New Directions in Environmental Policy

Abstract

Commonwealth Heritage natural resource Trust annual and and state environmental report governments for 2000-01 management. allocate shows that significant In Australia, this federal resources the program Natural to Commonwealth natural resource and environmental management. In Australia, the Natural Heritage Tr st annual report for 2000-01 sh ws that this federal program will have committed approxintately $2.5 billion to environmental works by June 2007. State and Federal Governments have allocated a further $1.4 billion to The National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality over a seven-year period. These and other environmental and natural resource management programs employ a combination of intervention mechanisms including community and catchment-based planning, voluntary programs, fixed-price subsidies and grants, education programs and capital works programs. Although there is general acknowledgment that these programs have altered community awareness about environmental issues, there is not a widespread belief that these programs have cost-effectively achieved significant on-ground outcomes. For example, the Australian National Audit Office (2001) commented on the Natural Heritage Trust by saying that the program has been successful in 'raising awareness and empowering communities, fostering integrated planning. . .but few projects have the potential to lead to broad scale long term landscape outcomes... and is... poor in monitoring, administration and cost shifting'. Thus, while achieving an attitudinal shift, these programs have been less effective at delivering and demonstrating improvements in the environment. This paper addresses the incumbent policy failures and seeks to posit some possible additions to the environmental policy toolkit. We proceed by first delineating the nature and existence of an 'environmental problem'. Second, a discussion of the existing policy approaches is undertaken. The third section of the paper, on a new policy framework, necessitates an investigation of the role of markets in the environmental landscape. Finally, we conclude with some observations on the importance of future research, both in terms of policy mechanisms and institutional design.