The California Global Warming Solutions Act, also known as Assembly Bill 32 (AB 32), was passed in 2006 to reduce California emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. Senate Bill 375 (SB 375) was passed in 2008 to support AB 32's emission goals. SB 375 aims to reduce emissions from transportation and land use by assigning regional per capita emission targets for 2020 and 2035. Through a series of four case studies of San Diego, San Francisco, Fresno, and Berkeley, this thesis investigates the impacts of SB 375. Each region is required to combine housing and regional transit plans in the hopes of promoting future sustainable growth. By compacting development SB 375 hopes to reduce sprawl and per capita emissions over time by greatly decreasing vehicular miles traveled.

During the last fifty years trade liberalization has stimulated different levels of industrial and technological development and economic growth around the world. However, during that same period, the world has witnessed a rapid degradation of the environment and an excessive exploitation of natural resources. The urgency of the situation requires the reconciliation of trade liberalization and environmental protection goals. / In this context, on January 1, 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement entered into between Canada, Mexico and the United States came into force. This agreement has significant environmental content and includes a side agreement on environmental matters. This new framework of environmental protection is serving to reconcile trade and environmental goals in the region, and is shaping the new legal framework for environmental protection and enforcement in Mexico.

In this dissertation, the concept of "problem bounding," argued by Bryan Norton and colleagues to be an important but understudied aspect of environmental problem solving, is operationalized and empirically investigated. The empirical part of the work involves participant observation and survey research on how diverse individuals – all of whom were invited by a state agency to advise the development of an institutional framework for statewide water planning – engaged in problem bounding both conceptually and in their choice of a spatial structure for ongoing water management. My particular focus is on the multiple ways in which the "place" an individual views the problem from shapes the way they engage in problem bounding. Although more research is needed and there are significant limitations to the data, my findings indicate that place – particularly in terms of location on an upstream/downstream continuum and rural/urban self-identification – does play a role in problem bounding. The dissertation concludes with a review and discussion of the major findings, and implications for the development of institutional frameworks that are both responsive to ecological dynamics and representative of the relevant public(s).

This thesis consists of an introductory chapter and four papers, which relate to environmental policy in the presence of transboundary environmental damage. Paper [I] concerns public policy in a multi-jurisdiction framework with transboundary environmental damage. Each jurisdiction is assumed large in the sense that its government is able to infuence the world-market producer price of the externality-generating good. This gives rise to additional incentives of relevance for national public policy in the non-cooperative Nash equilibrium. With the uncoordinated equilibrium as the reference case, the welfare effects from coordinated changes in public policy variables are analyzed. Paper [II] analyses welfare effects of coordinated changes in environmental and capital taxation in the presence of transboundary environmental externalities and wage bargaining externalities. In the wage bargaining between frms and labor unions, firms use the threat of moving abroad to moderate wage claims, which means that domestic policy infuences wage formation abroad. The specific framework implies welfare effects of policy coordination that correspond to each of the respective international interaction mentioned above. In paper [III], national governments face political pressure from environmental and industrial lobby groups, while pollution taxes are determined in an international negotiation. It is shown that a general increase in the environmental concern and the weight the governments attach to social welfare both tend to increase the pollution tax. However, allowing for asymmetries between the countries means that a general increase in the environmental concern has the potential to reduce the pollution tax. Paper [IV] studies national environmental policies in an economic federation characterized by decentralized leadership. The federal government sets emission targets for each member country, which are implemented by the national governments. Although all national governments have commitment power vis-à-vis the federal government, one of them also has commitment power vis-à-vis the other member countries. This creates incentives to act strategically toward the federal government, as well as toward other members.

Government is constantly attempting to balance the competing interests within society, and is itself active in a variety of different roles. The conflict between these roles becomes particularly clear when an attempt is made to implement a "regulatory market" - that is a market that exists only because of government action- such as an electricity or environmental market - to implement some policy objective, since it is the nature of markets to candidly reveal weaknesses that in a non-market management framework may have remained hidden for some time. This thesis examines the difficulty that government has in setting market rules that implement an efficient market design for such markets. After examining the history and development of the Australian Electricity Industry market reform process, we examine more closely some of the electricity related environmental markets developed specifically to drive a policy outcome in Australia -- in particular the Australian Mandatory Renewable Energy Target Market (MRET) and the New South Wales Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme. By comparing these environmental markets with established financial markets, and using the techniques of experimental economics, we show that these environmental markets have significant inefficiencies in their design. We argue that these come about because lessons from the financial markets have not be learned by those implementing environmental markets, that stakeholders are lobbying for market design characteristics that are not in fact in their own best interests, and that governments struggle to manage the divergent pressure upon them. For example, in MRET we show experimentally that one of the market design characteristics most fought for by generators (the ability to create renewable energy certificates from qualifying energy without declaring the certificates to the market until a later time of the creator's choosing) in fact leads to market volatility, and ultimately inefficiently low prices. We also examine the impact on the overall MRET market of simple rule changes upon market performance. Key conclusions of this thesis are that it is more difficult than has been appreciated to successfully use a market to implement public policy and that important lessons have not yet been learned from the existing financial markets.

