Bad odours - Policy Pressures and Policy Options

The policy pressures that contribute to the environmental problems associated with bad odours include

- Economies of scale that encourage the use of a large volume of inputs leading to a large volume of outputs including bad odours
- The concentration of production and processing close to areas of demand which tend to be highly populated areas, leading to odours affecting large populations
- Inappropriate input and output pricing policies including income support schemes and subsidies
- Inappropriate or non-existent regulatory policies that fail to respect local natural resource management and environmental needs
- Inappropriate health and safety policies
- Inappropriate financial policies on various inputs, exchange rate and import/export policies

Policy options that can lessen the risk of bad odours in these systems are

- Environmental regulation:

- Improvements in management of odour emissions - the polluter pays
- Banning or limiting the use of certain inputs helping to create bad odours
- Regulatory policies to reduce the permitted level of odours – safe minimum standards

- Zoning policies to encourage relocation away from urban residential areas – establishment of industrial parks with infrastructure to handle odours
- Adapting pricing, subsidy and taxation policies to ensure recovery of full cost of goods and services,
- Hypothecation of taxes for use in improving livestock production, processing and environmental interactions
- Investment incentives/transitional subsidies to encourage improvements in infrastructure to reduce odour emissions and encourage processors to move quickly to new minimum standard
- Encouragement of R & D to limit odour emissions.

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