Environmental Lobby Research Articles

The Direction of Environmental Lobbying

The Direction of Environmental Lobbying

Green Product Portfolio and Environmental Lobbying

AbstractNowadays, a growing number of firms utilize corporate lobbying to advocate for more environmentally friendly policies and regulations, deviating from the traditional lobbying mainly used to minimize regulatory burdens. In this study, we investigate what motivates firms to engage in such an unusual type of lobbying—environmental lobbying. Focusing on the product strategy of firms, we suggest that firms with greater green product intensity are more likely to engage in environmental lobbying. When environmental lobbying raises environmental hurdles in the market, firms with an intensive focus on green products can bear adjustment costs with little effort, leaving other “less green” firms relatively disadvantaged under the newly regulated market conditions. Moreover, those firms can address demand-side issues more easily by lobbying the government to provide greater incentives for purchasing green products or to request subsidies that can be used to improve their cost structure. Our analyses based on the US light vehicle market indicate that, indeed, the more electric vehicles automakers sell relative to their total sale volumes, the more they will engage in environmental lobbying. We also find that this relationship becomes more salient when a firm has greater market share or originally comes from a foreign country with more stringent environmental regulations than the United States.

Environmental Clientelism: How Chinese Private Enterprises Lobby under Environmental Crackdowns

AbstractChina's environmental crackdowns under Xi Jinping have led to a sweeping shutdown of private enterprises. To circumvent this, enterprises have developed different survival strategies including direct lobbying to government officials and indirect lobbying through business associations. Based on comparative case studies of environmental lobbying in Chinese cities, our research finds that larger enterprises, enjoying more economic leverage, tend to lobby directly using their own political connections to sway environmental enforcement. By contrast, smaller enterprises are excluded from these clientelist networks and have to lobby through business associations, the effectiveness of which hinges on the support of large enterprises. Therefore, we argue that although the Chinese government's increasingly stringent environmental policies have shrunk the lobbying (and living) space for private enterprises, the existence of environmental clientelism protects economically powerful and politically connected private enterprises but sacrifices the others in the implementation of environmental policies.

Tug of War in Corporate Environmental Lobbying

Tug of War in Corporate Environmental Lobbying

Effects of climate change on financial statements of entities listed in the Netherlands

A survey of 88 companies listed on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange shows that the number of financial statements referencing climate change has increased significantly (from 9% in 2020 to 39% in 2021) and that the reported financial impact of climate change was not material. However, significant improvements in the disclosures can be achieved by disclosing assumptions used, sensitivity analyses made and comparisons against benchmarks such as Paris-aligned climate change scenarios. We also found a very significant increase in the references to climate change in the auditor reports (from 2% in 2020 to 70% in 2021). We conclude that the increase in references to climate change has most likely been caused by increased pressure from institutional investors, environmental lobby organisations and regulators upon preparers and auditors for more transparency.

Green Product Portfolio and Environmental Lobbying

Nowadays, a growing number of firms utilize corporate lobbying in favor of more environmental-friendly policies and regulations, deviating from the traditional lobbying mainly used to minimize regulatory burdens. In this study, we investigate what motivates firms to engage in such an unusual type of corporate lobbying—environmental lobbying. Focusing on the product portfolio strategy of the firms, we suggest that firms increasing their production of “green products” are more likely to engage in environmental lobbying. When environmental lobbying raises environmental hurdles in the market, firms with intensive focus on green products can easily bear adjustment costs with little effort, making other “less green” firms relatively disadvantaged under the newly regulated market conditions. Moreover, those firms can also address demand-side issues more easily by lobbying the government to provide greater incentives for purchasing green products or to request subsidies that can be used to improve their cost structure. Our analyses based on the U.S. light vehicle market indicate that, indeed, the more electric vehicles automakers produce in their product portfolios, the greater environmental lobbying they make. We also find that such a positive relationship between green product intensity and environmental lobbying becomes more salient when a firm has greater market share.

Peer Responses to Environmental Regulatory Sanctions: Local versus Distant Search

Regulators impose sanctions on firms that violate environmental laws or regulations not only to punish the violators but also to warn non-sanctioned firms that environmental misbehaviors may be penalized. Accordingly, non-sanctioned firms are motivated to respond to such sanction threats. Combining problemistic search and threat rigidity theories, we propose that rising environmental regulatory sanctions on industry peers can propel non-sanctioned firms to focus on local search and refrain from distant search, resulting in an increase in environmental lobbying, a direct and immediate strategic action that we consider as an outcome of local search, and a decrease in green innovation, an indirect and long-term strategic action that we consider as an outcome of distant search. We also propose that such effects are stronger when non-sanctioned firms find peer sanctions a more salient threat, reflected by higher media exposure of non-sanctioned firms’ environmental misbehaviors. Using a U.S. sample of 5,893 firm-year observations, we find support for our arguments. This study reconciles problemistic search and threat rigidity theories by highlighting the heterogeneous influence of external threats on local search and distant search and showcases the spillover effect of regulatory sanctions on peer firms.

