Manual on the Development of Cleaner Production Policies ... - Unido

More documents

Recommendations

Info

DEVELOPMENT OF CP POLICY MODULE 4: POLICY TOOLS AND INSTRUMENTS EXAMPLE In Poland, the Environmental Inspectorate publishes the “List of 80” exposing the eighty largest polluters in the country. The enterprises on the list are subject to regular monitoring and inspection by the authorities to check if they comply with environmental improvement plans. Additionally, regional inspectorates maintain their own priority lists for the areas of their jurisdiction. In most cases, environmental permits are media specific (e.g. waste water discharge, waste disposal, health and safety). An interesting example of a non-media specific approach is the integrated environmental permit required in the European Union’s Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control Directive (see module 5 for further details). One commonly used instrument is the Environmental Impact Assessment required in the approval process for new investments. The investor needs to carry out an EIA and include it in the set of documents that accompany a request for a location permit. The EIA may also be subject to periodic verifications, to check whether the agreed conditions are still being met, as there may be discrepancies resulting from changes in the actual technical design of the investment since the time the location permit was issued. The EIA law requires an assessment for environmentally sensitive investment projects and occasionally also for the local development and spatial management plans. EXAMPLE Required permits in Nicaragua and El Salvador Companies may sometimes be required to implement a structured environmental management system and to submit regular reports on their environmental performance in order to obtain an operating permit. In Nicaragua, the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources requires that companies prepare an Integrated Plan of Gradual Reduction of Industrial Contamination (Plan Gradual Integral de Reducción de la Contaminación Industrial). In El Salvador, companies are obliged to present an Environmental Assessment (Diagnóstico Ambiental). In closing the discussion of regulatory instruments, it is worth noting that some Cleaner Production experts proclaim CP as an open, transparent and voluntary process that uses an incentive-based approach; as such, regulatory measures and liability assignment may not be the most effective tool to promote the concept. There is, nonetheless, broad agreement that enforceable regulation is needed to deal with non-performing companies. PAGE 92
DEVELOPMENT OF CP POLICY MODULE 4: POLICY TOOLS AND INSTRUMENTS SLIDE: Market-based instruments • Emission fees and non-compliance fines (Mexico: waste water fees depending on the location and pollution load, similar regulations in Uruguay and Colombia); • Grants, subsidies and financial assistance for CP (National Environmental Fund in Colombia, Subsidy for Technological Conversion to avoid the use of CFCs in Chile). Market-based instruments (also known as economic instruments) are increasingly used in environmental protection. You may want to note that market-based instruments tend to support Cleaner Production, as they are based on the “polluter-pays” principle, and provide strong financial incentives to implement CP. Background The term “market-based instruments”, also called “economic instruments”, is used to describe a mechanism that changes the financial and economic conditions faced by enterprises when dealing with environmental pollution. Economic instruments are based on the “polluter-pays” principle, which states that polluters must bear full financial responsibility for pollution reduction or clean-up. The pollution prevention principle allows the internalization of costs that would not normally be incurred by the producer or the user (externalities). Market-based instruments can be divided into three main categories based on how they affect a government’s budget: 1. Public expenditure instruments take the form of subsidies, grants and tax allowances and are the most familiar tool of intervention. Their function is to provide a financial incentive for individuals or companies to undertake an activity they would not otherwise engage in. Examples include grants for developing environmentally friendly technology, price supports for recycling industries and tax allowances for energy conservation; 2. Revenue-generating instruments include taxes, charges and fees. These, to some extent, can be viewed as the price to be paid for polluting, and have both an incentive impact and a revenue impact. However, taxes, charges and fees are generally too low to have any effect on environmentally damaging behaviour and so they serve mainly as a revenue generator. Effluent charges, tax differentiation between leaded and unleaded petrol, user charges for public waste disposal and depletion taxes on mineral exploitation serve to demonstrate how these instruments are used; 3. Budget neutral instruments represent a relatively new class of instruments within the policy arena, the most common of which is the deposit/refund system. They are designed to collect a surcharge on a potentially harmful substances or activities, and then refund that surcharge if the substance is recycled or restored, or use is avoided. Environmental economists often list literally hundreds of individual instruments. At one extreme, they comprise fines or sanctions that are linked to traditional command-and-control regulations. At the other extreme, they include approaches that depend on consumer advocacy or private litigation to provide incentives for improving environmental management. Between these extremes are the more familiar tax-and-subsidy approaches as well as less commonly used mechanisms that rely on traded property rights. PAGE 93
Page 1 and 2:
Manual on the Deve
Page 3 and 4:
Table of Contents: BACKGROUND AND I
Page 5 and 6:
Background and Introduction The cor
Page 7 and 8:
DEVELOPMENT OF CP POLICY INTRODUCTI
Page 9 and 10:
••• MODULE 1 1 hour INTRODUC
Page 11 and 12:
DEVELOPMENT OF CP POLICY MODULE 1:
Page 13 and 14:
Page 15 and 16:
Page 17 and 18:
Page 19 and 20:
Page 21 and 22:
Page 23 and 24:
Page 25 and 26:
Page 27 and 28:
Page 29 and 30:
Page 31 and 32:
••• MODULE 2 1 hour BASICS O
Page 33 and 34:
Page 35 and 36:
Page 37 and 38:
Page 39 and 40:
Page 41 and 42:
Page 43 and 44:
Page 45 and 46: DEVELOPMENT OF CP POLICY MODULE 2:
Page 87 and 88: █ █ █ MODULE 4 2 hours POLIC
Page 95: DEVELOPMENT OF CP POLICY MODULE 4:
Page 141: DEVELOPMENT OF CP POLICY—APPROACH
show all

Manual on the Development of Cleaner Production Policies ... - Unido

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?