Projecting Environmental Trends from Economic Forecasts (Ashgate Studies in Environmental Policy and Practice)

Sustainable development offers visions of the future, but implementation of new sustainable policies seems slow. This text presents a forecasting method directed to overcome some barriers to the implementation of more sustainable economic policy. Using a case study, the authors describe how economic and environmental forecasts can be developed that are relevant to the immediate concerns of policy-makers and are more likely to lead to policy changes. A combination of forecasting methods are shown to evaluate a range of current alternatives in the future. Similar techniques have been used in developing countries, but here the techniques are applied to an already industrialized economy.