Fair Principles for Sustainable Development: Essays on Environmental Policy and Developing Countries

With the increasingly evident and widespread impact of economic activity on the environment, there is a growing concern in all parts of the world for environmental considerations to be more fully reflected in economic decision-making. The Polluter-Pays, User-Pays and Precautionary principles are increasingly being used as guidelines for environmental policy, and yet their developmental implications have barely been explored.

Fair Principles for Sustainable Development is one of the first books to study the developmental implications of these basic tenets of environmental policy. Having assessed the merits, drawbacks and technical feasibility for developing countries of applying the Polluter-Pays and User-Pays principles, the contributors then examine the Precautionary principle from the same perspective. This is followed by discussion of Subsidiarity, which offers guidance on the application of these principles and aims to ensure that local interests are articulated and incorporated in the decision-making process. Finally an overview by the editor draws the material together to support the application of these principles, particularly in international trade and global environmental agreements, to serve the sustainable development in the Third World.

As an important early contribution to the debate on the application of Polluter-Pays, User-Pays and Precautionary principles in development policy, as well as one of the first books to discuss the application of the subsidiarity principle to environmental policy, Fair Principles for Sustainable Development will be welcomed by researchers, students and policymakers attempting to come to terms with a new, important, but little understood, area.

Edited by Edward Dommen, Senior Economic Affairs Officer, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Geneva, Switzerland