The Handbook of Environmental Voluntary Agreements: Design, Implementation and Evaluation Issues

ISBN-13: 9789048168439 / Angielski / Miękka / 2010 / 395 str.

Edoardo Croci

Opis

EDOARDOCROCI IEFE - Universita Bocconi, Milano, Italy Voluntary approaches in environmental policy represent a third wave of regulation in the environmental field. Command and control was the first wave. Its core is based on uniform emission standards, the respect of which needs to be enforced through extensive monitoring and severe sanctions. The expected cost of sanction for non-compliance, calculated as its amount multiplied for the probability to be caught, must be superior to the benefits of non-compliance, in order to let the sanction be effective. As the benefits of non-compliance can vary among firms, sanctions need to be very high in order to be effective. In fact sanctions are ordinary correlated to environmental damage and not to the benefits of non-compliance. But very high sanctions can be difficult to enforce as they appear unfair and can lead to dramatic consequences on firms and workers, up to shut-downs of plants. Ambient standards reduce these problems, but oblige the regulator to know a huge amount of information, regarding the specific contribution of each polluter to the polluted body. Information is difficult to obtain because of asymmetric information and costly to produce because it requires large and skilled regulating and enforcing organizations. Nevertheless complex regulation is the base of any environmental policy framework, as it allows the policy maker to fully exercise its power of composition of various interests in a relatively transparent way. Economic instruments were the second wave."

Spis treści

Preface. 1. Voluntary agreements in environmental policy. The economics of environmental voluntary agreements; E. Croci. Corporate self-regulation and multi-stakeholder dialogue; P. A. Mazurkiewicz. 2. The poltical economy of voluntary agreements. Voluntary agreements in a rent-seeking environment; M. Glachant. Aspects of the political economy of environmental voluntary agreements – a meta study; L.G. Hansen. 3. The European and the American approach to environmental voluntary agreements. The evolution of environmental agreements at the level of the European Union G. Schnabl. The use of voluntary approaches for environmental policymaking in the U.S. K. Brouhle, C. Griffiths and A. Wolverton. Negotiated regulation, implementation and compliance in the United States. N.A. Ashford and C.C. Caldart. 4. Design, negotiation and implementation of environmental voluntary agreements: national and sector approaches. Efficiency standards versus negotiated agreements in the European electrical appliance sector; P. Menanteau. Implementing the duty of acceptance in Flemish waste policy: the role of environmental voluntary agreements; M. de Clercq and R. Bracke. Environmental voluntary agreements in Portugal: characterisation and implementation; M. Cabugueira. Designing energy conservation voluntary agreements for the industrial sector in China: experience from a pilot project with two steel mills in Shandong Province; L. Price, E. Worrell and J. Sinton. 5. Evaluation of environmental voluntary agreements. On the assessment of environmental voluntary agreements in Europe: lessons to be learned from a comparative case study analysis; M. de Clercq and R. Bracke. Environmental voluntary agreements in the Dutch context; H.Bressers and T. de Bruijn. Analysing the effectiveness of an environmental voluntary agreement: the case of the Australian national packaging covenant; R.L. Burritt, H. Lewis and K. James.Towards an integrated performance indicator for (energy) benchmarking covenants with industry; J. Couder and A. Verbruggen. 6. Environmental voluntary agreements in policy mixes. Environmental agreements used in combination with other policy instruments; N.A. Braathen. Using the benchmarking covenant for allocating emission allowances: are we still moving ahead? A.W.N. van Dril.