Environmental Policy Instruments Research Articles

Review of the environmental policy instruments in the standardization of H2 for the decarbonization of Mexico

The objective of this work is to review the environmental and ecological policy instruments that Mexican legislation for existence of an Official Mexican Hydrogen Standard according to the premises motivates decarbonization. There is a worldwide interest in hydrogen (H2) and its incorporation into legal systems. In Mexico there are large legal gaps that question the legality of H2, because it is not recognized in a federal law and is only considered in technical standards of voluntary application. Also, Mexico has forest, agricultural, and livestock waste that, if properly used, can cover the energy demand of communities. The main findings of this study refer to the fact that, according to international standards for the management of H2 and taking into account the regulatory limitations in Mexico, it is possible to promote, an Official Mexican Standard exclusively aimed at establishing the minimum requirements for the design, construction, operation and maintenance of H2 storage, considering the areas of the opportunity offered by foreign experiences, according to the Mexican context. It is concluded that the parameters of legality exist in the instruments of environmental policy, to support the existence of an Official Mexican Standard of H2.

Renewable Energy Consumption Shocks on CO2 Emissions and Economic Growth of Nigeria

The paper examines the nexus among economic growth, renewable energy consumption and CO2 pollution in Nigeria. The study tested for co-integration using the Johansen technique, which is evident and applied the vector error correction model (VECM) on the annual data for the period 1990-2015. The results indicate a bi-directional causality between renewable energy consumption (REC) and economic growth (GDP). REC positively granger causes GDP in both short-run and long-run, while GDP has an adverse effect on REC in the short run. Historical decomposition of shocks reveals the relative implications of renewable energy shocks on GDP to be mostly negative between period 1990 and 2007. This is as a result of inefficient renewable technologies during the period. However, there is persistent and positive influence of REC on economic growth in the period between 2009 and 2015. Increase use of renewable technologies due to its relative affordability and better efficiency contributes to the progressive influence on economic growth. The variance decomposition analysis predicts an increase in the use of renewable energy technologies in the five year forecast period, with CO2 emissions will increasing as a consequence of dependence fossil fuel energy resources. The paper suggests environmental and tax policy instruments, as well as, effective governance to enhance environmental quality and encourage sustainable/green economic growth. The key instruments include: grants, feed-in-tariffs (FIT), production tax credits, renewable portfolio standards (RPS), and loans to enable industrial sector invest in renewable energy.

Impacts of human behaviour in agri-environmental policies: How adequate is homo oeconomicus in the design of market-based conservation instruments?

Models of human-environment systems frequently employ the model of rational behaviour in which a rational, perfectly informed and self-interested homo oeconomicus maximises individual utility. This model has been criticised with regard to its adequacy in models of social-ecological systems, because other motives exist beyond profit maximisation that affect land-use decisions. The question arises what consequences do these other motives have on the design and performance of environmental policy instruments. For this, two existing generic models of agri-environmental schemes are expanded to consider alternative landowner behaviours: agents make mistakes in their search for the profit-maximising land-use decision, are inequity-averse and care about the profits of their neighbours, and are influenced by their neighbours' decisions. In the analyses even large deviations from the model of homo oeconomicus have generally only a small or moderate effect on the cost-effective design and the level of cost-effectiveness of the two agri-environmental schemes. With the models being rather simplistic, the results should not be used for specific policy advice but to point out and argue that the model of homo oeconomicus should not be abandoned prematurely, but its scope in environmental policy advice needs to be assessed more thoroughly both empirically and theoretically.

Revisiting ISO 14001 diffusion among national terrains: panel data evidence from OECD countries and the BRIICS

Being one of the primary soft-voluntary environmental policy instruments, ISO 14001 has been studied from a number of diverse perspectives and disciplines. Nevertheless, it is only few assessments that have attempted to shed light on variations in the diffusion ISO 14001 certification among countries in terms of national factors and macroeconomic conditions that may stimulate relevant implementation patterns. We employ a 1999–2017 annual time-series that yields a panel dataset of 33 countries, out of which 27 are OECD countries, complemented by the BRIICS. Applying the appropriate static and dynamic econometric specifications, the EKC hypothesis is not rejected in all the cases in static and dynamic specifications. Our turning points are in all cases within the sample ranging from $20,812 to $52,023.

