Response-Ability of Environmental Controls

A previous work (Swaney, 1987) is extended where Foster's 3 principles of institutional adjustment were applied to environmental policy. Swaney argued that a 4th principle, coevolutionary sustainability, should be added to Foster's principles. Here, it is argued that the environmental policy structure should incorporate both standard fluidity and compliance flexibility. These response needs are addressed while evaluating proposed environmental policy reforms in the context of environment-induced institutional stress and in light of European and US experience. A market for existing private entitlements to environmental services could be instrumental if it were gradually and systematically replaced with a mechanism for social control of the supply of environmental services. This approach provides for the incremental transfer of discretion over the environment from established polluters to society, using pecuniary incentives and the market mechanism to expeditiously pursue instrumental standards of valuation.