Habitat Protection, Ideology and the British Nature State: The Politics of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981

Abstract The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 was the most important piece of environmental legislation passed by a British government since the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949. It sought to enhance the protection of listed flora and fauna, prevent further damage to existing habitat and resolve issues that had arisen with respect to rights of public access to the countryside. Although the bill was long and complex, many of its provisions sought to rationalise existing statutes or extend existing provision rather than create new powers. Provisions seeking to protect habitat proved highly contentious. The proprietary interest resented what it saw as an unjustified interference in private property rights; statutory bodies were alarmed that the centralising aspects of the Act would empower ministers at the expense of their ‘scientific’ independence; and the emergent environmental lobby, increasingly frustrated by the cautious approach of the statutory bodies, was determined that the bill’s habitat protection provisions be strengthened. This article examines the lengthy and disputatious consultation and parliamentary process in terms of longer-term frustration with the apparent weakness of statutory protections and how it brought the environmental effect of agricultural intensification into mainstream political debate. This article contextualises the growing insistence that there was a public interest in the health of the natural environment and situates the argument with respect to what environmental historians have started to analyse as the history of the ‘nature state’, a distinct realm of state activity comparable to the welfare state, warfare state or security state.

Ecologists' Big Step Forward: Opening the Ecological Society of America’s Washington Office in 1983

AbstractIn a bold move, the Ecological Society of America (ESA) decided in 1982 to open a Washington Office. Promoting an ecological viewpoint at the national level and providing advice on matters of national and international importance were the long‐term objectives. Seemingly few if any ESA actions have been more significant. ESA President Lawrence Bliss appointed Richard Forman to spearhead the effort, while Frank Golley, Arthur Cooper, Francis Evans, and Elliott Norse played major roles, and some 33 of our other leading ecologists contributed significantly. Golley chaired a Search Committee which selected Elliott Norse, former member of the President’s Council on Environmental Quality, as Washington Office (WO) Director. Forman chaired the Public Affairs Committee which worked intensively in uncharted territory to delineate policies and practices for WO and oversee the Office and Director. The search for an office considered some 50 locations and ended next to the World Wildlife Fund at Dupont Circle. The primary immediate goals and approaches of the WO were outlined: (1) widely introduce ESA, as a source of ecological expertise, to Washington agencies, organizations, and decision makers; and (2) develop a list of qualified and willing ESA members who could provide advice or testimony on specific environmental issues to national decision makers. Not just another environmental lobby organization, ESA should fill an unfilled role in Washington. Endless problems arose and were solved, but gradually time spent on accomplishing goals predominated. Keeping the ESA Executive Committee, Council, and membership informed on progress remained a key mission. After several months Cooper chaired a committee which reviewed the WO and its Director and reported favorably on progress. Encapsulating 180 documents, mostly correspondence and reports, reveals the remarkable process of opening ESA’s pioneering Washington Office. Exactly one year after approving the WO effort, the office was operating and building a record of accomplishment. No one, including Bliss, Forman, and other key ESA leaders, had expected this success. Four decades of accomplishment now highlight the wisdom of ESA’s action.

Prospects for Energy Markets and Investment in Traditional Oil & Gas

The oil and gas industry is facing as hostile an environment as it ever has. Already under increasing pressure from a highly vocal environmental lobby, precious sources of capital from all angles were already turning their backs on the industry when COVID-19 struck. The pandemic has provoked a further two-pronged attack on the industry. First, it dealt a huge blow to energy demand, as lock-down grounded economic activity, before driving what are likely to become long-term changes to our behavioural patterns with material consequences on global energy demand. Secondly, and perhaps more worryingly, the COVID-19 experience has given the impression that we can already live without the industry, encouraging the anti-industry lobby yet further. However, we cannot escape the fact that we are set to rely fundamentally on the oil and gas industry for decades to come. The challenge for the industry is in part to react to the reality of the political environment, evolving the way it operates to show it can deliver the necessary ESG-focused goals, but also to demonstrate that the industry remains a fundamental part of our global economy – our way of life: we need the industry, and the industry needs investment. COVID-19 did not start the debate, but has been a massive catalyst in raising the awareness of the issues. Through its direct impact on the economics for the industry, as well as helping increase the political pressure on it, the pandemic has increased the threat the industry faces in trying to fund itself sustainably. While many traditional investors count themselves out, the opportunity is opening up for those who recognise the importance of the industry and are prepared to buck the current trend.

