Policy instruments and implementation◗ Regulation and regulatory styles
◗ The case for regulation
Regulation is the most widely used instrument of environmental policy.
Broadly defined, regulation involves any attempt by the government to influ-
ence the behaviour of businesses or citizens, but it is used here to refer to
what many observers, rather pejoratively, call ‘command and control’ or
‘coercive’ regulation. It involves the government specifying the standards of
pollution control that a process or product has to meet, and then using
state officials, backed up by the legal system, to enforce its rules. Regulatory
standards usually take one of three forms.Ambientstandards place limits on
the total concentration of pollutants permitted in a particular area, such
as a street, river or bathing waters.Emissionstandards limit what an indi-
vidual source can emit: the gases released from factories, exhaust emissions
from vehicles and discharges of agricultural silage into rivers are all typ-
ically regulated in this way.Designstandards require the use of a specific
type of pollution-control technology or production process, such as a cat-
alytic converter in a car, or the use of particular materials or products, such
as unleaded petrol. In addition, stringent controls limit the dumping of
hazardous waste. Many chemicals such as DDT, once widely used as a pes-
ticide, are completely banned or else their use is tightly controlled. Some
regulations are aimed directly at the behaviour of individual citizens. Clean
Air Acts have created urban smokeless zones where the burning of coal
is banned; traffic-congested cities such as Florence and Athens limit the
number of cars entering the city centre; while many local municipalities
require citizens to separate their household waste for recycling. Regulation
is also the main instrument used by international regimes to deal with
both common-sink problems (e.g. banning ozone-depleting substances) and
common-pool problems (banning whaling).
Regulation is the policy instrument most associated with the traditional
environmental paradigm. When the political salience of pollution rose dur-
ing the 1970s, governments concentrated their initial legislative responses
on the large industrial polluters responsible for the bulk of harmful emis-
sions. As there were relatively few firms compared to consumers, they
appeared easy to police; industry had the resources to invest in abatement
and factory smoke-stacks and waste-pipes were highly visible symbols of pol-
lution (Braadbaart 1998 ). The huge extant legislative programmes designed
toachieve pollution abatement still make regulation the most widely used
environmental policy instrument. In the USA, for example, eight new reg-
ulatory programmes, or major amendments to existing ones, were intro-
duced between 1980 and 1994. The EU has introduced over 600 regula-
tions directly affecting the environment (Haigh 1998 ). Environmental policy
today is still primarily concerned with the content and implementation of
regulations.