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This paper calls for a reevaluation of the pollution problem in order to devise efficient strategies for its control. It contends that a fundamental cause of pollution is inefficiency in input-use during the production process. This inefficiency manifests itself as input-waste and polluting residues. Precision technologies can increase the effectiveness of inputs used in production and reduce pollution generation. Despite their potential economic and ecological benefits, adoption of precision technologies has been slow. This paper presents a conceptual framework to identify and analyze the specific factors that affect their diffusion among microunits. These include various heterogeneous characteristics of microunits, prices which do not reflect the relevant scarcities due to distortionary regulatory policies and lack of institutional mechanisms for efficient allocation of inputs and outputs. It rationalizes the observed variations in the appropriate choice of technology across microunits and argues for the need to broaden the range of incentive-based instruments for environmental protection beyond pollution taxes.

This paper explores the relationship between telecommunications systems and urban environmental policy. It challenges the powerful, and often taken for granted, assumption that telecommunications improve the environmental performance of cities because the technologies are ‘inherently environmentally benign’ and that they simply ‘substitute’ for travel, inevitably leading towards the dematerialisation of the contemporary city. Instead the paper argues that telecommunications raise serious environmental problems and act as powerful materialisers, particularly as a generator of new demands for travel. It shows that the environmental implications of telecommunications are undoubtedly more complex and contradictory than is often assumed.

The present paper aims to map existing and future opportunities for utilizing EU bilateral agreements to promote the protection of environmental rights, as well as available legal avenues to address missed opportunities and possible risks that EU environmental action abroad may negatively impact on environmental rights in third countries. It starts with a brief overview of the external environmental policy of the EU, including constitutional requirements to couple human rights and environmental protection in external relations and an introduction to the practice of EU bilateral agreements. The chapter will then provide a snapshot of the environment-and-human-rights connection in EU law from an internal perspective, to demonstrate the political sensitivity of the issue. Against this background, the central part of the paper will identify six thematic areas in which entry points for the protection of environmental rights exist in the framework of EU bilateral agreements. The final section will offer a preliminary reflection of the human rights risks of current environmental external relations of the Union and possible avenues to tackle these risks in EU and international law.

The high level of nitrogen emissions over the last decades and their adverse impact on the natural environment and human health are a pressing environmental issue. A nitrogen tax can be a cost-efficient and effective policy instrument to reduce nitrogen emissions. However, adverse effects on low- and middle-income households might lead to societal and political frictions that could end up in resistance. In this paper we investigate how a hypothetical nitrogen tax covering the specific external costs of nitrogen could be implemented and estimate its short-term distributional effects on household income groups in Germany. The findings show that the proposed tax would be regressive. However, if the tax rate is set equal to the true cost of nitrogen, the monetary impacts would overall be small, ranging from 1.15% of income for the first income quintile to 0.66% for the fifth. Complementary policy measures to lower the burden on low-income households, farmers and the energy sector could preempt social resistance against the tax.

CONTEXT: To address sustainability challenges in agriculture, private and multi-stakeholder initiatives increasingly use sustainability indicators to monitor the sustainability impact of farms. These indicators can be part of standards for certification or assessment tools to measure farm performance. While these initiatives play an important role in navigating the sustainability transition, insight in how these governance initiatives operationalize sustainability in crop farming is lacking. OBJECTIVE: This paper examines how private and multi-stakeholder governance initiatives, which increasingly regulate the sustainability of a sizeable portion of agriculture globally, operationalize the concept of sustainability. It provides understanding into which sustainability themes are commonly included in sustainability initiatives, and those that are not, which can give insight into the direction these initiatives are steering crop production worldwide. METHODS: We developed an overview of governance initiatives using databases and existing research on sustainable agriculture initiatives. Documentation about these initiatives was gathered and used to systematically review descriptive and institutional characteristics of the 29 sustainability assessment and standard initiatives. Moreover, we analyzed the kinds of indicators (i.e., performance, practice, and target) and the themes that are prioritized in the environmental, social, and economic dimensions of sustainability. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: The analysis shows that the 29 initiatives are very diverse in their characteristics. While some specifically focus on one crop or country, others operate across production chains and at a global scale. Within specific sectors or countries, certain standards are quite influential, for instance, the Better Cotton Initiative covers 22% of global cotton production, while in Ireland, 70% of horticulture farmers are Origin Green certified. Globally, 2% of the crop land is certified under one of the 14 standards that reported land use. Our analysis of sustainability themes show an imbalance across environmental, social, an economic sustainability, with environmental sustainability being prioritized. In particular, social themes such as quality of life, food sovereignty and fair trading practices were less often included (38, 24 and 21% respectively). SIGNIFICANCE: Sustainability standard and assessment initiatives govern a substantial and growing portion of global cropland. They play a central role in determining what is considered sustainable and thereby influence which farming practices are applied worldwide. The impact of these initiatives is likely to continue to grow as sustainability assessments and standards become more widely adopted. In examining a large sample of standard and assessment initiatives, this study presents a comprehensive overview of the current state of sustainability indicators for crop farming globally.

Crop residue-based bioenergy (CRB) is a green replacement for fossil fuels and an effective way of utilizing crop residues. Understanding CRB's GHG reduction effects is critical for predicting its contributions to carbon neutrality. However, many studies have focused on single products or regional assessments, and results remain uncertain and lacking in systematic examination of the diversity in products, feedstock types and their supply. Therefore, this paper systematically investigates the GHG reduction efficiency, driving factors and abatement costs of principal CRB products using a database of 225 cases composed of 71 carbon trading projects and 154 projects analyzed in scientific publications. The results show that bio-power and/or heat (bio-P&H) is highly efficient (689 kg CO2e/t dry CR) and economical (269 $/t CO2e) in reducing GHG emissions, but liquid biofuels is not encouraged because of its inefficient performance. Plant size and feedstock collection radius significantly affected GHG reductions of bio-P&H and liquid biofuel. Recommended plant sizes and feedstock types for CRB production were identified from environmental and economic perspectives. Overall, these results clarify the patterns and driving factors of GHG reduction efficiency and abatement costs of various CRB products, providing a framework for optimizing CRB development to combat climate change.

