Economics and the Environment, 8th Edition

CHAPTER 20Environmental Policy in Low-Income Countries

20.0 Introduction

At the end of Chapter 19, we discussed the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that provide a framework for assessing progress toward a just, ecologically sound, and prosperous future. The intertwined social and environmental goals range from investing in education, to achieving food security, to protecting forests and biodiversity, to empowering women, to cutting down global warming pollution. This chapter moves on to consider a variety of actions that low- and middle-income countries can take to work toward the SDGs.

As in our discussion of environmental policy in the United States, we need to be fully aware of the constraints that government policymakers in poor countries face. The potential for government failure in poor countries is high. Indeed, one of the SDGs is titled “Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions” and focuses specifically on the need to strengthen governance, respect for human rights, and the rule of law in all countries. Given these concerns about government failure, the first half of this chapter analyzes the measures designed to harness the profit motive in pursuit of sustainable development. First, poor-country governments should eliminate environmentally destructive subsidy policies. Second, by strengthening property rights and systems of justice, governments can reinforce community and private sector motives for conservation.

While government can do a lot by selectively disengaging ...