And welcome to our course on Environmental Management & Ethics. Today I would like to introduce you to voluntary environmental programs. My name is Steffen Foss Hansen and I'm an associate professor at the Technical University of Denmark at the Department of Environmental Engineering. And generally, we would distinguish between four different kinds of voluntary environmental programs. First we have what is known as public voluntary schemes where governments develop and define the rules of the scheme. Then we have negotiated agreements between governments and industry. We have unilateral commitments designated by firms and their associates. And then finally, we have private agreements between firms and affected communities. There's a number of arguments that speak in favor of having voluntary environmental programs. For governments, voluntary environmental programs offer a faster and cheaper control measure compared to their sometimes very rigid process of having to develop command and control regulation. They also offer governments a chance to gain experience with new problems and industries before having to actually develop command and control regulation, and in a good way to control pollutants that have not yet been regulated or for which their jurisdiction might be difficult to obtain. For businesses, on the other hand, voluntary environmental programs offer an opportunity to get hands-on experience with a given issue without having necessarily a straightjacket regulation put upon them. It also gives them a chance to enhance their reputation with government, investors, the public, etc. And finally, it gives industry or companies or business an opportunity to stave off more command and control regulation, at least for a while. As I mentioned, those different kinds of voluntary environmental programs. I would like to introduce you to an example of a public voluntary scheme, and I'm going to use the example of nanomaterials. The example stems from some initiatives taken by the Department of Food, Environment and Rural Agency in the United Kingdom. Some time ago, they decided to implement a voluntary environmental program on nanomaterials. The purpose of the program was to develop a better understanding of what types of nanomaterials were produced in the United Kingdom and what properties these nanomaterials might have. It was a two-year program where they asked companies to submit existing data on nanometer characteristics, hazards, use, and risk management practices. It's important to underline that there was no request to develop new risk data associated with participating in the program. It was estimated at the time that more than 370 companies were involved in micro- and nanomanufacturing at the time in the United Kingdom. However, only about 11 companies participated in the program eventually. Nine submissions were received and two were from academia. An example of a negotiated agreement between government and industry also comes from the area of nanomaterials. But this time, it's not from the United Kingdom but from the United States of America. At the same time as the voluntary program was developed in the UK or implemented in the UK, the United States Environmental Protection Agency decided to have a Stewardship Program on nanomaterials. The purpose of the program was to help and aid the agency assemble data and encourage the development of data and thereby foster a responsible development of nanomaterials. The Stewardship Program consisted of two different parts. The first part, the basic program, is very similar to the program that was implemented in the United Kingdom, whereas the second part known as the in-depth program, was a negotiated part of the program. The companies that signed up for the more in-depth program had to go into a dialogue with the United States Environmental Protection Agency in order to generate new data. They had to initiate programs to monitor the workplace, establish environmental and worker releases, etc., also discussing, exploring best risk management practices. So, especially the in-depth program provides an example of a negotiated voluntary environmental program, or at least aspects of a negotiated voluntary environmental program. The third kind of voluntary environmental program that I would like to go a little bit more in detail with today or in this lecture is the unilateral commitments that can sometimes be made by governments and their associates. The example also comes from the area of nanotechnology and it's an example between a collaboration between the NGO, Environmental Defense, and the industrial chemical producer DuPont. In 2007, they published a so-called Nano Risk Framework that was freely to be used by anyone who wished to. And the purpose of the program or the framework was to define a systematic process for identifying, managing, and reducing the potential environmental health and safety risks of developing nanomaterials throughout all stages of their lifecycle. The framework and signing up for the framework, using the framework was voluntary, and the aim was to facilitate responsible development of nanomaterials and products based on nanomaterials. The framework was supposed to be used interactively as development advanced from basic R&D, basic research and development, to full-scale commercialization of a given nano product. In order to understand what makes a voluntary environmental program successful, we have analyzed more than 200 different voluntary environmental programs implemented in the U.S. Overall, we looked specifically at what is known as the EPA 33/50 program, the Green Lights program, the Energy Star Office Products program, the EPA WasteWise program, the Product XL, the Project XL, and the High Production Volume Chemicals Challenge Program. All of these are examples of a few of the more than 200 voluntary environmental programs that have been implemented in the United States since the 1990s. What's quite interesting with our analysis is that it shows that there's a few key elements that need to be in place in order for a voluntary environmental program to have a chance to eventually become successful. First of all, it needs to have very clear incentives for participation for various stakeholders. It might be incentives such as reduced cost, high publicity, or the fact that you get access to agency guidance and technical assistance. Another key element seems to be signed commitments. It might seem counterintuitive that you have a voluntary program where signed commitments can actually be key for the program to become successful, but that's nevertheless the case. The fact that you have a voluntary participant actually sign that they're committed to participating in the program seems to have a profound impact on the likelihood that the program will eventually be successful. That also includes having requirement for periodical reporting of how progress is being made. Furthermore, it seems that the quality of the information is actually something that has to be considered in order for the program to become successful in the end. If there is no independent evaluation of the quality of the information provided as part of the voluntary program, then there is a higher likelihood that the program will eventually not be very successful. Transparency is another key element of a successful voluntary program, and that goes both for transparency in the design, the reporting, and eventually in the evaluation of the success of the program. Sometimes, it's lack of clear baseline reporting that has worked against the success of a voluntary program; sometimes it's the lack of stakeholder involvement; and sometimes it's the lack of public access to the actual information that is being submitted as part of the program. All of these can work against the success of a voluntary environmental program. It also seems that the presence of what could be termed a regulatory threat also is a key element to consider when you want to implement a voluntary program. It basically means that if industry, if businesses do not participate in the voluntary program, then there's a regulatory threat that regulators will eventually actually implement command and control regulation instead. So the fact that there's a regulatory threat or there's a threat or a risk that there might be initiated implementation of command and control regulation actually seems to motivate businesses to participate in voluntary environmental programs. The final element is something we call participation incentives. It could be regulatory relief. It could be awards, newsletters that promote the businesses that participate in the voluntary environmental program. It could be technical assistance provided by agencies to small- and medium-sized enterprises. And it could also be a reduction of future liability. There's a number of participation disincentives that one has to be very careful about when implementing or considering designing a voluntary environmental program. One could be listing of non-participating members is something that is often noted as being important. And then the fact that you notify other firms that, now, this and that company has decided to participate in the voluntary program – that can often also work as a disincentive and make more and more companies participate in the programs. So, out here, I've listed all the key elements of a successful environmental program or voluntary environmental program. And of course, what's interesting to now note or to have a look at is how do these elements compare to the three different voluntary environmental programs that we discussed or I introduced when it came to nanomaterials. And what's quite striking here is that if you compare the approach used in the United Kingdom with the approach used in the United States, as well as the voluntary framework developed by the Environmental Defense and DuPont, what you can actually see is that, in many cases, they actually lack these elements. So there's a lot of negatives here, a lot of minuses, indicating that the voluntary programs implemented on nanomaterials, they do not include all the elements or any of the elements that you need in order for these programs to eventually have a chance of becoming successful. The only one where you could partially argue that the criteria or the element is fulfilled is when it comes to transparency. So it seems, overall, that a seemingly successful combination of elements when it comes to implementing voluntary environmental programs are having a threat of regulatory intervention, having unbiased technical/non-technical information support, having required progress reports being made, provide favorable publicity in regards to participation and achievements of participants in the program. And overall, this combination seems to be able to foster a common understanding of environmental health and safety, problems, dilemmas, and it seems to be able to develop, make participants develop a sense of mutual understanding on how to address these problems. Thank you very much for your attention.