This paper begins with an examination of the role of state failure in constructing and preserving inefficient and ineffective systems of pollution control. It then assesses the characteristics, goals and mechanisms associated with integrated economic development and environmental protection as proposed by the conceptual framework of ecological modernization. In seeking to assess the applicability of the policy prescriptions of ecological modernization, recent European Union (E.U.) policy developments relating both to environment and economy are analysed. It is contended that while aspects of the emerging E.U. policy framework correspond to the theoretical construct of ecological modernization, the reluctance of other key actors in the E.U. policy process, most notably certain national governments, remains a key obstacle to its implementation. The paper submits that this reluctance is associated with concerns regarding the impact of environmental policy on industrial competitiveness. Through an examination of the interrelations between environmental policy and industrial competitiveness in the U.K., the paper suggests that to date the integration of environmental and economic concerns in U.K. industry remains weak. However, it also suggests that recent positive experience relating to the impact of environmental policy on industrial competitiveness is beginning to change the way that industry perceives policies that reflect the goals of ecological modernization. The paper concludes that these altered perceptions in industry have the potential to influence the policy stances adopted by national governments and hence to overcome some of the key barriers to ecological modernization at the E.U. level.

This paper reports the results of a study that employs a computable general equilibrium model to trace the economy-wide effects of environmental policy shocks - a carbon tax and a timber export tax. The results indicate that the policies have contractionary effects on the economy. The paper discusses ways in which the model could be modified to account for the use of environmental inputs in consumption and production activities.

The paper examines the scope for social and environmental objectives to be included in public procurement procedures. The concept of sustainable public procurement (SPP) is analysed, and the extent of its implementation by European public authorities. The paper then turns to the legal characterisation of SPP measures and the competence of the EU to regulate in this area. Areas of legal uncertainty are found to exist regarding the specification of production processes and methods, the requirement for a ‘link to the subject-matter of the contract’ and the proper role of contract performance clauses. Conclusions are drawn regarding the likely impact of the reforms proposed by the European Commission on these areas, which are also relevant for the implementation of SPP under the revised WTO Government Procurement Agreement. The paper is intended to lay the groundwork for assessing the legality and effectiveness of different approaches to SPP.

This paper analyzes the effects of several types of regulatory policy on the operation of the SO2 allowance trading system established in the UC Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 (CAAA). Theoretically, such a system can achieve environmental goals at least cost. However, regional environmental and employment concerns have suggested regulations in some states that will restrict full market operation, thereby negating many of the efficiency gains that market based regulation is designed to capture. This paper determines the costs of these regulatory interventions. These costs can be compared with employment and environmental impacts to assist policy makers in their regulatory decisions.

This paper compares and contrasts the nature and scope of change in the domestic climate governance of India and South Africa between 2007 and 2010. It uses an actor‐centered approach to analyze the drivers of change. An exploratory test of fit shows that the concept of 'communities of practice' captures the trends and actor relations well for the South African case, while more simple networks could be identified in India. Using data from an expert survey and from semi‐structured interviews, this paper finds that both countries have generally not yet surpassed the level of second‐order change, or double‐loop learning. Differences exist for more specific parts of climate governance. Three resulting hypotheses give conditions for the development of either communities of practice or of networks, as conceptualized in formal network analysis. They target the number of participating actors, the size of the scientific landscape and the degree of competition among scientists, and the centrality of a governmental actor with a certain knowledge and attitude within a network.

On a global scale transparency is seen increasingly as an important tool of governance. Within environmental policy at the nation state level, transparency is also seen as a way to achieve positive outcomes in situations where traditional regulatory approaches have been less successful. As a first step towards a wider project comparing environmental information disclosure policies and programs across a number of countries, this paper briefly discusses some initial data collection for the country of Thailand. The purpose is to understand governmental transparency in the environmental arena within the larger context of pollution control activity. This paper ends with some conclusions about the role of transparency in the future of Thai environmental policy.

This paper assumes that hotels are pivotal in the development of tourism in general, and specifically in the context of economically marginal areas in Canada that are looking towards tourism as a generator of economic activity. In consequence, they may be deemed to be important opinion leaders contributing towards decisions about environmental protection policies that impinge on tourism. This study therefore reports on the attitudes of Canadian hoteliers to environmental issues, and tests various hypotheses including whether or not current profitability, size of hotel or other structural components are determining factors of such attitudes. The paper concludes that hoteliers tend to concur with environmental protection policies, and that these attitudes are generally independent of profitability.

There have been several methodologies for environmental impact assessment and management planning available for many years. These methodologies have centred round a fairly standard format for their core or central documents: environment impact statements and management plans, respectively. At the same time, methodologies have been slow to evolve in the broader field of environmental policy analysis. These methodologies possibly could be improved if a standard format for the core document, often a discussion paper, could be developed. In this paper a proposed standard format is deduced from those available for environmental impact statements and management plans and then tested on a case study: the analysis of coastal policy in Victoria, Australia. As a result of this study, modifications are made and a revised standard format for environmental policy analysis is suggested.

