Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD) and the cost-effectiveness principle

摘要

Either through neglect or intent, the attempt to embed ESD and its decision framework into environmental laws and policies has failed. What started as a technical version of SD has ended up as rhetoric. There is no better illustration of this than the cost-effective policy principle. It is little more than a slogan that has been tacked onto other ESD principles. It adds nothing to the technical version of ESD and lacks even the rhetorical appeal of its counterparts. Jan McDonald said it well in her recent Mahla Pearlman Oration, when she commented that, "legislatures have struggled to articulate ESD principles in a way that offers real guidance to decision-makers and courts about how they should be implemented". Amen.