Enviromental Policies and Competitiveness

This paper deals with the question of the shared role government and concerned industries should play with respect to pollution control. It argues that instead of generating ever more costly and complex legislative and regulatory inflation, governments should rather unleash market forces, which create incentives for polluters to invest, on a voluntary basis, in pollution reduction measures that are consonant with the specificity of their activities. An important role for government as an enforcer of private property rights and as a guarantor of an efficient private tort law, is emphasised. Actually in Europe, a sort of collaboration between the legal order and the market order seems to be initiated in the field of environment. Industries increasingly adopt private environment managment, and even financial markets more and more take into account ecological variables. This paper shows that ecological decision-making can turn out to become an essential determinant of competitiveness.