This book addresses the increasingly urgent question: How can governments be made more accountable for the quality of their environmental stewardship? It explores: Enhanced national State of the Environment reporting and integration of environmental outcomes in key national indicators. Mainstreaming environmental goals, targets, and risks by integrating them in fiscal policy and the annual budget—a government’s most important policy instrument. Promoting sustainability by progressively exposing and eliminating harmful tax and expenditure policies, putting a price on pollution, and providing environmental public goods. Civil society environmental monitoring. The book combines in-depth assessment of the latest climate/green budgeting literature and country practices with discussion of how to implement green fiscal policies. The framework is deliberately ambitious given the severity, scale, and urgency of climate change and biodiversity loss. The book will be of interest to ministry of finance, budget, and planning officials, to environment sector agencies, oversight institutions, international organizations, civil society organizations, and to academics and students in the fields of environmental studies, development studies, economics, public finance, and public policy.

The book combines perspectives from leading environmental taxation scholars on both the theory and impact of different policies. It covers topics such as theoretical assumptions of environmental taxes; the relationship between environmental taxes and t

Green Taxation and Environmental Sustainability explores the critical issue of how taxes can be applied across relevant environmental issues _ including transport, nuclear power, and water and waste management _ to achieve sustainability. Containing topical chapters written by environmental experts, the book covers a number of key issues, including interaction of biofuels and EU state aid rules; territorial differences for transport fuel demand; electric vehicles, taxation and electricity transmission; public policy issues on the disposal of high-level radioactive waste in Japan; landfill and waste incineration taxes; and many other topics. This insightful study will appeal to policy makers in government, as well as to students and academics in environmental law, environmental economics and environmental sustainability.

Public financial management (PFM) consists of all the government’s institutional arrangements in place to facilitate the implementation of fiscal policies. In response to the growing urgency to fight climate change, “green PFM” aims at adapting existing PFM practices to support climate-sensitive policies. With the cross-cutting nature of climate change and wider environmental concerns, green PFM can be a key enabler of an integrated government strategy to combat climate change. This note outlines a framework for green PFM, emphasizing the need for an approach combining various entry points within, across, and beyond the budget cycle. This includes components such as fiscal transparency and external oversight, and coordination with state-owned enterprises and subnational governments. The note also identifies principles for effective implementation of a green PFM strategy, among which the need for a strong stewardship located within the ministry of finance is paramount.

This policy guidance outlines a number of steps to be considered when building capacity for greening national development planning, national budgetary processes and key economic sector strategies.

Policymakers and program managers are continually seeking ways to improve accountability in achieving an entity's mission. A key factor in improving accountability in achieving an entity's mission is to implement an effective internal control system. An effective internal control system helps an entity adapt to shifting environments, evolving demands, changing risks, and new priorities. As programs change and entities strive to improve operational processes and implement new technology, management continually evaluates its internal control system so that it is effective and updated when necessary. Section 3512 (c) and (d) of Title 31 of the United States Code (commonly known as the Federal Managers' Financial Integrity Act (FMFIA)) requires the Comptroller General to issue standards for internal control in the federal government.

Despite its tiny size and seeming marginality to world affairs, the Central American republic of Costa Rica has long been considered an important site for experimentation in cutting-edge environmental policy. From protected area management to ecotourism to payment for environmental services (PES) and beyond, for the past half-century the country has successfully positioned itself at the forefront of novel trends in environmental governance and sustainable development. Yet the increasingly urgent dilemma of how to achieve equitable economic development in a world of ecosystem decline and climate change presents new challenges, testing Costa Rica’s ability to remain a leader in innovative environmental governance. This book explores these challenges, how Costa Rica is responding to them, and the lessons this holds for current and future trends regarding environmental governance and sustainable development. It provides the first comprehensive assessment of successes and challenges as they play out in a variety of sectors, including agricultural development, biodiversity conservation, water management, resource extraction, and climate change policy. By framing Costa Rica as an “ecolaboratory,” the contributors in this volume examine the lessons learned and offer a path for the future of sustainable development research and policy in Central America and beyond.