Much has been written about the effects of climate change on the environment, particularly on the potential effects of climate change on water resources and their management. Despite that plethora of information on the potential effects of climate change on water resources, little has been written to date on the effects of water and land use projects on climate change.

This autumn, President George W. Bush belatedly held international meetings to discuss global climate change. It may have been a calculated gesture from a leader whose political stock has been plummeting for some time. But the move underscored the dramatic shift in the debate over global warming. Mostly ignored for years, climate change had burst into view again between 2005 and 2007 for a number of reasons: the release of a major scientific report that the Arctic was melting; the unprecedented natural devastation on US soil of Hurricane Katrina; two more years of record heat in 2005 and 2006 followed by an ongoing severe drought in 2007; the release in early 2007 of a gloomy Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment of climate change; a renewed environmental and climate change movement symbolized by the popularity of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth; and, of course, the sweep of the Republican Congress that had featured climate change deniers like Senator James (“it's a hoax”) Inhofe (R-OK).

No one within the National Association of Environmental Professionals is unfamiliar with the timely and growing issues involving global warming. But there is another, newer phenomenon that has received considerably less media attention. This bizarre occurrence has been labeled “global dimming,” among other names. To date, the mainstream media largely has not picked up on this story.

How does a small-budget, regional non-profit organization really have an impact on the world's biggest environmental problem?

This editorial calls for action to strengthen the National Association of Environmental Professionals (NAEP) and its chapters. If others agree, it will also enable NAEP and its chapters to speak effectively on climate change. Global warming currently ranks among the top factors that are forcing nations across the world to reconsider their policies and economies. The work of environmental professionals will change, too, and the members of NAEP and its chapters have expertise that is needed in the ongoing discussions.

The strategic importance of the United States having an unimpeded source of energy is becoming ever more crucial. The significance of energy and the need for greater energy responsibility by the US have been identified in several State-of-the-Union Addresses. President Bush's 2006 State-of-the-Union Address stated that “America is addicted to oil” and encouraged federal agencies to lead the way in developing more reliable alternative energy programs. In July 2006, Major General Richard Zilmer, Chief of Multi-National Forces West, identified a crucial need for “a self-sustainable energy solution” available for use by US forces in Iraq. Use of renewable energy systems is one way to help decrease dependency on fossil fuels and offer Warfighters alternative sources of energy to accomplish their mission. This article explores the institutional impediments that prevent the Army from increasing its use of renewable energy systems in Contingency Operations and makes recommendations to overcome those barriers in order to enhance use of renewable energy, thereby becoming less dependent on foreign oil.The views expressed in this manuscript are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Defense or any of its agencies.

Environmental Practice 9:157–161 (2007)

Last year, the National Association of Environmental Professionals (NAEP) established a new committee, the NAEP Environmental Policy Committee, which was pioneered by NAEP Board member Eric Galamb. At some point thereafter, I assumed responsibility for chairing the committee and currently continue in that capacity.

In June 2007, I presented some recent research of mine at the 27th annual conference of the International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA), held in Seoul, South Korea. It was a great opportunity to experience an international perspective on environmental processes as well as a good chance to meet professionals from around the world with similar areas of interest.

Development and implementation of administrative programs are important steps in the process of change through public law and policy. These programs set the specific mechanisms that will be used to carry out the intent of the law or policy as best an agency can determine. Administrative personnel may involve the general public and stakeholders in program development and implementation in order to improve program design, increasingly used as part of collaborative environmental management strategies. This article examines the use of focus groups as a stakeholder participation method in collaborative program development and implementation processes in two different environmentally-oriented agency programs at the state level in Ohio—the Clean Ohio Revitalization Fund of the Ohio Department of Development, and the Ohio Coastal Resources Management Training Program of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, NOAA, and the Ohio Sea Grant Program. The comparison confirms three categories of benefits in using focus groups: better program development and implementation through more in-depth and nuanced information from stakeholders, an enhanced administrative and civic capacity through development of a shared knowledge base, and an enhanced sense of legitimacy for the program among future program beneficiaries. The comparison also identified some constraints and challenges for using focus groups, including the importance of skilled facilitators with substantive knowledge of the environmental context of the program development process and the skills to resolve contentious stakeholder interactions when the processes are distributive in nature.

Environmental Practice 9:166–178 (2007)

Specialized academic programs have developed over the last several decades to provide technical and managerial expertise to students anticipating careers as environmental health professionals. A challenge facing many of the graduates from these programs will be working with colleagues prepared in a variety of countries and cultures. A challenge facing environmental health educators is ensuring that their graduates have the necessary abilities to meet complex professional challenges, including the possession of leadership skills for addressing global-scale environmental problems. Through application of a survey, we sought to gain understanding of the preparation of environmental health students in Costa Rica and in the United States in terms of their (1) knowledge of key global environmental problems, (2) attitudes about the severity of specific environmental issues, (3) attitudes about the role of the environmental health professional, and (4) attitudes about skills needed to be successful as professionals responsible for worker health and safety. We found that these two groups of students generally shared professional identities and ideals but that neither had a high level of understanding of global environmental problems. The environmental health workforce being prepared through these structured academic programs has excellent potential for multi-national collaboration through their sharing of many professional values and skills; however, their ability to serve effectively as leaders addressing large-scale environmental issues is problematic.

