ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
whilst neatly categorising it as a separate policy area. However, in practice,
separation has usually meant marginalisation.
MEs have only partially resolved horizontal co-ordination problems.
Although they bring together a range of functions that had previously been
carried out by other departments and agencies, many overtly environmental
competencies initially remained outside the ambit of MEs. Over time there
has been greater consolidation of functions, but some fragmentation per-
sists everywhere; for example, water management is the responsibility of
other ministries in the Netherlands, Croatia and the Czech Republic (EEA
2005b:19). The emergence of global issues such as climate change, which
require greater co-ordination of strategies encompassing energy and trans-
port policies, has increased pressure to amalgamate some economic and
environmental functions. The British government, therefore, created a new
‘super-department’ of Environment, Transport and the Regions in 1997, but
this unwieldy and internally divided ministry was broken up again in 2001
when environment was combined with the agriculture and food safety port-
folios in a new Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA).
One progressive initiative is in Sweden where a Ministry of Sustainable Devel-
opment has been created combining energy, construction and housing with
thetraditional environmental responsibilities (such as nature conservation
and biodiversity), and with a specific remit to co-ordinate sustainable devel-
opment and climate policy across government. However, attempts to extend
thejurisdiction and power of an ME frequently stumble into turf wars with
established ‘economic’ ministries, such as transport or energy, anxious not
torelinquish their functions (Jansen et al. 1998 : 302).
Twobroad models of environment ministry can be identified. One has an
exclusively environmental remit, which produces a clear but narrow policy
focus. A danger here is that the ME might be politically isolated. A small,
unimportant department, often with a correspondingly weak minister, may
be a lone, ineffective voice for the environment within government. The
French Ministry of the Environment, for example, has a clear mission, but
it possesses few independent policymaking powers and can only get things
done by working with other departments. Although it bangs the drum of
environmental protection loudly, the Ministry has been marginalised, fre-
quently behaving more like ‘an internal government pressure group than
thecentral focus of a major sectoral policy domain’ (Buller 1998 : 77; see
also Szarka 2003 : 96–7). Similarly, even the more powerful German Ministry
forthe Environment has little or no influence over many core ‘environ-
mental issues’ that fall within the competency of other ministries, such as
transport and agricultural policy, and like most MEs it has a small budget
(Weidner2002b:155).Asecond, generalist, ME model involves the merger of
several environmental and non-environmental functions within one depart-
ment. Common partners for the environment are the portfolios for housing
(Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden), local government (Ireland and, until
2001, the UK), agriculture/rural affairs (Austria, UK), heritage (Australia,