week 49 - class exercise

Question: This course features class exercises to each meeting to let students experience the theoretical material from lectures and literature. Develop one class exercise to replace one that you felt was not entirely suitable.

One of the class exercises that I felt not entirely suitable is the debate over Friedman's proposition. Due to the large class size, it is challenging to allow everyone in the two teams to contribute to the debate. With all the different background we have in the class, I think the debate could be organised to allow us to bring out the best from the class members. The 2 judge who commented at the end of the debate is really helpful to wrap up the whole process. In general I think the debate can be more dynamic and more people can be involved in the process.

Preparation

To give the class members more opportunities to be a part of the debate, the debate statement and the rules can be provided to the two teams a week ahead of the debate to allow preparation. The teams can distribute the work by assigning people into subgroups to do research and organize talking points, etc. This can be organised by students. Doing so not only gives the students sense of responsibility to contribute to the debate, it also allows people who are not familiar with the debate rules to look into the debate styles and discuss their strategy. Since there are only limited time to deliver the points and to ask the other team questions, some preparation to simulate the debate would be very helpful.

 

Debate style

Since there are more than 20 people on each team, more people can take part in speaking. A session with more interactions can be saved after the affirmative and negative arguments are delivered. Each team can send 3-4 people to take turns answering or giving questions to the other team to create more dynamics between two teams and allow a more immediate response from another team when a question is raised. 

Wrap up

The judges can give final comments at the end of the debate to bring attention to the main conclusion and observation. Also, in the end, both teams can provide records on paper. People in the class all come from different backgrounds and cultures, sometimes it is not the easiest to come up with ideas immediately if people are not familiar with the oral debate style or exchange. People with social science background tend to have a better idea of how to approach a problem and how to analyze some topics in this course. I come from natural science background and the discussions in the course takes some time for me to take in and put it in my own words. Therefore it would be helpful to have students to summarise the debate and comb through the debate afterwards. It is like the quote from the class on culture, "When I hear, I forget. When I see, I remember. When I do, I understand. "

Week 45 - Increase the use of LCAs: in seek of incentives

In the first part, four external control measures are proposed to increase the use of LCAs in products. In the second part of this blog post, Paul Sabatier's framework is used to assess the potential effectiveness of external control.

Part 1: Four external control measures proposals

LCAs as a tool to gain more knowledge in
environmental impacts of products

1) Mandatory LCAs and information disclosure
External control: The first proposed measure is the most stringent method. It involves rule making by the government. Performing LCAs and documenting the results are required before the company's new products can be put on the market. For the products already on the market, grace period is given to allow the company to perform LCAs while the products are allowed on the market if demonstrating a plan to perform LCAs. Inspections will be done by the government for compliance check. Companies fail to comply with the rules will be fined. Product is banned on the market if LCAs are not performed after the company received 3 warning notices from the inspector. Business operation will be forced to shut down if the products without LCAs remain on the shelf. The results of LCAs will be translated into green ranking and made public to encourage a more sustainable consumption pattern on the market. the information disclosure and the rankings can help drive the competition for sustainable production.

Boundary conditions: To demonstrate an extreme case, the range of the products in this policy measure covers the full spectrum of products. All products sold on the market in the country are subject to prove that LCAs has been done in a report. This include retailers, importers, manufacturers, raw material suppliers, etc. The business entities are responsible for delivering the report while most of the data needs to be obtained from the upstream supply chain members, making all the supply chain members that is involved in any economic activity responsible for their products' environmental impact.

2) Mandatory LCAs and information disclosure - multistage implementation 
External control: Identical to the first proposal, the second proposal requires the companies to perform mandatory LCAs for their products. Companies are required to demonstrate LCAs are performed and the LCAs results are made available for their products.

Boundary conditions: Scope of the policy subject is narrowed down by timeline in this proposed measure. Industrial sectors such as resource extraction and resource processing are prioritised because they have a relatively straightforward product supply chain comparing with products with a complex supply chain, such as cellphone manufacturers. Prioritising the upstream industries could help filling the data gap during LCAs for the further downstream sectors and achieve more sophisticated LCAs results.

Cefic, European Chemical Industry Council, 

an industrial association of chemical 

industry in Europe.

3) Voluntary LCAs, in cooperation with industrial associations
External control: In this proposal the LCAs are voluntary initiatives. The government works with industrial associations such as chemical industrial association to promote using LCAs tool among their members. No obligatory measures are required. Companies are encouraged to share their information among the association members or to the public. The data made public can be used as a reference for future regulatory controls. Comparing with the mandatory LCAs measure, there is less incentives in this measure to motivate industrial association members to adopt voluntary LCAs since such initiative involves human resources and cost. If the companies demonstrate that their products are low in environmental impact, the products are less of environmental concern so they have less possibilities of being subjected to certain rules. Companies have incentives of a more free market given that they prove their products to be low in environmental impacts.

