Disclosure Strategies for Pollution Control

Disclosure strategies, which involve public and/or private attempts to increase the availability of information on pollution, form the basis for what some have called the third wave in pollution control policy (after legal regulation – the first wave – and market-based instruments – the second wave). While these strategies have become common in natural resource settings (forest certification and organic farming, for example), they are less familiar in a pollution control context. Yet the number of applications in that context is now growing in both OECD and developing countries. This survey will review what we know and don’t know about the use of disclosure strategies to control pollution and conclude with the author’s sense of where further research would be particularly helpful.