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.

University of Macau / Faculty of Law

The Environmental Justice Networking Forum’s first national conference had three major objectives: to constitute the organisation on a national basis; to make policy recommendations regarding the implementation of the RDP both for submission to government and as a guide to action by EJNFparticipants; to build and disseminate the workof thelDRC/ANC/ COSATU/ SACP/ SANCO International Mission on Environmental Policy (referred to here as the Mission). EJNF was in itiated at the Earthlife Africa International Environment Conference in 1992 at Pietermaritzburg. That conference mandated an interim national steering committee to guide a process of establishing an organised voice within civil society for environmental justice. It stipulated that the organisation should be formed on a regional basis leading up to the national constitution of EJNF at a national conference. The EJNF conference is thus the culmination of a two year process. During that time, meetings were held to establish EJNF in six regions: Gauteng, Northern Transvaal, Western Cape, Eastern Cape, KwaZulu- Natal and OFS. Participating organisations include women’s, rural, youth, religious and environmental organisations, unions, civics and service NGOs. Each region sent delegations to the national conference. Two other regions, Eastern Transvaal and Northern Cape, also sent delegations which will form the focus groups for establishing EJNF in those regions. Regional EJNF participant organisations also elected members to the national steering committee. They took office at the constitutive conference. The minutes of the constitutive session of the conference are not included here but are available from the EJNF national office. The EJNF delegates were joined by a number of guest delegates for the conference on Greening the RDP. They included members of national organisations which represent or work with the constitutuencies which EJNF is developing and researchers working in the sectors covered by the conference. Government was represented by Ministers Kader Asmal (Water Affairs) and Derek Hanekom (Land Affairs), by provincial MECs, by members of standing committees in parliament and provincial legislatures andby ministry or department officials.

University of Macau / Faculty of Law

Despite the pollution control provisions provided in national and local legislation that explicitly or implicitly give effect to the polluter pays principle (PPP), certain rivers continue to suffer from persistent industrial pollution. This research focuses on one such river, the Bayne's Spruit, as a case study. The Bayne's Spruit is a small river that is located within an urban catchment, and which has been subjected to wet industrial pollution for over a decade. Much of this pollution is associated with the Pietermaritzburg edible oil industry. This pollution impacts negatively on a downstream community that uses the river for irrigation of subsistence crops, for recreation and for subsistence fish harvesting. The pollution has also severely degraded the riverine ecosystem. This research commenced with a literature review of the PPP in its international, national and local context. It was noted that the current legislative framework for implementation of the PPP with regard to pollution of rivers in South Africa comprises primarily of the National Water Act 36 of 1998 (NWA), the National Environmental Management Act 107 of 1998, and the Pietermaritzburg-Msunduzi industrial effluent bylaws of November 1998. The case study was approached using a largely qualitative methodology, although quantitative data was also relied upon where feasible. The historical context of the case study was provided by conducting a review of newspaper reports, a review of. government inspection records, and a review of water quality data (including biomonitoring and chemical data). The current status of the Bayne's Spruit was then explored by conducting in-depth historical interviews with community members, and by conducting direct observation of the environmental status of the Bayne's Spruit. This data was supplemented by an analysis of the test results of sampled industrial effluent, and by information obtained from representatives of two edible oil companies. In-depth, purposively selected interviews were conducted with various role players. (local government, regional government and industry) to identify what factors are preventing the successful implementation of the PPP in the case study area. Factors identified include a lack of environmental ethic within the edible oil industry, with some of these companies free riding on the Bayne's Spruit to maximize their profits. At a local level, factors preventing implementation of the PPP include deficiencies in the local industrial effluent bylaws, failures to administer and implement provisions contained in the bylaws, capacity restrictions and institutional paralysis. National legislation is not being successfully implemented because the government agency empowered under the NWA is deferring primary responsibility for dealing with pollution to the local authority. Factors also include difficulties associated with monitoring of rivers, including lack of capacity to engage in monitoring, and confusion over the functions of the various spheres of government. Finally, enforcement complexities are a major factor preventing successful implementation of the PPP. These problems relate to inadequate penalties, enforcement arrangements, capacity problems, separation of authority to operate the municipal sewer works and to enforce the industrial effluent bylaws, difficulties in identifying the offending polluter (causation), problems with access to company premises, the open access character of the storm water drainage system, previous failed prosecutions and reliance on the criminal justice system. / Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of Natal, 2002.

Location is a critical component of business decisions. A firm's location decision may be influenced not only by market forces, such as the location of input suppliers, output processors and competitors, but also by government policies if such policies impact their expected profits and are applied non-uniformly across space. Likewise, a firm may adjust its business strategy, including opening and closing establishments and laying off employees as responses to changes in environmental regulations. In certain polluting industries, location decisions may include choosing potential storage sites for geologic carbon sequestration or finding landfills for industrial solid waste. There is extensive literature discussing the effects of environmental regulations or agglomeration economies on firm location decisions but few studies analyze the interactive effect of environmental regulations and agglomeration economies across regions in the United States. The potential consequences of changes in environmental regulations may include loss of polluting establishments, jobs, and income. Geological carbon sequestration offers long term storage opportunities to mitigate greenhouse gases (GHGs). Incorporating environmental risk into economic assessments of geological sequestration choices is crucial for finding optimal strategies in using alternative carbon storage sites with limited capacity. This dissertation consists of three essays that address the above issues. The first essay examines the interactive effects of air quality regulation and agglomeration economies on polluting firms' location decisions in the United States. Newly available annual (1989-2006) county-level manufacturing plant location data for the United States on seven pollution intensive manufacturing industries are applied in the analysis. Conditional Poisson and negative binomial models are estimated, an efficient GMM estimator is also employed to control for endogenous regulatory and agglomeration variables. Results indicate that births of pollution intensive manufacturers are deterred by stricter environmental regulation; and are attracted by local agglomeration economies. County attainment/nonattainment designations can impose heterogeneous impacts over space and across industries. The magnitude of the regulatory effect depends on the level of local agglomeration. Urbanization economies offset the negative impacts of environmental regulation, whereas localization economies can reinforce or offset the negative impacts of environmental regulation, depending on the industry. The second essay analyzes the effect of changes in regulatory environmental standards on the total stocks of establishments and local jobs and income Results indicate the effects vary across counties in the United States. When the standards were raised to 80 percent of the current level, from 2007 to 2009, the affected counties would lose a total of 326 establishments, 14,711 jobs with $705 million U.S. dollars of income each year. At the national economy level, the impacts of tightening environmental regulations are relatively small. The third essay constructs a dynamic optimization framework that deals with optimal utilization of alternative nonrenewable resource sites (geological formations) with possible negative externalities. We apply the model to an optimal usage problem of alternative long term CO₂ geologic storage sites for carbon. The storage sites are different in terms of capacity and potential leakage after CO₂ injection; the problem is determining the minimum cost for storing a fixed amount of CO₂ (sequestered) within a certain time period. Analytical solutions show the decision rule depends on the discount rate, storage capacities, marginal CO₂ storage costs, and environmental damage costs associated with CO₂ leakage from alternative sinks. The framework provides critical information about the optimal timing of switching from one resource sequestration site to another. / Graduation date: 2013 / Access restricted to the OSU Community at author's request from Feb. 1, 2013 - Feb. 1, 2015