The Why and Whether of Private Environmental Governance

• Pages: 73-88
• Author: Michael P. Vandenbergh,Sarah E. Light,James Salzman

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Chapter 4

THE WHY AND WHETHER OF PRIVATE

ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE

Imagine you are on the first day of a new job for an

environmental advocacy group. The head of your team has asked you

to find some way to reduce water pollution from agriculture, the

leading cause of water quality problems in the US. Congress has been

unwilling to impose standards on farmers, ranchers, and foresters,

and federal, state, and local agencies have had limited success over

the last 50 years. You can use any combination of tools and targets.

What will you do?

What if you were just starting a new job at a law firm

representing food retail companies that feel pressure to reduce their

role in agricultural “non-point source”water pollution (such as

pollution that does not come out of pipes)? Or representing companies

or farmers who want to avoid the costs of reducing non-point

pollution and have asked you to respond to pressure on this issue?

What if you are a business manager trying to successfully position

your business on this issue?

The last chapter outlined the new PEG actors, tools and

processes that can help you develop new ways to implement—or

defend against—a non-point source water pollution strategy. But to

succeed as an environmental advocate, lawyer, or manager, knowing

the actors, tools and processes is not enough, it is also important to

have a mental model of how PEG works—to know why PEG occurs,

what motivates the private sector to perform the roles that otherwise

would be performed by governments, and how those drivers have led

to the modern system of private and public governance that has

emerged in the last several decades. In other words, why do private

sector actors engage in environmental protection? How do they

interact with other private sector actors? When do private sector

actions enhance or undermine government actions, and vice versa?

When we account for all of the effects of PEG, does it improve the

environmental behavior of companies or improve environmental

quality? Does it achieve or undermine environmental ju stice? With

an understanding of how PEG works, you can develop effective

strategies and avoid unintended consequences.

PEG is rapidly evolving, developing new tools, adding new

actors, and addressing new areas every year. This Chapter explains

what we know about the core features of the emergence of PEG—the

motivations of the major actors, how we should evaluate PEG, its

74

TOOLS AND CONCEPTS

Pt. I

effects, and what we should worry about as PEG and public

governance interact in the US and around the world. We will use non-

point pollution as our test case, but the essential elements of the

model we develop in this Chapter are important for understanding

all the subject matter areas we will explore in later chapters.

Vocabulary—a Cautionary Note

We begin with a cautionary note on how our choice of words can

be a trap in the environmental law and policy field and can limit our

ability to understand the opportunities and limits of PEG. Word

choice steers our ability to think about all types of problems. The

terms that have developed over the last 50 years to describe

environmental law and policy were developed at a time when

environmental law almost always involved the exercise of public

authority, with the private sector serving as the target of government

environmental regulations, not as the creator and implementer of

standards. As a result, the traditional terms of environmental law

and policy assume that government is the regulator and private

organizations are the regulated community. But these terms can get

in the way of our ability to see new governance options as they

emerge and to develop new solutions to problems in an era in which

the exercise of private authority, not just public authority, is

becoming increasingly common.

The first choice of words is demonstrated by the discussion in

the last paragraph. Note how we begin by talking about

“government” but end by talking about “governance.” That small step

can open the door to the idea that governance—the exercise of

authority by one party over another—can involve the actions of many

different actors, not just government. We use the term governance

throughout this book to leave the door open to the wide range of

actors who are performing the functions of governments, but it is

important to be aware of other vocabulary traps as well.

For instance, a group of environmental advocates may meet to

discuss ways to reduce non-point source water pollution. Using the

language of public governance they may ask “What can government

do?” They may discuss how they can encourage national, state, and

local governments to adopt policies, laws, and regulations directed at

farmers, ranchers, foresters, homebuilders, and other sources of non-

point source water pollution. If they think of themselves as

environmental policy experts, they may start by assembling a list of

the available policy options, but for many people the term “policy”

refers to government policies, and government policies may not be

feasible or effective. Although policy does not necessarily mean

government policy, because many of us equate policy with a

government standard rather than a private sector standard, the term