The ‘Prevention in Pursuit of Sustainable Business’ programme

The Dutch ‘Prevention in Pursuit of Sustainable Business’ programme (2001-2005), set up jointly by three agencies (IPO, VNG, UvW) and the ministries of Environment and Economic Affairs, seeks among other things to achieve an across-the-board reduction in the environmental burden of Dutch industry. Between January and May 2004 CE carried out an interim assessment of the programme with the following twin aim:

• to provisionally evaluate the programme and its constituent elements in terms of target achievement, cost effectiveness and efficiency, and identify the factors contributing to success and failure of implementation;
• to estimate the extent to which targets will indeed be secured with the mix of instruments currently in place and recommend possible supplementary targets and/or instruments.

To this end, interviews were held with representatives of 29 municipal and 7 provincial authorities and 8 ‘support groups’, and 2 workshops organised with smaller segments of the former. A limited background study was also conducted to compare the programme with other policies and schemes pursuing part-overlapping objectives.