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This book presents important new research on applied eco-efficiency concepts throughout Europe. The aim of eco-efficiency is to achieve market-based measures of environmental protection, in order to enhance the prospects for sustainable development and achieve positive economic and ecological benefits. The distinguished authors discuss a number of themes surrounding eco-efficiency including the necessary conditions for technological dissemination and ecological modernization, and the role of government in enabling businesses and society to participate actively in this process. In particular, they highlight the application of existing European-based policies concerning material flows and energy. The authors also investigate some new concepts of sustainable development and provide a useful introduction to material flows analysis. In further chapters they study the emerging regulatory policies for eco-efficiency, and examine the issues of sustainable business and consumption strategies.
The paper explores a framework for analysing governance towards sustainable development. Departing from the thesis about a possible positive role for corporate action, it refers to recent theorizing about both market and government failures. Discussing externalities, public goods, information and adaptation deficits, as well as bureaucracies' self-interest, corruption and capture of the regulator, the paper stresses the importance of governance aiming at synergies between corporate and political governance. Concerning framework conditions, it outlines principles of regulated self-regulation. Following the thesis about a positive role, the paper adds recent insights about theories of the knowledge-based firm, which help to analyse market evolution. In this context, it outlines the concept of "responsible corporate governance". Because governance involves actors in their daily operations and certainly goes beyond setting a frame, the paper finally discusses innovation-inducing regulation, serving complementary functions to a framework and business operations. The conclusion is drawn that governments' main function is to facilitate learning processes, thus departing from states' function as known from welfare economics. Thus, governance will have to be explored as collective learning, involving business, governments, and civil societies’ actors.
The paper sketches out a theoretical framework for analysing the interplay between eco-efficiency, cognition and institutions. It derives from analytical shortfalls of the prevailing literature, which features strongly engineering and business economics, by using insights from New Institutional Economics, from Cognitive Science and, partly, from Evolutionary Economics. It emphasises the role cognition and institutions play in the adoption of "green" technologies by firms. A cognitive perspective derives from recent research on simple heuristics and context-based rationality; it is proposed that those findings can serve to analyse decision-making of individual actors respectively firms and, thus, should complement economic analysis. A second proposition is that eco-efficiency and normative rules such as a Factor Four strongly rely upon institutions, i.e. the ability of institutions to evolve over time and the development of those institutions that are most appropriate to enhance technological change. In this regard, business institutions and competition are crucial, but regulatory needs remain in order to safeguard continuity of knowledge creation. The framework allows for an analysis why overall adoption of eco-efficiency still can be considered relatively slow and why some markets and firms are far ahead. As a brief case study the article reflects upon German waste law's ability to enhance eco-efficiency.