Research Policy and Review 6. Future Directions for Environmental Policy

Abstract

Environmentalism is an elusive concept with many meanings. In this paper its changing character is examined together with an analysis of how it is likely to influence public policy across a broad front. The major environmental issues which OECD countries are likely to face nationally, regionally, and globally over the next twenty years are reviewed and the type of politics that may emerge within the new environmentalism is discussed. The overriding global issues will be the tragic interconnection between poverty and environmental damage in the underdeveloped countries. In the developed but deindustrialising economies of the ‘North’, greatest attention will be placed on devising means for creating jobs and providing satisfying occupations for people forced out of a job or never in employment. Environmental rehabilitation can create jobs, but it will involve the denial of resources otherwise available to create jobs elsewhere. It will therefore be necessary to consider the ‘next job effectiveness’ of environmental policies. Another policy area that requires new thinking is the management of environmental hazards, notably how to dispose of toxic wastes in a manner acceptable to a majority of people. Finally, serious efforts will have to be made, not only to infuse environmental principles within all policy arenas, but also to ensure that departmental responsibilities and budgets are properly linked. The principle that those who exploit environmental resources should, by means of transfer taxes and payments, subsidise those who use environmental resources frugally and benignly should also become established.