Twenty years ago, governments gathered for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro. The “Rio Declaration” laid out several principles of sustainable development, including the central role of policy instruments. In this article, we take stock of where we stand today in implementing sound and effective environmental policy instruments throughout the world, particularly in developing and transitional economies.

Recent assessment reports emphasise that the impacts of climate change and escalating environmental degradation risk becoming key constraints to economic growth and poverty reduction in many poor countries (e.g. World Bank, 2010; Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005). While various global, regional and national commitments to

In settings characterized by weak human capital and agricultural land degradation, investments in human capital formation and land conservation can be key candidates for triggering sustained economic growth.

Although failures and successes in fisheries management are related to decision making processes, these are rarely analyzed in detail and even less often following quantitative or semi-quantitative approaches. Herein, we study the decision making process for Chile's most important fisheries using a binary decision model. This model evaluates the probability that an annual total allowable catch (TAC) will or will not be modified by the National Fisheries Council (NFC) based on biological, economic, and social factors.