Suchergebnisse

AbstractDespite all the rhetoric, efforts to reform environmental regulation in the United States offer little promise of relief. Incapacitating the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and shifting responsibilities to the states hardly insures a less burdensome situation for the business community. At best, basic reform strategies merely add on various efficiency devices (bubbles, cost-benefit analyses, etc.) without addressing issues of overall regulatory performance. Moreover, none of the reform strategies, thus far, get at the underlying statutes and processes of environmental regulation which tend to generate a highly combative milieu. This discussion explores these weaknesses, and forwards an alternative approach, which is similar to regulatory processes in Europe and Canada (involving reduced litigation and increased negotiation).

For environmental legislation to 'work' it must not only be well designed but also efficiently and effectively enforced. Strategies must be developed as to how inspectors should go about the task of intervening in the affairs of regulated organisations to ensure compliance and enforcement-a question regarding which there is little consensus. This article examines this question from a number of angles: descriptive; analytical; and normative. It explores the practices of a representative sample of environmental regulators, identifying a number of distinctive intervention strategies (which are only limitedly shaped by existing theoretical models). It goes on to examine the strengths and weaknesses of each strategy and to consider how best to balance the sometimes competing criteria of effectiveness, efficiency and legitimacy. Finally, it considers how resource allocation and intervention strategies can best be integrated, whether there is a single 'best practice' strategy, and if not, what sorts of hybrids might be developed.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) enforces two different regulation s in the state of Kansas. One set of regulation s is from the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and applies to larger operations. The other is a set of Kansas regulation s created by our state legislature for smaller operations. EPA regulations pertain to confined feeding operation s in excess of 1,000 animal units and require an EPA National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit. Because an animal unit for the NPDES permit is defined as one beef animal, a feedlot with a capacity of 1,000 or more will need to apply to KDHE for a NPDES permit. The main criterion of the permit is to contain the runoff volume from a 24-hour, 25-year frequency rainfall event.

For environmental legislation to 'work' it must not only be well designed but also efficiently and effectively enforced. Strategies must be developed as to how inspectors should go about the task of intervening in the affairs of regulated organisations to ensure compliance and enforcement-a question regarding which there is little consensus. This article examines this question from a number of angles: descriptive; analytical; and normative. It explores the practices of a representative sample of environmental regulators, identifying a number of distinctive intervention strategies (which are only limitedly shaped by existing theoretical models). It goes on to examine the strengths and weaknesses of each strategy and to consider how best to balance the sometimes competing criteria of effectiveness, efficiency and legitimacy. Finally, it considers how resource allocation and intervention strategies can best be integrated, whether there is a single 'best practice' strategy, and if not, what sorts of hybrids might be developed.

Environmental degradation limits the prospects of sustainable economic development and the pursuit of a life of better quality. An informational approach to environmental regulation, a policy innovation implemented after direct regulation and economic incentive mechanism, has exhibited its positive results on pollution reduction. Since 1995, this approach has been exported from the developed world to more than ten developing countries by international policy advisors. China experimented with environmental performance information disclosure (EPID) pilot programs in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu province and Hohhot, Inner Mongolia between 1999 and 2000. Mixed results have been found. The disclosure program was sustained in Zhenjiang but was stopped in Hohhot only after the pilot phase. Furthermore, there has been no extensive research on how an informational approach to environmental regulation worked in a developing country context such as China, where private environmental enforcement by civil society and markets are lacking. This comparative case study advances our knowledge of the informational approach to environmental regulation by examining its implementation and impact. The following factors are found to be critical for policy implementation: perceptions of the policy innovation by local leadership and implementers, capacity of local environmental protection agencies, and the contexts in which the policy was carried out. Disclosed environmental information was able to induce better industrial environmental performance and incorporated the environment into development decision making by local government officials. However, environmental performance information disclosure alone was not sufficient to involve the public in environmental protection in China. For administrative, legal, market, and public forces to converge in environmental compliance and enforcement in China, building better institutional infrastructure is in order. ; Ph. D.