between liability systems from other instruments (except for enforcement incentives and noncompliance charges) is that the threat of legal action to recover damages is the economic instrument that internalizes the external cost in the first instance. Unlike taxes and charges, that are set at the level of marginal damage cost to alter the relative probability of environmentally harmful products and activities, and unlike environmental bonds and deposit refund systems that internalize ex ante, the environmental risk liability systems assess and recover damages ex post. Yet these systems do have the effect of preventive incentives as long as the expected (certainty equivalent) damage payments exceed the benefits from non-compliance. The frequency with which liability cases are brought to the courts and the magnitude of damages awarded influence ex ante behavior of potentially liable parties.
Liability insurance has emerged as an instrument for pooling and sharing liability risks among liable parties. The incentive effect of liability systems is not significantly dampened as long as the liability insurance premium varies with individual behavior or performance. For example, vehicle accident insurance may vary with the individual's driving habits and/or past accident record. Where potential damages are very large relative to the ability of the individual agent to pay a certain minimum level of damages, liability insurance is mandated by law.
Liability systems are not recommended for developing countries with poorly developed legal systems, or with cultures that very rarely use courts to resolve disputes or award damages (although “liability systems” are not unknown to traditional societies, where the tribal chief or the elders settle disputes and award damages). One particular type of liability system practiced in the U.S., the joint and several liability for hazardous waste sites, is particularly litigation-intensive and cost-ineffective (legal fees rather than cleaning costs account for the bulk of the costs of the so-called Superfund for cleaning hazardous waste sites in the U.S.). This system is clearly unsuitable to developing countries, but even transitional economies with an inherited large number of contaminated sites would do well to avoid burdening their privatization efforts and nascent markets with joint and several liabilities. (For more
appropriate alternatives see Panayotou, Bluffstone and Balaban, 1994).
Performance Bonds and Deposit-Refund Systems Environmental performance bonds and deposit refund systems are economic instruments that aim to shift responsibility for controlling pollution, monitoring, and enforcement to individual producers and consumers who are charged in advance for the potential damage. Often the state is saddled with huge bills for cleaning up oil spills and contaminated land, for collection and treatment of hazardous waste, for reclamation of abandoned land after mining, for reforestation after logging, and for manmade “natural” disasters. In fact, a large portion of public environmental expenditures is for restoration of degraded environments, which could have been prevented or paid for by the polluters or beneficiaries of responsible activities. The government can reduce its share of the clean up and restoration bill (and, in fact, the overall size of the bill), by instituting deposit-refund systems, environmental bonds, bank guarantees for compliance with environmental rules, presumptive charges based on engineering or statistical output-waste coefficients, etc., with refunds for improved efficiency.
Environmental bonds, for instance, ensure that: (1) resource extracting companies and potential
polluters take adequate measures to minimize the environmental damage caused by their activities; (2) they effect clean up and restoration of residual damage in the most cost efficient manner; and (3) adequate funds are available for the clean up of waste and restoration of damaged environments by anyone who fails to comply. Environmental bonds need not be a constraint on economic activity, as they can be invested in interest-bearing accounts or replaced by bank guarantees. Deposit-refund systems can similarly shift the responsibility for controlling environmental degradation to the producers and consumers of polluting products, who are thereby induced to return the byproducts of their production and consumption for recycling or treatment and safe disposal or otherwise to finance their collection and return by others. A great advantage of deposit-refund systems for developing countries is the inducement of a labor-intensive activity (waste collection) in an environment of low-cost, abundant, and underemployed labor. Deposit-refund systems are applicable to a wide range of products and by-products from beverage containers and packaging of car batteries and vehicle hulks, to plastics and hazardous materials. In the absence of such depositrefund systems, the government has to expend scarce government revenues for their collection or to leave such waste uncollected to litter water bodies and soils, thereby damaging public health and wildlife and harming the country's tourist potential and investment climate. There are many other ways in which governments can induce the private sector to assume responsibility for waste minimization. For example, industrial associations for specific types of
Sedang diterjemahkan, harap tunggu..