英国环境治理的几种主要方式
‘Command and Control’ Regulation and Alternative Mechanisms of Pollution Control
谷啸 gu xiao
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INTRODUCTION
British pollution control history can be ascended to nineteenth century. As the cradle of the Industrial Revolution, Britain’s position led to the very early development of public controls specifically related to environmental protection. The first national public pollution control agency in the world, Alkali Inspectorate, was established by the Alkali Act 1863 to control atmospheric emissions primarily from the caustic soda industry. In the more than a hundred years, environmental regulation has accomplished a great deal: considerable progress have been made in reducing air and water pollution, cleaning up hazardous wastes. But as conditions improved, the problems with command and control became more obvious. Modern Britain has inherited a far less coherent system of pollution control than many other countries in the long history. Britain’s regulatory style is characterized by flexibility and informality, and summarized as:
An absence of statutory standards, minimal use of prosecution, a flexible enforcement strategy, considerable administrative discretion, decentralized implementation, close co-operation between regulators and the regulated, and restrictions on the ability of non-industry constituents to participate in the regulatory process. (Vogel’s ‘National styles of regulation ‘)
Environmental policy appears to be at a crossroad. A new generation of environmental problems has emerged for which the traditional command and control strategy of regulation appears ill equipped to cope. It became harder and harder to achieve environmental improvements.
For meeting the challenges of new threats to the environment, global environmental problems, and the pressure from EC, the most recently, there are two increasing tendencies, firstly, the command and control regulation shifts away from secretive, flexible, subjective and individualistic approaches, to more open, formal, objective and collective forms of decision-making; and secondly, the tendency for using economic instruments and voluntary instruments to achieve environmental objectives.
There are two issues will be discussed below, (1) the failings of command and control system and it’s improvement, (2) what extent alternatives such as economic instrument or voluntary measures to be a viable answer to the perceived failings of command and control regulation.
