[Copyright Crosslands Bulletin] A dozen people have mapped out in 150 pages how the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can embrace sustainability. The agency is now gingerly exploring ways to act on the recommendations in the National Research Council peer-reviewed assessment, which is dubbed the Green Report.

“The end point is optimizing the social, economic, and environmental impacts of the decisions that EPA makes,” said law professor John Dernbach introducing the report at a Environmental Law Institute (ELI) seminar in Washington, D.C. Dernbach, who has edited books on sustainability policy issues, was among the experts who served on the independent panel. The National Research Council is part of the congressionally charted National Academies of advisors to the federal government.

“We are still at EPA figuring out what our response to the Green Book is,” said Bicky Corman speaking at the ELI event. Corman is deputy associate administrator in EPA’s Office of Policy. She moved to the agency from the District of Columbia’s Department of the Environment, and, prior to that, from the staff of New Jersey’s Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg.

Sustainability can be a combative subject at EPA. Corman joked that the agency took longer to compose and approve the brief letter from Lisa Jackson thanking the National Research Council for the report than it did for the panel to write the Green Book.

“There are parts [of the report] we will likely want to accept and, maybe, parts that we reject,” she says. “But we are taking seriously the [National Academies] recommendation that we solicit stakeholder input. We think it is a huge issue, and we want to find out what others view as the appropriate role is for EPA in the sustainability arena.”

Over the years devotees in and out of EPA nursed the idea of developing a sustainable economy for the US (see A Flicker of Interest in Sustainability Appears in Washington, 21 June 2004). Absent congressional involvement, the agency’s response to the efforts has been indecisive and piecemeal.

The staffs in charge of EPA’s traditional programs in the domains of air, water, and waste have for the most part resisted any diversions from their core mission, which is to ensure legal compliance. The first significant decision at EPA after George W. Bush moved out of the White House was to close down the Performance Track program — the most important test bed for voluntary corporate triple-bottom-line management (see Closing EPA’s Performance Track Wast a Mistake, 30 June 2010).

Paul Anastas, head of EPA’s Office of Research and Development (ORD), conceived the latest foray into sustainability. The Yale University professor, who coined the term green chemistry, was nominated for the job by President Obama. Anastas is a member of the National Research Council’s talking group, the Roundtable on Science and Technology for Sustainability. Anastas seized on the occasion of the agency’s 40th anniversary to launch the study (see EPA Requests Sustainability Guide, 5 December 2010). Given the expedited schedule and the sustainability panel’s explicit desire not to back EPA into a corner with specific demands, the final report proves to be less than a definitive word on the subject.

EPA is making a six-month review of the Green Book recommendations. They agency is undertaking a series of what it calls “listening sessions” with businesses, non-governmental organizations, and other stakeholders.

“Overall, the assessment is a very reasonable first cut for EPA to begin down the road toward sustainability thinking,” says Ira Feldman, president and sole proprietor of the Greentrack Strategies consultancy. “The report is only useful if it is viewed that way because it is not, nor does it purport to be, a finished product.”

Few independent analysts are better placed to comment on the National Research Council report. Feldman was a decorated special counsel at EPA. He initiated the agency’s first program for corporate excellence (Environmental Leadership) and wrote the agency’s policy on self-auditing.

“It is clear, at least to me,” Feldman says, “that EPA, or the Council on Environmental Quality, or someone in the administration at some point must realize that a true multi-stakeholder dialogue convened by an entity that has a grasp of the length and breadth of the sustainability field — which of course the National Academies does not have — is needed. EPA has to take on board an awful lot of input to sort through a different range of options.”

An entirely different group of contributors convened by the same national council is identifying gaps in thinking about sustainability in other federal programs. The panel, chaired by Thomas Graedel, director of the Center for Industrial Ecology at Yale University, is called Sustainability Linkages in the Federal Government. The assignment is slated to conclude with a report at the end of 2012 describing how to make connections among areas such as energy, water, and health.

For more information contact Marina Moses, Director, Science and Technology for Sustainability, The National Academies, 500 Fifth Street, NW, Keck 531, Washington, DC 20001, USA. Tel: +1 202 334 2143; Fax: +1 202 334 3094; E-mail: mmoses@nas.edu.  John Dernbach, Director, Environmental Law Center, Widener University Law School, 3800 Vartan Way, Harrisburg, PA 17106, USA. Tel: +1 717 541 1933; Fax: +1 717 541 3966; E-mail: jcdernbach@widener.edu.  Ira Feldman, Greentrack Strategies, P.O. Box 34088, Bethesda, Maryland 20827, USA. Tel: +1 202 669 1858; E-mail: ira@greentrack.com.

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