Encouraging Environmentally Sustainable Growth

Clean air, clean water, fewer toxic emissions and less household waste are among the key environmental policy objectives that most OECD governments have been pursuing over the past three decades. This effort to take more account of the environmental costs of economic growth has been pursued in a variety of ways in different countries, and has evolved over time with policy instruments that may be technical standards, emission prohibition, tradable permits, taxes, voluntary agreements and many others. This paper surveys aspects of environmental and natural resource policy in a number of OECD countries paying particular attention to how countries succeed in conducting cost-effective and consistent policies in the environment and natural resource areas, not on environmental policy or outcomes per se. Four common themes emerged: attempts to design institutions or processes to achieve co-ordination across policies and sectors; certain sectors where policies make environmental objectives ...