Economic Instruments for Environmental and Natural Resource Conservation and Management in the South Pacific

Trends in natural resource exploitation and consumption patterns have increased the need for resource conservation and pollution control in the South Pacific. The need for greater government resources, implied by the intensification of environmental management, has coincided with budgetary restraints in the South Pacific that have often been severe. Economic (as opposed to command and control) instruments are of increasing interest because they possess the potential to shift from government to producers or consumers the onus to comply with environmental measures. In this paper, argument about the applicability of economic intruments in conservation and management in developing countries in general and the South Pacific in particular, is prefaced by a brief exposition of the theory and a description of the types of instruments. (The typology follows Panayotou (1995).) An analysis of some twenty case studies in the South Pacific enables some conclusions to be drawn about the conditions necessary for the application of economic instruments and enables some recommendations to be made about their adoption. The paper reports on work in progress and as such acknowledges gaps. Meanwhile comments are welcomed by the author.