Boundary conditions: Industrial associations chosen to be partners for LCAs promotion are identical to the logic for prioritisation process in proposal 2. The upstream industrial sectors are chosen first to fill in the data gap for the further downstream industrial sectors.

4) Voluntary LCAs with tax break as reward
External control: In the last external control proposal, the government will draft the guidelines and standards of LCAs for companies to adopt while performing LCAs. The companies voluntarily participate in this initiative and meet the requirements will be able to enjoy a tax break for the particular product. Tax break is used as an incentive to stimulate the motivation of companies to invest in the technical capacity and human resources.

Boundary conditions: The boundary condition in this case covers the companies that participate in the voluntary program. Companies that choose to take part in this voluntary LCAs program need to interact with the government.

2. Assessing the effectiveness of external controls

To assess how effective the four external control measures proposals are, Sabatier's framework is used in below. Sabatier's framework is built upon three pillars, 1) tractability of the problem; 2) ability of statute to structure implementation; 3) non-statutory variables affecting implementation. While effective governmental external controls can be seen in many examples, it is truly challenging to design an external control measure that will work in practice, especially when the incentives for the actors are sometimes not easily identified immediately. The four proposed measures are assessed based on the three criteria from Sabatier's framework.


1) Tractability of the problem
For all four proposals, availability for valid technical theory and technology are at a similar level since the LCAs tool is generally considered accessible. Although overall the actors in option 1 and 4 might face more challenges with some data gaps due to the wide coverage of industrial actors. Target actors in proposal 2 and 3 have a relatively less complex supply chain and are expected to encounter less obstacles due to the lack of information. The behaviours of the actors in all four proposals are expected to vary significantly. Since proposal 1 and 2 are obligatory, the interests of the companies are at stake. Stronger response from the industrial actors are expected to be seen.

Diversity of target group behaviour is expected to be higher when the companies are not obligated to perform LCAs. This is because companies have the choice to determine if it is desirable to invest in the resources to perform LCAs. In the first proposal where the scope of the measures cover the widest range, the target groups takes up the biggest proportion of the population. Extent of behavioural change required is larger for the mandatory LCAs measures, companies do not have an option to choose the degree of how compliant they want to be. Companies need to put in more efforts in order to survive on the market. For the voluntary measures, companies can take their time to assess the feasibility of the investment in LCAs or how much effort they want to put in. Therefore the extent of behavioural change is less than the mandatory measures in general.

2) Ability of statute to structure implementation 
Among the four measures, adequate causal theory is best incorporated in the second and the third proposals. The issue of data gap in LCAs could be addressed by targeting the prioritised groups first. Mandatory LCAs can be less unambiguous with requirements and target group while the voluntary measures require less financial resources for implementation because they require less recruitment of human resources and investment to enforce the rules. However, voluntary LCAs with tax breaks also require financial resources to compensate for the reduction of tax revenue.

The integration within and among implementing institutions are considered to work the best for the mandatory measures since the government agencies are more structured and responsibilities distribution is less ambiguous. On the other hand, the structure and interactions between the actors implementing the measures in the voluntary options are considered less formal and more flexible, which might be an advantage that the mandatory proposals do not possess. In order for the results of LCAs to be reviewed and examined by outsiders, it is crucial for the measures to have a mechanism to open up its data and process to professionals or organisations from outside the institution.

Challenges are expected to be encountered in all measures but especially in the third option where the LCAs is voluntary. Information of the processes of the business operation is regarded as confidential for many business entities. For an outsider to have access to these information might cause concern for the companies because it might be considered as a threat to business.

3) Non-statutory variables affecting implementation
To assess how the non-statutory variables affect the implementation of the measures proposals, social economic and technological environment are reviewed. Here the socio-economic environment is considered not favouring the third option since it has less incentives for the industries to gain interests in the voluntary program. Although exceeding the regulatory requirement would help the industry maintain its reputation, the cost associated with the efforts do not guarantee the return of investment and the uncertainty is high. On the other hand, media attention and public support could put pressure on the industries to comply with the policy measures. It is expected that the mandatory measures would receive the most positive results from these pressure since the companies will only considered to be legitimate if they meet the requirements.

