Ammonia Emissions - Policy Pressures and Policy Options

Increased Problems

The policy pressures that contribute to the environmental problems associated with ammonia emissions include

- Economies of scale that encourage the use of a large volume of inputs leading to a large volume of outputs including ammonia emissions
- The concentration of production and processing close to areas of demand which tend to be highly populated areas, creating problems of ammonia emissions disposal
- 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 financial policies on various inputs, exchange rate and import/export policies

Decreased Risks

Policy options that can lessen the environmental risks from ammonia emissions in these systems include

- Environmental regulation:

- Improvements in the management of ammonia emissions - the polluter pays
- Banning or limiting the use of certain inputs
- Regulatory policies to reduce level of emissions including safe minimum standards
- Effluent charges

- Zoning policies to encourage relocation away from urban residential areas – establishment of industrial parks with infrastructure to handle emissions
- Adapting pricing, subsidy and taxation policies to ensure recovery of full cost of goods and services
- Emission trading mechanisms
- Investment incentives/transitional subsidies to encourage improvements in infrastructure to reduce emissions and encourage processors to move quickly to new minimum standards
- Encouragement of R & D to both limit ammonia emissions and increase their utilisation.

Further Reading

Duke University. 1996. Policy Recommendations for Management of Agricultural Animal Waste in North Carolina. http://www.env.duke.edu/faculty/sigmon/agwaste/contents.html, or click here to view as a Word Document

Hammond, C. 1994. Animal waste and the environment. http://www.ces.uga.edu/pubcd/c827-w.html

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