Accountability and Offsetting in Environmental Law Enforcement

Abstract

Since 2010, the Environment Agency has had a range of flexible tools at their disposal to deal with misconduct. One such sanction, enforcement undertaking, is akin to a settlement where the regulator and the offender agree to deal with the breach through a range of promises that may restore and remedy the environmental harm caused by the offence. The majority of these undertakings further require the offender to make donations to charitable environmental causes to improve the environment. However, there is little transparency around the latter promise. Consequently, this article details the findings of a pilot study interrogating the specific implementation of a subset of enforcement undertakings in North East England. The paper argues that a more transparent enforcement process would address some of the accountability problems arising from the findings showing that community benefits operate as an offset mechanism instead of a restorative enforcement mechanism.

Keywords: Environmental law, enforcement, civil sanctions, enforcement undertakings, regulatory enforcement

JEL Classification: K2, K32