The Eighth Annual Global Conference on Environmental Taxation

18-20 October 2007, Munich, Germany

Innovation, Technology and Employment:
Impacts of Environmental Fiscal Reforms and Other Market-Based Instruments. 

The Eighth Annual Global Conference on Environmental Taxation is part of an annual series of international conferences focussing on environmental fiscal reform. The conference provides a forum for legal scholars, economists, political scientists, conservationists, representatives of the private sector and non-governmental organisations to exchange the latest research on the use of environmental taxes and other market-based instruments, as well as other economic instruments such as tax relief and subsidies, to advance environmental policy objectives.  

This year’s conference will focus on the positive effects of environmental taxation and environmental fiscal reform. The focus will not only or indeed primarily be on their ecological benefits, as these are already well-documented, but rather on less well-publicised aspects of EFR, such as the stimulation of innovation, the development of new technologies, and job creation.

The importance of emphasising these positive effects should not be underestimated. For the implementation of EFR to be successful in the long-term, it is imperative that the benefits of such policies be communicated, both to leading decision-makers and politicians and to a wider audience than is presently the case. Political will has a crucial role to play in climate change mitigation, and convincing legislators that implementing EFR may even be a vote-winner, if communicated intelligently, may itself play a crucial role in delivering such political will. In addition, a public that understands the benefits of EFR (and indeed the underlying principles of EFR) will prove more open to reform and more receptive to shifts in taxation patterns.

Within this thematic framework, the conference will focus on the following six areas: transport; buildings and households; energy; employment; political issues; and NGOs. Each issue will be launched with a plenary session for all conference participants, followed by a number of panel sessions to examine specific issues in more depth.

For more information on these sub-topics and other issues concerning the conference theme please see the conference call for papers.

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