New Scholarship

New Scholarship

Corruption and environmental regulatory policy in the United States: Does trust matter?

This study shows that the level of trust matters for how corruption affects public policy outcomes in the long-run, in particular the stringency of environmental policies. We argue that the level of trust affects the relative strength of industry- and environmental lobby groups, and therefore the effect of corruption on the stringency of environmental policies. We use a novel index of the level of corruption in each state which uses Associated Press (AP) news wires. We find that higher corruption reduces the stringency of environmental policies when the level of trust is low, but the effect declines and even becomes positive at higher levels of trust.

The bubble that got away? Prospects for shale gas development in South Africa

The potential for shale gas development (SGD) in South Africa’s environmentally sensitive Karoo region has attracted the interest of energy companies, government and the public. The South African government is eager to revive economic growth, improve energy security following an energy supply crisis and relieve high unemployment. The public is torn between environmental concerns and prospects of economic benefits, while investors seek clarity in legislation. The impact of the US shale revolution explains the allure of SGD and constitutes the only model worldwide of a developed shale industry. South Africa is a useful case study for examining how various societal interests shape support for and opposition to SGD. While government seeks to proceed with exploration, a dominant coal industry and other alternatives including renewables and nuclear compete for attention, and there are increasing concerns about the size and economic viability of South Africa’s shale gas deposits. Influential actors in the energy-intensive industries comprising South Africa’s powerful ‘minerals-energy complex’ will play a role in how any shale industry might develop. By considering the interests of key actors including a vacillating government, cautious energy companies and a determined environmental lobby, this article examines South Africa’s tenuous road towards SGD.

Apocalypse adjourned: the rise and decline of cold war environmentalism in Germany

ABSTRACTNuclear energy was a defining topic of German environmentalism from the 1970s to 1990s. An analysis of the transformation of Naturschutzbund Deutschland (NABU) shows that anti-nuclear protests, which are frequently depicted as a prototypical example of ‘new’ social movement activism, were only a temporary phenomenon. From the 1970s, NABU gradually transformed from a traditional nature conservation organization into an environmental lobby organization that addressed nuclear energy, other health hazards and environmental risks. These topics were perceived through the notion of mutual assured destruction that emerged with the cold war nuclear arms race. With the end of the cold war and the government’s decision to phase-out nuclear energy, NABU began to rediscover its neglected focus on nature conservation. Nature walks and wildlife monitoring schemes replaced sit-ins, political rallies and civil disobedience against the construction of nuclear reactors. Since 2000, the goals and strategies of German environmentalism have increasingly turned back to the ‘old’ social movement activism of traditional nature conservation.

Sport and Protest: Global Perspectives

Sporting mega-events habitually spawn protests from local groups discommoded by the building of new infrastructure, environmental lobbies contesting the long-term legacies of such events, and expressions of outrage at the expenditure of public funds on events often restricted to an elite selection of participants and spectators. Are these protest movements ever successful in preventing sporting events from taking place or in modifying their nature, or even in drawing attention to social issues? Or are they inevitably destined to be ignored in the popular fervour and financial windfall that accompanies such events? Similarly, sporting events have occasionally been the site of iconic moments of political protest. Tommie Smith’s and John Carlos’ ‘Black Power’ salute at the Mexico Olympics in 1968, for example, remains one of the abiding symbols of resistance to oppression expressed in a sporting context. What is it about sport that lends itself to these kinds of protests? Are these protests effective in accelerating change in society or does the sporting context ultimately serve to trivialize important social issues? Here we endeavour to respond to some of these questions and thereby illuminate the evolving political, economic, environmental and cultural implications of sport in society.

Would you trust lobbies?

