This article highlights some of the similarities and differences between Australia and Canada in environmental policy, and speculates about reasons for the differences.

I spent six months in Canada in 1995 and have been back (more briefly) a couple of times since. It is a place where I can feel very much at home, although I must admit the weather can be a challenge, as it was when I visited Guelph last month.

In the area of environmental policy, Canada and Australia have a number of similarities, but also some differences. I reflected on some of each recently while reading a new article titled “Reflections on Environmental Policy in Canada” by Vic Adamowicz in the Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics.

Similarities

• Broadly speaking, in both countries there has been relatively weak enforcement of environmental regulations, particularly in the past. There is a preference for negotiation, and voluntary compliance, rather than application of standards.
• Much of the responsibility for environmental policy lies with provincial/state governments, who tend to each do their own thing to some extent. National environmental programs attempt to influence what happens at the provincial/state level.
• Benefit Cost Analysis is rarely used to inform decisions about policy or on-ground interventions. There are strong policy agencies concerned with economics and finance but, with some exceptions, the environmental agencies tend to place little emphasis on economics.
• There is a need for greater capacity in the design and application of economic policy instruments for environmental issues.
• A lot of the funding under environmental programs relating to agriculture is not particularly targeted.

Differences

• Australia’s history with the Landcare program has no real parallel in Canada. Landcare has probably raised awareness of environmental issues among Australian farmers to a higher level than exists in Canada, although I suspect that the difference in actual responsiveness to environmental issues is much less than the difference in awareness.
• Canada has made much less use of markets, in particular for water. Australia does use markets for water up to a point, although there is plenty of scope for their more extensive use.
• Australia has made greater use of economic policy instruments for land and water conservation. This is perhaps due to the efforts of a few passionate and articulate individuals, who blazed a trail with pilot programs like BushTender and EcoTender. Presumably, it was their influence that led to the Market-Based Instruments Pilot Program that has operated under the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality. Arguably, the enthusiasm by policy makers for economic instruments in Australia has sometimes even been excessive (Pannell 2001), in contrast to the indifference that is apparent in Canada.

I shared a draft of this piece with Vic, and one of his responses was to wonder why the above differences have occurred. He speculated that some may be due to real differences in the scarcity of resources. For example, much of Canada has water resources to an extent that Australians can hardly imagine. According to Wikipedia Canada has more than 31,000 lakes with surface areas of at least 3 square km, and for four of its largest provinces, the area of water is at least 10% of the area of land! On the Australian mainland, outside the tropics, the number of large permanent fresh lakes is tiny – a mere handful. Most of the lakes we do have are salt lakes, man-made lakes or coastal lakes and lagoons. Perhaps this difference in water abundance has prompted Australian policy makers to be more innovative and adventurous.

On the other hand, it may just be about people: the persuasiveness of individuals, the capacities of agencies, different levels of familiarity with alternatives, or different tendencies towards policy inertia. It might be interesting to probe the reasons further.

Whatever the reasons, given the broad similarities in culture and institutions, there would seem to be good potential for us to learn from each others successes and failures in environmental policy. On the other hand, perhaps I am being too optimistic – we sometimes seem to have trouble learning from our own successes and failures.

David Pannell, The University of Western Australia

Further Reading

Adamowicz, W. (2007). Reflections on Environmental Policy in Canada, Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics 55: 1-13.

Pannell, D.J. (2001). Harry Potter and the pendulums of perpetual motion: Economic policy instruments for environmental management, Connections: Farm, Food and Resource Issues 1: 3-8.* http://www.agrifood.info/connections/summer_2001/Pannell.html