This paper examines the two externalities that a country's environmental regulation imposes on other country's welfare: an environmental externality, due to transboundary pollution, and, a competitive advantage externality, as regulations affect domestic firms' abatement costs, which impact the profits of their foreign competitors. We first analyze the emission standards that countries independently set under different market structures and then compare them with the standards set under international environmental agreements that internalize one or both types of externalities. The paper hence disentangles the effect of each externality. We show that firms' profits increase when countries participate in international treaties if the environmental damage from pollution is relatively low and such pollution is not significantly transboundary. We hence demonstrate that international environmental agreements can serve as cooperative devices firms use to ameliorate overproduction and increase profits, without the need to form collusive agreements.

In this paper, we seek to clarify further the processes of internationalization on environmental policy convergence by focussing narrowly on transnational communication as a mechanism for policy learning mediated by a country’s policy analytical capacity. We argue that without significant policy analytical capacity, it is unlikely for transnational communication as a source of lesson drawing to translate into environmental policy convergence. Based on a survey of Canadian provincial public servants, we find that policy analysts in the environmental policy sector do not engage in significant interaction or training outside of their own jurisdictions and are therefore unlikely to engage in extensive trans-national or international learning. This paper clarifies an important finding of Holzinger, Knill and Sommerer (2008) that while transnational communication leads to harmonization in the presence of policy, it does not result in convergence around particular policy instruments or their settings.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyse the role of transfers as a means to overcome inefficiencies in the provision of impure public goods. The paper employs the example of international conditional transfers targeted to overcome suboptimal low climate protection efforts by influencing the abatement technology choice of countries.Design/methodology/approachThe paper applies the Lancastrian characteristics approach and conduct numerical simulations for divergent degrees of substitutability between different characteristics. The paper takes into account climate‐protection benefits (global pollution reduction) as well as co‐benefits (local pollution reduction) of climate protection activities.FindingsThe analysis shows that individual country solution can be improved upon by making transfers from the richer countries to the poorer ones, if the latter have a lower relative preference for the global public goods (global pollution reduction) than the former. The magnitudes of such transfers will depend on the relative benefits of the global and local pollutants in the two countries. The authors also investigated the dependency of the potential for transfers on the degree of complementarity between global and local pollution characteristics. With a “Cobb Douglas” type of function used here the elasticity of substitution between the two is of course one. With a zero degree of substitutability the adjustment to a lower level of the global public good in fact starts to happen at a lower per capita income level. The scope for conditional transfers is still there, although the gains can be slightly smaller than when adjustment on the “global pollution characteristic – local pollution characteristic” margin is possible.Originality/valueThis paper is a contribution to the literature on impure public goods. In particular, the authors examine the role of international transfers in obtaining an efficient global allocation of resources in the presence of such public goods. To date the analysis of impure public goods has not examined the case of a continuum of technologies where an efficient solution requires conditional transfers, i.e. payments from one country to another to undertake a different supply of global and local public goods than the second country would wish to undertake.

Traceability is broadly understood as a technical means of understanding, communicating and steering the relations of production and trade in the global food system. Using an assemblage lens, this paper challenges this technical understanding by analysing how traceability affects and is affected by the relations that constitute global value chains. Analysing the introduction of the ThisFish traceability system in a small-scale tuna fishery in Indonesia we show how an NGO, Masyarakat dan Perikanan Indonesia (MDPI), de-stabilised existing relations and expertise around landing and trading tuna and subsequently re-stabilised these relations in a different assemblage through the collection, collation and management of fisheries data. In doing so MDPI worked through rather than reconfigured the social relations of production and trade in the implementation of traceability, thereby becoming part of the assemblage the NGO sought to change. The results demonstrate how the implementation of traceability is, in contrast to its technical framing, more accurately understood as a process of 'active embedding' by 'boundary subjects' who re-assemble contingent interactions by enacting multiple roles simultaneously. Traceability is as such contingent on the performance of these boundary subjects rather than on market incentives or objective monitoring and control. However, we also conclude that because it also dependent on the negotiated identity and function of these boundary subjects, traceability (and similar market based forms of governance) risk reinforcing rather than transforming the relations of production and trade they engage.

Whether a new policy is adapted to a new social-ecological reality depends on the complex interactions that play out from the policy process itself. The established theories of the policy process do not directly or explicitly address the actors' ability to influence. This study attempts to fill this gap by developing a model of actors' capacity to influence (an actor-centered perspective) which allows us to analyze the casual relationship between actors' influencing capacity and its effects on policy decision-making. This paper provides an in-depth study of the 2010 Brazilian Solid Waste Policy, a policy process characterized by high conflict that took almost 20 years to be approved by Brazilian Congress. It maps the actors' capacity of influence over the course of ten years to understand how this influence is related to policy dynamics (change and stability) and policy contents (policy instruments adopted). The study involves document analyses and interviews with relevant stakeholders. The findings identify the important role of influential actors in causing moments of paralysis and in fostering instrumental design. The insights on actors' capacity of influence and its effects contribute to our understanding of the complex dynamics of the environmental policy process.

Aquifers are facing severe pressure from water extraction and irrigation. In many regions groundwater tables have declined considerably and aquifers have become polluted by various pollutants such as nitrates. The changes observed in groundwater quantity and quality are a threat (i) to the crucial ecosystems services groundwater provides such as drinking and irrigation water provision, natural attenuation processes, storage functions and habitats, as well as (ii) to groundwater dependent ecosystems such as springs, rivers, wetlands, and lakes. In order to provide sustainable solutions new methods are needed in groundwater management where groundwater systems are seen in a more holistic and integrated way. The impact-response ecosystem service models are a model class useful to show potential known or predicted changes, among those the European Commission adopted the DPSIR framework that defines the Drivers that by Pressures affect the water Status causing Impacts and Reponses. However the full application of the DPSIR requires the development of different conceptual models. The one related to biogeochemistry requires the identification of the sources and pathways of contamination and the biogeochemical processes that have influence on the transfer of the contaminants from the soil to the groundwater. Once the conceptual model is well developed, it is possible to use software tools for leaching assessment at different scales and it is possible to apply the impact response model assessing the impact of future scenarios considering climatic and land-use changes. The special issue reports paper that are investigating on the assessment of the pollutant input into groundwater systems and on the measures for protecting groundwater, considering also the assessment of the effect of climate and land-use change. Case studies are reported. The substances that are stated in the issue are trace metal, salt, nutrient, pesticide and organic waste water contaminants. The special issue includes mainly papers coming from GENESIS project (Groundwater and Dependent Ecosystems: New Scientific and Technological Basis for Assessing Climate Change and Land-use Impacts on Groundwater; EU project, contract number: 226536) and the issue addressed in the final conference on Integrated Management of Groundwater Resources and Dependent Ecosystems held in Prague from 5th to 7th March 2014.

