Voluntary Environmental Regulation in Developing Countries
December 19, 2007 by amathew , Brian Butler | Filed under: Industrialized vs Developing Economies,Literature Review
Blackman, Lahiri, Pizer, Planter, Pina; Voluntary Environmental Regulation in Developing Countries; July 2007; RFF DP 07-36This discussion paper,from the RFF, details “Mexico’s Clean Industry Program” where a voluntary approach is used to provide environmental oversight. The authors make an interesting statement that environmental authorities in developing countries, particularly those in Latin America, have embraced voluntary regulation and are rapidly putting new initiatives in place. They contrast the approach in industrialized countries where voluntary environmental programs are “typically used to encourage firms to over comply with mandatory regulations or to cut emissions of pollutants for which mandatory regulations do not exist” to the voluntary approach in developing countries where “environmental authorities generally use voluntary regulation to help remedy rampant non-compliance with mandatory regulation resulting from, among other factors, limited public support for environmental protection, weak regulatory institutions, and a paucity of financial and technical resources in the private sector”. This is an interesting analogy to this research topic [and a great cap to the EHS management class in itself]. One should be cautioned however, that this paper becomes very technical and the math calculations alone can become burdensome.This paper is somewhat applicable to the subject. Its’ most important feature is it brings up new underlying assumptions and understandings and in some cases busts the myths.