Introduction
There exist a lot of definitions for the word ‘environment’. The most popular definitions are those from the National Environmental Management Act (NEMA) and Environmental Conservation Act (ECA).
According to Nel & Kotzé (2009:4) the Environmental Conservation Act 73 of 1989 was the first act that implemented the generic fundamentals and definitions related to the environmental law, governance and management in South Africa. The ECA defines ‘environment’ as “the aggregate of surrounding objects, conditions and influences that influence the life and habitats of man or any other organism or collection of organisms”. Nel & Kotzé (2009:4) further states that an environmental policy was issued in relation to the section 2(1) of
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Instruments must be selected that cover the PDCA phases of this Deming cycle and as previously said not one instrument will perform equally well through the PDCA phases (Nel & Wessels, 2010).
1. Command and control based approaches
Hahn & Stavins (1992:3) states that policy instruments are frequently divided into two broad categories in helping to achieve environmental objectives: Command and control approaches and market-based approaches. According to the National Centre for Environmental Economics (NCEE) (2015) there are two basic types of command and control approaches. Firstly, a technical standard that dictates production procedures in which polluters must meet a certain standard of emissions. Secondly, a performance-based standard, where polluters can choose which method they want to use to meet an emission standard.
1.1 Strengths and weaknesses of command and
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Experts might ignore their goals and focus more on the specific resources to achieve these goals (Hahn & Stavins, 1992:4). According to the NCEE (2015) market-based instruments can be unfitting to deal with environmental issues. Hahn & Stavins (1992:4) claims that economists prefer market-based approaches over command and control because market-based instruments provide achievements of a desired level of environmental quality in a more cost-effective way.
Hahn & Stavins (1992:7) states that the impact of discrepancy monitoring and enforcement capabilities on efficiency has not been given the right amount of attention. They use an example of greenhouse gas emissions where if there is an international agreement that limit these emissions but countries might have different needs and capabilities to monitor and implement this agreement.
Stavins (1998:74) claims that bureaucrats prefer command and control approaches above market-based instruments because they were familiar with the former. Market-based approaches require different levels of technical expertise than command and control based instruments. Market-based methods can shift the decision-making from the bureaucracy to the private sector and this might indicate a scale down role for the organization (Stavins,