In this paper, we consider a problem in environmental policy design by applying optimal stopping rules. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the optimal timings at which the government should adopt environmental policies to deal with increases in greenhouse gas concentrations and to reduce emissions of SO2 or CO2 under the continuous-time Knightian uncertainty. Furthermore, we analyze the effects of increases in Knightian uncertainty on optimal environmental policies and the reservation value.

Regulators have increasingly become concerned about end-of-pipe abatement technologies because they not only play a crucial role in air pollution control but also ensure the achievement of the deep carbon emissions reduction target. This paper investigates the effect of emission taxes and standards on the adoption of end-of-pipe abatement technology when the arrival time and degree of improvement of the new emissions abatement technology are uncertain. We find that the ranking of emission taxes and standards in terms of motivating early adoption depends on the policy stringency. More specifically, for high levels of environmental stringency, standards induce an earlier technology adoption than taxes, while the opposite conclusion holds for low levels of environmental stringency. The sensitivity analysis shows that these findings are robust to various relevant crucial parameters. Finally, the implications for the choice of environmental policy have been provided.

This paper examines the welfare effects of market-based (permits, taxes) and choice-based (voluntary emission certifications, eco-labels) environmental policy. My analysis shows that choice-based eco-labels can be a welfare-improving policy. However, these welfare gains occur through “green” consumer surplus as opposed to (social benefiting) emission reductions while emission taxes and permits increase welfare by causing “dirtier” or less efficient firms to leave the market. Although greater environmental conscientiousness makes eco-labeling an effective tool to improve overall welfare, eco-labels are not as effective at reducing environmental damage relative to traditional market-based emission taxes or permits. Using research on consumer preferences and previously implemented environmental policies, the effectiveness of traditional emission taxes and eco-labeling programs are estimated. The results suggest that consumers participation in the eco-labeled product market benefits producers, but overall, eco-labeling programs are an inefficient policy tool relative to traditional market-based emission taxes or permits.

In order to estimate the possible effects of existing ballast tank sediment management routine in ports the respective legal framework from different states was examined and the operational modes of selected Adriatic shipyards was analysed. The goal was to determine if the States' administration and ports' management are aware of risks which sediments pose to human health and environment due to possible presence of harmful aquatic organisms and pathogens (HAOP) or high concentrations of heavy metals. The analysis revealed that sediments from ballast tanks after being collected, are subject to the same handling procedure as any other waste material generated during ships' repair and maintenance. In addition, measures preventing sediment drainage into the sea or procedures for analyzing the presence of heavy metals or toxics have not been identified. The paper proposes the procedures ensuring the more advanced level of protection from HAOP and potentially toxic substances from ballast sediment.

This paper presents an estimate of the costs of reducing CO2 emissions as agreed in Kyoto by Annex 1 countries. Unlike most of the existing literature, this paper uses an Almost Ideal Demand System model for energy products to estimate the role of each country within the Annex 1 market. A major result is the provision of marginal (and total) abatement costs for each. The recent position of the US is also discussed, showing the cost of some alternative outcomes.

Cross-border illegal water pollution discharge (CIPD) occurs much frequently due to weak environmental supervision and unclear environmental rights. This paper attempts to explore the impact of cross-border ecological compensation policy (CBEC) on CIPD. By using day-night difference of pollution data at administrative boundary monitoring station, illegal water pollution discharge is calculated. Difference-in-differences-in-differences (DDD) model is used to estimate the impact of CBEC on CIPD. First, DDD results show that CBEC can effectively curb CIPD. Second, environmental regulatory effect, environmental governance effect and environmental awareness effect produced by CBEC are tested. CBEC inhibits CIPD by strengthening media supervision and public pollution reporting in environmental regulatory effect, and reduces CIPD by increasing environmental protection investment and environmental law enforcement efficiency in environmental governance effect, and curbs CIPD by promoting environmental information disclosure and reducing environmental corruption in environmental awareness effect. Third, by further analyzing different stages of CBEC, CIPD generated by environmental action coordination and environmental governance mechanism coordination is highly inhibited. Fourth, CBEC has a stronger inhibition effect on CIPD as upstream region is economically underdeveloped and downstream is economically developed. The conclusion provides policy implications from inter-government coordination for restraining CIPD.

This empirical study examines the factors enhancing environmental governance for marine plastic litter abatement in Manila, the Philippines. We use a combined covariance-based hybrid structural equation modeling (SEM) and DPSIR framework, with data collected via an online survey from 456 barangays in Manila, the Philippines. The survey was processed and analyzed using a combined model, validated through interviews and focused group discussions. With Higher-Order Model good internal consistency (0.917) and achieved measures of CFI (0.992), RMSEA (0.036), and SRMR (0.019), the findings revealed that environmental governance (COVID-19 waste), community participation, socio-economic factors, and solution measures have positively affected marine plastic litter (MPL) abatement. Notwithstanding, environmental governance (SWM policies and guidelines) has a negative impact on MPL abatement. There is, however, no link between waste infrastructure and MPL abatement. The findings provide significant perspectives in Manila to enhance environmental governance for MPL abatement. This paper presents policy-actions implications drawn from DPSIR-SEM.

