Innovating for Better Environmental Results


Book Description

Innovating For Better Environmental Results




Environment and Innovation


Book Description

This book seeks to show the role of sustainability and innovation in the business and productive sector as good strategy to improve performance and contribute to growth and sustainable development through innovative strategies applied to the management process. Different public and private organizations seek to maintain their business and market share, while developing strategies to improve environmental performance through innovation and address new challenges that seek a productive sector responsible on environmental issues. This book offers an analysis of the relationship between sustainability and innovation in production with the aim to offer strategies to improve sustainability performance.




Innovation in Environmental Policy?


Book Description

. . . offering an enjoyable read in comparative politics and policy, it offers a point of reference for understanding the conceptual and empirical possibilities for further research in EPI. Darren McCauley, West European Politics . . . a bank of internationally based case studies written by leading environmental experts. The Environmentalist The organisation of th[is] book is exemplary, particularly for an edited volume. . . [A]n impressive intellectual contribution to the understanding of EPI. . . I strongly recommend it to scholars and students. . . and, crucially, also to politicians and civil servants who have attempted (or half-attempted) the task of remedying the historical neglect of environmental issues. Ian Bailey, Environment and Planning C Good social science may not raise our spirits, but it should improve our policy understanding. Andrew Jordan and Andrea Lenschow have produced a volume that provides a subtle and empirically informed understanding of environmental policy integration, using a design that looks both at the full policy cycle and at cross-national comparisons. From the foreword by Albert Weale FBA, University of Essex, UK Policy coordination is normally studied in hierarchical and institutional terms. This volume demonstrates the power of an idea to function as a framework for coordination. It offers an innovative study of policy coordination, as well as a thorough study of environmental policy. Guy Peters, University of Pittsburgh, US This book deals with a critical challenge facing modern governments: how to integrate environmental thinking into all policy areas. It provides fascinating insights into the progress made in realizing this objective and is a must read for anyone interested in understanding how far we have come, and how far we still have to go, in greening government for sustainable development. James Meadowcroft, Carleton University, Canada This collection brings together leading scholars in the field to explore the origins and applications of different instruments of environmental policy integration from a comparative perspective. This book is a must read for environmental policy practitioners and scholars with an interest in how environmental outcomes can and are being improved. Miranda A. Schreurs, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany Environmental Policy Integration (EPI) is an innovative policy principle designed to deliver sustainable development. This book offers an unrivalled exploration of its conceptualization and implementation, drawing upon a set of interlinked case studies of the most common implementing instruments and the varied experience of applying them in six OECD states and the EU. Written by a team of international experts, it identifies and explains broad patterns and dynamics in what is an important area of contemporary environmental policy analysis. This insightful account of the state-of-the-art aims to offer a valuable resource for academics interested in environmental politics and policy analysis, as well as the broader, interdisciplinary theme of governance for sustainable development . It will interest advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students taking courses in comparative politics, public administration and environmental politics and policy-making. Given the continuing political relevance of sustainability, it should also appeal to NGOs, think tanks and international bodies attempting to coordinate policies across and within different levels of governance.




Environmental Innovation and Firm Performance


Book Description

The links between a firm's competitiveness and the natural environment have been studied since the mid 90's. This volume explores, both theoretically and empirically, the relationships between environmental product innovation, green image and firm performance.




Theory and Practices on Innovating for Sustainable Development


Book Description

This book explains how income growth and better environmental qualities go hand in hand, and reviews the drivers and barriers to sustainable innovation on the basis of real-life cases. It discusses why innovation-based income growth reduces environmental impacts and how the huge global markets for sustainable innovation are currently hampered by protectionist policies. Subsequently, diverse sustainable innovators are presented in ascending order of the complexity of interactions between innovators and stakeholders. In this context, innovating consumers who create communities of peers in solar powered mobility are examined in the first case. It also focuses on regional tacit inventors, who spur innovation in tourism mobility thanks to the informal policies but whose efforts are obstructed by the formalities of the European Union. Artists with an interest in both innovations and the environment develop art services that deliver experiences of environmental qualities. Though these experiences have gone unrecognised so far, they are nonetheless socially beneficial. The book also shows how technology suppliers develop four different patterns of sanitation, each with its own pros and cons for the specific community’s needs and conditions. It discusses how project developers also make innovations in office systems, including socially beneficial ones that do away with the need to commute. It includes an analysis of interactions between consumers pursuing ethical consumption and international trailblazers in corporate responsibility and concludes that it is more rewarding to support social entrepreneurs than to attempt to moralise consumers. Further analysis of interactions between sustainable investors and innovators reveals different groups’ opinions about policies and markets, helping to explains their weak influence on policies. Mushrooming local energy initiatives are now evolving into energy service companies, producing shifts on energy markets. Why these innovators emerge and how certain policies are blocking them are explained. The policies of the United States and European Union are compared with regard to the main barriers to and drivers of, the renewable energy business. Though the US invests more money and takes more risks, it is less cost-effective in terms of the number of enterprises and jobs, thanks to the feed-in tariffs in Europe. Lastly, the book also discusses policies that invest in education, skills, knowledge and know-how exchange, but instead abolish perverse?? subventions of vested interests to?? create conditions for sustainable development.




Industrial Innovation and Environmental Regulation


Book Description

What role should governments play in protecting the environment and controlling the environmental impacts of industry? Do regulations benefit the environment? And how do they affect industrial innovation? Since the early 1970s, regulations have been used to coerce producers of goods and services into internalizing the environmental costs of production. These efforts have often faced opposition on practical and ideological grounds. Beginning in the 1980s, there has been a movement toward liberalization, coupled with the continued failure of the market to protect the environment as a public good. As a result, private and public sector interests have been debating the appropriate role of governments in protecting and improving the environment and controlling the environmental impact of industry. Using case studies from numerous countries, this book examines political and industrial trends and the responses to these challenges. The authors conclude that the complexities of environmental and economic relationships disallow universal solutions, and they stress the need for context-specific perspectives on the role of regulatory measures in environmental innovation.




Environmental Innovation and Ecodesign


Book Description

The end of the post-war economic boom was marked by the recognition of the environmental problem with the oil crises of the 1970s and, in 1972, the first major UN conference devoted to the human environment. Successive international meetings have resulted in a context where technical change, innovation and industry have assumed a central place in the creation of a new model of society. Against this consensus, the author demonstrates from economic analysis and wide-ranging examples that the environmental innovation doctrine and ecodesign methods remain fragile and can lead to paradoxical results.