[Truncated abstract] The salinisation of agricultural land, urban infrastructure and natural habitat is a serious and increasing problem in southern Australia. Government funding has been allocated to the problem to attempt to reduce substantial costs associated with degradation of agricultural and non-agricultural assets. Nevertheless, Government funding has been small relative to the size of the problem and therefore expenditure needs to be carefully targeted to interventions that will achieve the greatest net benefits. For intervention to be justified, the level of salinity resulting from private landholder decisions must exceed the level that is optimal from the point of view of society as a whole, and the costs of government intervention must be less than the benefits gained by society. This study aims to identify situations when government intervention is justified to manage dryland salinity that threatens to affect road infrastructure (a public asset). A key gap in the environmental economics literature is research that considers dryland salinity as a pollution that has off-site impacts on public assets. This research developed two hydrological/economic models to achieve this objective. The first was a simple economic model representing external costs from dryland salinity. This model was used to identify those variables that have the biggest impact on the net-benefits possible from government intervention. The second model was a combined hydro/economic model that represents the external costs from dryland salinity on road infrastructure. The hydrological component of the model applied the method of metamodelling to simplify a complex, simulation model to equations that could be easily included in the economic model. The key variables that have the biggest impact on net-benefits of dryland salinity mitigation were the value of the off-site asset and the time lag before the onset of dryland salinity in the absence of intervention. ... In the case study of dryland salinity management in the Date Creek subcatchment of Western Australia, the economics of vegetation-based and engineering strategies were investigated for road infrastructure. In general, the engineering strategies were more economically beneficial than vegetation-based strategies. In the case-study catchment, the cost of dryland salinity affecting roads was low relative to the cost to agricultural land. Nevertheless, some additional change in land management to reduce impacts on roads (beyond the changes justified by agricultural land alone) was found to be optimal in some cases. Reinforcing the results from the simple model, a key factor influencing the economics of dryland salinity management was the urgency of the problem. If costs from dryland salinity were not expected to occur until 30 years or more, the optimal response in the short-term was to do nothing. Overall, the study highlights the need for governments to undertake comprehensive and case-specific analysis before committing resources to the management of dryland salinity affecting roads. There were many scenarios in the modelling analysis where the benefits of interventions would not be sufficient to justify action.

Industrial pollution is one the most critical environmental problems facing Thailand at the present time. Therefore, control of industrial pollution is of the highest priority to the Thai government. Problems associated with industrial pollution place significant limitations on the potential growth of manufacturing industries in Thailand, because international trade today requires not only manufactured products of a high quality but also a commitment to high environmental standards by manufacturing companies (European Commission Environment Directorate-General, 2001; Ken, 2004). This thesis investigated the major dimensions of the quality of the Environmental Management System (EMS) in large size manufacturers, that are located both inside and outside of industrial towns in Chonburi Province, Thailand. In particular, the research examined whether different stakeholders had the same or different perceptions about these dimensions. The study used both qualitative and quantitative methods to collect information from four groups of stakeholders: Thailand's government officers in the government agencies concerned about environmental policy; top management within manufacturers; the manufacturers' staff at management level; and the local communities. A survey was carried out involving the government officers and top management staff within manufacturers. The qualitative data were collected from documentaries, interviews and observations. The triangulation of methods and data permitted the comparison of the perceptions of the manufacturers' staff, from both inside and outside of industrial towns. The data were structured into the four major parts of an EMS: the performance agreement for the environmental programme; the plan for transformation implementation; the standards and processes; and the continuous improvement process. The survey results show that manufacturers in the Town use ISO 14001. Two of the three manufacturers, outside the Town use TQM / TQEM as their EMS and the other manufacturer, also from outside the Town, does not have any EMS within their company. The results also show that the factories in the Town, that used IS0 14001 and the factories outside of the Town that used TQM ITQEM, are similar in the four major parts of the EMS. However, they still have some processes which are notably different, such as the manufacturers that use ISO 14001 have better documentary systems, additional budgets for training staff and larger budgets to publicise, to the local communities, the companies' activities relating to their environmental management. However, the TQM / TQEM and Thailand's environmental legislation are more flexible and they allow companies to create environmental management activities. Finally, the results suggest that there are three main factors that may effect the achievement of environmental management within manufacturers in Thailand. They are: the human factor (knowledge and awareness about the environment); the processes factor (green production and EMS processes); and the legislation factor (environmental standards, monitoring and enforcement systems).

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