To alleviate the ecological and environmental problems caused by rapid urban development, China has formulated and implemented the new-type urbanization strategy. However, there is insufficient empirical research on the specific relationship between new-type urbanization and air pollution. Therefore, based on the panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2005 to 2018, this paper constructs a comprehensive evaluation index system of new-type urbanization using the five dimensions of population, economy, space, society, and green. The spatial Durbin model and the spatial mediating model are used to discuss the spatial effect, transmission mechanism, and regional heterogeneity of new-type urbanization on air pollution. The results show that China's air pollution mainly presents a spatial pattern of high-high agglomeration and low-low agglomeration, and there are spatial fluctuations. The construction of new-type urbanization significantly reduces local air pollution, and the industrial structure optimization, technological innovation, and energy structure adjustment are considered as important transmission mechanisms. However, under the fiscal decentralization and political tournament system in China, the policy implementation deviation may weaken the emission reduction effect of new-type urbanization, which is not conducive to regional environmental governance. From the sub-regional level, the impact of new-type urbanization on air pollution has regional heterogeneity. A robustness test confirms the reliability of our research conclusions. This study also proposes some policy suggestions that the government can utilize in grasping the policy focus of new-type urbanization construction to discover effective ways of controlling air pollution.

Environmental licensing is a command-and-control (CC) instrument used at the state level in Brazil to enforce compliance with legal requirements and environmental standards; however, it does not encourage continuous improvement. The objective of this paper is to propose a methodology that can be used as a licensing and monitoring policy for industrial activities, based on both command and control and economic instruments. Therefore, the development of a matrix to measure the environmental performance of companies is proposed so as to include mandatory compliance requirements, environmental management requirements and continuous improvement indicators. Performance assessment could be used by the environmental agency as a tool to support environmental management policy change by working with environmental incentives for better-performing companies. The results obtained with the matrix will demonstrate exactly what the theory describes: in an environment where the control imposed to the entrepreneur is by the attendance of a legislative standard and not the demonstration of continuous improvement, there is no evolution of the environmental performance over the 3-year period of the companies. Consequently, the inclusion of a tool to assess environmental performance constitutes a requirement for the environmental evolution of the country.

As a tool to regulate environmental issues, standards play a key role in defining acceptable levels of safety and environmental protection. From a governance perspective, standards are also significant for their inclusion of non-governmental stakeholders, including industry and environmental organizations, in determining the benchmarks upon which policies are enacted. Drawing upon work on Israeli standards for both environmental pollutants in consumer products and ‘green building’, this paper considers how the use of standards as an environmental policy tool affects how environmental issues are regulated. The research uses written standards, research into standardisation committees and approximately twenty in-depth interviews. Thematic analysis of the use of these standards as environmental policy tools highlighted different issues including the connection between representation of different interests and availability of resources; different rationales for standards that may produce conflict in professional decisions; and implications of the consensus-building approach for balancing interests and driving government policy. We conclude that various factors ought to be taken into account when using standards within environmental policy. We provide policy recommendations including a need to consider the implications of using a standard in the absence of broader regulation; the impact of economic and pragmatic rationales on environmental and health measures in standards; and means to improve the balance of representatives on standards committees.

Recent analyses maintain that recycling in developed countries, being mostly the result of costly policies, may be already above its socially optimal level. These analyses in fact underestimate such level if increasing recycling not only reduces residual waste, but also total waste. We find that this is the case: a 10% increase in recycling rate is associated with a 1.5–2% decrease of total urban waste. This effect is largely attributable to curbside collection programs, whose adoption increases recycling rates by 8–14% and reduces waste generation by about 4%. This paper contributes to the literature on the relations between waste and recycling by providing estimates of the source reduction effect of recycling policies and pointing out the important role played in it by curbside collection programs.

In this paper, a new parametric meta-frontier estimation method, which we call the metafrontier input distance function (MIDF), is proposed to construct a new green productivity index and the shadow price for Chinese coal-fired power plants. Taking the policy heterogeneity into account, 93 Chinese coal-fired power plants are divided into two groups based on whether they are located in China's key “environmental protection cities”, a Chinese environmental protection policy. Using this method, the productivity and the shadow price of the two groups are compared. We find that the average annual growth rate of green productivity of coal-fired power plants in key environmental protection cities is 5.11% from 2005 to 2010, while in the non-key environmental protection cities it is 9.43%, suggesting that environmental regulation will damage productivity growth. Interestingly, although coal-fired power plants in key environmental protection cities face more stringent environmental regulation, their green productivity index still shows an overall upward trend, which partially supports the Porter hypothesis. For the shadow price of sulfur dioxide (SO2), the group-based shadow price of coal-fired power plants in key environmental protection cities is 5419 US dollar per ton on average, while in non-key environmental protection cities it is 1628 US dollar per ton, which also indicates that power plants facing more stringent regulation bear greater abatement costs.

Environmental taxes are usually perceived as regressive. However, delving into the literature of the distributional effects of environmental taxation reveals that the heterogeneity within and between studies lead to divergent conclusions. This paper employs a meta-regression analysis of the existing studies about the effects of ecological taxes on distribution to investigate the sources of variation of the distributional outcomes. Using a multinomial logit model, it is found that the distributional implications significantly vary with the adoption of revenue-neutral schemes and the stage of development of the analyzed economy. In particular, environmental taxes have an expected probability of being regressive (progressive) of about 0.84 (0.10) when the policy is not accompanied by any revenue-recycling package, the incidence of the tax is measured based on households’ current income, and it is performed in a developed country. However, that expected probability falls (rises) to 0.04 (0.91) when the revenue raised by the policy is progressively recycled, the incidence is measured using expenditure data, and the study is performed in a developing economy. In contrast, other features such as the type of tax or methodological issues do not seem to significantly influence the results. This study aims to inform policymakers, especially in developing countries, to design a socially desired environmental policy.

