Voluntary approaches for environmental protection in the European Union - a survey

Abstract

The use of voluntary approaches has gained significant momentum in the European Union over the last decade. To date, more than 300 of these schemes are in force in the different member states and their number is still increasing. Through a survey of the literature our paper tries to portray the use of voluntary approaches in the member states and to identify both their common characteristics and those that separate them. It appears that the most frequently used types of voluntary approach are environmental agreements that are negotiated between public and private bodies. The common characteristic of these negotiated agreements throughout the member states is that they set collective targets for industry. However, they differ in important ways in their linkage to the pre‐existing regulatory framework and thereby in the ways monitoring and enforcement are implemented. An assessment of effectiveness and efficiency is therefore difficult, also because available data are still scarce. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Voluntary agreements in environmental policy: an empirical evaluation for the Chilean case

“…In this regard, they are fairly similar to the Dutch covenants [8]. Although the executive does not have the legal power to sign such agreements, in practice, VAs can be enforced in courts since there is a precedent set over a dispute regarding the implementation of an agreement reached in 1995 between health authorities and the fish processing industry in which the court ruled in favor of the former given the constitutional mandate that defines as state duty the preservation of the citizens' right to live in an environment free of pollution.…”

“…This result confirms what the literature (e.g. [8,32]) often identifies as a problem of negotiated voluntary agreements and it certainly is a limitation of these schemes.…”

“…Of course, in order to be effective, participation needs to be somehow structured and properly organized, but what seems unjustified is the policy of no-participation at all. The lack of credibility may be the biggest political threat for VAs because the public may see them as a way (for firms as well as the government) of evading more substantial environmental improvements [8]. At the end of the day, public policies unable to confront public scrutiny tend to be unacceptable as a way of dealing with important social issues [7].…”

“…In the literature, the claim that voluntary agreements suffer from regulatory capture is strongly advocated, though rarely supported with empirical evidence. It is suggested as an intrinsic characteristic of voluntary approaches, given their negotiated nature [8,32,33]. Nonetheless, capture is not exclusive to VAs, and traditional legislation suffers from it too [8]; any regulation is the result of a political process, which is inevitably shaped by the pressure exercised by the targeted agent.…”

Free riding in voluntary environmental programs: The case of the U.S. EPA WasteWise program

“…These voluntary programs are increasingly popular as supplements and sometimes replacements for traditional command-and-control regulation. There are more than 300 VPs in place in the European Union (Börkey and Leveque, 1998), and Darnall and Carmin (this issue) identified more than 200 VPs operating in the United States.…”