NACEPT reviews and recommends environmental foresight methods, and identifies emerging trends and issues relevant to EPA in the next five to ten years.

The issues associated with sustainable production are among the most important facing the world in the early 21st century. While most of the scholarship in this area has been produced in the United States and Europe, not much has been written from a Canadian perspective. Sustainable Production establishes a Canadian presence in the sustainable production debate by analyzing the opportunities and constraints facing the public and private sectors as Canada strives to move public policy and industrial practice forward. Sustainable production envisions an industrial system that would maximize resource efficiency, minimize environmental impacts, and replenish natural capital, while providing safe and satisfying employment opportunities.

Since its establishment in 1970, the mission of the Environmental Protection Agency is to protect human health and the environment. EPA develops regulations, ensures compliance, and issues policies, in coordination with state, tribal, and local governments. To accomplish its mission, EPA should be equipped to produce and access the highest quality and most advanced science. The Office of Research and Development (ORD) provides the scientific bases for regulatory and public health policies that have broad impacts on the nation's natural resources and quality of human life, and that yield economic benefits and incur compliance costs for the regulated community. In addition, ORD develops the agency core research capabilities, providing tools and methods for meeting current and anticipating future environmental challenges, such as the risks to health and the environment posed by climate change. Because challenges associated with environmental protection today are complex and affected by many interacting factors, the report points to the need for a substantially broader and better integrated approach to environmental protection. This report calls for EPA ORD to pursue all of its scientific aims in a new framework?to apply systems thinking to a One Environment ? One Health approach in all aspects of ORD work. To accomplish this, the report provides actionable recommendations on how ORD might consider incorporating emerging science and systems thinking into the agency research planning, so that ORD can become an increasingly impactful organization. The report identifies a number of high-priority recommendations for ORD to pursue in taking advantage of a broad range of advanced tools, in concert with collaborators in other federal agencies and the broader scientific community. Given the resource constraints, the report recognizes that ORD will have to make decisions about priorities for implementing its recommendations, and that ORD leadership is in the best position to set those priorities as implementation begins. The report concluded by stating that shifting to a systems-thinking approach will require renewed support from science leadership, enhanced strategic planning, investment in new and broader expertise and tools, and a reimagined and inclusive commitment to communication and collaboration.

Analyzes long-term interest group/party alliances, with a focus on the part played by federal advisory committees. This book sheds light on the dealings between special interests and political parties by challenging three long-standing assumptions: that transactions between interest groups and parties are quid pro quo exchanges, such as the buying and selling of legislation; that the interrelationship between bureaucrats and interest groups is accommodating and friendly; and that special interests are single-minded in their pursuit of favorable policies, specifically legislation and regulations. The authors argue that political transactions are organized through durable informal agreements between interest groups and political parties, whereby parties obtain a dependable source of long-term campaign funds, and interest groups gain enduring favorable treatment in the political process. In response to interest group demands, legislatures such as Congress establish quasi-governmental appendages to federal agencies that oversee the administration of programs prized by special interests—namely, federal advisory committees. The authors examine the complex relationship between the establishment and influence of thousands of federal advisory committees and long-term interest group contributions to political parties. “This book is the single best study of federal advisory committees, with reams of data about them. It is also one of the best books on contractual politics, pulling together a wealth of ideas about the utility of that approach, by scholars who really understand it well.” — Paul Teske, author of Regulation in the States