The coastlines of many Arabian cities are now dominated by structures such as seawalls, breakwaters and jetties as urbanization has expanded rapidly in the region. Coastal development has substantially degraded the mangrove forests, saltmarshes, seagrass meadows, oyster beds and coral reefs that traditionally provided invaluable ecosystem goods and services to coastal trading villages of the Arabian Gulf. Regional awareness of environmental issues is growing, however, and local governments are increasingly promoting more sustainable urban development. The use of ecological engineering approaches, along with improved environmental policies, may mitigate some past impacts, and will potentially create new development projects with greater ecological benefits for more sustainable growth in the future. In this paper, we discuss past coastal development in the Gulf, and offer advice on how ecological engineering could be used to enhance the ecological benefits of coastal infrastructure, particularly by encouraging the colonization of juvenile corals and fishes. Such approaches can encourage more sustainable development of this increasingly urbanized seascape.

A comprehensive understanding of the relationships between environmental regulations and green growth of economy is essential for policy design and decision-making. This paper combines hybrid measure with Global Malmquist Luenberger index to estimate national green growth level. A panel threshold regression technique is then employed to observe the non-linear impacts of both the formal and informal environmental regulations on green growth in Group 20 countries during 2001-2015. Results from empirical tests reveal that, for the formal environmental regulations represented by Environmental Policy Stringency (EPS), the market-based EPS is only significant at high-level phase while this is not the case in the low-level counterpart; non-market based EPS witnessed significant signs across the three phases, but in varied coefficients and significance levels. By comparison, the informal environmental regulations represented by environmental-related technologies and education levels show positive and significant impact on green growth, except for the case when countries have higher level of technologies. In addition, income per capita and gross Research & Development (R&D) expenditures present significant positive impacts on the dependent while share of service sector to the economy and investment on transport infrastructure witnessed negative effects across the models. Policy implications are proposed thereafter, although both the formal and informal environmental regulations are important to promote green growth, but they show different impacts at different phases.

This paper explores the potential of climate finance to support developing country efforts to shift away from unsustainable land use patterns in the context of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. We pursue two research objectives here. Through a meta-analysis of 40 developing country Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), we provide, first, a comprehensive qualitative overview of developing country perspectives on climate financing needs for mitigation and adaptation activities in the land use, land-use change and forestry sectors (LULUCF). Second, we examine whether countries acknowledge a role for domestic financing and international and domestic fiscal policy reform within these NDCs, as a way to address drivers of land use conversion. We supplement our meta-analysis of NDCs with a brief assessment of climate financing in two forest-rich countries, Brazil and Indonesia. Our analysis of NDCs reveals that only 14 of the 40 countries provide clear cost estimates for proposed climate-related forest activities, with most activities being conditional on provision of international climate finance. While some discuss domestic sources, few note the need for (international or national) fiscal policy reform to counteract direct and underlying drivers of land use conversion. The challenges inherent in doing so are also highlighted in our discussion of Brazil and Indonesia. Our findings suggest that, while much attention is directed to inadequate quantities of international climate finance, a lack of fiscal reform remains a key hurdle to realizing transformative change in the land use sector.

In this Perspective paper we call for attention to the rise of digital platforms in the energy field. The smart grid has laid the ground for – and is increasingly swept up by – attempts to apply the economic, social and technological model of the platform to energy provisioning. The emergent energy platforms offer decentralised, digitally enabled exchanges of energy from distributed resources. They can record flows of energy to administer connections of exchange between household users, develop algorithms to steer the flow of energy from and to household batteries, and enable crowdsourced investments into (small-scale) renewable energy production. We draw up a first typology based on platforms’ physical integration into the energy infrastructure as well as users’ scope for action. To map out the possible implications of these developments, we draw on the burgeoning, interdisciplinary field of platform studies to show how logics of platformization will drive changes to the energy system. We identify the marketization of new domains and activities, the formation of new collectivities and the creation of digital environments that afford new types of engagement with energy assets and other users of the grid. Our main concern is that uncertainties produced by these platforms and their tendency to privatise energy provisioning may slow down the transition towards sustainable energy systems. We therefore call upon energy social scientists to not only examine these developments but use these insights to also participate in the responsible design of the energy grids of the future.

Increasing worldwide environmental consciousness has been driving countries in the world to adjust their environmental policies. Conventional wisdom often suggests tightening environmental policy, but this paper challenges that wisdom. By using an oligopoly model, we show that, in the case of local pollution, a country that confronts increasing environmental consciousness tightens or slackens its environmental policy depending on the relative cost competitiveness to its rivals. However, in the case of global pollution, all countries in the world always tighten their environmental policies as worldwide environmental consciousness rises. These results derived from the optimal non-cooperative (Nash) equilibrium policy that maximizes own country’s welfare are valid in the case of efficient policy setting in which policy is chosen to maximize global welfare. The policy gap between these two equilibria may increase or decrease as environmental consciousness changes, relying on the relative competitiveness to firm’s rivals and on the initial level of environmental consciousness.

