The purpose of this document is to survey the present and map out a potential future for sector-based environmental protection, with particular attention to implementation -- to making sector-based programs work in the real world. The experiences and the suggestions of state and local government partners in environmental programs, the co-implementers, have provided the raw material.
We follow a roadmapping format, developed under the NCMS Environmental Roadmapping Initiative (ERI), with successive sections that outline the present situation, lay out potential future programs, discuss strategies for moving forward, and consider likely obstacles and how to surmount them.
To understand the strengths and limitations of the sector approach, we provide an Introduction that discusses the sector approach in the context of several other approaches to environmental protection. Approaches to classifying environmental protection tasks fall into two general categories: those based on the environmental resource being impacted, and those that address the sources of the impact. The media-based approach, with separate regulation of air, water, solid waste, falls in the first category. The sector approach plays the same pivotal role in the second category that the media-based approach plays in the first category -- it forms the overarching division. Other approaches represent finer-grained subdivisions: facility-based, process-based, and material-based regulation represent successively finer divisions of environmental impact source categories, just as regional, state, local, and community-based regulation represent finer divisions of environmental resources.
In Section 1, we survey the current state of the sectors approach in relation to their implementation at the state and local level. Not surprisingly, it is the larger municipalities, and the more heavily industrialized smaller municipalities, -- localities where there are concentrations of companies in specific sectors -- that tend to have the most active sector-based programs. We consider which types of regulatory activities are most amenable to a sector approach, and find that co-implementers see a natural fit between the sector approach and compliance assistance. The rule-making process can also benefit when input is solicited on a sector-by-sector basis. Sector programs can be particularly helpful when new regulations are to be applied, particularly for sectors which will be more closely regulated when the new rules take effect. The support and participation of trade organizations is often very helpful for the effectiveness of sector-based programs.
Building on this experience, Section 2 lays out a variety of proposals for future sector-based programs involving co-implementers as key players, and offering specific benefits for state and local environmental agendas. The possibilities include:
To accomplish this ambitious agenda, Section 3 develops a strategy based on the creation of deliverables from sector-based programs which will stimulate further participation of both industry and co-implementers in subsequent programs. Documentation of economic incentives for industry (such as cost savings resulting from pollution prevention programs) is an obvious example, and the sector approach is well suited to programs that include gathering the necessary information. A less obvious, but even more compelling opportunity is the potential for sector-based programs to contribute to a cost-benefit framework for measuring the success of environmental programs.
The sector approach cannot develop in a vacuum, but must co-exist with other approaches, some of which have an impressive track record of environmental accomplishment to their credit. In Section 4, we consider in particular the command-and-control approach to rule-making (a military metaphor) and the enforcement approach to implementing the rules (more akin to civilian policing), and discuss how the sector approach best fits in with these other, well-established methodologies. The inconsistency between the sector approach and these venerable systems lies not so much in the defining characteristic of the sector approach (dividing industry into sectors) as in the collaborative character of many sector programs. Command-and-control is in essence hierarchical, and enforcement is essentially adversarial, neither of which fit well in a collaborative framework. According to the point of view suggested throughout this document, the environmental mission has been evolving from the need to deal with specific, acute problems in an atmosphere of conflicting interests, to the desire to make the best use of existing resources for ongoing, across-the-board environmental performance improvement in an atmosphere of general agreement on the goals, if not the means. Our proposal recognizes that this evolutionary process is not uniform, and that some sectors have moved further than others along this path. But we argue that the trend merits encouragement. Collaboration is the best way to stimulate the technical and managerial expertise that is ultimately the real road to environmental performance improvement.