Securing High Levels of Business Compliance with Environmental Laws: What Works and What to Avoid

Abstract This regulatory reflection considers an elusive question: how to secure high levels of business compliance with environmental laws? It examines, at a time of great uncertainty and challenge for environmental law and policy, what forms of regulatory intervention appear to have worked and some that have clearly failed with a view to drawing lessons. Some fresh evidence is presented on specific environmental interventions which the Environment Agency for England has found appear to work and on some which do not appear to work. It is suggested that despite its many shortcomings well-designed and enforced environmental regulation when aligned to the market delivers huge benefits to society.