Environmental Practice 9:179–194 (2007)

Public participation in natural resource management has been described as paradoxical: citizens want the best science to guide natural resource management decisions, but not to the exclusion of their input; agencies want meaningful citizen involvement in their management decisions, but they also want citizens to trust their scientific expertise. As a result, many studies have focused on developing criteria for designing successful participatory processes. Rather than definitive guidelines, however, studies to date typically indicate broad rules of thumb, which may differ in situation-specific application depending on political and historical context. These observations suggest the need to identify contextual elements that influence the varying success of participatory process designs. One such element is the degree of understanding, or coorientation, between stakeholders and managers. This article expands the concept of coorientation to “coorientation contexts” to describe the real and/or incorrectly perceived barriers and opportunities for communication between natural resource managers and stakeholders. Examining participation philosophies and corresponding techniques reveals that certain types of communication are better suited to certain coorientation contexts. Tailoring participation strategies to the appropriate coorientation context throughout the evolution of public issues, i.e., “matching the forum to the fuss,” may ultimately result in more informed, equitable, and sustainable management decisions. Future empirical testing of this approach may improve natural resource managers' abilities to navigate successfully the paradox of public involvement in natural resource management.

Environmental Practice 9:195–205 (2007)

There has been a rapid increase in knowledge regarding the importance of the external environment to our health. Eight characteristics of the outdoor environment (serene, wild, lush, spacious, the common, the pleasure garden, festive/centre, and culture) have been identified as fulfilling recreational needs through a number of environmental psychology studies carried out at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Alnarp, Sweden, between 1995 and 2005. The external environment has become an increasingly decisive factor in people's choices regarding where to live and work; the landscape has become a competitive factor in attempts made by companies and local authorities to attract well-educated, mobile manpower and housing. Knowledge-based companies predominate in the Öresund Region of Sweden and Denmark, which at present has substantial recreational values making it an attractive area in which to live and work. The region's annual population growth is approximately 20,000 to 25,000 inhabitants. The prime ministers of Sweden and Denmark have expressed a common objective that the Öresund Region be one of Europe's cleanest metropolitan regions. The objective of this article is to present methods for implementing the eight characteristics as indicators for impact assessment in planning projects. The article presents case studies of the application of environmental impact assessments in the municipalities of Malmö and Svedala, which are situated in the immediate vicinity of the Öresund Bridge. Development plans are being evaluated through impact assessment. Mitigation and compensation measures are being created to achieve the environmental quality goals defined by the eight characteristics. The case studies referred to in this article are in very early planning phases, either the feasibility or pre-feasibility phase. This article does not present complete investigations of balancing, but discusses some principal ways of defining values and suggests measures for mitigating and compensating for negative impacts on existing values.

Environmental Practice 9:206–217 (2007)

Useless Arithmetic: Why Environmental Scientists Can't Predict the Future. O. H. Pilkey and L. Pilkey-Jarvis. 2007. Columbia University Press, New York. 230 pp. $29.95 paperback.

Humankind has a long history of seeking definitive answers to explain the complex systems operating on our home planet. Our tremendous success in calculating phenomena like atomic behavior and planetary movement has given us a false sense of confidence in our ability to calculate any and all phenomena. Our quest for definitive solutions to perceived problems has generated a sense of “physics envy” and driven many disciplines toward math-based predictive models. Orrin Pilkey and Linda Pilkey-Jarvis thoroughly discuss that our confidence in such models is misplaced. As a result, we are potentially increasing risk from natural hazards and have created a venue for ludicrous policy-based demands, such as certifying safety for tens of thousands of years at the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.

The Si'lailo Way: Indians, Salmon and Law on the Columbia River. Joseph C. Dupris, Kathleen S. Hill, and William H. Rodgers, Jr. 2006. Carolina Academic Press, Durham, NC. 450 pp. $40 paperback.

It is impossible to work in the environmental field in the Pacific Northwest without knowing something of salmon: their epic journeys from river to sea and back; the legendary runs of the nineteenth century, before the arrival of dynamite, fish wheels, dams, and hatcheries; the near-symbiotic relationship between the Northwest Indian tribes and the fish that were the backbone of their diet and culture. Those who pay any attention at all to the area's history are aware that serious injustice was done to the native people and fish of the Columbia River. The Si'lailo Way makes that injustice tangible by adding lavishly illustrated characters and a narrative that viscerally connects the reader to the people and places that fell victim to what the authors depict as a 150-year campaign to rid the Columbia of its native human and piscine inhabitants.

Contributors.