Consumptionomics by Chandran Nair

Author:Chandran Nair
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Infinite Ideas Ltd
Published: 2011-03-12T16:00:00+00:00

Interventionist frameworks

What states must do is construct a framework of rules for their national economies with the management of resources and their environmental impact at the core. The principal tasks of these rules will be to ensure resources are used in environmentally sustainable ways, and that previously ignored or under-priced environmental factors are included in the costs of goods and services. They will also have to be enacted and executed in ways that receive popular support, ensuring that well-being is brought to all and shared equitably, and that expectations are managed in ways that restrain consumption.

States will need to be unashamedly interventionist. This should not be seen as outrageously controversial. The World Bank has noted: ‘Climate change requires public interventions to address the multiple market failures driving it – the failures of pricing; of research and technology development; and of coordination and collective action, global, national, and local. As providers of public goods and correctors of externalities, governments are expected to address these market failures.’4

Or, put slightly differently, governments will have to live up to their responsibilities as the primary force overseeing the management of society. They will have to set the limits within which the private sector is free to operate and then ensure that these limits are respected. They will have to decide what measures should be used to mitigate the environmental impact of human activity, and then how such measures are communicated, regulated and enforced. Community involvement in all this will be vital, as will determining the appropriate degree of central oversight and decentralized day-to-day management.

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