Environmental Policies

Environmental policies are any measures created by a government or corporation or other public or private organization regarding the effects of human activities on the environment, especially the measures that are designed to prevent or reduce the harmful effects of human activities on all of the ecosystems.
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The Tragedy of the Commons

Despite not being talked about much, these policies are needed because environmental values are usually not considered in organizational decision making. What this means is that when decisions have to be made, the way that a certain person or country looks at/treats the environment is not taken into consideration at all. This happens for 1 of 2 reasons.
First, environmental effects are considered economic externalities. What this means is that whenever a certain good is produced, no one directly pays for the effects it has. For example, polluters do not usually bear the consequences of polluting, which will most likely be felt either somewhere else or in the future. Second, natural resources are almost always underpriced for often being assumed to have infinite availability. Together, these 2 factors form what is commonly called as the "tragedy of the commons", which is the conflict between individual and collective rationality.

History Of Envionmental Policy Making

  • First Sewers
  • The Big Sewers of Home
  • Greece's first laws to protect the forests
  • Feudal European societies create laws to limit hunting and wood gathering
  • Sustainable development becomes one of the leading concepts in environmental policy making

Guiding Concepts

Over the years, a variety of principles have been developed to help guide policy makers. Examples of these guiding principles are the "polluter pays" principle and the "precautionary principle", however, such straightforward guiding principles do not work in all situations. For example, some environmental challenges, like the global warming, emphasize the need to view Earth as an ecosystem consisting of various subsystems, which, once disrupted, can lead to rapid changes that are beyond human control. Applying these guiding principles would not necessarily roll back the damage already imparted to the biosphere, but it would, however, reduce future damage. Since the early 1970´s, environmental policies have changed from "end of pipe" solutions, to "prevention and control", because these rely on the mitigation of negative effects, rather than on the penalization of activities.

Environmental Policy Instruments

 Traditionally, public policies have focused on regulation, financial incentives, and information as the tools of government. These were developed in the past to influence the behavior of actors who contribute to environmental problems.

Regulation

 In essence, regulation is an effective means to prescribe and control behavior. Some of these regulations have resulted in a considerable improvement in the quality of air, water and land since the early 1970s.

 One big improvement in environmental regulation made since the 1970s is the development of performance requirements, which allow actors to determine their own course of action to meet the standard.For example, they are not required to purchase a particular piece of equipment to meet an emissions standard. They can do it another way, such as developing a technology or process that reduces emissions. The advantage of performance requirements is that actors addressed by the regulation are encouraged to innovate in order to meet the requirements.

Financial Incentives

 Governments can decide to stimulate behavioral change by giving positive or negative financial incentives. These incentives can play an important role in boosting innovation and in the diffusion and adoption of innovations. For example, in Germany the widespread subsidizing of solar energy systems for private homeowners increased the large-scale adoption of photovoltaic panels.

CCPI

 The CCPI is an evaluation that is made from 4 different categories: Climate Policy, GHG Emissions, Renewable Energy and Energy use each with categories of their own and each with their respective percentage in the final result. With this methodology, the CCPI covers the evaluation of the countries’ promises as well as their current progress in terms of climate protection. Furthermore, CCPI ranking indicators are qualified in relative terms, in this case better to worse, rather than absolute terms.

Nordic countries

 In order to limit average global warming to below 2 °C relative to pre-industrial levels, the Paris agreement calls for emissions of greenhouse gases to peak as soon as possible, with this in mind in the recent years the Nordic countries have started a rapid development in renewable energy technologies, where Nordic stakeholders make important contributions.
Although lucky for their abundance in renewable energy resources, the Nordic countries are the ones who suffer the most when decreasing energy consumption due to factors including the long and cold winters they live through. So, to get over this problem, they opted to increase the energy efficiency having cut annual carbon dioxide emissions from household heating systems to just 0.2 tons of CO2 per capita through district heating systems and low-energy constructions, for example.

