from Coase’s work, are also in evidence in debate about Aboriginal rights in the Kakadu Conservation Zone (site of the proposed mine). The problems that beset the RAC both in its use of contingent valuation and its attempts to resolve Aboriginal issues exemplify why neo-liberal approaches are of limited use for dealing with the class of policy problem that Coronation Hill represented. Dryzek, Walker and others argue that ecological problems have a distinctive nature, which necessitates a distinctive policy response. However the evidence from the Coronation Hill case demonstrates the falsity of this premise. Ecological problems are in general similar to other policy problems. Radical analysis of environmental issues has treated them as potential sources of disruption to capital accumulation. According to the structural dependence thesis as formulated by Block and Przeworski and Wallerstein, the role of the state is to prevent damage to investor confidence. Data from the Coronation Hill case, however, suggests that the ‘anti-capital’ recommendations of the RAC iii adopted by the government had none of the detrimental effects predicted by radical theories (and by business actors). This is probably because it is not in fact clear that environmental protection is a goal hostile to capitalism. Environmental issues have also acted as an impetus to institutional innovation: innovation which the Resource Assessment Commission to some extent exemplified. The Commission’s apparent failure (it was shut down two years after the Coronation Hill episode) superficially lends credence to criticism of proposals for institutional reform. Comparative analysis of the Resource Assessment Commission and its established twin the Industry Commission, however, highlights the importance of institutional analysis for revealing that the type of institutional reform must match the type of problem being confronted. The Resource Assessment Commission is shown to be in several ways an inappropriate organisation to deal with issues like Coronation Hill. Thus the fate of the Resource Assessment Commission was largely inevitable, and was determined largely by its nature rather than by political events of the early 1990s. Theoretically, the Coronation Hill case highlights the limitations of both neo- liberal and ecological approaches to dealing with environmental concerns in the natural resources policy field. It also, however, leads to the conclusion that there is no coherent policy category of ‘environmental policy’. Rather, environmental policy issues are similar to other policy issues, and are themselves divided into other more important categories. These categories are defined by the divisions between first, issues in which conflict originates in distributive issues versus those in which that conflict originates in value clashes; and second, those issues in which interests are divided along capital / labour lines, versus those in which they divide in other ways. iv Contents Abstract _______________________________________ ii Contents _______________________________________ iv Lists of Tables and Figures___________________________ ix Acknowledgements _______________________________ xi Abbreviations __________________________________ xiii Statement of Originality ____________________________xv Chapter 1. Essence and Decision________________________1 The impact of environmentalism on natural resources policy ____________2 What are environmental issues?________________________________3 Four and a half ideas about addressing environmental concerns in the natural resources policy area _______________________________________6 Neo-liberal agendas: Pigouvian and Coasian approaches_________________ 7 Ecological analysis _________________________________________________ 10 Radical analysis ___________________________________________________ 13 Institutional analysis _______________________________________________ 14 The RAC as manifestation of, and battleground between, ideas __________ 15 Chapter 2. Mine, Yours or Ours?_______________________19 The Coronation Hill issue up to the establishment of the RAC___________20 Aboriginal People and the Conservation Zone _________________________ 29 From exploration to mining: the Environmental Impact Statement _______ 36 The Environmental Impact Statement and Cabinet _____________________ 41 The RAC is established _____________________________________ 42 The Conservation Zone Inquiry _______________________________ 51 Issues discussed in the Inquiries ______________________________60 Aboriginal interests ________________________________________________ 60 Environmental protection___________________________________________ 65 v Development of the mining industry _________________________________ 68 Conclusion _____________________________________________ 71 Chapter 3. Methods _______________________________72 Analytic induction ________________________________________ 73 Cases _________________________________________________ 75 The use of cases ___________________________________________________ 75 Choice of case _____________________________________________________ 78 Beyond the case ___________________________________________________ 82 Choice of theories__________________________________________________ 83 Limitations of the case-based approach __________________________85 Research methods ________________________________________86 Documentary sources ______________________________________________ 86 Interviews ________________________________________________________ 89 The content analysis of Inquiry hearings ______________________________ 91 Conclusion________________________________________________________ 94 Chapter 4. Neo-liberalism and Environmental Policy Issues ____95 Testing the application of neo-liberal instruments___________________ 97 Analytic criteria ___________________________________________________ 97 Analysing Pigouvian policy instruments ______________________________ 99 Analysing private property rights approaches ________________________ 100 A neo-liberal environment: the RAC in context ____________________ 103 A neo-liberal environment: the work of the RAC ___________________ 107 Contingent valuation______________________________________________ 110 Conclusion ____________________________________________ 118 Chapter 5. Pigouvian Techniques _____________________ 120 The problems of externalities________________________________ 120 The ‘moral free lunch’ and the voters ________________________________ 121 Bimodality and non-use benefits ____________________________________ 128 Devising the benefit cost analysis _____________________________ 130 Paying for goods: willing or able? ___________________________________ 137 When does contingent valuation work? _________________________ 140 vi Why are Pigouvian techniques of limited utility?___________________ 142 Conclusion ____________________________________________ 144 Chapter 6. Property Rights _________________________ 147 Property rights and the RAC ________________________________ 148 Contingent valuation: willingness-to-pay and willingness-to-accept compensation ____________________________________________________ 149 Sacred site, Aboriginal land ________________________________________ 154 Definition and redefinition _________________________________________ 158 Discussion ____________________________________________ 162 Is it worth defining environmental private property rights? ____________ 162 Individuals: aggregated preference curves? __________________________ 165 Politics: truth judgement or preference satisfaction? ___________________ 167 Conclusion ____________________________________________