Achieving development that lasts

March 28, 2010 10:08 am | Updated November 18, 2016 09:45 pm IST - Chennai:

Book Review: Sustainable Development.

Book Review: Sustainable Development.

When we think of taxes and sustainability, so-called ‘green’ or ‘ecotaxes’ come to mind first, since these are designed to make ‘bad’ environmental behaviours more expensive and thus contribute directly to environmental sustainability. But the environment is only one part of the process, argue Tracey Strange and Anne Bayley in ‘OECD Insights: Sustainable Development’ (www.academicfoundation.com).

The social and economic aspects of sustainability are influenced by taxes, too, and are among the biggest items in national budgets, the authors add. “Education for example represents 5 per cent of government spending in the OECD countries on average, while health accounts for another 6 per cent. But since ‘social taxes’ existed long before the concept of sustainable development was invented and their role is rarely presented in this light, their importance is easy to overlook.”

Nonetheless, through mechanisms such as social welfare schemes, they play an essential role in addressing issues that market mechanism and private initiatives alone cannot deal with efficiently, reason Strange and Bayley.

They recommend the use of taxation and other market-based mechanisms, rather than subsidies, to deal with many sustainable development issues. “What are the chances that policy makers will identify every initiative worthy of support and make the appropriate subsidy, without accidentally supporting some initiatives which turn out to have negative effects? On the other hand, a very simple taxation mechanism can spur innovation on the part of businesses, as they come up with their own solutions to reduce a particular practice.”

Externalities of concern

In an almost irreversible manner, market-related transactions have achieved high levels of efficiency to make affordable things such as cars and clothes, air-conditioning and fast-food. But the growing externalities of these transactions have made many ‘public’ goods – such as clean air, silence, clear space, clean water, splendid views, and wildlife diversity – increasingly scarce, the authors observe.

They rue that nearly every transaction of private goods carries an invisible cost, paid by everyone through degraded public goods. “Achieving ‘decoupling’ between continued economic growth and prosperity and the negative externalities created by such development is therefore a major challenge for achieving ‘development that lasts.’”

Interestingly, the book is one of the first to be published on a just-in-time basis, informs the last page. “OECD Publishing is based in Paris, France, yet this book was launched in an Angus and Robertson bookshop in Melbourne, Australia without a single copy being shipped anywhere.” How so? By manufacturing copies inside the bookshop using a digital press (an Espresso Book Machine from On Demand Books) only when a customer wants to buy one. “Just cutting out the shipping from Paris to Melbourne saves an estimated 5.8 kg in CO2 emissions per copy sold.”

Concise presentation.

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