Presentation by Eugene Mazur, Environmental Directorate, OECD, at the OECD Conference on Enforcement and Inspections which took place at the OECD Headquarter in Paris on 9 November 2017. Further information is available at http://oe.cd/regpol

1. ENVIRONMENTAL COMPLIANCE
ASSURANCE
KEY TRENDS AND CHALLENGES
Eugene Mazur
Environment Directorate, OECD

2. • How can governments use their limited
human and financial resources to achieve
the greatest environmental gain?
• How can performance of enforcement
authorities be measured?
• Where are the limits of doing more with
less?
Environmental compliance assurance:
The policy challenge

3. • Cross-media integration of permitting and
compliance monitoring
• Growing importance of compliance promotion
• Risk-based targeting of environmental
inspections
• Making enforcement more efficient and
proportional to non-compliance
• Increasing importance of performance
assessment of enforcement authorities
Key global trends: Stronger focus on
effectiveness and efficiency

4. • Reasons:
– Growing number and variety of statutory
requirements
– Diminishing resources of compliance assurance
authorities
– Pressure to reduce the administrative burden on
the regulated community
• Risk factors:
– Environmental hazard: installation’s complexity,
location, pollution releases, potential for
accidents
– Operator performance: compliance rate, EMS
Risk-based targeting of inspections

5. • Formal prioritisation and scoring systems
– UK: Operational Risk Appraisal (Opra)
– Estonia: EasyTools (developed by EU IMPEL)
• Categories of installations and minimum
inspection frequencies for each
– France, Finland: Classification and preset
inspection frequencies
• “Soft” (less formal) prioritisation criteria
– US, Japan, Korea: consideration of major risk
factors in designing inspection plans
Different approaches to risk-based
targeting

6. Estonia: formal targeting

7. Korea: informal targeting
0
1 000
2 000
3 000
4 000
5 000
6 000
0
20 000
40 000
60 000
80 000
100 000
120 000
2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
Totalnumberofviolationsandinspections by localgovernments,2006-14
Inspections Violations (right axis)
Source: Country submission.

8. • More emphasis on performance indicators of
enforcement authorities
– Assessment of progress
– Internal and external accountability
– Programmatic planning and budgeting
• Shift from output-based to intermediate outcome
indicators
– Compliance rates
– Measures of recidivism and duration of non-compliance
– Pollution release indicators for targeted parameters
– Indicators of improved environmental management
practices and reduced risk
• Quantitative data are hardly comparable across
countries
Improving accountability through
performance assessment

9. • Inspected populations not representative,
resulting compliance rates not statistically
valid
• Random inspections (beyond sector-specific
campaigns) not affordable
• Solution: categorisation of non-compliance
– Degrees of environmental harm
– Differentiation of licence conditions
How to measure compliance based on
risk-targeted inspections?

10. Scotland: Qualitative compliance rating

11. England: Compliance scoring

12. • Publications of the environmental
compliance assurance programme (2007-14):
http://www.oecd.org/environment/tools-
evaluation/compliance.htm
• Environmental performance reviews:
http://oe.cd/epr
– Chapter 2: Environmental governance and
management
More information?