Introduction

The world is speeding down an unsustainable path.

 Biodiversity loss,
 water scarcity,
 pollution and climate change
 Acid rain
 Waste disposal
 Ozone layer depletion
are threatening the life-support functions of our planet.

These threats persist because of many factors, not least an ongoing crisis of governance.

Since the birth of modern environmental regulation in the 1970s, designing and implementing effective,
efficient and legitimate regulation and governance have remained a continuing challenge for governments
and society.

Initially, governments and their agents managed environmental problems through enforcement of strict
rules and standards set out in legislation and treaties. However, with the rise of neoliberal ideals in the
1980s, governments began to shift their attention away from this Westphalian vision of state power through
hierarchy. Instead, environmental degradation was, in many cases, to be curbed via market-based
approaches, voluntarism and other ‘light-handed’ policy initiatives such as partnerships and cooperation.

Yet, by the end of the 1990s, continuing ecological degradation and the increasing complexity of social and
environmental problems saw a new shift towards environmental governance or what is increasingly being
called ‘new environmental
governance’.

The new environmental governance (NEG) emphasized collaboration, integration, participation,

deliberative styles of decision-making, adaptation and learning. As with many other issues discussed
in this book, NEG may equally be described as polycentric governance, where governments, non-
governmental organizations (NGOs), the private sector and civil society form many centers of
decision-making and action that are formally independent of each other, but that can either function
independently or constitute an interdependent system of relations. Although NEG is still an evolving
concept, a growing number of scholars and policymakers believe it can substantially improve the
effectiveness, efficiency and legitimacy of responses to environmental problems.

Approaches to Environmental regulations (Governance)

I. Traditional environmental law and regulation

The development of international and national environmental laws arose against a backdrop of states
exercising sovereignty over natural resources within their territorial boundaries. It was only natural, then,
that the early environmental protection of the 1970s relied on the nation-state or, at the international level,
groups of states, acting primarily through treaty-based intergovernmental organizations.

command-and-control approach to environmental regulation adopted by the state.

This involves:
Command: centralized legislatures setting blanket environmental targets, such
as emission standards, exposure levels or technology standards.

Control: Delegated agents, such as environmental protection agencies, were then empowered to police
compliance and impose penalties where standards were breached(broken).

Success of this approach: At least in some circumstances, these state-centered approaches to law and
regulation were relatively effective, achieving a number of gains in halting and reducing environmental
degradation.

Weakness of this approach:

1. At the international level- claim that international environmental law was too unwieldy, incoherent
and ineffective to confront increasingly serious global environmental challenges.
2. At Domestic level – considered as costly, cumbersome, inefficient and insensitive to local
contextualities

This insensitivity, along with the tendency of governments to administer regulation through
departments that are fragmented along ecologically arbitrary, human-defined boundaries, made it
increasingly difficult for traditional regulation to address more complex environmental problems,
which often involved multiple polluters and required a more holistic and integrated management
approach.

As a result of these weaknesses, state-centered hierarchy was no longer seen as the exclusive response to
all environmental problem. Instead, by the 1980s, new market-based instruments, partnership and light-
handed approaches were being explored,
particularly relating to more complex environmental issues such as resource extraction and in sectors
resistant to external intervention.

the traditional model of top-down environmental policy implementation,

Command and control-based tools should cover the entire legal enforcement loop, ranging from policy to legislation,
pollution or environmental degradation standards, and the full range of command and control instruments, as well as
the political will and institutional capacity to drive enforcement and prosecution.

II. II. Market-based instruments, partnerships and light-handed

approaches
Two distinct environmental enforcement phases may be identified in developed countries. The first, a
command and control phase, began in the early 1970s with a proliferation of environmental legislation,
performance standards and other command and control instruments. By the 1980s, the inability of
command and control tools to change behavior consistently and universally spawned a counter-movement
arguing for large-scale deregulation in favour of market-based enforcement tools. Once again, other
second-generation environmental enforcement tools were developed and experimented with, as it became
apparent that the market too had failed to be the panacea for all the environmental enforcement ills.

