Environmental Management

, Volume 39, Issue 4, pp 575–586 | Cite as

Assessment of Compliance Performance of Environmental Regulations of Industries in Tuzla (Istanbul, Turkey)

Article
First Online:
  • 121 Downloads

Abstract

Although environmental management in Turkey is evolving, its performance needs to be assessed in terms of the extent to which polluters and dischargers are complying with their legal obligations. In spite of this necessity, however, not a single study evaluating the effectiveness of command-and-control strategy of environmental management has been conducted. It is for this reason that it was decided to conduct an analysis of the impact of environmental legislation on a major industrial area in Turkey. Accordingly, Turkish environmental legislation was analyzed, and all relevant obligations and responsibilities of industry are identified. Based upon this appraisal, a questionnaire was prepared and used to conduct interviews in Tuzla, Istanbul. From the results, it can be concluded that environmental compliance performance of industry is low. The total of 92 parameters has been questioned. Fifty-three parameters have been found as satisfactory compliance, whereas 26 parameters have been classified as partial compliance and 13 as unsatisfactory compliance. The most important reason for inadequate performance is the lack of an effective national and local environmental compliance management system. The other leading reasons are found to be low-level environmental consciousness of the people, absence of environmental management system at the sites, inadequacies in environmental subsidies, and insufficiencies in public environmental infrastructure. Four recommendations are made to increase the effectiveness of compliance management: establishing an effective environmental compliance management system, accelerating public investment for environmental infrastructure, developing financial subsidies and incentive schemes for environmental investments, and encouraging voluntary initiatives.

Keywords

Compliance management Enforcement Turkey Developing countries 
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

Literature Cited

  1. Commission of the European Communities. EU. 2001. “13,11.2001 SEC (2001) 1756”. 2001 Regular report on Turkey’s progress towards accession. BrusselsGoogle Scholar
  2. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) USA. 1992. Principles of environmental enforcement. Washington, DCGoogle Scholar
  3. Eve E., F. A. Arguelles, P. M. Fearnside. 2000. How well does Brazil’s environmental law works in practice? Environmental impact assessment and the case of Itapiranga private sustainable logging plan. Environmental Management 26:251–267CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  4. Hall J. 1994. Promoting voluntary compliance: Environmental auditing, outreach and incentive programme. The proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Environmental Enforcement (INECE). pp 505–515Google Scholar
  5. IMPEL. 2001. Best practice in compliance monitoring. EU, SwedenGoogle Scholar
  6. Kajura H. M. 1994. Promoting voluntary compliance: Environmental auditing, outreach and incentive programme. The proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Environmental Enforcement (INECE). pp 517–526Google Scholar
  7. Kolk A., A. Mauser. 2002. The evolution of environmental management: From stage models to performance evaluation. Business Strategy and the Environment 11:14–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  8. Krages II, P. Bert. 1999. Environmental testing, official methods and attitude toward noncompliance. Environmental Management 24:141–149CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  9. Lahdelma R., P. Salminen, J. Holckanen. 2000. Using multi criteria methods in environmental planning and management. Environmental Management 26:595–605CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  10. OECD. 1992. Environmental policies in Turkey, OECD, ParisGoogle Scholar
  11. OECD. 1999. Environmental performance review of Turkey, ParisGoogle Scholar
  12. OECD. 2002. Working together towards sustainable development: OECD experience. ParisGoogle Scholar
  13. State Planning Organization of Turkey (SPO). 1998. The national environmental strategies and action plan. SPO, AnkaraGoogle Scholar
  14. State Planning Organization of Turkey (SPO). 2000. Long term strategy and the eight five-year development plan 2001-2005. AnkaraGoogle Scholar
  15. Swanson K. E., R. G. Kuhn, W. Xu. 2001. Environmental policy implementation in rural China: A case study of Yhang, Zhejiang. Environmental Management 27:481–491CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  16. Wak R. 2000. Development of environmental indicator systems: Experiences from Germany. Environmental Management 25:613–623CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  17. Wang M. S., Fang W., M. Bowen. 2000. An Integrated framework for public sector management in developing countries. Environmental Management 25:463–476CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  18. Yasamis F. D. 1989. Environmental management and planning, Ankara (in Turkish)Google Scholar
  19. Yasamis F. D. 1995a. Basic tools of environmental management, Ankara (in Turkish)Google Scholar
  20. Yasamis F. D. 1995b. Criteria of effectiveness for national and local environmental organizations (in Turkish). New Turkey 5:238–255Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2007

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Associate Professor, Part-time member of faculty at YeditepeMaltepe and Fatih UniversitiesIstanbulTurkey

Personalised recommendations