Reader: Could you explain the focus of the current Carnegie Council project, entitled "Understanding Values: A Comparative Study of Values in Environmental Policy Making in China, India, Japan, and the United States."

Mastiani: This project examines and compares the environmental values held by elites and non-elites of China, India, Japan, and the United States and how these values affect environmental policy in each country. By examining values in the context of real world environmental struggles, this project aims to better understand the relationships between public values and policy, and in particular to determine the circumstances in which local values matter. People worldwide have been witnessing a shift of the causes of environmental degradation and the power to regulate away from local decision making to outside influences, often characterized as the globalization trend. This project assesses the way globalization is influencing the authority and capacity of local actors to guide and manage environmentally sustainable growth

Reader: What are the preliminary results of this research?

Mastriani: Because this is a complex, multi-institutional, muti-year research project in which we have completed a pilot phase to test our research protocol and have just begun our full phase of research, it is still too early to say much substantively about research results for the project as a whole. What has been accomplished to date is developing and refining a research protocol that each team can use and that will provide us with a comparative base at the end of the project. For example, teams are using a set of Common Research Questions that have been tested during a pilot phase and have evolved at subsequent meetings. These questions are used by each team to draw out information on key themes that we see emerging from this project: globalization; governance; social justice; trust in institutions; and degree of political efficacy. In the current phase of fieldwork, teams have focused on the ways in which citizens and policy makers frame the concept of social justice in relation to their cases and how that framing effects values more generally.

Reader: What cultural factors of your foreign associates have impacted the project? How have these factors impacted the project?

Mastriani: As with most international projects, participants are influenced in their work by their own personal biases and assumptions as well as their cultural background. From the very beginning of our project, participants have been committed to stating their biases, assumptions, and cultural influences up front. For example, the India team has stated that they are activists working to advance the rights of marginal people in India. This does not hinder the India team from doing the work of the project, but it must be stated in any results that come from the project. Another example is from the China team. It was very important for our China team to obtain government approval to participate in this project, and they have done so.

Reader: What is your impression of the future of environmental regulation in developing countries like China and India? What policies should developed nations like the United States and Japan pursue to encourage environmental protection in developing nations?

Mastriani: Because the research of our project is in its early stages and we have not yet begun our comparative analysis, I do not think that it would be fair to offer a prediction regarding these two questions. I do hope that the results of this project can shed some light on answering these questions as they are definitely some of the most pressing matters the international environmental community face.

Reader: Can you explain the different impact policy elites have on environmental regulation in the nations studied in this project?

Mastriani: Again, because the research of the project is in its early stages, I cannot comment on this yet.

Reader: The Carnegie Council project description states, "This project is based on the premise that, while individuals around the world face the same biospheric conditions, their perceptions, values, and ways of knowing about and evaluating environmental problems differ vastly." What perceptions, values, and evaluations can you identify that illustrate this statement?

Mastriani: What we mean by this statement is that individuals each have their own socio-economic, cultural, and political lens through which they see the world and this affects the way they interact with and view the environment. What this project is learning is that what is often overlooked is a person’s political position and how that affects their attitude toward the environment. For example, a fishworker dependent on catching fish for survival will tend to value clean lakes and oceans that are conducive to reliable supply and good quality catch, whereas this may not be a priority for some governments and companies seeking to increase economic development of a region.

Reader: What do you hope will come of this research upon completion?

Mastriani: We hope that this project will contribute to filling a gap in the scholarly work on environmental values and policy making as well as to the policy making process. Regarding scholarly work, the rich existing literature on environmental values lacks a study on the precise role of values in policy making, particularly across societies with contrasting forms and conditions of governance.

Regarding the policy making process, by contributing our knowledge of environmental values in societies of widely different systems of governance and how these values are changed and challenged by globalization of environmental policy, the project aims to assist in the production of more workable and equitable domestic and international environmental policy solutions.