MARKETS - THE PANACEA FOR ENVIRONMENTAL-REGULATION

In the context of the current debate over sustainable development, this paper will review the role of market forms of environmental regulation. Despite the fashionability of claims that markets are superior to conventional, bureaucratic systems of regulation, there are significant limits to their adoption in practice. Some of these limitations will be exposed by considering why and in what forms economic tools have actually been used. It will be argued that, contrary to some theoretical expectations, their use does not represent any 'retreat of the state', any shift in the locus of power to decide our environmental futures. Rather they are employed highly pragmatically to allow politically bargained choices to be implemented. The achievement of sustainable development will continue to depend on the complex processes which create social values, and drive political and economic decision making.