Essay on "Environment and Fossil Fuel"

Quoted Instructions for "Environment and Fossil Fuel" Assignment:

Environmental Issue to Discuss: FRACKING

ESSAY ASSIGNMENT

Topic: The anatomy of an environmental issue in relation to national strategies

Due date: 12 noon: Fri 22 Aug. It is advisable to start aspects of this assignment immediately.

Mark: 25% of total grade

You will prepare a briefing paper on a current New Zealand environmental issue for a New Zealand government minister. First, you will need to select a current ‘environmental issue’, resource issue, or development proposal with environmental implications. Key sources to guide this search for an issue will be media outlets, including google news, google etc. Then you will need to identify the principal New Zealand ministry/department that is responsible for handling the environmental aspects of the issue (e.g., Ministry for the Environment, Department of Conservation, Ministry of Primary Industries). You will prepare the briefing paper for the minister in charge of this ministry/department.

Examples of some recent New Zealand environmental issues: Reform of the RMA, development of a number of marine reserves, mining on the Denniston Plateau, the Kapiti expressway or “Basin Bridge” project, weaknesses in NZ’s emissions trading system, etc, etc. Be careful how you choose the issue. You want it to be fairly specific. If it is too broad (‘climate change’ would be way too broad) you will have a difficult time narrowing down which ministry/department is relevant, which scientific literature you should focus on etc. Stick with specific case studies.

The briefing paper needs to provide the following:

1. An overview of the issue: What is the dilemma, controversy, etc? What are the perceived benefits and adverse effects (risks and threats)? Who are the key stakeholders and what are their potential gains and/or losses (i.e. who are the potential winners and losers; direct and indirect, short and long-term)?

2. An analysis of the relevant legislation and ministry/department’s statement of intent:

Legislation: What legislation is relevant to the issue and what does this legislation say in regard to the issue? Summarise how this legislation may guide the ministry/department’s response to the issue. Assume that the minister more or less knows the legislation; therefore, you do not need to summarise every point in the legislation. But you need to be concise and clearly identify what aspect of the legislation is relevant. Do not spend your limited words quoting the legislation. Rather, explain why you think a particular section of the legislation is relevant. Are there any potential controversies in terms of how the legislation might be interpreted in regard to the issue you are focused on? Some key sources here include the ministry/department webpages that have links to relevant legislation (e.g., http://www.doc.govt.nz/about-doc/role/legislation/; http://www.mfe.govt.nz/laws/)

Statement of intent: Each ministry/department publishes a statement of intent which outlines their approach to key policies. What aspects of this statement are most relevant to the issue? How can the statement guide the ministry/department’s response to the issue? Again, assume that the minister knows the statement well (they signed it off!), so focus on identifying the aspects of the statement that are most relevant to the issue. Key sources: ministry/department webpages (e.g., http://www.doc.govt.nz/publications/about-doc/statement-of-intent-2012-2017/ ; http://www.mfe.govt.nz/publications/about/soi/ )

3 A concise review of relevant science-based evidence on the issue:

You will need to choose one aspect of the issue to explore in more depth. The aspect you choose should be one of the most controversial and one for which the peer-reviewed scientific literature can provide some insights. To gather information from the peer-reviewed scientific literature you can use search engines such as the Web of Science (this is accessible through the library’s databases link) or Google Scholar (not regular Google!). Note that we will provide a review of how to search for peer-reviewed scientific literature in the first tutorial session – don’t miss it!

You will also find that the articles you discover in your initial search all will have reference lists that likely contain other relevant articles. Therefore, your search can ‘snowball’. You find one or two very useful articles, and these articles reference more useful material, and so on.

Limit your search to recent (last 10 years) articles. First, identify the most relevant articles for the aspect of the issue you want to explore, then read the abstracts. Identify which abstracts contain the most relevant information and then read a selection of those articles. The majority of the articles can be accessed via “article linker” on Web of Science or via Google Scholar. (Again, we will discuss how to do this in the first tutorial session.)

You may discover that there is no relevant peer-reviewed scientific literature from New Zealand on the most controversial aspect of the issue. You have two options in this case. For one, you could select another aspect of the issue that is also controversial, but for which science-based evidence exists from New Zealand. Or, you could choose to examine science-based evidence from international case studies. For example, you might be interested in windfarm development. One controversial aspect of this issue is the noise generated by the turbines and the disturbance this causes for local residents and wildlife. You might discover that no (or very few) relevant studies have been done on this aspect of the issue in New Zealand. However, you may find related studies from Germany or the United States. In this case you will need to review a subset of these international studies and also include an analysis of the relevance of this literature to the NZ case (are the results from the international case studies comparable to the NZ case – why or why not?).