Environmental enforcement tools are classified for the purpose of this article into the following broad
categories: classical command and control-based instruments;
and three loosely defined categories of alternative enforcement tools, namely, market-based instruments,
civil-based instruments, and agreement- or commitment-based instruments. The latter two may range from
entirely voluntary commitments.

Adherence to these tools may also be entirely voluntary, that is, performance is never verified by anybody,
while others may need to be regularly verified by independent and competent third parties. These verifiers
may also again be either entirely independent, such as accredited certification bodies providing assurance
of conformity, or even enforcement agencies themselves, public watchdog bodies or enforcement
surrogates appointed by the regulated. Agreement- and commitment-based enforcement measures may also
range from commitments by a single organizational unit to commitments made by or on behalf of business
sectoral groups.

Civil-based instruments include all measures to empower, inform, educate and co-opt civil society to be involved in
the enforcement process.
In reality, any of the tools loosely classified into any category may have characteristics of any one or any
combination of any of the other categories as well, as alternative tools are increasingly hybridized. The
adoption and use of many agreement- and civil-based environmental enforcement tools are also routinely
specified as conditions of environmental authorizations.

Advantages and disadvantages of command and control and alternative enforcement tools

A fundamental characteristic of all the environmental enforcement categories and tools are that no one
enforcement category or tool offers a one-size-fits-all solution to enforcement challenges. Every tool or
category of tools has particular strengths and weaknesses characterized by very specific elements relating
to enforcement performance.

Strengths and weaknesses of command and control tools

Weaknesses Strengths

Not effective for delivering policy choices Dependability

Not efficient in delivery at lowest cost Clarity

Enforcement is not easy Major driver of private-sector compliance

Too information intensive Compliance or non-compliance is readily
detectable
Universal rules do not work Works well for:
 Single media issues
 Control of point-source emissions
 Waste management
 Protection of endangered species
Absence of incentives Fosters new technologies
Often results in adversarial legal combat
May result in administrative complexities
Proliferation of laws
Insufficiently flexible to deal with dynamic
Situations

Often media specific

Difficult to deal with trans-media impact
Difficult to deal with regional and global
Challenges

Difficult to perform across all the cycle

phases
Depends on politicians to prosecute

Strengths and weaknesses of alternative tools

Strengths Weaknesses Strengths Weaknesses
 Improved flexibility General mistrust of performance Improved flexibility General mistrust of performance
potential potential
Improved efficiency, fit for purpose Not clearly Improved efficiency, fit for purpose Not clearly
understood understood
Fosters innovation Fosters innovation
More cost effective for the government More cost effective for the government

Framework conditions to direct the selection and use of alternative

enforcement tools

An important question that needs to be raised and answered is: how should the different
environmental enforcement tools be structured and used to ensure both sustained and reliable
environmental enforcement? A number of important insights may guide users in selecting,
adopting and using environmental enforcement tools or portfolios of enforcement tools to drive
the enforcement of environmental law.

The first insight is that no one tool or category of enforcement tools offers a comprehensive
solution to environmental enforcement challenges. The learning point is that to ensure an effective
and efficient environmental enforcement regime, a series of tools needs to be selected, adopted
and used in order to harness the synergies offered by both their differential performance and their
failure potentialities.

The second insight is that there is no universal cocktail or broad portfolio of tools that guarantees
successful environmental enforcement for all situations. The selection, adoption and use of the
correct or optimum mix of enforcement tools to suit specific conditions and requirements are
essential to ensure an efficient and effective enforcement regime. Knowledge of the potential
performance and failure modes, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of all the types of
environmental enforcement tools is imperative to design a portfolio that will be efficient and
effective in offering an improved capability to drive sustained and reliable environmental
enforcement.

