Handbook of Environmental Policy

ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE, ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY

HANDBOOK OF ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY

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ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE, ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY

HANDBOOK OF ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY

JOHANNES MEIJER AND

ARJAN DER BERG EDITORS

Nova Science Publishers, Inc. New York

Copyright © 2010 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means: electronic, electrostatic, magnetic, tape, mechanical photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission of the Publisher. For permission to use material from this book please contact us: Telephone 631-231-7269; Fax 631-231-8175 Web Site: http://www.novapublishers.com NOTICE TO THE READER The Publisher has taken reasonable care in the preparation of this book, but makes no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of information contained in this book. The Publisher shall not be liable for any special, consequential, or exemplary damages resulting, in whole or in part, from the readers’ use of, or reliance upon, this material. Independent verification should be sought for any data, advice or recommendations contained in this book. In addition, no responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property arising from any methods, products, instructions, ideas or otherwise contained in this publication. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered herein. It is sold with the clear understanding that the Publisher is not engaged in rendering legal or any other professional services. If legal or any other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent person should be sought. FROM A DECLARATION OF PARTICIPANTS JOINTLY ADOPTED BY A COMMITTEE OF THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION AND A COMMITTEE OF PUBLISHERS. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Meijer, Johannes. Handbook of environmental policy / Johannes Meijer and Arjan der Berg. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-1-61668-439-6 (eBook) 1. Environmental policy--Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Berg, Arjan der. II. Title. GE170.M456 2009 333.7--dc22 2009027486

Published by Nova Science Publishers, Inc.  New York

CONTENTS Preface

vii

Chapter 1

Matching Environmental Policy to Recipients Quentin Farmar-Bowers

Chapter 2

Green Procurement Policies and Practices: Swedish Perspectives from the Public and Private Sectors Charlotte Leire, Oksana Mont and Carl Dalhammar

43

Environmental and Socio-Economic Aspects of Possible Development in Renewable Energy Use Abdeen Mustafa Omer

79

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Governance by the Commons: Emerging Perspectives in Global Environmental Governance Patrick E. Meyer

115

Environmental Governmentality as a Policy Apparatus: The Case of Shrimp Aquaculture in Bangladesh Md Saidul Islam

141

An International Comparison of Public Participation in Forest Policy and Management Kati Berninger

163

Chapter 7

Quantifying Eco-Efficiency with Multi-Criteria Analysis Jutta Geldermann and Martin Treitz

Chapter 8

Environmental Kuznets Curves for Carbon Emissions: A Critical Survey Nektarios Aslanidis

Chapter 9

1

Environmental Consequences of Agricultural Development in Bangladesh: Empirical Evidence, Farmers’ Perceptions and their Determinants Sanzidur Rahman

183

205

225

vi Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Content Informal Waste Recycling and Urban Governance in Nigeria: Some Experiences and Policy Implications Thaddeus Chidi Nzeadibe and Chukwuedozie K. Ajaero

243

The Economic and Environmental Effects of Water Pricing Policy in China: An Analysis of Three Irrigation Districts Han Hongyun and Zhao Liange

263

The Precautionary Principle and Environmental Protection: The Australian Experience Gamini Herath and Tony Prato

277

Chapter 13

Social Learning Processes of Environmental Policy Sanna Koskinen and Riikka Paloniemi

Chapter 14

Incentive Based Environmental Policies and Collective Response Trends; Spatio-Temporal Patterns of Land Managers’ Adoption of Agri-Environmental Measures Dan van der Horst

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19 Index

291

309

Capitalism, State, and Environmental Movements: An Analysis from Political Economy Perspective Md Saidul Islam

321

Incentive Mechanism Design for Nonpoint Source Pollution in China: Group or Individual? Han Hongyun and Zhao Liange

335

Analyzing Effective Environmental Policy-Making Process and Evidence from Aviation Sector Joosung J. Lee

349

Review of Environmental Governance in Kenya: Analysis of Environmental Policy and Institutional Frameworks Caleb Mireri and Sammy Letema

