This is a 750-word exam piece on the comparison of two information disclosure programme. They were analysed for the key factors that led to their success or failure. This was a graded piece. Do not plagiarise.
This essay shall compare two information disclosure programmes Factory Watch run by Friends of the Earth and US EPA Toxic Release Inventory, analysing the key factors that led to their success/failure in two points.
Firstly, Friends of the Earth (FoE) is a grassroots environmental campaigning body that used information disclosure to run an online interactive database campaign of polluting source points called Factory Watch in 1999(Pickerill, 2003). The aim of information provided by FoE was to enhance information asymmetry between the Environment Agency (EA) and the public by publishing the EA’s data in a more easily understood way, integrating interactive features such as maps (Friends of the Earth, 2003).
On the other hand, the US EPA Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) was formed in 1986 after Congress passed the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act that was expedited by the occurrence of the Bhopal disaster involving a USA corporation and the deaths of at least, 3,800 victims(US EPA, 1985). The Act provides all Americans the right to access information on toxic chemicals within their communities through the TRI encouraging action by all stakeholders (corporations, community members and the EPA) to ensure pollution standards are withheld(US EPA, 2016a).
The Factory Watch was closed August 2003 with the claim that data was accessible on EA’s website while the TRI still runs today. Factory Watch’s closure suggests a temporality to the efforts of individuals drawn to the campaign efforts as Pickerill (2002) notes that much public and media attention was drawn to the Factory Watch list as “people were actively seeking the information” (pg. 161).
Secondly, the specific public policy objective FoE sought to achieve was to build enough political pressure to pass a proposed ‘Community Right to Know’ Act with a ‘Take Action’ button on the Factory Watch website encouraging site visitors to lobby local MPs to push support for the FoE proposed bill in Parliament. By this means, FoE influenced the capital market, regulation and public accountability through shock and shame tactics to some gain which includes:
“an increase of 500 per cent in people accessing the website and stimulated a response from the EA, which a week later launched its list of top ten polluters” (Pickerill, 2002, pg. 161)
The publication possibly resulted in a suspected negative reaction on the stock market (Heyes et al., 2016; Zhou et al., 2021). Furthermore, the EA responded with proposed stricter punitive charges in the publication of the polluters list (Gregoriadis, 1999). In addition, FoE claims their Factory Watch campaign resulted in “40% reduction in releases of cancer-causing chemicals across England and Wales between 1998 and 2001” (Friends of the Earth, 2003, pg. 1)
Meanwhile, the specific public policy objective of the TRI is to collect data from industrial facilities on toxic chemicals being used, amounts being released into the environment and pollution prevention strategies as well as accidental releases and one-time remediation efforts and make them available on the website.
With evidence of a gradual decline in pollutants emitted, the EPA touts this as effective as data from industries must correspond with set regulations(US EPA, 2016b). However, it has been argued that release of information is not enough and misleading in certain cases as context or data processing is not provided(Gray, 1999). There have been calls for the TRI to include health risk assessments to make data more meaningful to the populace (Bae et al., 2010).
Moreover, due to the self-reporting nature of industries, Koehler and Spengler (2007) suggest that there may be widespread under-reporting of emissions data by industries which are dependent on variable market conditions and the need to meet regulations standards, explaining in part that the downward trend of emissions may be false. This was after evidence of underreporting was discovered in the aluminium industry.
In closing, both information disclosures can be described as partly successful as they highlight the interest of communities within the USA and UK in receiving information on potential hazards nearby. How the information is presented is critical to public adoption.
FoE processed large amounts of data that could be understood more easily by the populace using visual presentation as well as encouraged active public participation through the contribution on pollution data and personalised rankings of polluting bodies known as the ‘Filthy Factory’ league tables (Pickerill, 2003).
This facilitation enabled communication and mobilisation efforts compared to TRI which acts more as a repository of technical information(US EPA, 2016a) .
References
Bae, H., Wilcoxen, P., & Popp, D. (2010). Information disclosure policy: Do state data processing efforts help more than the information disclosure itself? Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 29(1), 163–182. https://doi.org/10.1002/PAM.20483
Friends of the Earth. (2003). Factory Watch. In Webpage pdf. https://cwm.unitar.org/publications/publications/cbl/prtr/pdf/cat7/factorywatch.pdf
Gray, G. M. (1999). Measure Risk, Not Just Emissions. Regulation, 22. https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/rcatorbg22&id=194&div=&collection=
Gregoriadis, L. (1999). ICI tops list of Britain’s filthiest companies. The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/ici-tops-list-of-britain-s-filthiest-companies-1082257.html
Heyes, A., Neidell, M., & Saberian, S. (2016). The Effect of Air Pollution on Investor Behavior: Evidence from the S&P 500. http://www.nber.org/papers/w22753
Koehler, D. A., & Spengler, J. D. (2007). The toxic release inventory: fact or fiction? A case study of the primary aluminium industry. Journal of Environmental Management, 85(2), 296–307. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.JENVMAN.2006.09.025
Pickerill, J. (2002). Weaving a Green Web : Environmental protest and computer-mediated communication in Britain. In Culture and Politics in the Information Age (1st edition, pp. 156–180). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203183250-16
Pickerill, J. (2003). Cyberprotest: Environmental Activism Online. In Nature. Manchester University Press. http://www.jennypickerill.info/wp-content/uploads/Cyberprotestbook.pdf
US EPA. (1985). The Aftermath of Bhopal: An Interview with Jack W. McGraw. In EPA Journal Blog. EPA Archive. https://archive.epa.gov/epa/aboutepa/aftermath-bhopal.html
US EPA. (2016a). 30th Anniversary of the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) Program | US EPA. Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) Program. https://www.epa.gov/toxics-release-inventory-tri-program/30th-anniversary-toxics-release-inventory-tri-program
US EPA. (2016b). Celebrating 30 years of Citizens’ Right-to-Know . The EPA Blog. https://blog.epa.gov/2016/10/17/celebrating-30-year-of-citizens-right-to-know/
Zhou, Y., Cao, J., & Feng, Y. (2021). Stock market reactions to pollution information disclosure: New evidence from the pollution blacklist program in China. Sustainability, 13(4), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.3390/SU13042262
Word count: 731
Comments and grades
This essay was one in two essay submission for the Environmental Policy course. I never saw the comments because I didn’t open it when it was finally graded. From my transcript, I noticed I received a 66/100. I shall post the second essay next week.