Are 'soft' policy instruments effective? The link between environmental management systems and the environmental performance of companies

Based on the analysis of a large dataset on the environmental performance of European companies in selected industrial sectors, the paper examines the question of whether the presence of an environmental management system (EMS) has a positive impact on the ecoefficiency of companies. It begins with a review of current evidence about the link between EMS and environmental performance, finding that despite much research into EMS there is still very little quantitative research on their actual environmental outcome. The second part of the paper uses three different statistical methods to assess whether companies and production sites with EMS perform better than those without and whether performance improves after an EMS has been introduced. Identifying only a weak link between EMS and eco-efficiency, the authors propose a number of possible explanations and warn against an overly-positive view of EMS as an autonomous driver of environmental performance.environmental management systems, environmental performance, eco-efficiency

How sustainable are companies?

Die Bewertung von Firmen unter Nachhaltigkeitskriterien ist immer noch schwierig. Es ist in erster Linie der Mangel an verlässlichen und vergleichbaren Informationen über Firmen, die eine umfassende Beurteilung verhindert. Das Projekt Sustainabiliy Performance Benchmarking hat umfassend Schlüsseldaten für verschiedene Sektoren gesammelt und ausgewertet

Drawing out the Links

Wird die Informationsgesellschaft tatsächlich "leicht und sauber" sein? Ein Über­blick über die internationale Literatur nährt hier eher Skepsis. Die Verbreitung von Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien birgt sowohl große Risiken als auch große Chancen für ökologische Nachhaltigkeit. Dabei fallen insbesondere die indirekten und strukturellen Wirkungen ins Gewicht. Entscheidend ist, wie die Bilanz von Effizienzsteigerungen, Substitutionseffekten, neu generierter Nachfrage (rebound effect) sowie Lebensstilveränderungen ausfallen wird

Nachhaltigkeitsprüfung in Deutschland weiterentwicklen

In Deutschland wird zunehmend über die Institutionalisierung einer systematischen Folgenabschätzung von Gesetzen im Hinblick auf Nachhaltigkeit diskutiert. Die Erfahrungen in anderen europäischen Ländern zeigen, dass die ausgewählten Faktoren für die Funktions- fähigkeit dieses Instruments ausschlaggebend sind

an empirical analysis

Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) - understood as the formalised analytical activities initiated or carried out by central government administrations when designing specific policy instruments - is currently receiving high levels of political attention. It is seen as a tool to improve regulatory quality and to promote cross-cutting objectives such as sustainable development. Often conceived as an economic analysis of costs and benefits, RIA tends to be depicted as ‘neutral’ assessment process that informs decision makers about ‘facts’. This does not explain, of course, why RIA often becomes an arena for political conflict involving both government departments and stakeholders. Based on empirical research on the design and practical application of RIA across the European Union, this paper explores the relationship between RIA, policy-making and politics. The aim is to shed light on what knowledge is produced, how it is used by different actors and what role it plays in decision-making. Based on this analysis, we explore to what extent and under what conditions RIA can serve as a tool for more evidence-based and sustainability-oriented policy-making processes

ex ante policy assessment and the utilisation of knowledge in the policy process

Procedures for the ex ante assessment of public policies are currently in vogue across the OECD. Their design is typically informed by an instrumentally rational model of problem solving, which assumes that knowledge is collected, evaluated and then trans-lated straightforwardly into 'better policies'. This model has, it seems, been little af-fected by more than three decades of academic research which has demonstrated thathe reality of every-day policy- making is far messier. This paper analyses whether the uptake of ex ante assessment of policies is nonetheless capable of providing new op-portunities for knowledge to inform processes of policy deliberation and learning. Drawing on an analysis of policy assessment procedures in three countries and the European Commission, it finds that there are several ways in which assessment knowl-edge is used in the policy process. Moreover, its argues that policy learning occurs de-spite, rather than because of the instrumental design of the new assessment proce-dures, which tends to act as a barrier to open deliberation and knowledge utilisation

Die schmerzhafte Einsicht in die selbstzerstörerischen Folgen der Erderwärmung

Ein autobiografischer, historischer, politischer und kultureller Blick auf die vom Menschen jüngst angelegte Klimageschichte zeigt die Ausnahmesituation, in die der Eingriff des Menschen in den Kohlenstoffkreislauf das Leben auf der Erde absehbar gebracht hat

Analysing Institutional Strategies for Environmental Policy Integration: The Case of EU Enterprise Policy

The aspiration to integrate environmental concerns into all areas of policy has long served as a rhetorical reference point in the environmental debate. But only recently has the objective of environmental policy integration (EPI) been tackled through serious institutional reforms. Although this has led to a rise of academic interest in the issue, much conceptual work on EPI remains to be done. This paper draws on the policy studies literature on ecological modernization to develop a framework for the analysis and evaluation of institutional strategies for EPI, arguing that they can be fruitfully evaluated on the basis of four specific functions of EPI: agenda setting, horizontal communication, capacity building and policy learning. The application of the framework to the Cardiff process in EU enterprise policy shows that its impact has varied in relation to different functions of integration

Socio-economic futures in climate change impact assessment: using scenarios as 'learning machines'

Climate impact assessment needs to take account of two interrelated processes: socio-economic change and climate change. To date, future change in socio-economic systems has not been sufficiently integrated with an analysis of climate change impacts. Participative and synthetic scenario approaches offer a means for dealing with critical issues of indeterminacy, innovation, reflexivity and framing in analysing change in socio-economic systems, paving the way for a coherent way of handling of socio-economic futures in impact assessment. We argue that scenarios represent heuristic tools that encourage social learning in climate impact assessment. The advantages and disadvantages of a scenario-based approach are explored using examples from regional climate impact assessment in the UK