The Oil & Gas Industry and the Environment
Module 5: Solving Problems: Policy, Regulations & Codes
■ Multilateral Environmental Agreements  > Regulatory Approaches > Voluntary Initiatives
 
Regulatory Approaches  
Which regulatory approach do you think is most effective?
 
On the OEF Website a series of national profiles demonstrate the variety of mechanisms- regulatory, co-regulatory and voluntary, in place between industry and governments.
■ Abu Dhabi
 ■ Australia
 ■ Malaysia
 ■ Norway
■ United Kingdom
 ■ United States of America

More Information >>
 ■ OEF Introduction to Environmental
   Regulatory Frameworks
 ■ Smart Regulation: Designing
   Environmental Policy (Neil
   Gunningham and Peter Gabosky,
   1998).
 ■ Leaders and Laggards (Neil
   Gunningham and Darren Sinclair,
   2002).
There are primarily two approaches to regulating the environmental performance of industry:
  • the ‘prescriptive’ approach
  • the ‘performance based’ approach.

The prescriptive or ‘command and control’ approach is based on specific requirements made by government, to be met by operators. Technical prescriptions make it clear what is required and give the regulations legal certainty. This makes it relatively easy for government to determine, via an inspection procedure, whether an operator is meeting the requirements.

Performance based approaches place a greater emphasis on setting an objective or goal to be reached by industry.  Self regulation, an example of a performance based approach, is an agreement made between the operator and government with specified environmental standards. It is the responsibility of operators to define strategies on how they will achieve these standards and provide evidence to assure they are complying with the agreement.