The Company and Environmental Management: 'Respectful' Behavior Towards the Environment by Means of Command and Control Instruments or Market-Based Instruments?

All human societies have laws, which may be written or unwritten. Those laws, and the mechanisms to enforce them, evolve as internal and external forces shape the society. Modern environmental regulatory frameworks are a complex mixture of traditional behavioural rules and newer benchmarks of environmental performance. Gradually, we have come to value the rules themselves above the goals they are intended to achieve. In fact, environmental improvement can be achieved in many ways, not just through traditional regulatory approaches. Traditional "command-and-control" regulation provides a useful backstop but is limited in its ability to encourage innovation. Newer approaches, including economic instruments, voluntary clean-up, and recognition programs, offer the means to encourage prevention, protection, and conservation, rather than resource wastage and reliance on end-of-pipe technology. A combination of command-and-control programs for minimum limits, coupled with economic incentives and voluntary compliance schemes for enhanced protection, may be the only viable environmental management strategy for the 21st century.Key words: environmental management, environmental law, pollution prevention, economic instruments, voluntary, compliance.

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The European Union's Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS): Still a Viable Entity or a Concept Spiraling Towards Obscurity?

Journal for European Environmental & Planning Law ◽

10.1163/161372709x457693 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

pp. 37-50 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Michael Wenk

Keyword(s):

Environmental Management ◽

European Union ◽

Environmental Performance ◽

Command And Control ◽

The Other ◽

The European Union ◽

The Future ◽

And Control

AbstractThe European Union's Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) was envisioned as a panacea for the perceived ills facing the European Union (EU) at the time of its inception. Its manifest purpose was to more comprehensively administer environmental management and compliance, to help ensure a uniform set of environmental performance across the entire EU. The scheme, together with the Eco-Label, the other EU voluntary tool, was developed as a complement to traditional 'command-and-control' legislation. While noble and ambitious in its design, EMAS has failed to become the shining light of environmental management which it was designed to be, and instead has devolved into a second class citizen. While the ongoing revision, EMAS III, offers some hope for the future, the program as a whole remains burdened by inefficiency and impracticality. The Scheme must expand in scope, and include motivations and rewards for incorporating such pressing ideas as CSR, or it will be doomed to the ash heap of history.

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