Article - Horizontal supervision in the environmental domain
[ Source: STANTEC, Horizontal supervision in the environmental domain - opinion (stantec.com)]
Summary
Government supervision of the quality and/or safety of the living environment can take several forms. For BRZO companies, vertical government supervision based on coercion currently prevails. But it can also be done differently.
The top-down imposition of rules on behavior and retrospective supervision of rule compliance is called vertical government supervision. In this form of supervision, coercion is dominant and trust is secondary. Next to vertical is horizontal government supervision, in which the factor of trust is dominant. This form of supervision assumes that companies themselves recognize the importance of proactively addressing certain problems by imposing bottom-up rules on themselves.
This article discusses the conditions for successful horizontal supervision.
