Commentary: Voluntary Innovations versus Enforceable Rights

• Date: 01 March 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12205
• Published date: 01 March 2014

244 Public Administration Review • March | April 2014

Commentary

Suzanne Y. Mattei has 30 years of

experience in environmental law and policy.

Prior to her current role as head of a health

consumer rights organization, she served

as regional director for the New York State

Department of Environmental Conservation.

In her previous positions in government and

in nonprof‌i t organizations, she participated

in multiple permit proceedings, rulemak-

ings, and legislative hearings, including

testifying by invitation before Congress

regarding the health impacts of Ground

Zero contamination on 9/11 responders.

E-mail: smattei@nyc.rr.com

The analysis presented in “Voluntary

Regulations and Innovation:  e Case of

ISO 14001” by Sijeong Lim and Aseem

Prakash supports the premise that voluntary par-

ticipation in ISO 14001 promotes technological

innovation.  e authors argue less successfully that

requiring companies to install a particular type of

pollution control technology hinders them from

researching and f‌i nding ways to curb pollution

through process changes or new technologies, and

they do not address whether the public would be

better protected under enforceable approaches to

environmental protection. Placing such a policy

discussion in a broader context that analyzes the

existing f‌l exibility within current regulatory schemes,

the rights of the public, and the practical challenges

faced by regulatory agencies, would be a helpful next

step for the authors’ inquiry.

ISO 14001 is a valuable tool. It requires adoption

of management policies and specif‌i c environmental

Suzanne Y. Mattei

New Yorkers for Patient & Family Empowerment, Inc.

targets, with third-party auditing to conf‌i rm achieve-

ment of objectives.  e positive reinforcement of ISO

14001 accreditation and the potential “loss of face”

that would occur if the facility lost that status moti-

vate and incentivize commitment to these goals.  e

authors emphasize that third-party monitoring and

reporting are key to the success of ISO 14001.  is is

consistent with the premise that “what gets measured

gets addressed.”

 e article of‌f ers interesting evidence that the volun-

tary ISO 14001 approach promotes innovation.  e

study examines the performance of 79 countries, using

14 years of data, to correlate voluntary ISO 14001 par-

ticipation with environmental patent applications.  e

study controls for potentially confounding factors such

as the level of economic development, the size of the

economy, and political and institutional factors that

can inf‌l uence innovation.  e analysis concludes that

those who participated in ISO 14001 had an increased

number of environmental patent applications.

Voluntary Innovations versus Enforceable Rights