Abstract: The chapter identifies the causes of poor environmental performance in the former Centrally Planned Economies including Poland. Their excessive resource use had its roots both in the general inefficiency of the non-market allocation mechanism, and in inappropriate environmental policies. While it can be expected that the introduction of market logic will gradually eliminate one source of problems, a proper choice of policy priorities and instruments poses a challenge. A number of instruments can be applied to implement priority programmes. Permit markets have several distinct characteristic features which make them a promising environmental, sectoral, and regional policy tool. They combine effectiveness with flexibility, and are likely to assist policy makers in Poland and elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe to efficiently address their economic restructuring and social concerns. In Poland, emission charges (in use since the early 1980’s) have already become very substantial, they rank among the highest in the world, and it is unlikely that the government will be able to raise them further within the next couple of years. Thus, in order to approximate least-cost solutions, other economic instruments, and, most importantly, permit markets should be applied. The argument is developed in 10 sections. The troublesome heritage is discussed in section (1). In section (2) Poland’s domestic environmental priorities are described. The next five sections deal with various problems of environmental policy design. Its relation to the general economic reform (3), and to its political requirements (4) are addressed first. These are then followed by a broad outline of economic instruments (5), a discussion of the Polluter Pays and User Pays Principles (6), and an explanation why the policy design should be kept simple and transparent (7). The next sections describe how various policy principles and options have been actually implemented in Poland since the 1989 (8), and what are the political and social constraints of this process (9). The last section (10) offers some conclusions, which suggest that — while there are hardly any major symptoms of environmental improvement yet — Poland has taken a small step towards a sustainable economy.
Publication Year: 1994
Publication Date: 1994-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 13
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