Policy Instruments - Criteria for Success and Failure

Keynote paper Clean Air for Europe (CAFÉ) and Network of

Experts and on Benefits and Economic Instruments (NEBEI) of the Convention on Convention on Long Range Transboundary Air Pollution

Charlemagne Building, Room S4, Rue de la Loi, Brussels

09:30 November 11, 2004 by Frank J. Convery (frank.convery@ucd.ie) 

1. Philosophy

• If markets don’t conserve environmental endowments, they will destroy them

• Mobilising markets the essential pre-requisite for both short term progress and long term sustainability

2. European Association for Environmental and Resource

Economists (EAERE)425 members representing the profession in EuropePresident 2004 and 2005 – key objectives• Bring the profession down to where things are done to

support productive change • Ensure informed and effective advocates in every Member

State • Re-introduce environmental economics into the European

Community research programme (FP7)• Recognise lifetime achievement in scholarship• Recognise outstanding achievement in implementing

environmental economics ideas.

3. Bremen Conference, June 23-26, 2005 - www.eaere.org

 Awards- Outstanding Practitioner, Outstanding lifetime achievement

• Evidence based themes – biodiversity, renewable energy, transport and environment, emissions trading

Richard Feynman, (Nobel Prize winning physicist) It doesn’t matter how beautiful your guess is or how

smart you are or what your name is. If your idea disagrees with experience it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.

4. Political commitment and skill

• Ken Livingstone, London (congestion charges)

• Noel Dempsey, Ireland (plastic bag levy)

5. Administrative commitment

 

• -    the embedding principle – Jos Delbeke

• -         UK Treasury

 

6. Persistence – emissions trading.

Calvin Coolidge. Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

 

7. Learning from the past and from each other

Importance of networks

 

Napoleon. The English are in everything more practical than the French; they emigrate, marry, kill themselves, with less indecision than the French display in going to the opera.

8. Intellectual and pedagogic commitment – importance of

research, percolation and presentation

• Samuel Beckett: The encyclopaedists wanted to know everything…..but that direct relationship between the self and – as the Italians say – lo scibile the knowable – was already broken. Leonardo da Vinci still had everything in his head, still knew everything, but now….it’s not longer possible to know everything. The tie between the Self and Things no longer exists. One must make a world of one’s own in order to satisfy one’s need to know, one’s need for order.

9. Research needed

Member State and European level to generate credible evidence and new ideas

 Examples of value• Understanding price elasticities of

instrument combinations• Understanding competitiveness• ‘Hot spots’ as a chimera in US acid rain

case

10. Creativity in labelling and dissemination

Genius of:

‘polluter pays principle’

‘double dividend’

‘win-win’

 Importance of repeating messages

11. Managing the Lobbyists – the Stakeholders

Betjeman. I’m Christian names with several Labourpeers; as for Conservatives - they’re rather dears.And just in case, you see - well just incase....I give them my attention for a spaceOver a whiskey watered down with iceI specialise in being very nice. Independent truckers

12. Creative use of the gains

• Environmental double dividend

a. Congestion charge in London

b.NOx tax in Sweden

• Reduction in labour taxes – scale problem

• Addressing distribution

13. Luck

Lefty Gomez: I’d rather be lucky than good

 

Bad luck - Irish carbon tax aborted by rise in oil and gas prices

14. Realism

Conflict between academics politicians and public servants

 Lionel de Rothschild, (one of the world's greatest

growers of rhododendrons, speaking to a city gardening club)). Gentlemen, no garden, however small, should be without its two acres of rough woodland.

 

15. Values, culture and philosophy

Religion as a new frontier – the US as leader?

 

de Tocqueville. On my arrival in the United States the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention….the Americans combine the notion of Christianity so intimately in their minds that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other.

16. Summary

EAERE and Bremen• Political commitment and skill • Administrative commitment• Persistence • Learning from the past and from each other

Intellectual and pedagogic commitment – importance of research, percolation and presentation

• Creativity in labelling and dissemination• Managing the Lobbyists – the Stakeholders• Creative use of the gains• Luck• Realism• Values, culture and philosophy