Emergent issues of environmental economics : What we should be analysing closely but haven’t thought much about

Environmental policies are rarely set by environmentalists, whatever they may think to the contrary. Macro‐level policies relating to land, water, atmosphere and other prime environmental resources are generally set by departments of agriculture, industry, settlement and the like, and especially by those departments of economic planning that establish the fiscal framework. Alternatively, policies are set by major business concerns, banks and investment bodies. These dominant agents in a nation′s economy then pass on to environmentalists whatever “policy space” is left over, whereupon environmentalists find themselves spending much time and energy in countering the environmental problems set up (all too unwittingly) by the others. A more productive approach for environmentalists would be to tackle some of these problems at source; and the first step in that direction is to better understand the sources in question.