Demand-side policies for environmental protection and sustainable usage of renewable resources

Since many renewable resource systems such as tropical and temperate forests, coral reefs, and wild fisheries are often exploited at unsustainable rates, studies aimed at reducing these trends have focused on the market failures associated with over-exploitation. Within this framework, the literature devised what we term supply-side policies to correct these market failures. Here we introduce demand-side policies into the mix of renewable resource and environmental management policies. These policies are designed to increase the demand for goods produced in a sustainable fashion by: (1) promoting the long-term conservation of natural capital assets, (2) promoting the attainment of economic efficiency, and (3) providing greater political acceptability relative to supply-side policies. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.