Encouraging environmentally sustainable growth: Experience in OECD countries

This paper presents an overview of OECD analysis of progress and policies in "enhancing environmentally sustainable growth" in a number of countries. The focus of the paper is on how countries succeed in conducting cost-effective and consistent policies in the environmental and natural resource areas, not on environmental policy or outcomes per se. The chapters were tailored to focus on a small number of interesting or important themes in each country, rather than aiming at a comprehensive coverage. Four common themes nevertheless emerged: a definite trend in recent years towards the use of market-based instruments; competitiveness and distributional issues as obstacles to policy implementation; certain sectors where policies make environmental objectives harder or more costly to achieve; attempts to design institutions or processes to achieve co-ordination across policies and sectors. These are discussed and illustrated in turn in the paper.