Performance measurement in environmental management at the local level: an experiment and proposal with reference to Switzerland

Bernard Dafflon and Sandra Daguet ()
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Sandra Daguet: Department of Economics, Postal: Office PER-F512, Bd. De Pérolles 90, 1700 FRIBOURG, Switzerland, http://www.unifr.ch/finpub/en

No 425, FSES Working Papers from Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Freiburg/Fribourg Switzerland

Abstract: This paper deals with the management of three environmental policies at the local level: clean water distribution, sewage and wastewater treatment and household solid waste collection and treatment. The argument is that applying the benefit principle for financing these services will enhance allocative efficiency, budget and environmental accountability, and contribute to induce environmental friendly attitude. The paper is organised in two parts. Because there is no fundamental seminal theory in environmental management, Part One summarizes the analytical foundations in combining three disciplines: political economy, law and environmental accounting. The original contribution of the paper is to mix them in a coherent process which also corresponds to the Directives 2000/60 and 2008/98 of the European Parliament in the fields of water policy and solid waste. Part Two develops a possible technique for defining and measuring the performance in order to assess the feasibility of our proposal. The data cover the 168 communes of the Canton Fribourg for the 1996-2009 period. The tested hypothesis is that the cost coverage ratio is an accurate measure of performance in the management of the selected environmental functions. But for accuracy - thus for improvement in policy implementation and practices - the test requires an in-depth command of the real situations because available data need to be treated before measurement. With the proposed procedure, the results verify efficiency in production, full information and no strategic behaviour from economic agents and politicians, and managerial accountability.

Keywords: benefit principle of taxation; environmental accounting; environmental legislation; environmental policy; environmental taxation; polluter-pays principle; user charges; user-pays principle; performance analysis in environmental management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H23 Q53 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2012-04-26
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff, nep-env and nep-res
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