We consider the regulatory problem to approve or to ban a new product/technology in the context of scientific controversy about its detrimental environmental and/or health effects. We formalize the regulator’s decision-making process as a Tullock contest (Towards a Theory of the Rent-Seeking Society, Texas A&M University Press, Texas, 1980), the contestants being an industrial lobby, representing the economic agents who have developed the new product/technology, and an environmental lobby, representing the economic agents who will be harmed by the product or technology. Assuming that the industrial lobby has private information about the unfavorable environmental and/or health effects, but can be held liable for damage ex post, we derive the equilibrium properties of the contest. In particular, we derive conditions under which it is socially preferable for the regulator to decide according to the contest’s outcome, rather than according to an ex ante cost-benefit analysis, using his prior beliefs. We find that the contest outperforms the ex ante cost-benefit analysis only if the risk of judgment-proofness is not too high.

Brexit or Bremain? Future Options for UK Agricultural Policy and the CAP

SummaryThe outcome of the UK's referendum on continued EU membership is at the time of writing uncertain, and the consequences of a vote to remain (‘Bremain’) or leave (‘Brexit’) difficult to predict. Polarised views have been voiced about the impact of Brexit on UK agriculture, and on the nature and level of funding, of future policy. Policymakers would not have the luxury of devising a new policy from scratch. WTO rules and commitments, the nature of any future accord with the EU, budget constraints, the rather different perspectives of the UK's devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the expectations of farmers, landowners and the environmental lobby, will all impact the policymaking process. The WTO dimension, and the UK's future relationship with the EU, are particularly difficult to predict, and – some commentators believe – may take years to resolve. Brexit's impact on the future CAP is also unclear. A vote to remain within the EU would not necessarily assuage the Eurosceptics’ criticisms of the EU, or the UK's perception of the CAP. Whatever the outcome, future agricultural, food and rural land use policies will remain key preoccupations of European governments.

Endogenous environmental policy for small open economies with transboundary pollution

We analyze how governments set their environmental policies if pollution is transboundary and countries are too small to affect world market prices. Assuming that governments are self-interested (rather than maximizing social welfare) we use a common agency framework to portray the calculus of political support-maximizing governments that find themselves in a situation of strategic interaction created by transboundary pollution. Our model shows how distortions created by the strategic interaction of national governments interact with distortions that arise due to the political processes in both countries. For instance, strong environmental lobbies may improve welfare as they counteract the distortion caused by the international externality, yet only up to a point. Instead of assuming interior solutions as most of the literature does, we show that corner solutions are a realistic possibility and derive conditions under which they occur. Moreover strong political distortions may create instability and thus lead to corner solutions.

A rewilding agenda for Europe: creating a network of experimental reserves

In the context of aging European conservation institutions rewilding has emerged as a popular and scientific expression of new directions in ecology and conservation management associated with the restoration of ecosystem function through reassembly of trophic levels involving the reintroduction of large mammals. It introduces a radical new natural archetype that evokes a positive environmentalism. The Oostvaardersplassen experiment in the Netherlands demonstrates the agency of rewilding for nature development and engaging diverse publics in debates on what is natural and the future of conservation policy. If conservation is to retain its cultural and policy visibility and influence in a 21st century multi‐cultural Europe, our conservation institutions and the natures we value must adapt. In this forum I frame rewilding as an asset for institutional adaptation that is being constrained by substantive institutional and societal resistance. I argue the need for strategic investment in a European network of experimental rewilding sites. These would bring rewilding into densely populated areas, develop the science and practice of ecosystem restoration, and promote public debate on nature conservation futures. The ‘Fitness check’ of European nature conservation legislation mandated in 2014 is a case of high politics. In this situation, compromise and negotiation is inevitable and the environmental lobby needs something to advocate as well as defend. A rewilding agenda could fulfil this need.

Corporate Regulation, Climate Change and Corporate Law: Challenges and Balance in an International and Global World

The focus of this paper is the impact of corporate governance on the way in which corporations handle their environmental obligations. It is noted that the current relationship between corporations and the environment is unsatisfactory, drawing on levels of climate pollution and disasters such as the Tafigura to demonstrate the fact. Possible methods through which corporate governance can be used to address environmental issues are explored. The neo-liberal bent of current supervisor standards, in particular the World Bank's country assessment and OECD's guidelines emphasis on shareholder interests, is highlighted. It is argued that the current capitalist models fails to take adequate account of environmental concerns. The paper compares of UK and Albanian approaches to the regulations of directors' duties, as a reflection on the corporate governance policy of these jurisdictions. The ability of shareholders to protect and enforce corporate and environmental interests against directors who mismanage the corporation under both systems in considered. The paper concludes that the adoption by Albania of laws allowing for the lifting of corporate veils for companies acting internationally represents a significant advantage for minority stakeholders, including the environmental lobby, to ensure corporate responsibility.