Message-ID: <85256539.00729509.00@WBLN0014.worldbank.org> Date: Thu, 23 Oct 1997 16:52:43 -0400 From: "Muthukumara S. Mani" <mailto:Mmani@WORLDBANK.ORG> Subject: New Ideas in Pollution Regulation To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
(436.3 7-23-1997)) id 85256539.0073B42F ; Thu, 23 Oct 1997 17:03:47 -0400 X-Lotus-FromDomain: WORLDBANK
INTRODUCTION TO NEW IDEAS IN POLLUTION REGULATION
A little more than a year ago, the World Bank's Development Economics Research Group for Environment launched an Internet site called New Ideas in Pollution Regulation.
(http://www.worldbank.org/NIPR)
We intend for NIPR to be useful to people interested in understanding and improving the environmental performance of industry. This note provides a short description of the web site and research project.
NIPR houses the work-in-progress for the Bank's "Economics of Industrial Pollution Control" research project as well as other resources related to pollution regulation. The Research Team has spent the past four years working in a number of less developed countries to better understand the problems environmental agencies and communities face when trying to improve industry's environmental performance. Together, the Research Team and EPA's in several heavily industrialized developing countries have collaborated to determine pollution patterns and improve industry's environmental performance.
The Economics of Industrial Pollution Control research focuses on three major themes. "Incentives and Behavior" discusses industrial pollution and abatement behavior as having multiple agents and multiple incentives. Traditional thought focuses on the state as primarily responsible for lowering pollution levels from the manufacturing sector. The "new" model explores how communities and financial markets also play important roles in influencing pollution and abatement behavior. (http://www.worldbank.org/NIPR/newappr.htm)
The second major theme we explore is "The Role of the Community in Pollution Control". The Research Team has conducted extensive research and analysis in several south Asian countries on this issue. For example, team members helped Indonesia's environmental agency, BAPEDAL, implement a public information disclosure program called PROPER, where the environmental performance of specific plants is publicized. To date, the program has had remarkable success in pressuring plants to change their pollution behavior, and at less expense to the agency than the traditional monitoring and enforcement approach. One of the key lessons both BAPEDAL and the Research Team have learned is that companies do value their reputations in communities where they are located, and with financial markets. (http://www.worldbank.org/NIPR/comrole.htm)
The final theme of our research is "The Impact of the Market in Pollution Control". We have been analyzing China's pollution levy system and how effective "pollution charge" systems force plants to internalize the costs of polluting. There is also analysis being conducted on how capital markets react to the disclosure of environmental information to the public by regulators. (http://www.worldbank.org/NIPR/market.htm)
NIPR also houses "The Industrial Pollution Projection System" (IPPS), a pollution modeling system. The IPPS can quickly estimate pollution parameters by sector and pollutant to help regulators gain a more complete understanding of where to prioritize abatement resources. The Research Team has developed abatement cost estimates by industrial sector for several major pollutants. The abatement cost estimates provide benchmarks for benefit/cost analysis of pollution control strategies. The Research Team's pollution modeling information has been implemented by environmental agencies and NGO's worldwide. We have recently supplemented these datasets with new information to estimate pollution intensities and corresponding toxic risk for 246 chemicals in the U.S. EPA's Toxic Release Inventory (TRI). (http://www.worldbank.org/NIPR/polmod.htm)
In addition, NIPR hosts a section devoted to other Internet links of organizations addressing brown sector and pollution regulation issues.
We have included you in this mailing because we understand you are involved or interested in pollution regulation and/or environmental issues. Economists, regulators and policy makers already aware of NIPR have told us the research has served as a useful resource for them, and we hope you will find it useful as well. We update the NIPR site regularly with new papers, articles and datasets and send out an electronic newsletter about once a month to inform readers of these changes. If you wish not to remain on the mailing list, please write to David Shaman at mailto:dshaman@worldbank.org.
Thank you for taking a few moments to read this. We have attached the most recent newsletter for your information. And welcome to the NIPR community. ----- Newsletter attached below -----
August, 1997
Dear Friends:
It has been almost three months since the last time you received news from the New Ideas in Pollution Regulation (NIPR) Web site. During that period we have been busy adding new items to the site, building a growing network of counterparts, and adapting to some organizational changes within the World Bank.
The most important news is that NIPR has now been moved into the World Bank's main Web site. Our new URL is
http://www.worldbank.org/NIPR/
The contract for NIPR has been extended which will allow it to remain an active address well into 1998. This additional funding combined with the move into the Bank's Web hierarchy will make it possible for us to distribute new pollution modeling datasets now being developed by the Research Team. We also expect to broaden our audience by helping the Bank's general Web traffic gain access to information on the Bank's work on promoting environmentally sustainable development. Bookmarks are encouraged. And please check back regularly for new papers and datasets.
We have added a number of items to the site. The most notable addition is a very detailed database of pollution intensities for chemicals in the U.S. EPA's Toxic Release Inventory, and the measures of the corresponding toxic risks.
This information will allow policy makers and urban planners to do pollution risk assessments for countries, regions or urban areas. With the database, researchers and planners can estimate toxic releases and risks within a manufacturing sector or across different sectors. With locally-available data on the volume of activity in an enterprise or sector, such as employment, value added or value of output, they can estimate releases by medium for a large number of toxic chemicals. Corresponding Threshold Limit Values provide associated health risk parameters. (http://www.worldbank.org/NIPR/data/toxint/)
There are also new working papers, and news articles about projects underway in the Economics of Industrial Pollution Control work program. These include "Bending the Rules: Discretionary Pollution Control in China," a paper by Dasgupta, Huq and Wheeler. The authors explore the determinants of regulatory compliance by industries in China. They note that firms may choose to remain non-compliant if the cost of compliance is greater than the loss expected from discovery by regulators and ensuing penalties. Obviously, strictness of monitoring and enforcement varies greatly, both in developed and developing countries. The authors used new plant-level data provided by China's National Environmental Protection Agency and the Tiajin Environmental Protection Bureau for this unique analysis of the regulatory process in a developing country. (http://www.worldbank.org/NIPR/work_paper/1761/)
Several recent articles and newspaper accounts of the Research Team's work on public disclosure systems have also been put on-line. These include newspaper articles from the Philippines on the progress of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources' EcoWatch program. For regulatory institutions in developing countries, which often lack resources to administer effective monitoring and enforcement programs, public disclosure systems can be used to provide the public with information on the environmental performance of local factories. The evidence suggests that reactions from local communities and financial markets will then moderate pollution in a variety of ways. Earlier results for EcoWatch, and Indonesia's PROPER program, have shown great promise. (http://www.worldbank.org/NIPR/comrole.htm#Public Information)
Also included is a recent article from the Bank's Environment Matters magazine which describes various strategies for "environmental management" and documents innovative programs that harness the power of public opinion. (http://www.worldbank.org/NIPR/envmat/) In addition, we have continued to update our "On The Net" page, which is a collection of Internet sites related industrial pollution and pollution regulation issues. ( http://worldbank.org/NIPR/onthenet.htm)
If you know of colleagues or counterparts who would be interested in receiving this newsletter or knowing about the site, please let them or us know. We will be pleased to include them on our newsletter list. If we have inadvertantly included you more than once on our mailing list, please let us know that as well. Of course, should you wish to not be included in further mailings, please contact David Shaman at mailto:dshaman@worldbank.org. Thank you.