SWITCH-Asia Network Facility
European Union
Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy
UNEP/Wuppertal Institute Collaborating Centre on Sustainable Consumption and Production gGmbH

Enforcing SCP

SWITCH-Asia is employing a multi-stakeholder approach with strong and intensive working relationships with Small and Medium Sized enterprises (SMEs), and aims at the consumer “groups”, consumer organisations, retailers and/or intermediary networks involved in influencing consumer behaviour.  There is a need from the project implementers and their EU-Asia partnerships, as well as the involved organizations, such as chambers of commerce, industrial and professional associations, regulatory bodies (regional and local authorities), research organisations, NGOs, and development agencies interested in pursuing sustainable development,  to set realistic long-term policy objectives and targets, apply an appropriate mix of policy instruments and measure progress toward meeting their objectives.
 

 

Some references on policy mixes:

 

Taking account of the local context – culture values and regions, there are a number of region-specific instruments to be built into a sound policy framework in a much wider array including economic, regulatory, informational, co-operational, and educational instruments. The following figure presents the overview of the instruments, which so far have shown success in promoting SCP in a number of Asian countries.

 

 

 

The following is a short summary of these policy instruments:

 

Regulatory instruments

 

Norms and standards
Norms and standards are rules and targets set by public authorities that subsequently are enforced by compliance procedures. Norms and standards include amongst others laws, directives, and technical guidance documents as far as these are of a legally binding nature.
There exist different types of norms and standards depending on the concrete environmental issue and target group to be addressed at the different phases of a product life cycle, e.g. during the manufacturing phase, use phase or at end-of-life treatment. Different types of the norms and standards may require business or consumers to comply with a number of dimensions, such as the Emission standards, Ambient standards, Technology standards, Management and process standards, product standards.
Norms and standards have high effectiveness and certainty in achieving objectives, but they are economically inefficient and cause the low innovation incentive for the businesses.

 

For more references, please see :

 


Environmental Liability
Environmental liability is a principle of the proactive prevention of environmental detriment in one form of the implementing of “polluter-pays”.  This means that the causer of environmental damage (“polluter”) pay for the damage he has caused. The amount of the sanction payment encompasses the actual damage caused, making it suitable to address damage through a wide range of substances by one integrated instrument.  The objective behind establishing environmental liability is to compensate parties who have suffered injury or damage, which can include both individuals and ‘society’ at large.  Meanwhile, as liability causes a cost for causing harm, it provides a direct incentive not to pollute and to reduce corporate environmental risks.
This instrument relies upon the adjudication system and particularly the financial ability of the polluter in the instance of small firms to managing risk and pay for the damages.

 

For more references, please see :

 

 

Environmental Control and Enforcement
Environmental control and enforcement includes activities of the public sector to inspect companies or projects whether they comply with environmental regulation, laws and standards. It also includes authorities’ activities or services to grant permits to projects and operations. In addition, the “polluter” or party causing environmental impacts can apply self-control mechanisms to monitor environmental impacts.
Besides assessing compliance with environmental legislation, control can help to identify inefficiencies in companies, and it also contributes to a balanced market through equal application of environmental criteria.

 

For more references, please see :

 

 

Economic Instruments

 

Environmental Taxes
Environmental taxes - or ‘eco-taxes’ as they are commonly called- are taxes with a potentially positive environmental impact. They can be collected from businesses, consumers or any other organisation. They usually have both an environmental and a revenue raising effect. The environmental effect arises from internalising environmental costs (‘getting the prices right’) and implementing the polluter-pays-principle by inducing consumers and producers to adopt more environmentally compatible behaviour. The revenue effect is created by the additional governmental income through the new tax, although proposals to implement environmental taxes are often accompanied by reductions in other taxes or recycling of revenues to support environmental objectives. Furthermore the revenue effects tend to decrease over time with the environmental benefits increasing.

 

For more references, please see :


 

Fees and User-Charges
Public authorities levy fees and user-charges for services provided (e.g. effluent or refuse disposal), or where the revenue is used for a specific purpose (e.g. funding clean-up or abatement measures). They are collected from businesses as well as from private consumers. Payment of user charges depends on the individual benefit principle and attempts to link the amount paid to the benefits received by a particular individual or firm. Fees and charges can be applied by general government or by bodies outside the general government, such as an environmental fund or a water management board.

