Market-based Instruments: The Australian Experience

Abstract

In Australia, there is an emerging perception that established methods and institutions for environmental management are failing to meet new challenges or to resolve persistent problems Whereas the 1970s and 1980s delivered improvements in urban air quality, the 1990s threaten to deliver a slow reversal of such trends in major urban centres like Sydney and Melbourne. In rural regions, the trend towards environmental degradation continues. Toxic algal blooms, fed by agricultural nutrients, have spread for hundreds of kilometres along the Murray and Darling Rivers, causing chaos in Australia’s agricultural heartland during the past few summers. A new wave of extinctions is predicted, in part because of ongoing clearing of remnant vegetation on private land, in a continent internationally renowned for the diversity of its endemic species. And, despite the establishment of targets for the stabilisation of carbon dioxide emissions, Australia’s total contribution to global warming continues apace. Yet political action on new instruments for environmental protection, including tougher regulations and market-based measures, has generally been lacking.