[Departement_IRSTEA]Eaux [ADD1_IRSTEA]Systèmes aquatiques soumis à des pressions multiples; International audience; Eutrophication is one of the most common causes of water quality impairment of inland and marine waters. Its best-known manifestations are toxic cyanobacteria blooms in lakes and waterways and proliferations of green macro algae in coastal areas. The term eutrophication is used by both the scientific community and public policy-makers, and therefore has a myriad of definitions. The introduction by the public authorities of regulations to limit eutrophication is a source of tension and debate on the activities identified as contributing or having contributed decisively to these phenomena. Debates on the identification of the driving factors and risk levels of eutrophication, seeking to guide public policies, have led the ministries in charge of the environment and agriculture to ask for a joint scientific appraisal to be conducted on the subject. Four French research institutes were mandated to produce a critical scientific analysis on the latest knowledge of the causes, mechanisms, consequences and predictability of eutrophication phenomena. This paper provides the methodology and the main findings of this two years exercise involving 40 scientific experts.

Owing to a lack of construct reliability and validity of environmental management measurements, advancements in understanding hotels’ environmental management practices have been somewhat limited. The goal of this paper is to propose a uniform and parsimonious scale that captures Hotels’ Environmental Management Initiative (HEMI) with the most common three dimensions in the hotel industry: environmental resource conservation efforts, environmental policy and training, and environmental public relation efforts. After the refinement of the initial items, the scale was confirmed with cross-cultural data obtained from full-time hotel employees in two Asian countries. The twenty-one item HEMI scale demonstrated a satisfactory level of content, convergent, discriminant, cross, and criterion-related validity. The proposed HEMI scale will serve as a useful tool for future hospitality scholars who would like to further explore the impact of hotels’ environmental management initiatives on employees’ attitudes and behaviors toward the environment and their environmental performance.

The introduction of effective solid waste management strategies in developing countries should be considered for improving sustainability at global level. Many barriers should be overcome, concerning the introduction of environmental policies, effective investments, social inclusion and public awareness, which are significant issues in low-middle income countries. The Circular Economy could represent the answer for improving current solid waste management activities worldwide, since denote the principle of waste valorization and recycling for boosting developing economies. This paper is focused on this theme, analyzing main opportunities for improving the current state of solid waste management in developing big cities. The solid waste management of two countries are reviewed: Romania is the emerging country where Circular Economy is becoming a future objective due to economic aids and strength regulations which the European Union (EU) established for the nations forming parts the alliance; as a comparison, Bolivia is reported for evaluating main differences founded for developing recycling systems in a no-EU country. These two case studies could be of interest for highlighting main pros and cons of the participation into a wide organization like the EU for introducing in short terms Circular Economy principles. Moreover, a theoretical Circular Economy model for developing big cities in low-middle income countries is described within the study for effectively comparing which chances can spread for these countries as regard municipal solid waste exploitation. Despite the economic level, Romania and Bolivia are both facing with many solid waste management issues although in different magnitude. For the Romanian case study, it is visible how it cannot achieve the European goals for 2020 due the need of change in public recycling behavior. Bolivia, instead, represents the case where international aids and new investments are required, considering the informal sector into the formal management system as a real opportunity for improving local recycling rate. In conclusion, the comparison suggests how external supports led to implement the principles of the Circular Economy within a developing region. The model of Circular Economy proposed is recommended for developing big cities in order to advance a new form of safe employment, encouraging the activities that are still in action (i.e. informal sector) and boosting the principles of sustainable development.

This paper identifies a new source that explains environmental behaviour: the presence of future tense marking in language. We predict that languages that grammatically mark the future affect speakers’ intertemporal preferences and thereby reduce their willingness to address environmental problems. We first show that speakers of languages with future tense marking are less likely to adopt environmentally responsible behaviours and to support policies to prevent environmental damage. We then document that this effect holds across countries: future tense marking is an important determinant of climate change policies and global environmental cooperation. The results suggest that there may be deep and surprising obstacles for attempts to address climate change.

Environmental objectives tend to receive a push to the background in post-conflict scenarios. On the other hand, the processes displacement and refugee's relocation in post-conflict countries have been associated with different environmental impacts. Currently, Colombia faces a post-conflict scenario, which brings about relevant socio-environmental challenges: it is a mega-biodiverse country, it has millions of displaced people and is one of the most inequitable country in the world. Since there is a gap in post-conflict studies regarding the exploration of victims' involvement in environmental strategies, this paper aims to analyze victims' willingness to participate (WP) in Land Recovery Strategies (LRS) in post-conflict Colombia. This research (1) describes the socio-economic characteristics of forced-displacement victims from a Caribbean municipality of Colombia; (2) analyzes the victims' WP in hypothetical LRS and their preferred type of participation in the project, (3) identifies the way of grouping victims according their WP. Finally, (4) it analyzes the kind of benefits victims would prefer to receive in exchange for their participation in the LRS. Our results made evident that the majority of the consulted victims are willing to participate in LRS by giving up manual work time or in exchange of local ecological knowledge. We also found that the victims' participation in LRS associates to the age of the respondents, and whether they have benefited from government programs previously. Victims would prefer monetary retribution in exchange for their involvement in LRS, which may be explained by their vulnerable socioeconomic conditions. This research also demonstrates that victims with positive WP in LRS are a heterogeneous group. We highlight the need of actively involving women in LRS and other post-conflict projects in order to ensure their wellbeing. The results of this research are valuable, because they put forward the population of victims as an active performer within environmental sustainability.

The CONFIDENCE project is performing research on uncertainties in emergency management and post-accident recovery. It concentrates on the early and transition phases of an emergency, but considers also longer-term decisions made during these phases. To ensure success, the project brings together expertise from four European Radiation Protection Research Platforms (NERIS, MELODI, ALLIANCE and EURADOS) and also from the area of social sciences and humanities. This paper presents an overview of the CONFIDENCE project with a focus on CONFIDENCE's consideration of the radioecology required to support emergency management and post-accident recovery. For instance, operational decisions concerning land and foodchain management rely on radioecological models that are at present mostly based on simple, but highly uncertain, transfer ratios to predict contamination in foodstuffs. CONFIDENCE will investigate if process-based models are better suited to reducing uncertainties associated with empirical ratio based models. Model improvements and uncertainty reduction might be also possible by better evaluating past experience from Chernobyl and Fukushima.

