Policy Instrument Choice and Diffuse Source Pollution

1. Policy Instrument Choice and Diffuse Source Pollution Neil Gunningham, Professor, School of Resources, Environment and Society, ANU

2. Non-Point Source Pollution from agriculture: policy challenges • Many different contributors to NPSP, spread over a large geographical area • ‘on the ground’ inspection largely impractical • NPSP very difficult to measure and track to its source • Impact of agricultural practices varies greatly between properties and areas • Agricultural enterprises limited awareness, knowledge, resources, and resistant to regulation

3. Key Issues • What to target? -inputs or practices known to lead to pollution -emission proxies etc -ambient pollution • Who to target? • the impacter • drain managers • others

4. In broad terms • Impact of State legislation and local government on NPSP very limited because these powers either -prospective in nature -establish a pollution threshold too high to capture diffuse sources -provide inadequate regulatory or enforcement powers

5. The result • Current policy focuses on strategic policy development and associated education programs • Eg Swan-Canning Cleanup program • Riverplan • Local community bodies • All underpinned by variety of education and information programs eg Heavenly Hectares

6. Past Policy • Heavy reliance on information and education • Heavy reliance on voluntarism

7. Eg The Swan-Canning • on-ground works by community and catchment groups, • public education, • ongoing research and monitoring and • a number of scientific and engineering projects “ At no point in the Swan Action Plan is there any indication that non-point sources are likely to be regulated or licensed, with most effort being aimed at education and information provision and cost-sharing assistance for voluntary on-ground works” (Gordon)

8. Why does exhortation fail? • Gap between public and private interest is large • Limits of appeal to ‘do the right thing’ • Perceptions that its ‘someone else who is causing it’ • ‘Its hard to be green while you’re in the red’ • Perceptions that ‘others are getting away with it”

9. 20 percent of the population will comply with any regulation, 5 percent will attempt to evade it, and the remaining 75 percent will go along with it as long as the 5 percent were caught and punished

10. Where next?Preliminary Steps • Identifying causes (eg reducing risk from fertilisers, changing land uses, buffer zones, replanting, perennial crops) • Establishing targets -individual management targets (X% with buffers) -management practice targets (Y% with environmental farm plans) -catchment/sub-catchment targets • Assessment criteria: efficiency, effectiveness, equity, political acceptability

11. Key questions: What compliance mechanism(s) to invoke • Voluntarism, education and information • Positive incentives • Negative incentives • Mandatory controls/regulation

12. What type of standards to employ? • Performance standards • Specification/technology standards • Process (management-based) standards

13. Where to target? • Farm Management Practices • Landscape Changes • Land Use Patterns

14. Farm Management Practices • Process Standards- eg environmental farm plans, BMPs, EMS, Codes of Practice • Environmental farm plans include farm description, issue assessment, design of works program or action plan, etc • Fertiliser management plan: level of application, when to apply, where to apply.

15. How to achieve compliance? • Voluntarism? • Positive incentives – subsidies/ rate rebate • Negative incentive – cross compliance, BMP incentive charges. • Mandatory regulation- eg Netherlands and Nutrient sensitive areas • The role of check-lists and self-audit • How do the above rate in terms of evaluation criteria?

16. Business inputs • Taxes on fertiliser or pesticide use • Mandatory quotas or bans

17. Landscape Changes • Landscape changes include fencing, buffer strips, re-vegetation, riparian zones a, contour landscaping, soil modification etc • Specification standards easy to monitor and enforce

18. Which compliance mechanism • Voluntarism? • Positive incentives- financial subsidy, NHT cost sharing programs, or auctioned grants • Mandatory changes (eg buffer zones) • How to the above rank in terms of evaluation criteria?

19. Land Use Patterns • shaping the location and type of farm activities that take place across an entire catchment/sub-catchment • Planning Law -enables coordinated approach and common standards: state, local, regional -eg state or regional plans, local zoning requirements but confined to prospective activities Assessment in terms of policy criteria?

20. Subsidies, Mandatory Controls and Compensation • Subsidies targeted at farmers in pollution hot spots to adopt different land management practices • Mandatory controls- cf native veg (again limited to hot spots) • Compulsory purchase? • Assessment in terms of policy criteria

21. A phased approach? • Dangers of a smorgasbord approach and of single instrument approaches • Build in responsiveness and principles of adaptive management • Place different weight on different policy criteria depending upon external circumstances

22. A phased approach? • The need for trade offs: effectiveness, efficiency, equity and political acceptability • Phase 1: positive incentives (process standards, landscape changes) and planning controls • Phase 2: negative incentives and regulation - environmental general duty to the land, • enforced through mandatory self-auditing and random third party audits); • mandatory specification standards (eg buffer zones); • levy or sliding charge re adoption of env farm plan