Protecting Environment via Civil Regulating of Firms Behaviour Dissertation

Protecting Environment via Civil Regulating of Firms Behaviour - Dissertation Example This essay discusses that there are essentially three actors in environmental regulation: governments, businesses and civil society. The three actors in environmental regulation do not function separate and apart from one another as the three interact to formulate regulatory and enforcement frameworks for environmental protection. The role of civil society can be direct in terms of putting pressure on business firms to adopt environmental friendly policies or by putting pressure on governments to implement and enforce tighter environmental protection policies. Civil society has been receiving increasing attention as governments have been losing authority and resources. Civil society has been viewed as either a suitable replacement for directly regulating environmental practices by governments or a complement to state regulation of firm’s behaviour relative to the environment. This paper examines the feasibility of replacing states’ regulation of environmental behaviour by firms with civil society forms of regulation. This paper is therefore divided into three parts. The first part of this paper identifies and analyses the concerns relative the environment as a result of the behaviour of businesses. The second part of the paper analyses traditional approaches to environmental protection and thus the regulating of businesses’ environmental behaviour. The third and final part of this study analyses arguments for civil society’s involvement in the regulation of the environmental behaviour of business organizations.... role of civil society can be direct in terms of putting pressure on business firms to adopt environmental friendly policies or by putting pressure on governments to implement and enforce tighter environmental protection policies.5 Civil society has been receiving increasing attention as governments have been losing authority and resources. Civil society has been viewed as either a suitable replacement for directly regulating environmental practices by governments or a complement to state regulation of firm’s behaviour relative to the environment.6 This paper examines the feasibility of replacing states’ regulation of environmental behaviour by firms with civil society forms of regulation. This paper is therefore divided into three parts. The first part of this paper identifies and analyses the concerns relative the environment as a result of the behaviour of businesses. The second part of the paper analyses traditional approaches to environmental protection and thus the regulating of businesses’ environmental behaviour. The third and final part of this study analyses arguments for civil society’s involvement in the regulation of the environmental behaviour of business organizations. The Environment and Firms’ Behaviour By the 1980s, â€Å"social anxieties† associated with the environment, including the creation of nuclear power, advances in medicine, biology and chemicals intensified.7 Invariably, any factor connected with compromising the environment is related to nature and as such fits into Beck’s theory of risk society which takes the position that the risk society begins where nature is in danger of ending. 8 To this end, the risk society provides a conceptual framework for examining what mankind has done to nature rather than inquiring as to what