All measures share the same level of support from the sovereigns and the constituency groups except for the third measure where the LCAs is voluntary. With the cooperation between the industry and the government, major responsibility will be expected to fall on the industrial association. organisation within the industry is expected to take on the burden. The threshold for accountability of implementing officials the first and second proposals. Therefore the commitment and leadership skills are more demanding for these two proposals.

Conclusion 
Overall speaking, the criteria under Sabatier's framework seem to favor proposal 2. With relatively specific target group and clearer implementation timeline, proposal 2 stands out as the strongest option. The introduction of LCAs into companies are extremely complex in this case since in reality the nature of industries vary from one another significantly. Therefore without setting the scope to cover specific targets, the results of the assessment would be overly generic and would not generate results that are representative enough. Various challenges are foreseeable in the introduction of the LCAs, however, with the specific target group in proposal 2, it is also expected that proposal 2 has the best conditions to resolve emerging problems.

Week 43 - Harvest Game 2.0

Although all of the classmates would have agreed that an ocean with fish resources that can replenish itself is ideal when we played the harvest game. The ocean was not able to replenish itself before the fishing boats exhausting it. The tragedy of the commons took place in a class full of people that are environmentally conscience.

Taiwanese fisherman (my brother) and his catch. 

As Hardin (1968) described in his paper, when all people try to go full speed in maximising his/her interest in a society that upholds the value of freedom of the commons, this freedom eventually take us all to ruin for everyone. To improve this "remorseless working of things" and avoid the eventual exhaustion of common resources, some mechanisms are suggested as below.

Assumptions

Assuming all the conditions of the harvest game remain the same except that the 6 teams are able to communicate with each other. We can distribute the resources with communications. The maximum number for each team to catch remains at 4 in order for the sea to double the fish for next year to have 50 fish. One team might be able to get the extra fish and the total fish next year would still meet 50.

In the previous game, the actors are individual fishing boats which cannot talk to each other. Even if we could calculate the maximum number of 4 fish per boat per year, some boats thought one more fish can't hurt. This overfishing based on individual rationality led to an empty sea after 5 years. When a team exceeds 4 fish per year, a crisis occur and the population of the fish is reduced to a level that is hard to come back. Therefore we need to establish a mechanism to ensure that no fishing boat goes beyond 4 fish every year and the maximum number of fish in total can be caught every year. 

One boat scenario

Of course it is also possible to just let one boat each year taking turns to go out to do all the fishing and comes back with 25 fish to distribute among all other teams. But that way the whole society would depend on that boat to supply all the fish to make a living. In real life this will seem risky since all the resources is only held by one actor and there is nothing to leverage with the boat. 

Six boats scenario

To distribute the risks more evenly to secure fish supply, we should let all the boats go catch their fish. On one hand we want to have the largest number of fish. On the other hand, the fishing boats needs to be checked to ensure that the catch number is below the maximum quota. The surveillance can be done by inspection at the port. The inspection group is formed by one member from each of the six teams to ensure the impartiality during inspection work. The team found to overfish will be punished. The team that failed to respect the 4 fish rule is banned from fishing the next year, allowing the reduced fish population to come back under less stress.

Possible challenges
It is foreseeable that some challenges may emerge. Since there is no way to find out if the boats overfish until the boat is back to the pier, the only way to ensure that the fishing boats stays within the 4 fish limit is to count on the fishermen's compliance. However, if more than one boat violate the rule, or one boat exceeds significantly beyond the limit, the punishment might not even help to recover the population. By then, the damage might have been irreversible. More rules are needed to secure the surveillance mechanism to prevent the violation of the rules while the fish is still in the sea. We need to make the action of overfishing a less rational option. This means that the benefits of staying within the limit needs to outweigh the benefit of catching every extra more fish. Or, put it in another way, to make the disadvantage larger than the advantage of overfishing.

Can human's desire of owning more resources be
restricted when we are reminded of the finite resources?
(Seafood buffet in Queichou, 

an inland province 

in China.)

Internal policing - sense of honour
So how do we make the collective rational choice of not overfishing attractive to the individual boats? We can further break down the actor structure and see the actors as individual members of the fishing boats. The external surveillance will be shifted towards internal surveillance to let all the fishing boat crew members take part in preventing overfishing. The number of fish that the boat aims to catch needs to be agreed among all the crew members. The crew members will be aware of each other's decisions. Therefore when someone on the boat proposes to catch an extra fish, the desire of proposing to overfish would be overcome by the fear of shame and greediness in others' eyes.

Through a combination of establishing 4 fish limit, surveillance, and sanction. The members of the fishing teams are involved in the rule enforcement and their interests are tied with the enforcement of the rules. Therefore the chances of the number of the fish in the sea being overfished could hopefully be lowered through this coordination.