This book is a remarkable case study of an environmental policy initiative for a national environmental regulatory system in the information age. In 1995 the Indonesian Ministry of Environment took the bold step to launch an environmental disclosure initiative called the Program for Pollution Control, Evaluation and Rating (PROPER). Under PROPER, environmental performance of companies is mapped into a five-color grading scale - Gold for excellent, Green for very good, Blue for good, Red for non-compliance, and Black for causing environmental damage. These ratings are then publicly disclosed through a formal press conference and posted on the internet. Not only did this simple rating scheme create a major media buzz and enhanced environmental awareness of the general public, but it also unleashed a wide range of performance incentives that showed how markets with environmental information could function in a developing country setting. The authors provide a multidisciplinary analysis of how the PROPER program harnessed the power of public disclosure to abate the problem of industrial pollution. They describe how the program has successfully improved the average environmental compliance rate from close to thrity per cent in 1995 to as high as seventy per cent in 2011. This improvement was driven primarily by information disclosure, which avoided expensive and unpredictable legal enforcement through the court system of Indonesia. The combination of institutional history and detailed economic and analyses sheds light on the role of policy entrepreneurs who laid the foundation for disclosure and transparency, despite the constraints of the Suharto regime. The PROPER program is now internationally recognized and continues to serve as a model for many developing countries.

This book is a remarkable case study of an environmental policy initiative for a national environmental regulatory system in the information age. In 1995 the Indonesian Ministry of Environment took the bold step to launch an environmental disclosure initiative called the Program for Pollution Control, Evaluation and Rating (PROPER). Under PROPER, environmental performance of companies is mapped into a five-color grading scale – Gold for excellent, Green for very good, Blue for good, Red for non-compliance, and Black for causing environmental damage. These ratings are then publicly disclosed through a formal press conference and posted on the internet. Not only did this simple rating scheme create a major media buzz and enhanced environmental awareness of the general public, but it also unleashed a wide range of performance incentives that showed how markets with environmental information could function in a developing country setting. The authors provide a multidisciplinary analysis of how the PROPER program harnessed the power of public disclosure to abate the problem of industrial pollution. They describe how the program has successfully improved the average environmental compliance rate from close to thrity per cent in 1995 to as high as seventy per cent in 2011. This improvement was driven primarily by information disclosure, which avoided expensive and unpredictable legal enforcement through the court system of Indonesia. The combination of institutional history and detailed economic and analyses sheds light on the role of policy entrepreneurs who laid the foundation for disclosure and transparency, despite the constraints of the Suharto regime. The PROPER program is now internationally recognized and continues to serve as a model for many developing countries.

Governments around the world are beginning to embrace a new form of environmental regulation - mandatory disclosure of information. While information disclosure programs appear to have an impact on subsequent firm behavior - often resulting in lower levels of pollution - little is known about the costs and benefits of these programs and whether or not they enhance social welfare. This paper presents a simple bargaining model where mandatory information disclosure is used to overcome a lack of information on the part of the public. We characterize the conditions under which information disclosure will lead to a reduction in emissions, and ultimately, the conditions under which it will enhance social welfare. Several extensions of the model are briefly explored, including the effect of two sources of pollution - only one of which is subject to information disclosure.

The substantial growth of voluntary formal corporate environmental reporting presents an opportunity to significantly expand informational regulation as a tool of American environmental protection policy. The goal of this Article is to encourage policymakers to leverage this voluntary trend for public policy purposes, ultimately leading to development of a comprehensive system of mandatory reporting of environmental performance information. Importantly, however, such an objective is not offered as a panacea for infirmities inherent in traditional environmental regulation. Indeed, extant scholarship reflects that disclosure strategies are imperfect substitutes for direct legal controls on environmental conduct. Nonetheless, concerning the search for viable alternatives to traditional regulatory choices, such scholarship also reflects the substantial promise of information disclosure as a supplement to the existing regulatory system. Indeed, as part of a reflexive law strategy, a primary objective of information disclosure is to encourage "self-regulatory" behavior to complement existing direct control systems and attendant enforcement regimes. Accordingly, use of corporate environmental reporting as an informational regulatory approach should stand alongside of, rather than in substitute for, command-and-control regulation. Section I of this Article examines the still evolving trend toward voluntary disclosure of environmental performance information in formal corporate environmental reports. This discussion pays particular attention to the most important recent development in the evolution of voluntary formal corporate environmental reporting - the Global Reporting Initiative. Section II examines two existing examples - the European Union's Eco-Management and Audit Scheme ("EMAS") regulation and environmental disclosure under United States securities laws - of governmental policy instruments requiring disclosure of environmental performance information. Section III utilizes a law and economics framework to evaluate the viability of utilizing the existing voluntary formal corporate environmental reporting regime to establish a comprehensive strategy of environmental informational regulation. Following analysis of formal corporate environmental reporting through consideration of economic and legal perspectives on environmental informational regulation, the Article concludes with a brief discussion of the intrinsic worth of a mandatory regulatory approach as opposed to mere governmental support for a voluntary reporting regime.

It is the publicity about the Pollutant Release Inventory’s data which creates an incentive for firms to achieve emission reductions. Accordingly, public access to environmental information constitutes a core characteristic of the aforementioned inventory. Here, in essence, two facets arise. First, with regard to the collection, it is disputed whether such information, which may comprise confidential commercial and industrial information in the EU as well as trade secrets in the US, can be protected under fundamental and constitutional property rights respectively. Second, in the context of dissemination and utilisation, it is arguable whether the information indeed impacts polluters and produces an outcome that secures a certain level of environmental protection. The author responds to the first issue by taking the EU and US jurisdictions into account and strives to analyse how this novel form of Internet disclosure liberates market mechanisms in the quest for effective and efficient emission reductions.