Research On The Institutional Arrangement Of Voluntary Envirental Agreements

As a kind of environmental policy instrument, Voluntary environmental agreements (VEAs) have been applied in almost all developed countries from 1960s and were finally introduced to China in the early years of 21st century by means of a series of pilot projects in several provinces and cities. This paper is devoted to the research on the institutional arrangement of VEAs from the perspective of law and totally consists of 4 chapters. During the 4 Chapters the following 4 issues will be discussed in order, include: the legal concept of VEAs, the validity of VEAs, The applicability of VEAs in China and preliminary institutional design for VEAs'universal practices in China in coming years.Chapterâ… VEA can be defined as a contract between governmental authority and specific enterprise or business sector for determining quantified objective(s) related to environment or natural resources protection which may not be provided by valid laws or administrative rules contemporarily, as well as the two parties'rights and obligations in relation during their joint operation to make sure that such environmental improvement action brought out by themselves can be well implemented. These contracts can be classified as public voluntary programs, negotiated agreements and unilateral commitments. Seeing that VEAs appear to form legal relations governed by administrative law between a public and a private counterparts, both of the parties'contractual performances have the appearances of public policies, even the agreements themselves involve special rules or clauses that make them definitely distinct from civil compacts, VEAs ought to be accepted in the scope of administrative contract, and thus subject to the adjustment and normalization of public laws.Chapterâ…¡VEAs get their opportunities to be used to elevate the levels of enterprises'environmental performances only by obtaining permissibility as a method for executing public governance and maintaining legitimacy in regard to their contents: The former is based on such a fact that addressing"market failure", as the purposes of public administration, can never be realized only by strictly abide by ready-made laws. While the flexible use of administrative powers, public bodies and policies, on the contrary, is much more likely to achieve the high efficiency of social resources allocation. The latter, however, can be accomplished just by following 3 principles, namely"the supremacy of law","public order and good custom"and"genuine intention expressions".Chapterâ…¢The uneven distribution of"ability to pay for environmental quality"within industry and commerce certainly make laws and administrative rules featured by strictly compliance no longer meet the needs of China's environmental regulation practices. Thus, we should give serious attention to the unique qualities of VEAs as they can establish"dress to figure"regulations and mine potentials relevant to environment and natural resources protection affairs among different enterprises or business sectors. Functions of these agreements, such as enhancing national environmental performance, reducing administrative costs as well as being a replacement for legislative regulations, should be brought into full play during environmental governance processes in our country.Chapterâ…£This chapter presents a blueprint of VEAs'specific institutional design for indicating that only by founding, following and fulfilling the contractual relations, administrative procedures and supporting measures suggested in details could these agreements be brought into mass applications in China. Environmental goals of operation of VEAs for purposes of public interests lead to the contractual arrangements beneficial for contracting public authorities to a certain extent. As a result, the powers of governmental bodies gain their superiority in comparison with those rights grasped by private counterparts. In order to prevent discrimination against business entities or collusion between public and private parties, contractual procedures as negotiation, 3rd party participation and information disclosure must be properly adopted. Moreover, it is also necessary to construct national and regional environmental policy targets reference frame, official-certificated 3rd organizations resources as well as a"double-track"dispute settlement mechanism so that excellent operation of VEAs could be guaranteed.