Environmental Policy and Industrial Innovation: Strategies in Europe, the US and Japan

摘要

This book addresses some important questions relating to the goals and process of national environmental policy-making. It draws on the experience of six countries with relatively long involvement in this field: the US, Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and France. The book focuses particularly on the interaction between environmental and industry policies, arguing that policy-making at this interface will be crucial in determining success or otherwise in achieving sustainable development. It sets out some elements for success, stressing the importance of the relationship between policy-makers and industry. As a personal view of how to reconcile national policies on environment and industrial competitiveness, the book deserves to be widely read in developing as well as developed countries. How can national governments raise environmental standards in an economically efficient way? This question is becoming increasingly important for policy-makers and societies, argues David Wallace in Environmental Policy and Industrial Innovation. On the one hand, there is a widely accepted need for higher environmental standards - in industry and elsewhere - and the goal of sustainable development is making the challenge of meeting this need qualitatively as well as quantitatively more difficult. On the other hand, the globalization of the world economy is leading to ever greater overlap between policies for competitiveness and environmental protection. The link between the two factors is industrial innovation, which is the key both to raising standards of environmental protection and to maintaining or improving competitiveness.