Nitrate Non-Point Source Pollution and Economic Incentives[Pollution diffuse aux nitrates et incitations économiques]

Despite the fact that up to now France has never used economic incentives to manage nitrate NPS pollution, this article reconsiders the potential of these instruments. The analysis is carried out on the basis of our European neighbours' experience —whenever possible—, or of theoretical advances and lab experiments. In particular, our analysis of several field experiments suggests that devices proposed to farmers must be the most efficient as possible, but also that they must be fair in order to mitigate social acceptability issues. However, the most ambitious devices have high costs of implementation, which can dissuade the regulator to use them. Hence, it becomes important to find means of reducing them. We tackle this question by describing two promising solutions: On the one hand, the introduction of retroactive audits, on the other hand, the use of ambient inspections.