Text Mining and Quantitative Research of Medical Service Policy: Sichuan Province as an Example.

Medical service policy plays a prominent role in the development of a “Healthy China.” This paper constructs a three-dimensional framework for text mining of medical service policy using the elements of policy instruments, policy strength, and types of medical service activity. Taking Sichuan Province as an example, 221 medical service policy documents, issued by the government and related departments, are selected as the research sample; the policy instruments, policy strength, and medical service activity types are analyzed using ROST and Nvivo 11.0 software. It is concluded that the government needs to optimize the structure of policy instruments, to appropriately reduce the use of environmental policy instruments in particular, while increasing the use of demand-based policy instruments. It is necessary to strengthen the interaction between the various sub-policy instruments, and to increase the use of financial services, fiscal taxes, overseas communications, and strategic measures. An increase in the implementation of government policy assists the acceleration of the policy landing, the further improvement of the supervision system, and the safeguard mechanism of the three medicine policy linkage, which can improve the sustainability of the medical service policy, and further resolve the difficulty and expense of seeing a doctor.

The Preferential Treatment of Green Bonds

We study the preferential treatment of green bonds in the Central Bank collateral framework as an environmental policy instrument within a DSGE model with environmental and financial frictions. Green and conventional entrepreneurs issue bonds to banks that use them as collateral. The associated collateral premium induce entrepreneurs to increase bond issuance, investment, leverage, and default risk. Collateral policy solves a trade-off between increasing collateral supply, adverse effects on entrepreneur risk-taking, and subsidizing green investment. Due to these adverse side effects, optimal collateral policy is characterized by modest preferential treatment, thereby increasing the green bond share and, to a smaller extent, the green investment share, which in turn reduces pollution. The limited response of green investment is directly related to higher risk-taking of green entrepreneurs. Furthermore, we show that preferential treatment is an imperfect substitute of Pigouvian taxation on pollution: only if the optimal tax can not be implemented, optimal collateral policy features preferential treatment of green bonds.

The politicization of protected areas establishment in Canada

Environmental issues and related policy instruments are becoming increasingly politicized in the Canadian context, but it is unclear whether biodiversity conservation and protected areas are similarly politicized. Here, we suggest that the political characteristics of protected areas do not lend themselves easily to politicization, but data from the Canadian Protected and Conserved Areas Database indicate that at the federal level, and provincially in Alberta, the rate of protected areas establishment is becoming increasingly tied to electoral politics, suggesting some politicization. We situate these trends within federal electoral politics between 2006 and the present, outlining the differing approaches of the Harper Conservatives and the Trudeau Liberals and showing how both administrations instrumentalized the environment and protected areas for their own electoral benefits. We find similar trends in Alberta with the Progressive Conservative, New Democratic Party, and United Conservative Party governments. However, while there is increasing polarization in practice, there has been less polarization of the electoral rhetoric surrounding protected areas. This politicization represents a barrier to conservation in Canada as it can lead to greenwashing, poor accountability, or the creation of an anti-conservation constituency. At the same time, politicization can raise the profile of conservation in public discourse, leading to greater public interest and engagement.

Designing Instrument Packages for the Low-Carbon Transition: An Evaluation Framework with an Application to Austria

Limiting global warming to no more than 2°C requires global large-scale deployment of low-carbon and negative emissions technologies. This requires the development of new eco-innovations and the diffusion of new and existing ones. Existing portfolios of environmental and technology policy instruments, however, may not be up to this task. In this paper, we develop an evaluative framework for the assessment of existing and new policy instruments for the successful development and deployment of eco-innovations. Our evaluative framework considers focus, scope, strictness, coherence and timing as key criteria for the evaluation of policy instruments for the transition to a low-carbon economy. We apply our framework to the residential and commercial (buildings) sector in an ambitious country, Austria.