Nordic Countries

Nordic countries are undoubtedly who score better at the CCPI evaluations, and here's why:
Finland
Denmark
Norway
Sweden

Two interlinked ideas – cutting greenhouse gases and building a bioeconomy – characterize Finnish climate and energy policy making. In 2015 the Finnish Climate Change Act was set up to ensure a coherent long and medium-term approach to climate policy up to 2050 and 2030 respectively. The 2030 plan sets a medium-term target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in various sectors including: transport, housing and agriculture and determines measures for ensuring that the target in line with the EU 40% reduction target is reached. Finland also pays special attention to impacts assessments, cost efficiency of measures and to strengthening stakeholder participation. The changing patterns of consumption in climate action is also highlighted in the plan.

Since Denmark’s 2012 Energy Agreement the country has been continuously moving towards carbon neutrality achieving well beyond their goals set in 2012. An example of this was the goal to achieve 40% of energy consumption from renewable sources by 2020 which was more than achieved with a 78% share of all electricity production coming from renewables. Denmark has also established an independent Climate Council consisting of experts from key fields who together with the minister for energy, utilities and climate annually report on progress towards strategic emission reduction targets. Denmark is the world leader in wind power with over 5000 wind turbines accounting for more than half of Danish electricity consumption all of this being supported by government backing for research and innovation and feed-in tariffs to guarantee developers’ return on investments.

Norway has through its National Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement committed to a target of at least 40% emissions reduction by 2030 compared to 1990. Norway’s intention is to fulfil this target jointly with the European Union, which is also welcomed by the EU member states. A key shorter-term target which was already achieved was to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by an amount equal to 30% of Norway’s 1990 emissions by 2020. This was achieved by combining domestic reductions with the financing of emissions reductions abroad through the Kyoto Protocol’s flexible mechanisms. Norway is also committed to become carbon neutral by 2030 by reducing domestic emissions and by financing emission reductions abroad that are equivalent to Norway’s own remaining emissions.

Sweden aims to become one of the first fossil-free welfare nations in the world. The Swedish parliament has adopted a climate policy framework including a climate act, new climate goals and an expert climate policy council. New national targets have been set of reducing emissions with 59% compared to 2005 by 2030. By 2045 Sweden is set to have zero net emissions of greenhouse gases. Emissions from domestic transport are to be reduced by at least 70% by 2030 compared with 2010. An expert climate policy council will provide independent assessments of how the Swedish government’s policy is compatible with the climate goals.

Portugal

Portugal has reasonably good outcomes, despite some policy tensions, getting a score of 6.2. This score is given following these two key factors: Environment and Global Environmental Protection.

Environment

  Due to the 2009-2014 economic crisis, production reduced and with this facilitated environmental pressures, but since the economic recovery, Portugal declined in some assets, but still ranks pretty well.
 They have improved in the regards of circular economy, marine conservation, waste management, eco-innovation, environmental tax revenues and the proportion of land area that is protected, but also lacks in certain topics such as waste management (including low levels of recycling), water management, low productivity in using material resources to generate wealth and urban sprawl and sustainable development.

Global Environmental Protection

 Portugal agrees to and participates in EU-wide policies on the environment. It signed the Kyoto Protocol, and in 2016, approved the Paris Agreement. It also has been very active in the promotion of the protection of marine environments, making good use of its large maritime area, being so active that they started hosting the annual Oceans Meeting. This effort is shown in the CCPI, where they rank very high in the “International Climate Policy” meter.

Sintra

 We have contacted Sintra City Hall about this topic, regarding the environmental policies that have been implemented, and for what we could understand from their answer, the City Hall is focused on educating younger generations about environmental issues through web seminars, contests, and educational programs. Nevertheless, the City Hall also takes other approaches such as:
• The creation of a network of bike paths, to help create healthier habits in populations decreasing the use of private transportation.
• The monitoring of water and marine environments, such as Sintra’s coast and the iconic Sintra Cascais Natural Park.
• The creation of an organic waste collection network, so that these can be reused, preventing them from going to landfills.
• Requalification of schools and other buildings in order to make them more energy efficient.