Speaking Green With a Southern Accent: Environmental Management and Innovation in the South

The nation's environmental policy approaches and methods are becoming more flexible and diverse, with state governments composing the fulcrum of policy changes. Southern environmental politics and policy are especially valuable when considering a changing environmental policy landscape because they present a contradiction of caution and innovation. This caution derives from the South's well-documented traditional culture while this innovation crosses geographical, pollution media, and intergovernmental levels. Environmental protection in the South must take this paradox into account if progress is to be successful. This book studies Southern environmental policy and politics in order to understand the concrete realities of the Southeast and extend those realities' understanding to other regions of the country. It analyzes a series of cases that describe the state of environmental policy implementation and management in the South. These case studies cover a range of environmental areas, including air quality, drinking water and wastewater, brownfields, collaborative environmental management, and environmental justice, among others. These cases explore the diversity and flexibility which compose the dominant characters of environmental management today.

Gerald Andrews Emison is associate professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at Mississippi State University. John C. Morris is professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Public Administration at Old Dominion University.