Co-designing workshops on sustainable consumption and production in Southeast Asia: application of idea cards and structuring methods

Ensuring sustainable consumption and production (SCP) patterns is an important task for achieving Sustainable Development Goal 12 by 2030. To facilitate international and domestic collaboration toward regional SCP, we developed a collaborative workshop method to generate and structure ideas about consumption and production (CP) patterns and employed the procedures for emerging Southeast Asian countries at workshops in Japan and Thailand. The main focus was on Bangkok, and the goal was to identify the implications of SCP policies. The structuring of seventeen SCP patterns chosen from 525 CP patterns generated at the workshops helped to identify the important influential factors, policy interventions, and features of probable SCP patterns. The main conclusions were the following: (1) The viewpoints of consumers and providers are important for idea generation. The products and services, as well as the systems of CP patterns, should be targeted; (2) Transition, improvement of the quality of life, and digitalization are also key directions of SCP patterns in Bangkok; (3) Culture, infrastructure, and industry are major considerations for regional SCP policy; and (4) SCP policy instruments are broader than conventional environmental policy instruments, and expanding the scope of SCP policy should be discussed more widely, especially in Asian countries.

An economic evaluation framework for land-use-based conservation policy instruments in a changing climate.

Climate change is a key threat to biodiversity. To conserve species under climate change, ecologists and conservation scientists suggest 2 main conservation strategies regarding land use: supporting species' range shifts to enable it to follow its climatic requirements by creating migration pathways, such as corridors and stepping stones, and conserving climate refugia (i.e., existing habitat areas that are somewhat buffered from climate change). The policy instruments that could be used to implement these conservation strategies have yet to be evaluated comprehensively from an economic perspective. The economic analyses of environmental policy instruments are often based on ecological effectiveness and cost-effectiveness criteria. We adapted these general criteria to evaluate policy instruments for species' conservation under climate change and applied them to a conceptual analysis of land purchases, offsets, and conservation payments. Depending on whether the strategy supporting species' range shifts or conserving climate refugia is selected, the evaluation of the policy instruments differed substantially. For example, to ensure ecological effectiveness, habitat persistence over time was especially important for climate refugia and was best achieved by a land-purchase policy instrument. In contrast, for the strategy supporting range shifts to be ecologically effective, a high degree of flexibility in the location of conserved sites was required to ensure that new habitat sites can be created in the species' new range. Offset programs were best suited for that because the location of conservation sites can be chosen comparatively freely and may also be adapted over time.

Sustainable tourism and mobility development in natural protected areas: Evidence from Apulia

The natural protected areas of a territory represent an essential instrument of environmental policy and, if adequately exploited, a significant added value resource for European Regions. The evaluation of adopted policies and the economic planning of these areas require an integrated approach that considers several factors. In this article, through the construction of several indicators, we analysed three large protected areas of the Apulia Region (Italy). Using data collected from regional and national reports, we investigated the status and policies activated by these protected areas, focusing on different aspects: namely, transport services (including soft mobility and transport infrastructures), tourism and territorial economic development. This paper should be of interest for natural areas that in recent decades have been affected by considerable tourism expansion but that have recently launched sustainable development and transport policies. The proposed policies for the analysed areas can be adopted by parks or reserves with similar characteristics.