 

For more references, please see :

 


Certificate Trading
In certificate trading systems governments establish a maximum quantity of emissions to the environment in a region and issue certificates or permits allowing certificate holders to emit pollutants or the use of environmental goods up to the defined maximum. Firms may only emit pollution for which they hold certificates and certificates can be freely traded among firms. By purchasing additional certificates, firms may increase their emissions beyond the limit set out in their initial allocation of certificates. Since the number of certificates available is limited, firms selling certificates must reduce their emissions beyond the level in their initial permit allocation.

 

For more references, please see :

 

 


Environmental Financing
Environmental financing is an instrument used for promoting environmentally beneficial measures through financial institutions or independent funds. Loans and/or grants are provided to fully or partially finance measures beneficial to the environment on more favourable terms than those in the prevailing market. Such measures are usually initiated through programmes of governments or credit lines of donor agencies with the necessary resources to provide the financial resources for such a scheme.

 

For more references, please see :

 

 

Green Public Procurement
Green public procurement usually means that the acquisition of goods or services by the public sector takes environmental elements into account (when considering how to create the best possible value for taxpayers). Green public procurement is thus expected to encourage the market to produce and sell more environmentally sound products and services and thus to reduce their prices through economies of scale.


For more references, please see :

 

 

Subsidies
Governmental institutions can provide financial support to households or private enterprises to promote sustainable production and consumption. Subsides are used either to promote innovations, or to facilitate the adaptation to new legal frame conditions or preserve environmentally sound structures and production processes.  
For more references, please see :

 

 

Cooperation Instruments

 

Technology Transfer
Technology transfer is the process of acquiring technologies themselves as well as the necessary knowledge and skills to apply them from foreign parties. It thus involves the parties (abroad) that develop(ed), hold, and currently use environmentally sound technologies, and counterparts (domestic) that wish to apply the environmental technology within their business.

 

For more references, please see :

 


Voluntary Agreements
Voluntary agreements aim to encourage single firms, groups of companies or industrial sectors to improve their resource efficiency and environmental conduct and performance beyond existing environmental legislation and regulations. Basically, voluntary agreements encompass two dimensions in business and/or industry participate voluntarily, and an interaction between public authorities and business/industry.

 

For more references, please see :

 



Informational Instruments

 

Eco-Labeling
An Eco-Label is a type of label displaying information regarding the environmental performance of a certain product or service, in order to provide information to consumers, procurement officials and other stakeholders, e.g. retailers.

 

For more references, please see :

 

 


Sustainability Reporting
Sustainability reporting can be defined as the public disclosure of information about an organisation’s ‘non-financial performance’– its management policies, activities, and the result of activities on economic, environmental and social issues. It can be applied for any type of organisation such as companies and public authorities to communicate their contributions towards and impacts on sustainable development over a specified period, usually one financial year, to their stakeholders. Information disclosure has been increasingly recognised as one of the most important mechanisms to stimulate organisations to operate in a more sustainable and responsible manner.

 

For more references, please see :

 

 


Information Centres
Information centres provide information on resource efficiency and related topics to actively promote the concept. Their main target group is private companies, including SMEs that often lack access to the latest information and do not have the capacity to keep up to date with every technological development in the market. Information centres thus play an important role for improving the technological competence of enterprises and for providing up-to-date, customer-oriented knowledge of resource efficiency. They sometimes also provide advice and training for company employees, government officials and consultants.

 

 For more references, please see :

 


Consumer Advice Services
Consumer advice services are a very important component of a consumer protection system. With regards to environmental protection, consumer advice services offer support in the following three dimensions: precaution (consumer advice services), after-care (liability) and control (laws).


For more references, please see :

 

 

Environmental Quality Targets and Monitoring

Environmental quality targets are science-based indicators of environmental quality approved by public authorities. They serve as instruments for the quantitative performance measurement in the implementation of the concept of sustainable development. In this context environmental quality monitoring is the regular and systematic analysis and assessment of the state of the environment and its trends based on carefully constructed metrics for pollution control and natural resource management. 

 

 For more references, please see :

 

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