Green Budget Reform
This site contains a wide variety of information of use to those interested in
the topics of ecological tax reform, taxation and subsidy reform, government
environmental policies, eco-efficiency, or sustainable development and
government policy. Through the annotated bibliography and case studies, it
provides tools for people seeking change.
Government policy has a major impact on all sorts of economic activity.
Expenditures and subsidies paid by governments make some goods and services
cheaper to produce, and thus increase their use; taxes have the opposite
effect.
Government-imposed regulations constrain or encourage many sorts of activities
in order to meet the goals of modern societies.
It has become clear, however, that many existing and emerging policies have a
major and fundamental flaw: their design and implementation did not adequately
consider environmental or ecological impacts. The fact is that all economic
decisions have environmental consequences, just as all environmental decisions
have economic consequences. IISD's program has been exploring these issues, and
this site effects some of our work to date.
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Annotated Bibliography:
The literature explaining these issues is reviewed three ways. This
bibliography contains references and annotations of print literature on economic
instruments for environmental and sustainable development policy implementation.
It covers the period 1989-1994 inclusive, with some earlier seminal works.
(Meyer,
M , Reforming Budgets for Sustainable Development: An Annotated Bibliography.
Winnipeg: International Institute for Sustainable Development, 1996.)
Matrix of policies and instruments:
An index to the Annotated Bibliography, which presents a review of
types of instruments and how they have been applied across several sectors.
Case studies:
An international set of case studies gives detailed examples of
taxation and subsidy measures that were developed in order to achieve specific
environmental results. It shows how governments have met some of the challenges
of integrating environmental and economic issues and developing tools that fit
their needs.
(Hansen, K. G., and Stephan Barg, Winnipeg: International Institute for
Sustainable Development, 1994)
Commentary: The Cost of 'Green'
Budgets:
In the spirit of cutting all unnecessary costs - to government, industry and
the environment - can governments afford not to green their budgets in 1995 and
beyond?
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