Integrated environmental policy instruments driven river water pollution management decision system

Market-based approaches and command and control regulations are the two main tools that policy/decision makers use to implement environmental protection goals; however, these alone have proven to be somewhat ineffective or counterproductive in some cases. Therefore, this study proposes a hybrid environmental policy tool to guide river basin environmental management decisions. The river basin authority and regional Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as the two leading decision makers, and policy makers and implementers of river basin management, make decisions sequentially in a process similar to a Stackelberg game. This decision making can be mathematically represented using a bi-level optimization model. The proposed model addressed the conflicting equitable resource allocation and economic efficiency objectives to achieve coordinated development of the whole river basin. To verify the model effectiveness, the most considerable pollutant emissions limits and water quality standards were set, and incentive measures (pollution chargers and subsidies) were applied to assess these hybrid instruments' impact on the decision outcomes. The results from a Minjiang river basin case further illustrated that the trade-off between social equity and cost-efficient environmental goals could efficiently achieve, proving that a combination of instruments could be influential in pollution decision-making and delivery of environmental policy. Given the model's proven effectiveness, several proposals are given for solving complex pollution problems that also need to consider the related socioeconomic issues.

Policy mix or policy mess? Effects of cross-instrumental policy mix on eco-innovation in German firms

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of a policy mix between general innovation policies and environmental policies in fostering the adoption of global warming-related eco-innovations both in the short term and long term. Focusing on process eco-innovations, we investigate whether the combined impact of general innovation and environmental policy instruments, which we term a cross-instrumental policy mix, is greater than their individual impact. We examined data from the Mannheim Innovation Panel on German firms, investigating both cross-sectional data from 2015 and longitudinal data from two waves of the survey conducted in 2009 and 2015. We apply two models, based respectively on a matching analysis and a panel analysis. We find that cross-instrumental policy mix has a stronger positive effect on process eco-innovations than the impact of general innovation policy instruments alone, both in the short and long term. In contrast, although we expected the greater impact of a cross-instrumental policy mix relative to environmental policy instruments, this argument is not supported by our empirical results. Our study offers policy implications concerning the coordination of innovation and environmental policies in achieving an optimal policy mix.

A systematic review of barriers impeding the implementation of government green procurement

Purpose Government green procurement (GGP) is becoming a popular environmental policy instrument to spur the economy whilst protecting the environment. However, the implementation of GGP is impeded by various barriers. This paper aims to analyse the existing literature on barriers impeding GGP. Design/methodology/approach This systematic literature review was guided by the PRISMA Statement (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) review method. A total of 29 articles from the Scopus and Web of Science databases were selected for the review. Findings Five themes, i.e. finance, legal, people, knowledge and organisation, emerged from this review, which further produced 16 sub-themes. Lack of knowledge and awareness were the major barriers for GGP, while financial constraint was not the major barrier for GGP, as previously perceived. Barriers related to organisation were the most complex. Certain barriers were found more in developed or developing countries. Research limitations/implications Only article journals with empirical data were selected. Review articles, book series, books, chapters in books and conference proceedings were excluded. Practical implications Public managers should place highest priority to enhance knowledge and awareness of procurers on GGP. Other important initiatives to be undertaken include emulating best practices, implementing change management and incentivising suppliers to tackle the prevalent barriers of GGP. Finally, with increasing evidences on barriers related to GGP, public managers should consider mapping and analysing specific barriers hindering GGP in their organisation/country. Social implications A less challenging and efficient implementation of GGP contributes to a cleaner environment. Originality/value This article will be the first to systematically review the barriers of GGP.

Environmental policy contests: command and control versus taxes

This study compares the performance of two types of environmental policy instruments (command and control and taxes on emissions) when (1) the regulator’s policy choice is sensitive to the pressure of two lobbies (environmentalist and industry) and (2) lobbies can strategically set the policy proposal they will lobby for. Due to the extra fiscal burden entailed by taxes, we find that lobbyists have more incentives to moderate their policy proposals under command and control. We show how this triggers a series of differences between these two regulatory tools in terms of expected emissions, lobbyists’ utilities, or aggregate welfare.

