Abstract
This chapter examines the main approaches to environmental management. Command and control approaches involve standards, monitoring and enforcement of penalties by public agencies. In the last few decades it has frequently been argued that such approaches impose too many costs on both government agencies and the organisations being regulated. This has resulted in the advocacy of economic instruments which focus on an economy’s overall environmental condition rather than the performance of each economic actor. Although New Zealand has introduced an emissions trading scheme it continues to be criticised by the OECD for not making sufficient use of economic instruments. Voluntary approaches to environmental management use a mix of social marketing, education, incentives and community pressure to make organisations address their environmental impacts and to help safeguard environmental resources. Two contrasting ways of explaining policy selection are: (i) normative guidance based on the understanding of the conditions in which each type of policy approach is judged most effective; (ii) a political economy perspective that examines how choices have actually been made.
Key Questions
What is environmental management?
What are the main features of standards and permits, economic instruments and voluntary approaches?
Are there clear advantages to using one type of management approach over another or does each approach have strengths and weaknesses when applied to individual management problems?
Why is there currently much support for the use of economic instruments over other approaches to environmental management?
How does a political economy perspective explain the choice of policy approach?
What are the implications of a political economy perspective on policy choices for the future of economic instruments?
Is New Zealand devoting too little attention to economic instruments?
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de Freitas, C.R., Perry, M. (2012). Alternative Approaches to Environmental Management. In: New Environmentalism. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8254-2_2
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