Sustainability, Innovation and Participatory Governance

A Cross-National Study of the EU Eco-Management and Audit Scheme

Hubert Heinelt, Randall Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351773799
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Title first published in 2003. This book focuses on whether participatory governance can lead to sustainable and innovative outcomes. Using an empirical analysis of the development, implementation and review of an EU environmental management system - the Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS), it examines under which circumstances participatory governance might encourage sustainability and innovation.

PART I

POLICY OVERVIEW AND ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK

Chapter 1

Introduction

Hubert Heinelt, Britta Meinke, Randall Smith and Georgios Terizakis

1.1 The Purpose of the Book

It was the purpose of the research project “Achieving sustainable and innovative policies through participatory governance in a multi-level context” (funded by the European Commission under the 5th Framework Programme on Research and Development) to find out under what circumstances participatory governance leads to sustainable and innovative outcomes. It is assumed that there is a link between participation on the one hand and sustainability and innovation on the other, such that participation leads to a higher degree of sustainable and innovative outcomes.

The theoretical basis for such an assumption and its further conceptual elaboration were discussed at a conference on “Democratic and Participatory Governance: From Citizens to ‘Holders’” held in September 2000 at the European University Institute in Florence.¹ The papers focused on the current debate about governance, and one of the core questions was: What does the shift from “government to governance” imply in respect to participation? “If one is trying to design an arrangement for participatory governance, one has to provide convincing answers to two questions: (1) Who should participate? And, (2) how should they participate?” (Schmitter 2002, 58). This is not “that simple – especially since the rules that are most likely to facilitate the mechanics of governance may not be the ones that are the most likely to conform to democratic principles” (Schmitter 2002, 68). Is the traditional idea of citizenship appropriate for legitimising participation in governance arrangements – or do we have to go beyond such traditional notions? Schmitter offers an answer to this question with his “holder” concept, where “holders” are individual or collective actors who possess specific qualities or resources which entitle them to participate or which require that they should participate. But holder involvement does not lead per se to participatory governance, let alone sustainable and innovative outcomes. Therefore, specific (governance) arrangements have to be considered.²

1.2 Why EMAS?

Although these ideas guided the overall work of the project, the empirical research has a place of its own. We tried to identify opportunities for participatory governance which support a shift towards sustainable and innovative policy developments.³ We therefore identified different governance mixtures in Germany, Greece and the UK, which reflected organisationally determined as well as socially and culturally embedded particular arrangements, from where policy change has to start. Furthermore, we took account of different territorial levels of government within which these arrangements were moulded by the political process.

The empirical work of the project covered two different policy areas: (a) water supply⁴ and (b) enterprise oriented environmental management systems, specifically the Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS). The differences between these two policy areas can be found in the forms of participation which are linked to particular characteristics of the structure of policy networks. Water supply, on the one hand, is an issue which potentially concerns everyone. This implies an open network structure with unclear boundaries. Apart from a relatively clearly defined set of actors officially responsible for water supply, the spectrum of holders can be widened depending on the perception, articulation and organisation of interests. But the way interested parties are actually involved in “governing” a water supply system depends on the political options which enable them to participate. EMAS, on the other hand, suggests a closed network structure, because, by its nature as a management tool in organisations, it involves only a defined set of actors and a clear boundary at the level of the organisation. So participation is inherently restricted.⁵ The two types of case studies are also indicative of different types of governance, different modes of interest intermediation and different types of actors. The water supply case studies indicate (at least in Great Britain) a shift towards the privatisation of governance and the exclusion of some political actors, resulting in less transparency and diminution of accountability. By way of contrast, EMAS is intended to foster environmental self-regulation by companies (and also public authorities) which are controlled indirectly by the state and answerable to the general public and certain external and internal actors (from verifiers and customers to the neighbourhood and employees), thereby leading to greater involvement by actors and to transparency of environmental effects.