Ordenamientos ecológicos territoriales, derechos humanos y vinculación jurídica

En este trabajo exponemos la importancia del ordenamiento ecológico como instrumento de política ambiental que permite integrar saberes en pro de la protección del medio ambiente y manejo sustentable de los recursos naturales, de tal forma que uno de los objetivos de dicho instrumento es transitar de la perspectiva teórica de la norma protectora del medio ambiente hacia un enfoque de acción social en pro de la protección del derecho humano a vivir en un medio ambiente sano. La idea es que el ordenamiento ecológico sea un instrumento para la defensa social de bienes comunes como el medio ambiente y el manejo de actividades y recursos naturales conforme a la cosmovisión de grupos indígenas, lo que permitirá transformar relaciones sociales dominantes.

Environmental policy mixes and target group heterogeneity: analysing Danish farmers’ responses to the pesticide taxes

ABSTRACT In this article, we challenge two assumptions embedded in many ex-ante analyses of environmental policy instruments. Firstly, it is often assumed that target groups in environmental policy are homogeneous and thus can be expected to respond to policy instruments in a similar manner. Secondly, individual target group members are expected to respond to policy instruments like ‘economic man’, particularly in relation to MBIs applied in environmental policy. We argue that despite the ‘behavioural turn’ in public policy, the debate on policy instrument development and effectiveness has often neglected target group heterogeneity. E.g. members of a given policy target group may be driven by different motivations and each member may even act based on a combination of motivations. Target group heterogeneity suggests that rather than chasing a single perfect policy instrument, research and environmental governance should focus more on better policy mixes to match those differences in decision-making rationales. We argue that a focus on instrument combinations designed to effectively address policy problems where target groups are heterogeneous would mark a new and innovative stage in the research on policy instruments. We substantiate our argument by an empirical analysis of farmer responses to Danish agricultural pesticide taxes.

How Do Fossil Fuel Divestment Commitments and Environmental Policies Impact Oil and Gas Financing?

This paper explores how fossil fuel divestment commitments and environmental policies have shaped the geography of capital flows into the oil and gas sector, based on the analysis of syndicated lending, equity and bond underwriting across 33 countries from 2000 to 2015. We find that the value of total assets pledged for divestment in a given country is negatively associated with capital flows to domestic oil and gas companies, particularly when divestment is led by regional or sovereign governments. Amongst environmental policy instruments, emissions trading schemes and renewables feed-in tariffs have been most impactful in reducing oil and gas sector capital inflows.

Technology licensing and environmental policy instruments: Price control versus quantity control

This paper analyzes the welfare implications of abatement technology licensing under taxation and emission trading schemes. We demonstrate that a firm with a better abatement technology optimally sells a per-unit royalty license to a competitor under both schemes but offers a higher royalty rate under the latter. The emission trading scheme may outperform the taxation scheme regarding social surplus by inducing more production by the licensor and less production by the licensee. These are reversals of the welfare implications suggested by the literature that adopts a partial equilibrium approach or omits either the market for the advanced technology or the final goods.

Environmental regulation, governance, and policy instruments, 20 years after the stick, carrot, and sermon typology

ABSTRACT In 1998, Evert Vedung posited a typology of policy instruments making governing akin to a conversation with a donkey: regulatory (sticks), economic (carrots) and information-based (sermons) instruments. Kathryn Harrison later applied this typology to pollution control in her popular ‘Talking with the Donkey’ piece. Though command-and-control instruments were central up until the late 1990s, growing global interest in ‘New Environmental Policy Instruments’ (NEPI) led to a disinterest in regulatory mechanisms and an increase in attention to information-based and economic instruments. Are governments using regulation as a policy instrument now more than before or are they choosing policy mixes? In this paper, I examine the state of the art regarding regulation as an environmental policy instrument by exploring whether the apparent shift to NEPI did reduce interest in environmental regulation as a policy instrument. I find that policy experiments with models of policy instruments led to increased interest in policy instrument mixes. Evidence from a systematic review of JEPP scholarship and a broader scholarly review of the literature on environmental policy instruments over the past 20 years focused on drinking water and solid waste governance suggest that policy mixes might work best when faced with conditions of uncertainty and governance complexity.