A third insight is that the efficient and effective deployment of mixed portfolios of enforcement
tools is also dependent on both the number and independence of the role-players involved. A
relatively valid generalization is that the greater the number of role-players involved and the
greater the independence amongst them, the better the performance potential of the environmental
enforcement effort will be. Taylor postulates that the insider–outsider hypothesis explains the
dynamics that ensure successful interaction by stakeholder groups with different interests. Two
important stakeholders that may be successfully engaged in the enforcement process are
government officials and civil society. They may co-operate in a mutually beneficial way.
Government insiders may have or may lack the political will and mandate to act, and they may
have or may lack the information or resources to do so, while civil society groups may or may not
have a mandate to act, but they may have the information or resources and the willingness to act.
A strengthened relationship amongst various interest groups is a powerful mechanism to drive
compliance by addressing the weaknesses inherent in single or disjointed interests. The
environmental enforcement effort may also be enhanced where more than one enforcement agency
is involved, despite the inefficiencies of duplication and overlap.

he fourth insight is that cognizance should be taken of complex process sequences

in selecting, adopting and using enforcement tools. Three process sequences offer
significant challenges to effective and sustained enforcement processes:

The project cycles

The Product cycles and the plan, do, check and act
phases of the Deming Management Cycle

Environmental enforcement through complex chains of project and product phases demands the
selection, adoption and use of very specific portfolios of environmental enforcement tools that are
able to perform under specific circumstances. No one single environmental enforcement tool,
including command and control tools, is both versatile and sufficiently robust to ensure sustained
environmental enforcement.

Environmental governance models, hybrid forms, and key issues.




Governments are no longer the most important source of decision making in the environmental field.
Instead, new actors are playing critical decision-making roles, and new mechanisms and forums for
decision making are becoming important (e.g., in some contexts regulation is being supplemented or
replaced by markets and cooperative arrangements). New ways of governing in relation to the
environment have important implications for the practice of conservation. Greater awareness of key ideas
and concepts of environmental governance can help conservation managers and scientists participate
more effectively in governance processes. Understanding how conservation practice is influenced by
emergent hybrid and network governance arrangements is particularly important.

Multilevel governance, collaboration among governmental and non-governmental entities across

different levels of government

Policy actors are engaged in two types of collaboration with other local governments: horizontal and
vertical collaboration. Policy actors participate in horizontal collaboration when they work with entities at
the same level, and in vertical collaboration when working with governments at different levels.

Multilevel Governance: Theoretical Construct and Chinese Context

With the development of advanced industrialized democracies and increasing influence of private sectors
in policymaking, scholars have realized that governance across different tiers of jurisdictions is more
effective than policy monopoly from the central government

Governance covers multiple scales, leading to policy externalities across levels. Scholars argued that
governance should be multilevel to internalize cross-level externalities. Through addressing policy
externalities in the governance process, policy synergy can be facilitated and inter-jurisdictional
competition will be enhanced, which thereby promote innovation and experimentation

Multilevel Governance- collaborative actions across multiple levels of governments and various types of
organizations. MLG broke the borders of traditional administrative jurisdictions, and changed political
structures and processes in response to the interdependent relationships in social development and
political decision-making. multilevel governance refers to collaborative actions taken by the EU, the
member states, and local and regional authorities, which involves actors at different tiers of government
to share governance responsibilities. Under MLG, governance at different levels is mutually interactive,
but is independent vertically or horizontally, which is different from the traditional bureaucratic hierarchy.

One of the key objectives of multilevel governance is to ensure the balance and collaboration between
local, regional, and national governments and other authorities.

Two types of multilevel governance:

Horizontal
Vertical

A study advocated that environmental governance is targeted

 at solving conflicts over environmental resources.
 to analyze the interactions among the participants involved in collective environmental
problems
Environmental issues are not restricted by region, thus governments at one level can no longer be isolated
from governments at other levels. Therefore, environmental governance required multilevel interactions
among various actors in dealing with complicated environmental governance issues and achieving
sustainable development.

Multilevel environmental governance: - environmental governance should ensure transparency,

accountability, and public participation during the process of decision-making. Sharing decision-making
power allows more actors to get involved in resolving environmental problems.