It is this characteristic of fostering environmental self-regulation which makes EMAS an interesting example of what can be called “modem governance”. Without going into detail about the main elements of this scheme (which are described in section 3.2.3) it is important to stress that EMAS encourages enterprises to voluntarily adopt policies dedicated to legal compliance and continuous improvement in environmental performance⁶ beyond what is required by law. According to the decision-making process at the EU level (see Chapter 3), EMAS is seen as an instrument to address the complexity of environmental impacts at the site level. As such, it was designed to deal with failures of environmental protection resulting from command and control instruments. In addition, it is an aim of the instrument that environmental benefits should be achieved, which would otherwise not be addressed.

Participating organisations establish a management system for the site that is designed to evaluate its environmental impact, to set goals for future improvement, and to carry out regular audits of environmental protection measures and their effects. To ensure that each site’s management system conforms to the EMAS standard, they are subject to an external verification procedure that is carried out by an independent, accredited verifier, who has to validate a published environmental statement. Through the requirement to publish the validated statement, it is possible for the general public to act as an additional control agent on the enforcement of environmental law as well as on the environment policy developed for the site itself.

Environmental systems in general, and more specifically EMAS, can be seen as a part of a broader trend that is fundamentally changing the way businesses and policies are regulated. More precisely, EMAS is creating new forms of governance in three different ways.

First, EMAS can be interpreted as creating in some countries a new form of Government-Market Governance. The objective of EMAS is to reduce regulation by the state and to further self-regulation on the part of companies/organisations. Traditionally, command and control policies, which make up the core of most countries’ environmental regulations, have sought to bring about environmental improvements by setting strict emission limits as well as prescribing the industrial technologies and processes needed to meet these limits. These policies are typically applied uniformly across industry regardless of local economic or environmental conditions, and they impose stiff penalties on violators. Business in general is more open to the use of such instruments (and especially market instruments such as ecotaxes or emissions trading). Governments intend to create stronger capacities for self-regulation by playing a more limited role in the EMAS “beyond compliance policy”.

Second, EMAS can be seen as creating a new form of Market-Civil Society Governance. In principle, by putting the general public, or more precisely the consumer or the neighbourhood, in an “observatory position” in relation to the individual site through the publication of the environmental statement, EMAS tries to increase the transparency of the registered sites in general. One could argue that it is the aim of EMAS to enforce better environmental performance in the light of public scrutiny.

Third, the revision of EMAS, EMAS II (see sections 3.5 and 3.6), focused more on the participatory aspects of internal decision-making and the implementation of environmental management systems within a firm or organisation. EMAS can here be seen as creating a new form of Governance within a site. The intention of EMAS is to change environmental performance on a site by the increased participation of interested parties/actors (employees, experts).

Table 1.1 lists the number of registered EMAS sites in April 1999 and October 2001. However, this rough overview can be misleading. First, Germany is the front runner in terms of the absolute number of sites, but if one relates the figures for example, to GDP (i.e. to the economic development of a country) or to population,⁷ the picture is different. For both indicators Austria gets a higher ranking than Germany and Denmark is nearly the same as Germany. France gets a lower ranking than Greece when GDP is taken into account. Second, one can get the impression that EMAS is unimportant. Even in the case of Germany less than 6 per cent of all sites in the manufacturing sector were registered in 2001. But one has to take into account that EMAS is taken up unevenly by companies, not least according to their size (as will be shown in the case studies in this book). To put it precisely: bigger firms are taking up EMAS more than smaller ones. This means that thinking about the importance of EMAS has to take into account (i) differing distribution by the size of sites and (ii) the importance bigger sites have economically in respect to the workforce and total turnover. An earlier survey (see section 8.3.1) undertaken at the end of 1997, revealed that in Germany “only” 699 sites (i.e. 1.6 per cent of all sites in the manufacturing sector) were registered, but 22.9 per cent of the registered EMAS sites had more than 1,000 employees and only 0.4 per cent between 1 and 49 employees. We have not calculated how many people were employed in total by the EMAS sites with more than 1,000 employees or those with less than 50 employees. However, it is clear from the official German statistics (German Statistical Office 1997) that in 1997 sites with more than 1,000 staff employed about 30 per cent of all employees and were responsible for about 36 percent of the total turnover of the manufacturing sector in Germany. Yet these large sites comprised only 1.6 per cent of all manufacturing sites. On the other hand, sites with less than 50 employees comprised more than 50 per cent of all manufacturing sites but employed only 10 per cent of the workforce and were responsible for only 7 per cent of the turnover.

