Ecology Law Quarterly 

About: Ecology Law Quarterly is an academic journal. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Environmental law & Agency (sociology). It has an ISSN identifier of 0046-1121. Over the lifetime, 785 publications have been published receiving 6793 citations. The journal is also known as: ELQ.

Marketable Permits: Lessons for Theory and Practice

Abstract: One of the central tenets of industrial organization theory is that the allocation and definition of property rights can have important implications for market performance. When ownership is not attached to a particular individual, but rather to a group of unrelated users, the problem of the \"commons\" arises; users of a common resource do not fully internalize the costs of resource depletion. The result is that a resource is \"overused\" relative to what might have occurred with individual private ownership or even public ownership.' Many environmental problems have been analyzed using the framework suggested by the commons problem. The basic insight from this work is that environmental protection systems could be designed more efficiently if the government were willing to define a system of tradable property rights. 2 Until recently, however, governments did not heed this insight. Instead, they chose to regulate environmental problems by imposing fixed emissions limits on individual sources-the so-called command-and-control approach.3 In many cases, regulatory authorities issued standards effectively specifying the actual technology that was required to achieve compliance.4 This approach has been criticized by economists and lawyers as being unnecessarily wasteful. Only in rare instances will authorities possess the information to identify standards

Incentive-Based Environmental Regulation: A New Era from an Old Idea

Abstract: During the twenty years since Earth Day in 1970, a host of environmental laws and regulations have been enacted, and substantial gains have been made in environmental protection. The United States and the world at large, however, continue to face major environmental threats both ongoing problems, such as urban smog, groundwater pollution, and acid rain, and newly recognized problems, including the threat of global climate change. As the decade of the 1990's begins, political leaders are giving increased attention to a promising set of new policies that recognize the potential role of market forces in achieving sustained environmental progress. Over the past several years, the nature and tone of the political debate has evolved rapidly, culminating with President Bush's proposal in June 1989 which called for a major overhaul of the Clean Air Act (CAA) l and Congress' subsequent passage of amendments to the Act. 2 A central feature of the administration's proposal was the introduction of a market-oriented approach for controlling acid rain and motor vehicle

Linking Tradable Permit Systems: A Key Element of Emerging International Climate Policy Architecture

Abstract: This Article analyzes the role that linkage between emission trading systems could play in a future international climate policy architecture. Cap-and-trade systems, regional, national, and international in scope, are emerging as a preferred instrument for addressing global climate change throughout the industrialized world, and the Clean Development Mechanism— an emission-reduction-credit system—has also developed a significant constituency. Because links between tradable permit systems can reduce