Policy Research

Environmental Sustainability: A Case of Policy Implementation Failure?

Michael Howes, Liana Wortley, Ruth Potts, Aysin Dedekorkut-Howes, Silvia Serrao-Neumann, Julie Davidson, Timothy Smith, Patrick Nunn

Summary

Sustainable Development, or the idea that we should help meet the needs of people presently while not disadvantaging future generations, has been an idea since the 1970s, however no real progress has been made towards better environmental quality and the situation has gotten worse world-wide. In developing countries in particular the policy implementation in fields like energy and transport have failed because of lack of economic incentives and political factors.

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Policy Implications

A large number of the economic reasons for policy failure is that there is not enough on the demand side of things to promote sustainable products. This also ties into the second complaint of favoring economic outcomes to environmental sustainability. Better policy would include ways of rewarding those who produce sustainably, so that environmental goals can be met. Environmental sustainability is not impossible but rather needs an economic push in the right direction.