Table 1.1 The Development of EMAS and ISO 14001 by Country

Sources: Official EMAS register and www.inem.org/htdocs/iso/speedometer/speedometer-4_2001.html (accessed January 2002).

Furthermore, the development of EMAS in different counties has to be considered in relation to the growing importance of management schemes in general and especially of ISO 14001 as another environmental management system.⁸ The differences between EMAS and ISO 14001 as well as attempts at the EU level to “bridge” both schemes are addressed in sections 3.3 to 3.6.

The emphasis here – as shown in Table 1.1 – is that most of the frontrunners in relation to EMAS are also the frontrunners for ISO 14001, although some countries (Sweden and Denmark) are more in favour of ISO 14001.⁹ This is due to a strong awareness of the usefulness of environmental management systems and the fact that a lot of companies in these countries have implemented both schemes. However, there are other cases – like the UK – where a strong awareness of the usefulness of environmental management systems can be assumed, but sites/organisation are showing a marked preference for the ISO standard. Finally, there are countries – like Greece – where neither scheme has been well developed.

Table 1.2 EMAS sites in the UK and Germany by Sector, January 2002

Economic sectors (NACE Code)		UK	Germany
11	Oil and gas	21	−
14	Mining	−	20
15	Food	−	252
17–19	Textiles/Clothing/Leather	2	62
20	Wood	−	57
21	Paper	2	63
22	Printing	4	95
23/24	Chemicals/Petroleum products	16	252
25	Rubber/Plastic	2	149
26	Glass	4	61
27	Basic metal material	3	63
28	Metal products	4	259
29	Machinery	2	159
30	Office machinery	1	11
31	Electronic machinery	−	76
32	Telecommunication	−	39
33	Med./Optical Instruments	−	39
34/35	Cars, vehicles, trailers	4	137
36	Furniture etc.	−	73
37	Recycling	−	27
40/41	Energy and water supply	7	75
51/52	Wholesale/Retail trade	−	53
55/63	Tourism and travel agencies	−	35
60–62	Transport	−	14
65/66	Banks/Insurance	−	19
75	Local authorities^*	2	66
80	Schools/Universities	−	21
85	Hospitals	−	55
90	Waste/Waste water	−	29
XX	Waste Recycling	4	188
YY	Others	−	53
	Total	78	2523

* It is worthy of note that just two local authorities in the UK are listed. The UK EMAS Register lists another 52 sites (44 of them in the London Borough of Sutton) under Article 14 of Regulation 1836/93. See Table 4.2 below.

Source: www.emas.org.uk (accessed January 2002).

Beyond the number and size of sites, there are, as shown in Table 1.2 – referring to Germany and the UK¹⁰ – also some considerable differences between the economic sectors. Leaving aside local government, in the UK EMAS sites are concentrated in the oil and gas and chemical industries (with 26.9 and 19.3 per cent respectively) followed by energy supply (with 9.0 per cent). In Germany the chemical industry is again important (9.5 per cent and together with the rubber and plastic sector 15.4 per cent of all sites). In contrast to the UK, the food sector as well as the sectors of metal products, electronic machinery and waste recycling are important in Germa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• List of Acronyms and Abbreviations
• PART I: POLICY OVERVIEW AND ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK
• PART II: COUNTRY STUDIES
• PART III: REFLECTIONS
• References
• Index