Namibia and South Africa share many ecological, geographical, and historical characteristics, including the challenge of overfishing. While both countries embarked upon legal reform to address the problem, the authors of one study found that Namibia emerged as a “success case.”

Namibia quickly established a post-independence administrative body for managing fisheries and policies for long-term management. The study authors point to a number of indications of strong policy enforcement: Namibia has the highest penalties in the world for illegal vessels caught in the country’s jurisdiction; a monitoring system described as “effective in preventing illegal fishing to a large extent”; low violation rates; and onboard inspectors who cover 91.5 percent of all seagoing vessels in the country’s waters.b Namibia experienced a 15 percent decline in “overexploited and collapsed” fish stocks over six years.

South Africa also put into place administrative and judicial controls on fisheries after the fall of apartheid and initially experienced a decrease in illegal fishing. But within two years, support and funding for these institutions largely ended, and South Africa experienced an 11 percent rise in “overexploited and collapsed” fish stocks over the same six-year period.The authors conclude that South Africa faced challenges to putting in place more robust enforcement mechanisms for a number of reasons, including that South Africa had existing institutions in place and interests vested in maintaining those arrangements. Additionally, South Africa’s abundance of small, geographically-dispersed, artisanal fisheries made monitoring costlier and may have required unique institutional adaptations.

The contrast between the two countries’ experiences reinforces the finding that strong institutions bolster environmental rule of law and produce real and meaningful environmental benefits.

In 2016, then-U.S. President Barack Obama declared a state of emergency in the city of Flint, Michigan. For years, city residents had been drinking water with dangerously elevated levels of lead, which is hazardous to all and can cause serious neurological damage to children. In order to save money, Flint switched its water source from the nearby city of Detroit to a local river. Agents of each responsible institution failed to investigate subsequent clear signals of trouble with local water quality. The new water source had higher corrosiveness, which caused lead from the pipes to leach into the water supply. Local officials failed to test the water in homes in order to monitor lead levels. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality failed to follow its own protocols to investigate the issue. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which issued a memo outlining the corrosiveness problem, informed local officials that it was a draft memo and did not push aggressively for more investigation. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services prepared and then dismissed a report revealing higher-than-usual lead levels in the blood of children who lived in Flint. It was only when a local medical center reported double the number of children with high levels of lead in their blood that public attention caused a regulatory response. A panel subsequently issued a report concluding that state officials were “‘fundamentally accountable’ for the lead contamination of Flint’s water supply.” This example illustrates the fact that even if several institutions detect a problem, without coordination and clear accountability action may not be taken to address the problem.

Virachey National Park is one of Cambodia’s pristine conservation areas and one of only two Association of South East Asian Nations Heritage Parks in Cambodia. Despite being isolated and largely unexplored, it has also been plagued by illegal logging for decades. After significant damage from illegal logging was discovered by the World Bank and global non-governmental organizations in 2004, Cambodian agencies mounted a concerted effort to prosecute illegal loggers with international assistance. The Ministry of Forestry and Ministry of Environment, which were responsible for forests, collaborated formally and informally with the Ministries of Interior, Justice, and Defense. In addition, Cambodian officials enlisted the assistance of peers in Laos and Viet Nam. In the end, 11 police officers and government officials were convicted and sentenced to five years in prison. In addition, seven officials, including the governor of one of the largest provinces in Cambodia, were each sentenced in absentia to six to seven years in jail. But in 2008, the World Bank and major international non-governmental organizations pulled out of the Virachey effort. Since then, illegal logging has reached new heights.

In 2010, the United Kingdom created the Behavioural Insights Team, known as the Nudge Unit, within the Cabinet Office. Its purpose was to improve government policy and services in a cost-efficient manner by experimenting with behavioral economic techniques so that, according to the Team, people could “make better choices for themselves.” The Team experiments with psychological insights to try to change people’s and institutions’ behavior. For example, the Team increased payment rates of the vehicle excise duty from 40 to 49 percent by adding a picture of the vehicle for which the tax was still owed to letters sent to non-payers. They also found significant increases in on-time tax payments when notices sent to payers mentioned that most people pay their taxes on time. This confirms insights drawn from behavioral economics and psychology, and seen in the literature on compliance and enforcement, that people are more likely to comply if they believe their peers are complying and will be detected and punished if they do not comply. Despite the success, however, it is also clear that such “nudges” alone are an insufficient motivator, and that traditional compliance and enforcement techniques remain necessary.