ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
12.1 Two successful voluntary agreementsIt is difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of a
voluntary agreement: proponents want to
measure improvements against some base
year; critics want to evaluate performance
against what could have been achieved by
regulatory instruments or MBIs. Both
approaches are flawed, as the former cannot
distinguish changes from developments that
might have happened anyway and the latter is
based on a hypothetical situation. None the
less, based on historical trends, both examples
below seem to have been successes (albeit
open to criticism).USA – 33/50 Program for Toxic Emissions
This was an EPA initiative representing a
voluntary ‘add-on’ to the Toxic Release
Inventory. It set national goals for seventeen
prioritised toxic chemicals of a 33 per cent
reduction of releases by 1992 and a 50 per cent
cut by 1995 compared with 1988 levels. Of
5,000 companies invited, some 1,300corporations agreed to join the agreement,
succeeding in making 50 per cent cuts in their
emissions by 1994, although overall cuts
among all firms on the Toxic Release Inventory
had reached only 42 per cent by 1995 and
45 per cent by 1998 (Sterner 2003 : 303).German climate change agreement
In 1995 the German government, having set an
ambitious CO 2 emission reduction target of 25
per cent by 2005, made a voluntary agreement
with fifteen (later nineteen) industry
associations representing 80 per cent of
industry energy emissions. In exchange for
industry promises to make emission cuts of up
to 20 per cent by 2005, the government agreed
to withhold additional regulatory measures.
Initially criticised for being unambitious,
subsequent agreements set increasingly
tougher emissions reduction targets, which
were achieved well before 2005 (Hatch2005a).Schemes (EMAS), environmental management standards such as ISO 14001
and eco-labelling (see Chapter8). The most significant instrument is the
environmental ‘voluntary agreement’, which is a commitment undertaken
byfirms or trade associations, usually in consultation or negotiation with
apublic authority, although normally there will be no sanctions if commit-
ments are not fulfilled. Environmental agreements have become increas-
ingly common since the late 1980s: a comparative study of eight OECD
countries reported that they had ‘grown significantly’ everywhere (Jordan
et al.2003a:211), with several thousand in Japan, and the Netherlands and
Germany having the largest share in the EU. While the Dutch NEPP has pro-
duced agreements, or ‘covenants’, in almost all policy areas (see Chapter11),
most countries have just a handful of agreements concentrated in a few
core polluting areas, notably the energy, chemical, agriculture, tourism and
transport sectors. Some environmental agreements represent a co-ordinated
industry response to a legislative development; for example, all EU member
states have concluded agreements that implement the European Commis-
sion directive on packaging waste.
Environmental agreements have several potential advantages (see
Box12.1). They offer a flexible and cost-effective means of achieving policy