13 Policies, instruments and co-operative agreements

Introduction

This chapter discusses national policy instruments and their implementation, initiatives of the private sector, local governments and non-governmental organizations, and cooperative international agreements. Wherever feasible, national policies and international agreements are discussed in the context of four principle criteria by which they can be evaluated; that is, environmental effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, distributional considerations and institu- tional feasibility. There are a number of additional criteria that could also be explicitly considered, such as effects on competitiveness and administrative costs. Criteria may be applied by governments in making ex-ante choices among instruments and in ex-post evaluation of the performance of instruments [13.1].