In developing countries, weak environmental regulatory institutions often undermine conventional command-and-control policies. As a result, these countries are increasingly experimenting with alternative approaches that aim to leverage nonregulatory “green” pressures applied by local communities, capital markets, and consumers. This article reviews three strands of the empirical literature on this trend.

The aim of this working paper is to investigate the optimal regulatory routes from a competition and public interest point of view for the South African water industry.

This paper analyzes unintended impacts of the interaction of multiple environmental policy instruments, specifically, the effects of tradable permits and seasonal direct regulations on adoption rates of advanced abatement technologies.

When environmental emergencies are exogenous, mixing direct regulations with tradable permits induces an inefficient rate of adoption, while tradable permits maximize social welfare. If endogenous, then tradable permits and emissions standards could eventually offer a higher level of social welfare.

Following the 1998 National Forest Policy and Forest Act of 2002, participatory forest management (PFM) is being introduced in Tanzania. PFM has two key objectives: to reduce forest degradation thereby increasing ecosystem services, and to improve the livelihoods of local villagers.

A unique data set collected in 2006 suggests that significant challenges remain with respect to communicating the new forest policies if the objectives of PFM are to be achieved.

Santiago was one of the first cities outside the OECD to implement a tradable permit program to control air pollution. This paper looks closely at the program’s performance over the past 10 years, stressing its similarities and discrepancies with trading programs in developed countries, and analyzing how it has reacted to regulatory adjustments and market shocks. Studying Santiago’s experience allows us to discuss the drawbacks and advantages of applying tradable permits in less developed countries.

The author analyzes the role of environmental policies and energy cost savings in the switch to natural gas by stationary sources in Chile. There is skepticism about using market-based policies (economic instruments) in the developing world—permit trading programs versus emissions fees. This paper produces new evidence of the role of environmental regulations and market forces in a successful air-quality improvement program in Chile, a less-developed country.

The author looks at the effects of the choice between taxes and permits on the pattern of adoption of a new emissions abatement technology. The regulator determines the optimal ex-post amount of emissions before firms start to adopt the technology. Each firm decides when to adopt, considering benefits, costs, and advantage gained over their rivals, producing a sequence of adoption that is “diffused” into the industry over time.

This paper evaluates the impact of credit availability on communal and commercial sector maize output in Zimbabwe. This is important given the increased use of concessionary credit for agriculture as a policy strategy to increase agricultural output and food security, in response to the disruption caused by controversial land reform.

This paper uses relatively recent time series techniques on data spanning over different pricing regimes to estimate the aggregate agricultural supply response to price and non-price factors in Zimbabwe. The ARDL approach to cointegration employed here gives consistent estimates of supply response in the presence of regressor endogeneity and also permits the estimation of distinct estimates of both long-run and short-run elasticities when variables are not integrated of the same order.

The authors estimated the deforestation impact of Costa Rica’s pioneering environmental services payments program (Pagos por Servicios Ambientales, or PSA) between 2000 and 2005. Despite finding that less than 1 in 100 of enrolled land parcels would have been deforested annually without payments, the program’s potential for impact was increased by explicitly targeting areas with deforestation pressure and increasing some payments to enroll land that would have been cleared.