Environmental planning and sustainable development

Sustainable development has become the main guideline for environmental policy making. This article analyzes some of the theoretical implications that the acknowledgement of this new principle has for the paradigm of environmental economics. Three main points are discussed. First, the problem of scale at which environmental problems can be recognized and managed (far from being trivial) is shown to alter deeply the basic meaning, of the concepts of externalities that environmental economics is used to deal with. Second, the relevance that territory must assume in the focus of analysis forces analysts to pay attention to vertical (i. e., site-specific) territorial assets, and not just to horizontal (due, for example, to transportation costs) ones. Third, environmental policies (and environmental analysis as well) need a good deal to be de-sectorialized, and instead to be developed in a global and systematic way. Finally, implications for the institutional framework of environmental policy are discussed. Some evidence is provided about the usefulness of referring to industrial districts as to optimal levels at which many environmental problems can be solved