Overall, your goal for this section of the briefing paper is to provide the minister with evidence from the peer-reviewed scientific literature that can inform the ministry/department’s response to a particularly controversial aspect of the environmental issue. Remember that in this section you will need to avoid broad generalisations. You must be specific in regard to what aspect of the problem you are focusing on and how the scientific evidence supports a specific position. In the example above, you might discover that turbines of a certain size produce noise levels that can disturb wildlife and have significant impacts on local human communities. Based on this evidence you may be able to recommend that turbine size and/or distance to key conservation lands or communities be considered. This section of the report should include proper referencing to at least four (4) studies from the peer-reviewed scientific literature. Avoid using direct quotes in this section. You want to summarise the literature in your own words, but be sure you properly cite references (see notes on referencing below).

4. Recommendations for additional data gathering:

Discuss the information requirements, environmental indicators and monitoring that might be required to make an informed judgement on the issue. This section of the report should reflect your findings from the review of the science-based evidence. What additional information specific to the New Zealand case study location might the minister need to make a judgement?

5. Your recommendation:

Offer your own judgement as to whether the activity or policy is acceptable and under what conditions, or provide alternatives which would be compatible with the relevant legislation, the Ministry/department’s ‘Statement of Intent’, and the science-based evidence. You might recommend changes to legislation or to the statement of intent. Remember you are not required to agree with the ministry’s approach. Rather you need to inform the minister of the best way forward, given the guiding principles of the legislation and statement of intent, the concerns of key stakeholders, and the scientific evidence available.

Remember that the ideas in each section should be connected to each other. For instance, you will need to report scientific evidence that is relevant to the problem you outline in the beginning of the briefing paper, and you will need to ensure that the arguments you make about the issue are consistent from section to section. It is important to maintain a connection between the different sections: explain the controversy, then an***** the legislation and statement of intent in RELATION to the controversy. Recommendations then should be made related to the scientific information presented.

General Instructions for the Essay Assignment

Format: Maintain a tight focus. Be concise. Use appropriate headings (overview of the issue, key legislation, etc.). Ensure you separate fact from opinion and indicate your own opinions by using the first person. The report should be typed; be sure to proof-read it carefully.

Citations and references: It is important you supply references. Citations go in the body of the text and the reference itself goes in a reference list, preferably at the end of the text. To clarify, a reference list is the list of references cited (used) in the body of the text of this particular piece of writing, whereas a bibliography is a reading list that may have been consulted during the preparation for a piece of writing, but not necessarily cited in the text. In your essay present a reference list not a bibliography.

Every factual statement in a piece of science writing needs to cite the source of that information unless the fact happens to be so well understood by the entire scientific community that it has become accepted as a norm (an accepted truth). For example, to suggest that evolution happens one does not need to refer to Darwin any more. But to suggest that kiwi and moa have a common ancestor one will need to refer to the publication that made this claim. Similarly, if describing the geological characteristics of a particular area one would refer to the geological study that defined the geological mapping of that area: “The Vunivia catchment is underlain with basaltic breccias, with 9 sedimentary infusions toward its eastern boundary (Twyford and Wright 1986). The soils are dominated by humic latersols, with recent alluvials in the river delta region of the coastal plain (Bertrum and Saunders 1990).”

In-text citations are your way of showing the reader the source you are using without providing all of the details of those references. These details are presented in the reference list at the end of the essay.

Reference Formatting: The reference list needs to be correctly formatted using an accepted referencing style. It is preferable that you use the APA system (more details below). For example:

In-text citation: “The rates of bio-degradation of 1080 in water and soil have also been subject to laboratory studies (Booth and Smith 1999; Ogilvie et al. 1996).” The latter is for three or more authors. Also note here that the citations give the authors’ names in the order in which they appear in the article (Booth was the first author, and Smith the second author). This order usually indicates their relative contribution to the article – Booth contributed the most to the article’s preparation in this example. The references themselves are listed in alphabetical order: first Booth and Smith, and then Ogilvie et al. If there are three or more authors, you should provide the name of the first author followed by et al. (et al means “and others”). Also note that every reference lists the author(s) and the date of publication.

Electronic references: You may have reason to include an electronic reference in your assignment (i.e. from a web site). The way to do this is to cite the author, or source, with the date in the in-text citation (e.g. Greenpeace 2007), and then in the reference list at the back of the Assignment you put the author and date as with other references, but then also include the web address and the date that you viewed the web site