Resource and Environmental Economics D18

The course aims to stimulate critical thinking about environmental and natural resource challenges and policies designed to overcome them. The course focuses on a range of environmental policy instruments available to attain sustainable environmental outcomes and on the mechanisms by which environmental policy instruments operate in attaining these outcomes. The course encompasses both theoretical and practical aspects related to the design of environmental policy instruments to address important environmental challenges e.g. climate change, local air pollution, overfishing, soil erosion and degradation. The use of pollution taxes, tradable emission permit systems, market certification, and other voluntary and mandatory policy instruments are discussed in depth. Furthermore, the course will also examine criteria for assessing the relative merits of environmental policy instruments.