369

Stakeholder Assessment in Environmental Policy Analysis Zhenghong Tang, Feng Xu and Christopher Hussey

379 393

PREFACE Today, environmental protection is among the central matters for natural conservation, public health and sustainable business. With advanced technologies and changing lifestyles, the consumption of resources and release of wastes and pollutants are increasing fast. This requires policy makers to design environmental policies that properly guide the development of new products and business operations. The goal of environmental policy is to limit, slowdown, reduce or eliminate environmental damages caused by industrial and human activities. Environmental issues generally addressed by environmental policy include (but are not limited to) air and water pollution, waste management, ecosystem management, biodiversity protection, and the protection of natural resources, wildlife and endangered species. This book gathers the latest research from around the globe in this field. Chapter 1 - Families who run family business enterprises are the policy recipients the author focuses on in this chapter. They respond to environmental policy either as family members or as business people. In this chapter, the author uses decision-systems theory (DST) to discuss why policy recipients choose to respond in different ways. Understanding policy recipients’ decision processes is important for policy developers for two main reasons. First, it can help policy developers devise environmental policies that are accepted as ‘legitimate’ by policy recipients. This is important because ‘legitimate’ policies are more likely to be implemented and result in lasting change than policies that are resented. Second, it can help policy developers assess whether or not their proposed policies are going to ‘improve society’. Policies that ‘improve society’ are those that both help future generations satisfy their family’s aspirations and also meet global ideals, such as sustainable development ideas. The author starts the chapter by outlining decision-systems theory (DST) as it provides a theoretical framework for dealing with the question of policy ‘legitimacy’ and the meaning of ‘improving society’. DST indicates that family’s aspirations, which the author conceptualizes as a set of five ‘motivation-stories’, have similar intentions as sustainable development ideas. These intentions are to secure family welfare (human welfare in sustainable development terms) and concomitantly be supported by the environment (conserve the Planet’s environment in sustainable development terms). The author uses the ‘4-Group-Stakeholder model’ and DST to argue that the ‘ultimate driver’ for the current human development system is the desire of families to satisfy their ‘motivation-stories’. The ‘ultimate future driver’ is a projection that describes the ‘ultimate driver’ future generations would have if global ideals (such as sustainable development ideas) were effectively incorporated into their ‘motivation-

viii

Content

stories’. The author suggests that policy developers ought to create policies that facilitate the ‘ultimate future driver’ for all decisions in the human development system. Developing policies that do this would ensure the legitimacy of the policy and also ensure that the policy developers have done their best to ‘improve society’. The final part of the chapter discusses how policy developers can give priority to the ‘ultimate future driver’ in the policies they create. The ‘boxes of influence’ concept, which is part of DST, can be used as a policy classification system. It covers policies and programs over the life-cycle of family decision-makers; childhood to retirement. It shows how policy developers can help policy recipients create opportunities that will satisfy their ‘motivationstories’ in ways that meet the global ideals of caring for the Planet’s environment and caring for people, including their own family and descendents. Chapter 2 - In recent years, European policy has emphasised the role of green procurement as a policy instrument in efforts to make European markets more environmentally sustainable. By purchasing products and services with low environmental impacts, public bodies and companies may shape the markets of products and services and stimulate their environmental sustainability. Environmental procurement can send signals to producers that these products and services are in demand, thereby helping to reduce the overall environmental impact on society. However, the main question regarding green procurement is what role existing policy plays in driving various actors to integrate environmental criteria into their purchasing decisions. This chapter provides an overview of the main European and Swedish policies that address public and private procurement and identifies gaps in existing efforts. The differences between the public and private sectors in terms of policy drivers and employed strategies are highlighted. The chapter also discusses the need for further policy efforts to support environmental procurement practices of public bodies and companies. Chapter 3 - The use of renewable energy sources is a fundamental factor for a possible energy policy in the future. Taking into account the sustainable character of the majority of renewable energy technologies, they are able to preserve resources and to provide security, diversity of energy supply and services, virtually without environmental impact. Sustainability has acquired great importance due to the negative impact of various developments on environment. The rapid growth during the last decade has been accompanied by active construction, which in some instances neglected the impact on the environment and human activities. Policies to promote the rational use of electric energy and to preserve natural non-renewable resources are of paramount importance. Low energy design of urban environment and buildings in densely populated areas requires consideration of wide range of factors, including urban setting, transport planning, energy system design and architectural and engineering details. The focus of the world’s attention on environmental issues in recent years has stimulated response in many countries, which have led to a closer examination of energy conservation strategies for conventional fossil fuels. One way of reducing building energy consumption is to design buildings, which are more economical in their use of energy for heating, lighting, cooling, ventilation and hot water supply. Passive measures, particularly natural or hybrid ventilation rather than air-conditioning, can dramatically reduce primary energy consumption. However, exploitation of renewable energy in buildings and agricultural greenhouses can, also, significantly contribute towards reducing dependency on fossil fuels. Therefore, promoting innovative renewable applications and reinforcing the renewable energy market will contribute to preservation of the ecosystem by

