7th Assignment

LCA and Sabatier

Think up four ways in which government can increase the use of LCAs through external control and setting boundary conditions. Use Sabatier’s framework to assess the potential effectiveness of external control vis-a-vis other options.

This week, our lecture was based on the study of Government and Public Policy, how they can apply not only to government but other forms of organization and how policies are implemented, certainly not an easy job for governments.

Thinking about this week’s assignment, I have come up with four possible ways in which governments may be able to increase the use of LCA as a form of assessing environmental impact.

#1: By direct external control, enforcing a rule in which they make it mandatory for some products on the market, such as food, drinks, shampoos, cleaners and so on to include the global warming potential or other characterization factors of the potential environmental impact of their product on their label, much as they do with nutrition facts or toxicity hazards. Producers  (some of them at least) will be forced by law to perform LCAs of their products in order to be able to calculate the information required by the government and be able to comply with the new law, hens increasing the use of LCA.

#2: Within their environmental agency or as an independent entity, the government may set up a Life Cycle Assesment office, which can have functions such as evaluating the environmental impact of certain products and making their results public for consumers.

 By making this information public, they will not only be already increasing the use of LCA by means of their own office, but may make companies (incredulous or worried about their public image due to negative outcomes) try to challenge their results by performing private assessments or beat them to the punch by performing LCAs for other products not yet evaluated.

Also consumers may see LCA information as a desirable trait in a product and companies may start performing this analysis as means to keep up with consumer demand.

#3: As a way to set boundary conditions, the Government may fund LCA courses and discussion meetings where they invite different firms of the same field. Firms attending these seminars can network, learn about LCA  and its application, get acquainted with the LCA framework and if one or two start implementing LCA, it would be likely that others will follow in search for legitimacy.

#4: Giving subsidy for “lower impact products”, the government would encourage the production of products that have lower environmental impact factors or give some kind of taxation waver incentives to companies that manage to lower their overall environmental impact.

This will most likely increase the use of LCA as a tool to assess the reduction on environmental impact and measuring results to implement this policy. This can also apply for private interest governments, under a threat of penalization for emmitins of certain industry type, they would be forced to apply LCA tools to monitor their environmental impact levels.

Sabatier’s framework of policy implementation analysis, provides us with a way to identify the factors that affect the achievement of statutory objectives (Sabatier, 1980).

Figure1 depicts this framework in a very basic form:

Figure 1.

 For the case of LCA increase, below you’ll find a comparison of Sabatiers framework between external control and other options.

1)     The tractability of the problem:

1.1: External control: most likely would have to gather a lot of data and maybe consult on experts on the matter in order to have a clear understanding of the necessity of the tool, it’s results and how can it be applied, however, no very specific technology is required and most is easily available. Target groups are very diverse and in most cases there is a need for major behavioral change, since most companies are not familiar with the LCA tool and it’s implications, and they can vary from major corporations to small business owner, wich makes the boundaries of LCA totally different and makes the effectiveness of the program harder to monitor because the use of LCA in larger corporations may be more effective and useful than by single individuals or small firms. (We can do the LCA of using a mug instead of plastic cup in our house and decide which to use, but the impacts would be severely smaller that those of major firms using LCA to monitor their emissions).

1.2 Boundary conditions: More tractable problem, still requires the government to know the tool, but not to such a far extent and target groups are diverse, but they can target clusters of similar firms which will make it easy as firms from similar fields interested in adopting LCA would share knowledge in this tool for similar products.

1.3Private Interest Government: Private interest governments would have technical information readily available, target group s not so diverse, meaning most private interest governments are clusters of similar firms and behavioral change may not be as drastic since most firms are accustomed to regulation compliance protocols and most likely already apply LCAs or oher forms of environmental assessment tools.

2)     Ability of Statue to structure implementation:

2.1: External control: Implementing external control as a form to increase the use of LCA has no clear purpose but to increase the use of this tool, and we imagine that a positive environmental impact should come about using this tool, however, this is not explicitly specified as the problem being addressed nor there is a way to probe this will happen. Would need implementers to be strongly commited and it is not likely that setting up a government agency with this projects will be invested enough in it, having other more pressing issues at hand.

2.2: Self organization: By setting boundary conditions, agencies would voluntarily adopt LCA as a tool and most likely will put to use the information available. Their objective to use it will be more clearly defined.

To set up boundary conditions, not a lot of infrastructure and personnel would be required, and once firms catch on the application of LCA, there would be little work to do by the government but periodical checks on the development of this initiative.

2.3: Private interest government: Private firms would have the funds, to implement a wide spread use of LCA. Also have expert and motivated implementers (motivated by threat of external control and interest in their own practice).

3)     Non Statutory Variables Affecting implementation

3.1 External Control: External variables as delay in cooperation or having  other more pressing agenda can interfere with the implementation of this policy.

3.2 Self organization: Lack of external incentive to apply LCA  or not enough motivation may not make it possible to increase the use of LCA. , Different interpretations and boundaries set by different private actors leading to different results can also reduce the credibility of the tool, undermining its use.

3.3 Private Interest government: Lack of commitment of leadership skills from enforcing officials might prevent the widespread use of LCA as a common tool, unwillingness too cooperate.

So, in regards of the above, it could be said that for the increase in use of LCA, self organization and private interest government can provide a more effective option to enforce this policy.

Reference:

Sabatier, P. and Mazmanian, D. (1980), THE IMPLEMENTATION OF PUBLIC POLICY: A FRAMEWORK OF ANALYSIS. Policy Studies Journal, 8: 538–560. doi: 10.1111/j.1541-0072.1980.tb01266.x