Environmental regulatory tools in OECD and EaP countries

This chapter looks at developments in environmental regulatory tools and how different approaches can more effectively support compliance. It begins with an exploration of changing trends in many OECD countries around simplifying environmental regulatory requirements for SMEs. These countries are doing so by replacing bespoke environmental permitting with standardised requirements (e.g. general binding rules) for specific activities with low environmental risk, provided that they involve a large number of operators and employ similar technologies. The chapter also looks at reducing the administrative burden on SMEs through collaboration between environmental and non-environmental regulators on identifying opportunities to reduce duplication in paperwork and conduct joint or delegated inspections in selected sectors. The increased effectiveness of a sectorbased approach is also explored in the chapter, as part of a broader customer service perspective on the relationship between environmental regulators and SMEs.