Preface

ix

reducing emissions at local and global levels. This will also contribute to the amelioration of environmental conditions by replacing conventional fuels with renewable energies that produce no air pollution or greenhouse gases. This chapter presents review of energy sources, environment and sustainable development. This includes all the renewable energy technologies, energy savings, energy efficiency systems and measures necessary to reduce climate change. Chapter 4 - In the realm of environmental policy, it is evident that a widespread shift is taking place from what has traditionally been known as "government" to a new form of "governance". There is a trend throughout literature which refers to government becoming one party equal in power to members of a group comprised of many other parties. That is, government as traditionally defined, is becoming an equal peer amongst nonprofit organizations, nongovernmental organizations, activist groups, citizens, and other entities, as opposed to serving as the dominant ruling body. Globalization has fueled this shift by changing the way in which the world operates – increasing complexity and intricacy of all interactions, especially in the environmental realm. Embodied in the aforementioned trends, global environmental governance has emerged as a new paradigm and, for some, a discipline of environmental policy. While no correct rule for global environmental governance has emerged, analysis of the concept is imperative to ensure that the world's environmental problems are addressed in an organized, effective, and mutually-beneficial manner. This chapter identifies challenges associated with the conceptualization of global environmental governance, focusing on the perspectives of authors in relevant fields. It is determined that the challenges of global environmental governance can be accurately described through a handful of overarching themes, including public procurement programs, private certification systems, minority environmental groups (women's groups, among others), and the emergence of post-sovereign environmental governance. This chapter characterizes and compares these four major themes – as well as other minor themes – and demonstrates how various authors have made contributions to the literature supporting or contending the reigning paradigm. Given the abovementioned review of the reigning paradigm, this chapter provides a concise summary of who should be involved in global environmental governance regimes, including a discussion on which parties may hold more power than others and which parties have potential to become more powerful in the future. Lastly, this chapter looks to the future and provides a discussion on potential directions of the field of global environmental governance, including an identification of the primary areas where more work is needed. This chapter concludes that considerable contradiction exists amongst various authors within the global environmental governance debate. It is further concluded that the existing body of literature should serve only as a foundation for what could become a complex discipline. That is, there is room for a tremendous amount of future work to be completed in the realm of governance and the fundamental concepts discussed in this chapter serve as compelling leverage points for future deliberation. Chapter 5 - Shrimp industry is contested as it is identified with negative social and environmental legacies. Bangladesh, being one of the major shrimp producing countries of the world, has been facing resistance and criticism from local and international environmental NGOs. In response, Bangladesh government along with its donor agencies has come up with a series of environmental agendas and programs to ensure “environmentally sound shrimp aquaculture”. This process of institutionalizing environmental domain pertaining shrimp industry have some positive impacts in terms of creating awareness among the people

