The Use of Economic Incentives in Developing Countries: Lessons from International Experience with Industrial Air Pollution
December 19, 2007 by amathew , Brian Butler | Filed under: Industrialized vs Developing Economies,Literature Review
Blackman, Harrington; The Use of economic incentives in developing countries: Lessons from international experience with industrial air pollution; May 1999; Discussion paper 99-39This paper by Allen Blackman and Winston Harrington, sponsored by the Resources for the Future, discusses some interesting approaches to a specific problem within a specific field of global environmental concerns regarding developing countries. Using economic incentives to address industrial air pollution and its applicability, use, advantages and disadvantages is covered in depth and a couple of new (not from the references used in the presentation) assumptions can be understood. In particular it is inferred that the historical experience of those in the “west” set up an advantage over those in developing countries who do not have several decades of environmental regulatory history to learn from. If one wishes this could be converted into a new assumptions that “developing countries should rely on the history of the developed countries to formulate their approach to environmental sustainability”. As effectively pertinent is the discussion related to the constraints on environmental regulation in developing countries. These include: public sentiment that generally favors economic development over environmental protection; environmental regulatory institutions are generally much weaker along with complementary judicial, legislative and data collection institutions, than in industrialized countries; fiscal and technical resources for environmental protection are generally in short supply; and finally production is often dominated by hard-to-monitor small-scale firms.
All sources used to this point have been recognized governmental or academic-sponsored programs. It was difficult to ascertain if there is any hidden agenda regarding “Resources for the Future” – the sponsor of this paper. Some of the parallels and information to existing research for this paper are fitting within this document. Since the assumptions made regard a smaller segment regarding a global environmental issue, and only address one specific approach the assumptions are not listed on the presentation. The applicability of this source to the topic is mild – it does give good examples and ideas pertaining to a contributing smaller problem in the whole scope of environmental sustainability.