Industrial Innovation and Environmental Regulation

Edited by Saeed Parto and Brent Herbert-Copley

Industrial Innovation and Environmental Regulation: Developing Workable Solutions

Industrial Innovation and Environmental Regulation
Edited by Saeed Parto and Brent Herbert-Copley

ISBN 92-808-1127-4
320 pages; paper; US$36.00
December 2006

What role should governments play in protecting the environment and controlling the environmental impacts of industry? Do regulations benefit the environment, and how do they affect industrial innovation?

Since the modern era of environmental management began in the early 1970s, regulations have been used with increasing intensity and sophistication as the main instrument in steering the behaviour of economic agents in industrial production. The purpose of environmental regulation has been to coerce producers of goods and services into internalizing the environmental costs of production. These efforts have often faced opposition on practical and ideological grounds.

Since the 1980s there has been a movement towards liberalization, coupled with the continued failure of the market to protect the environment as a public good. As a result, private and public sector interests have been engaged in debate about the apporpriate role of governments in protecting and improving the environment and controlling the environmental impact of industry.

The contributors to this book examine a number of political and industrial trends and responses to these challenges. A useful set of case studies appraise environmental policies and comprehensive statements on environmental protection and sustainable development by numerous countries in the North and the South.

The book concludes that the complexities of environmental and economic relationships disallow universal solutions, and it illustrates the need for context-specific and non-linear perspectives on the role of regulatory measures in environmental innovation.

Editors

Saeed Parto is a Research Fellow at the United Nations Univeristy Maastricht Economic and Social Research and Training Centre on Innovation and Technology (UNU-MERIT) and Adjunct at the Faculty of Environmental Studies, University of Waterloo, Canada. Brent Herbert-Copley is the Director, Social and Economic Policy at the International Development Research Centre in Ottawa, Canada.

Contents Overview

Introduction
Public Policy and Corporate Environmental Performance: Case Studies from Taiwan
Environmental Regulation and Industrial Competitiveness in Pollution-intensive Industries
Environmental Management and Innovative Capabilities in Argentine industry
To the limits .. and beyond? Firm-level responses to regulation in the Canadian pulp and paper industry
Toward a Theory of Innovation and Industrial Pollution: Evidence from Mexican Manufacturing
Environmental Policy, Innovation and Third-Party Factors in Nigerian Manufacturing
Environmental Policy in the Presence of Technological Uncertainty, Diversity, and Rigidity: The Case of the Japanese Chlor-Alkali Industry
Reconfiguring Environmental Regulation: Next Generation Policy Instruments
Transitions and Institutional Change: The Case of the Dutch Waste Subsystem
Integrating Environmental and Innovation Policies
Conclusion