Policy Instruments to Limit Negative Environmental Impacts from Increased International Transport: An Economic Perspective

Transport activities have adverse environmental and health impacts, of which local and regional air pollution, climate change, and noise impacts are the most important. This paper is a non-comprehensive overview of existing and potential policies to deal with these negative impacts, with a focus on “international transport”. We define “international transport” as those transport activities that are mainly derived from the globalization of economic activity, not as cross-border transport flows in a more narrow sense. We discuss surface transport, aviation, and maritime transport. The overview is not comprehensive: we focus on climate change, treating other adverse impacts (including aviation noise and local and regional pollution from shipping) more succinctly. This does not reflect a judgment on which impacts are more or less important policy problems, but rather policy interest and the authors’ expertise.