| The present system of environmental protection laws, as implemented, has been unable to achieve its goals of protecting and conserving the natural environment, reducing the impact of industrial processes on the environment and changing the behaviour of those responsible for pollution.; Without debating whether reform can cure all of the perceived inadequacies of the system, voluntary compliance is proposed as a valuable supplement to the present environmental protection system. The thesis predicts that voluntary compliance can address the "failures" of the present system, provide equivalent or better environmental protection, and potentially do so more quickly and at less cost than traditional regulation. The hypotheses are tested through an analysis of existing voluntary compliance programs.; A model voluntary compliance program is developed to consolidate the findings from the analysis into a comprehensive policy of voluntary responses for environmental protection. The policy integrates voluntary compliance into the present system and develops a structure for voluntary responses that should, at a minimum, uphold existing environmental standards and establish mechanisms to encourage continual improvement in environmental protection from within the corporate institution itself. These concepts are critical to shifting the emphasis away from pollution prohibition and focusing on pollution prevention and conservation. An important tool to help achieve these goals is voluntary compliance. |
