Introduction It was only recently, about fifteen years ago, that the “precautionary principle” rose to international prominence in environmental policy making. Loosely formulated, the principle states that if there is an indication that a certain activity may be harmful to humans or the environment, that activity should be abandoned. The principle provides politicians with the possibility to in...

Early environmental policy depended on science, with mixed results. Newer approaches continue to rely on science to identify problems and solve them, but use other mechanisms to set standards and legal obligations. Given the important role that science continues to play, however, several cautionary tales are in order concerning "scientific management," "good science," the lure of money, and the...

A major question in global environmental policy is whether schemes to reduce carbon pollution through forest management, such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+), can also benefit biodiversity conservation in tropical countries. We identified municipalities in Brazil that are priorities for reducing rates of deforestation and thus preserving carbon stocks that are a...

China’s environmental policy emphasizes the use of economic instruments. By levying a fee for discharges, the government hopes to internalize environmental costs associated with production and consumption. This policy has been working relatively well in the urban areas, but faces a grave challenge in the rural areas where there has been a development of rural industries on a massive scale since...

The pursuit of sustainable development requires balancing the objectives of FDI, Trade, economic growth and environmental protection. Achieving a balance between these often-conflicting priorities is difficult enough at the national level, where competing interests are at least grounded in a common environmental, social and economic context. At the international level, where different countries...

Sustainable resource management has become the most hotly debated and challenging concept in environmental research and development policy. Based largely on a notion defined by the Brundtland Commission a decade ago, calls for attention to sustainability have become de rigueur in the academic, conservation, and international development communities. Discussion of the issues involved have led to...

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) policies compensate individuals or communities for undertaking actions that increase the provision of ecosystem services such as water purification, flood mitigation, or carbon sequestration. PES schemes rely on incentives to induce behavioral change and can thus be considered part of the broader class of incentive- or market-based mechanisms for environmen...

Article history: Available online 27 March 2007 The standard metaphor of market failure is an impediment to the crafting of environmental policy that can escape policy lock in. Sustainability requires a policy process that can avoid this lock in. Sustainability concerns the creation of dynamic human processes that can respond to—indeed anticipate—unanticipated feedback from biological processes...

This paper deals with the interface between science and economics in environmental policy making in India. It explains Nehru‘s concept of scientific temper and its influence in the formulation of science and technology policy and development of the science and technology system. It reviews the evolution of global environmental policy regime and the important role assigned to science to gain ins...

This paper explores to what extent secondary policy issues are influenced by electoral incentives. We develop a two dimensional political agency model in which a politician decides on both a frontline policy issue and a secondary policy issue. The model predicts when the incumbent should manipulate the secondary policy to attract voters. We test our model by using panel data on environmental po...