University of PaviaCollegio GhisleriIUSS

The Fifth Annual Global Conference on Environmental Taxation Issues, Experience and Potential will be held on Thursday 9th September - Saturday 11th September, 2004, hosted by the European School of Advanced Studies in Integrated Environmental Management of the University of Pavia, ITALY.


Here the Participants' Link



Government can get involved in environmental issues to protect the public interest through different policy instruments: social regulation (education, information, reports..), self-regulation (voluntary agreements), instruments of planning (sectorial planning, master-plan), direct regulation (permits, prohibitions, bans, normative acts…) and market instruments (taxes and charges, subsides, deposit and refund systems, tradable permits).

While the introduction of command and control measures, as well as planning instruments, have experienced a quite long history, an increasing attention has been more recently given to the use of economic incentives/disincentives, aiming at encouraging, through price mechanisms, people decisions which will be more favorable for the environment. This attention is mainly due to the fact that market regulation is considered more effective, flexible and efficient: it does not, in fact, impose uniform behaviors to economic agents, while inducing more important changes for those they can result less costly.

This apparent superiority is strictly connected to the opportunity - both from a technical and political point of view - of implementing them, and above all to the ability of overcoming various barriers which can prevent their utilization and acceptability.

A wide collection of experiences from different States concerning the use of environmental taxes and charges and a scientific assessment of the environmental, economic and social impact of their introduction can be an important tool to face those barriers, which can be to an extent problems of fear of the unknown.
Previous Conferences
The Pavia 2004 conference is the fifth in a series of conferences. The number of delegates has grown with each successive conference, following the successes of those held in Cleveland, Ohio, USA in 2000; Vancouver, Canada in 2001; Woodstock, Vermont, USA in 2002 and Sidney, Australia in 2003.
Please visit the
Summer Academy “Energy and the Environment”, from July 5th to July 17th 2004, in Greifswald.
The Conference is in partnership with
Environmental Tax Policy Institute, Vermont Law School USA
Fondazione Banca del Monte di Lombardia
OECD,  ITALY
A.P.T. Pavia
ECMT
 
Cleveland State University