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regarding environment, but at the same time it marginalizes others. It benefits a fortunate few, but the fate of people affected by the industry remains almost the same. The study demonstrates a trend and development, which is quite common to all environmental issues today, that is, the trend of moving towards a domain of managerialism, bureaucratization, and governmentality. Chapter 6 - This chapter compares the public participation regulations and practices in forest policy and forest management in Canada, the USA and two countries in Northern Europe, Finland and Sweden. The countries studied all have extensive forest cover and forestry is important to the economy and local people. They were selected to represent different forest ownership structures. The comparison revealed that the countries with a strong private forest ownership regulate public participation less than the countries where most of the forest is publicly owned. Public participation in relation to private land needs to be based on voluntary processes like certification or it needs to occur at a more political level concerning a relatively large area. Most countries studied had established public participation practices and the participants had a moderate possibility to change the management plan. Only in Sweden is participation in forestry almost nonexistent. Chapter 7 - Based on the efficiency definition by Koopmans, a case study is presented in this chapter comparing the results of a multi-criteria method and an eco-efficiency analysis for emerging technologies for surface coating. Multi-criteria analysis aims at resolving incomparabilities by incorporating preferential information in the relative measurement of efficiency during the course of an ex-ante decision support process. The outranking approach PROMETHEE is employed in this chapter for the case study of refinish primer application with data from an eco-efficiency analysis. Comprehensive sensitivity and uncertainty analyses (including the first implementation of the PROMETHEE VI sensitivity tool) elucidate the variability in the underlying data and the value judgements of the decision makers. These advanced analyses are considered as the distinct advantage of MCA in comparison to the eco-efficiency analysis, which just comprises various types of normalisation of different criteria. Chapter 8 - The empirical finding of an inverse U-shaped relationship between per capita income and pollution, the so-called Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), suggests that as countries experience economic growth, environmental deterioration decelerates and thus becomes less of an issue. With more or less success, a large number of econometric studies have documented the existence of an EKC for pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and suspended particulate matter. The baseline models estimated in the literature are linear polynomial models that include quadratic (and sometimes also cubic) terms of income as explanatory variables. Recently, these models have been criticized for being too restrictive, and alternative more flexible econometric techniques have been proposed. Focusing on the prime example of carbon emissions, the present chapter provides a critical review of these new econometric techniques. In particular, the authors discuss issues related to functional forms, heterogeneity of income effects across countries (regions), non-stationary (“spurious”) regressions and spatial dependence in emissions. As for the functional form issue, some studies have addressed the nonlinearity of the income-emissions relationship by using a spline (piecewise linear) function, Weibull and smooth transition regression models, and more flexible parametric specifications, as alternatives to the polynomial model. The nonparametric models constitute one of the latest econometric tools used. Another important issue in panel data studies is the underlying assumption of homogeneity of income effects

Preface

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across countries. This assumption is too restrictive for large panels of heterogeneous countries. A further econometric criticism of the EKC concerns the issue of “spurious” regressions. As the model includes potentially non-stationary variables such as emissions and GDP, one can only rely on regression results that exhibit the co-integration property. Finally, recent studies allow for spatial dependence in emissions across countries to account for the possibility that countries’ emissions are affected by emissions in neighbouring countries. Despite these new approaches, there is still no clear-cut evidence supporting the existence of the EKC for carbon emissions. Chapter 9 - Concern about the environmental consequences of agricultural development, and studies exploring farmers’ awareness of this issue are few. This chapter provides an insight into the environmental consequences of Green Revolution technology diffusion in Bangladesh using selected material evidences, such as, loss of soil fertility and trends in fertilizer and pesticide productivity at the national level, as well as examines farmers’ awareness of these adverse environmental impacts and their determinants using a survey data of 406 households from 21 villages in three agro-ecological regions. Results reveal that Bangladesh has lost soil fertility in 11 out of its 30 agro-ecological zones to the tune of 10– 70% between 1968 and 1998 due to intensive crop cultivation practices. The intensive HYV rice cultivation pattern (i.e., three rice crops a year: Boro rice–Transplanted Aus rice– Transplanted Aman rice) depletes approximately 333 kg of N, P, K per ha per year. Also, the partial productivity measures clearly demonstrate that productivity from fertilizers and pesticides were declining steadily at a rate of 4.5 % and 7.0 % per year (p