This paper provides a contemporary analysis of how research issues have developed in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management (JEEM) over the four decades of its existence. We have classified the articles in the journal along five dimensions: content, methods, environmental media, the regional dimension of studies, and cross-cutting issues. While up to about 10 years ago, non-market valuation and cost-benefit analysis, natural resource economics, and environmental policy instruments represented the lion's share of articles published in the journal, more recently we observe a significant shift towards a more diversified array of research areas, with climate change and energy issues finding their way into the journal. In addition, increasing methodological plurality becomes apparent, reflected in a significant shift away from economic theory and towards empirical approaches. We also analyze key distinctions between the major environmental economics journals. Finally, we analyze JEEM's external influence on leading general economics (A+) journals. We find that A+ citations are positively correlated with a focus on climate change economics, market-based environmental policies and policy comparisons, the use of econometric and statistical methods or experimental approaches, and negatively correlated with a focus on water pollution and other pollutants such as pesticides.

Short and long-term exposure to air pollutants has been shown to be strongly associated with mortality and morbidity. This is a particular problem in big cities, largely due to traffic. In response, low emission zones (LEZ) are becoming more common in cities all over the world. London introduced its Toxicity Charge in 2017 and the more restrictive Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) in 2019. In this paper, we evaluate the effectiveness of these policies on NO2 levels. Our results show that NO2 levels significantly dropped in the roadside stations, especially after the implementation of the ULEZ. Similarly, at the background stations, the Toxicity Charge and the ULEZ had a similar, smaller effect. Furthermore, our results suggest that there was a positive spillover effect associated with both traffic policies, which was, however limited to the area within the North and South Circular Roads. In any case, while these policies have been useful to comply with the recommended limits on NO2 levels, alleviating Londoners’ health problems, they need to be enhanced since some stations still are above those limits.

Industrial policy has moved into the center of debates on climate policy, as the EU’s Green Deal, China’s green industrial strategy, President Biden’s climate agenda, and green stimulus packages such as South Korea’s reflect. This represents a shift away from climate policy as we know it—as classic environmental policy. Industrial policy and environmental policy differ in their policy goals, policy instruments, and distributional effects. One primarily concerned with economic development, the other with cutting greenhouse gas emissions. This raises questions about policy interactions between industrial and environmental policy in broader climate policy mixes, and how these effect global decarbonization. This paper identifies complementary and conflictual dynamics between industrial policy and environmental policy in both domestic and international climate politics. It shows how green industrial policy can advance climate goals and cooperation, but can also present challenges to deepening climate cooperation and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Developing an understanding of policy interactions is central to leveraging the potential of industrial policy to accelerate global decarbonization.

This paper breaks down the renewable energy space in Africa. It researches the types of different renewables, providing a balanced evaluation of every single one. Specifically, it looks at certain companies with potential for massive growth in their respective sectors and regions. Not only this, but it also investigates challenges those companies have faced while converting Africa into a sustainable place. All in all, the use of PEST analysis and quantitative information frames discussions in a simple manner.

Anticipation methods and tools are increasingly used to try to imagine and govern transformations towards more sustainable futures across different policy domains and sectors. But there is a lack of research into the steering effects of anticipation on present-day governance choices, especially in the face of urgently needed sustainability transformations. This paper seeks to understand how different perspectives on anticipatory governance connect to attempts to guide policy and action toward transformative change. We analyze perspectives on anticipatory governance in a global network of food system foresight practitioners (Foresight4Food) – using a workshop, interviews, and a survey as our sources of data. We connect frameworks on anticipatory governance and on transformation to analyse different perspectives on the future and their implications for actions in the present to transform food systems and offer new insights for theory and practice. In the global Foresight4Food network, we find that most foresight practitioners use hybrid approaches to anticipatory governance that combine fundamentally different assumptions about the future. We also find that despite these diverse food futures, anticipation processes predominantly produce recommendations that follow more prediction-oriented forms of strategic planning in order to mitigate future risks. We further demonstrate that much anticipation for transformation uses the language on deep uncertainty and deliberative action without fully taking its consequences on board. Thus, opportunities for transforming future food systems are missed due to these implicit assumptions that dominate the anticipatory governance of food systems. Our combined framework helps researchers and practitioners to be more reflexive of how assumptions about key human systems such as food system futures shape what is prioritized/marginalized and included/excluded in actions to transform such systems.

The development of expressway construction projects (ECPs) poses overwhelming challenges to the physical environment around the world. The challenges are supposed to be addressed with the enforcement of environmental policies (EPs). In this regard, developed countries have gained rich experience in EP formulation while developing countries are making efforts to improve policy decision-making on environmental sustainability. This study compares ECP-related EPs (EREPs) between China and the US by conducting a historical analysis with materials from 1960 to 2018 and text mining-based evaluation with materials from 2009 to 2019. The comparison results indicate that (1) an EREP framework is composed of two systems, namely outer factors and inner EPs; (2) the upper-level EPs exhibit a periodic and plan-dominating trend in China and an explanatory tendency in the US; (3) Chinese EPs are focused on pollution mitigation, whereas US EPs highlight the impacts on human health; (4) Both attach less importance to environmental protection measures at the project-level EPs. This paper provides a longitudinal comparison and analysis of EREPs in two huge countries, implying that EREPs are a snapshot of national rules and backgrounds. The findings lay a foundation for future research to examine the innovation of environmental policies, especially for those countries with massive expressway construction projects and the related environmental issues.