Economic Policy and Sustainable Natural Resource Management

The need for improved approaches to economic analysis of the impacts and causes underlying environmental degradation will become increasingly important in the future formulation of economic policy. As major macroeconomic distortions are corrected in developing countries techniques which focus closely upon adjustments necessary to overcome market and policy failures causing environmental degradation will become more widely demanded. Significant improvements in environmental quality and natural resource conservation however can not always be derived from simple adjustments of macroeconomic policy and microeconomic incentives. The long-term contribution of environmental economics is to elucidate the trade-offs between biological economic and social systems. Environmental cost-benefit analysis resource accounting economy-environment linkages and applied sustainability research are described.