2006/2007 Annual Report - International Institute for Sustainable ...

IISD no longer runs a program called “Economic Policy.”
We don’t have to. The promotion of sound, sustainable
economic development is at the core of much of our work.
By David Runnalls
[IISDFEATURE]
The most incisive conclusion of the Brundtland Commission report 20 years ago was that the
earth’s environment and its economy are so closely intertwined that policies in one area that
ignore the other are bound to fail.
For years, IISD has been studying and developing tools that integrate the environment into
mainstream economic and social policy. We have examined expenditures that ultimately harm
the environment and compromise well-being. We are producing tools to help the newly
emerging carbon markets work better. We are following up our groundbreaking work on the
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment with recommendations for the creation of markets for
ecosystem goods and services and continuing work on the relationships between poverty and
the environment. We are also trying to get at the costs of regulations in certain sectors. Finally,
we continue our work on poverty and the environment. All this without continuing to run a
formal program focusing specifically and exclusively on “economic policy.”
THE SCALE OF ECONOMY
Economic policy and principles
cut across all of IISD’s programs
WORK ON SUBSIDIES EXPANDS; GAINS INTERNATIONAL ATTENTION
Often, for perfectly legitimate reasons, governments subsidize sectors of the economy to
preserve jobs, or to promote new technologies or even to protect vulnerable sectors. IISD’s
Global Subsidies Initiative, under the auspices of the Trade and Investment program, has been
designed to identify those subsidies that are also trade-distorting and environmentally perverse.
Our pioneering study on the U.S. biofuels industry has rapidly become the standard reference
on the subject and has been quoted twice in reports from The Economist.
We have been exploring the potential for market-based mechanisms to supplement
environmental regulations. Whatever one thinks of the Kyoto Protocol, it has made carbon
into a commodity that can be bought and sold like any other commodity. Some U.S. states
and Canada have followed the European Union in the creation of emission trading regimes;
and the Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has proven to be a much greater
success than originally envisioned. IISD’s Climate Change and Energy program has been
working to improve the functioning of the CDM, especially to ensure that CDM projects act
to promote sustainable development in recipient countries.
IISD continues to examine the linkages between
poverty and environment in the developing world.
iStockphoto
“Whatever one thinks of the Kyoto
Protocol, it has made carbon into
a commodity that can be bought and
sold like any other commodity.”
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