Are EMS environmentally effective? The link between environmental management systems and environmental performance in European companies

Based on the analysis of a large dataset on the environmental performance of European companies in five industrial sectors, this paper examines the question of whether the presence of an environmental management system (EMS) has a positive impact on the eco-efficiency of companies. It begins with a review of evidence about the link between EMS and environmental performance in business organisations, finding that, despite much research, there is still little quantitative evidence. The second part of the paper uses three independent statistical methods (simple correlations, Jaggi-Freedman indices and a 'trend differences' approach) to assess whether companies and production sites with EMS perform better than those without and whether performance improves after an EMS has been introduced. The paper shows that there is currently no evidence that EMS have a consistent and significant positive impact on environmental performance. Policy action based on the simple assumption that companies with an EMS perform better than those without therefore seems inappropriate

Adaptation in integrated assessment modeling: where do we stand?

Adaptation is an important element on the climate change policy agenda. Integrated assessment models, which are key tools to assess climate change policies, have begun to address adaptation, either by including it implicitly in damage cost estimates, or by making it an explicit control variable. We analyze how modelers have chosen to describe adaptation within an integrated framework, and suggest many ways they could improve the treatment of adaptation by considering more of its bottom-up characteristics. Until this happens, we suggest, models may be too optimistic about the net benefits adaptation can provide, and therefore may underestimate the amount of mitigation they judge to be socially optimal. Under some conditions, better modeling of adaptation costs and benefits could have important implications for defining mitigation targets. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

Making government more reflexive : the role of regulatory impact assessment

The thesis explores whether and how analytical activities during the policy formulation process - typically referred to as Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) - contribute to a reorientation of policy-making towards the goals of sustainable development. During the 1990s and the 2000s, many OECD countries introduced, extended or formalised proce-dures for RIA. Many of these reforms also stated to aim at giving more regard to sus-tainability issues. In the political science literature on environmental policy integration, such appraisal procedures have been considered as an important instrument to ensure that environmental effects of new measures play a more prominent role in decision-making processes. Based on extensive empirical analysis involving a review of all RIA procedures in the EU as well as 59 case studies of individual assessments, the research aims to establish to what extent and under what conditions these procedures contribute to sustainable de-velopment in practice. The research finds that RIA offers opportunities to give more prominence to ecological concerns in sectoral policy-making practice, but also contains a considerable risk that narrow assessment practices contribute to sidelining sustainable development. The re-search observes not only a large implementation gap, but reveals that even in cases where a substantial RIA is undertaken, the process functions very differently from what has been envisioned both in guidance documents and in the environmental policy inte-gration literature. After analysing the actual roles of assessment knowledge in policy processes, the study concludes that the positivist perspective underlying both theory and practice of policy appraisal is inadequate to account for its political and practical uses. The thesis then moves on to adopt the more post-positivist perspective of reflexive gov-ernance which implies a fundamentally different set of expectations about the uses and effects of policy appraisal. By reinterpreting the empirical material from this theoretical lens, the study finds considerable potential for RIA to serve as a reflexive governance arrangement, but also identifies a number of structural limitations. Five approaches for making RIA more reflexive are identified: focusing on the function of opening up rather than closing down decision-making; increasing participation; defining process rather than material standards; extending the appraisal towards frame reflexivity; and understanding RIA as boundary work. The thesis concludes with the argument that the reflexive gov-ernance literature should not only develop and study new government arrangements outside the core institutions of representative democracies, but undertake more efforts to identify opportunities to reshape the working of the classical-modernist institutions in more reflexive ways to foster more integrative and sustainable policy-making/to improve environmental governance.</p

De-materialising and re-materialising: Digital technologies and the environment

Drawing on recent literature on the environmental impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the Internet, this paper identifies three main types of effects: direct impacts of the production and use of ICTs on the environment (resource use and pollution related to the production of infrastructure and devices, electricity consumption of hardware, electronic waste disposal); indirect impacts related to the effect of ICTs on production processes, products and distribution systems (de-materialisation, substitution of information goods for material goods, and substitution of communication at a distance for travel); and structural/behavioural impacts, mainly through the stimulation of structural change and growth in the economy by ICTs, and through impacts on life styles and value systems. This paper argues that the diffusion and use of ICTs are leading to both positive and negative environmental impacts. However, because the effects of ICTs on economic activity are pervasive, their impacts on the environment are difficult to trace and measure. The paper argues for a need to move beyond the dichotomy between pessimism and optimism demonstrated in much of the emerging literature. Instead the relationship must be recognised as complex, interdependent, deeply uncertain and scale-dependent. © 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved