Distributional Concerns in Environmental Policy Instruments

This contribution focuses on how distributional concerns may be understood with respect to an environmental policy instrument. Distribution is identified as a separate analytical category that reveals criteria for policy-making and instrument design. Subsequently, a typology of distributional concerns is developed that would inform a policy instrument, concentrating on the distribution of benefits and burdens, distribution of membership, distribution of responsibilities and distribution of capabilities. This typology is then applied to reveal distributional choices in a specific policy instrument, namely the EU ETS