Recognizing the importance of stakeholder participation in MLG in general and environmental governance
specifically, there still exists a participation gap in environmental governance. It is important to promote
trust among stakeholders, to involve multilevel actors and to cultivate their self-initiative and awareness
in environmental participation

Why environmental governance?

Management and governance are not synonymous. Management involves operational decisions to
achieve specific conservation outcomes, whereas governance refers to the broader processes and
institutions through which societies make decisions that affect the environment. Of course, management
and governance are not mutually exclusive. Management interventions also involve uncertainty,
negotiation, deliberation, and sensitivity to social–ecological dynamics. Recognition of the similarities and
differences among management and governance is crucial given the complex, nonlinear and cross-scale
nature of conservation challenges in an era of global environmental change

Selected definitions of environmental governance

 The set of regulatory processes, mechanisms and organizations through which political actors
influence environmental actions and outcomes
 Environmental governance should be understood broadly so as to include all institutional
solutions for resolving conflicts over environmental resources.

 The interrelated and increasingly integrated system of formal and informal rules, rule-making
systems, and actor-networks at all levels of human society (from local to global) that are set up to
steer societies toward preventing, mitigating, and adapting to global and local environmental
change and, in particular, earth system transformation, within the normative context of
sustainable development.
Models of governance reflect assumptions about how society should be organized, how problems should
be addressed, and by whom.

A growing interest in cooperative models of governance will not replace the existing regulatory approach.
Instead, cooperative models of governance are more likely to work effectively within an enabling system
of government regulations, and be compatible with other governance mechanisms, such as the use of
market incentives. Models of environ-mental governance are not mutually exclusive. Across a wide
spectrum of environmental problems (from biodiversity conservation to watershed management), hybrid
forms of governance are emerging that combine the state, markets, and civil society.

Governance is generally defined as the institutions, struc- tures, and processes that determine who makes decisions,
how and for whom decisions are made, whether, how and what actions are taken and by whom and to what effect.
governance and man-agement:

Management refers to the resources, plans, and actions that result from the functioning of governance.

The aim of environmental governance, in particular, is to manage individual behaviors or collective actions in pursuance of public
environmental goods and related societal outcomes.

To comprehend environmental governance is to understand how decisions related to the environment are made and whether
resultant policies and processes lead to environmentally and socially sustainable outcomes. The analysis of environmental
governance focuses on the capacity, functioning, and/or performance of the institutional, structural, and procedural elements of
governance.

To comprehend environmental governance is to understand how decisions related to the environment are made and whether
resultant policies and processes lead to environmentally and socially sustainable outcomes. The analysis of environmental
governance focuses on the capacity, functioning, and/or performance of the institutional, structural, and procedural elements of
governance.

Institutions as both the formal (e.g., constitutions, laws, policies, tenure systems) and informal rules (e.g., cultural context,
social norms, prevailing power structures) that shape human interactions (e.g., in the form of decision-making structures and
processes) and that guide, support, or constrain human or management actions.

The term structures refer to the formalized bodies or entities (e.g., decision-making arrangements, co-management bodies) and
organizations (e.g., levels of government, private sector organizations, civil society organizations) as well as informal networks
of actors and organizations that embody governance capacities (e.g., efficiency, participation) and perform different functions
(e.g., producing rules and decisions, enabling management actions).

Governance processes, which are the means for realizing the functions and the performance of governance, include articulation
of institutional mandates, negotiation of values, conflict resolution, law making, policy formation, diffusion of information, and
application of policy. These processes, then, play an important role in both decision-making and the implementation of those
decisions. Environmental governance structures and processes can come together in different ways- for example, governance can
be driven from the top by governments or private individuals or actors, from the bottom by local communities, or via shared
decision-making and authority through formal co-management arrangements or informal networks of actors and organizations.
Moreover, the institutional, structural, and procedural elements of governance are understood to occur at various scales from local
to global, to interact across scales, and to have an effect on the capacity, performance, and outcomes of environmental governance.