Taxes and subsidies provide important positive and negative incentives for businesses and individuals to act. Perhaps nowhere more visibly than in the increasing requirement in the areas of energy and the environment. There are many examples of the positive forms incentives to build power generation in the form of solar, wind and biomass. Similarly, the purchase and installation of electric automobiles, LED lighting and building insulation or cycle schemes.
Still to be fully developed are the negative incentives. While the market for trading in carbon credits, so called cap and trade, these plans are full of exemptions and lack of a floor price that don't incentivise and are hardly punitive to emitters. We advocate for the development of a carbon tax and dividend schemes, similar to that proposed by Senator Chris Van Hollen’s Healthy Climate and Family Security Act of 2014 , for producers and users to receive the benefits directly of movements to low carbon activity while being tax neutral.
So it is that with extraordinary interest that we see this story from PRI's environmental news magazine, Living On Earth, in their story titled, "Harvesting "Himalayan Viagra".
Reporting on a "Tibetan fungus being sold on the Chinese medicine market as an aphrodisiac, bringing new income and problems to rural villages on the Tibetan plateau. Anthropologist Geoff Childs tells host Steve Curwood that he’s found one village that is managing the resource sustainably."
The traditional ethnic resident of Nubri, a valley in Gurkha district of Nepal, have a religious and cultural tradition of living in harmony with the land. However, local authorities additional action to guarantee the sustainable farming of this supposed medicine. Childs found, "In terms of the village regulations the first one that I just mentioned is the exclusion of all outsiders. The second one is they've got a designated starting date, and they arrive at that by looking at the snow melt, looking at the conditions in the alpine pasture and figuring out what's going to be the likely time when it's best to gather it. And so for a couple weeks prior to the official starting date, every adult in the village has to check in four times daily to the village meetinghouse to prove that you're not collecting early. A third thing that they do is they tax it. For the first member of your household, the tax is very low; it's 100 rupees or approximately $1 dollar. For every additional household member, it's 4,500 rupees, so about $50 dollars, and they gather that tax and use it for communal purposes."
A great story and example of using incentives to find sustainable solutions. The transcript and audio download of the interview can be found here.
Still to be fully developed are the negative incentives. While the market for trading in carbon credits, so called cap and trade, these plans are full of exemptions and lack of a floor price that don't incentivise and are hardly punitive to emitters. We advocate for the development of a carbon tax and dividend schemes, similar to that proposed by Senator Chris Van Hollen’s Healthy Climate and Family Security Act of 2014 , for producers and users to receive the benefits directly of movements to low carbon activity while being tax neutral.
So it is that with extraordinary interest that we see this story from PRI's environmental news magazine, Living On Earth, in their story titled, "Harvesting "Himalayan Viagra".
Reporting on a "Tibetan fungus being sold on the Chinese medicine market as an aphrodisiac, bringing new income and problems to rural villages on the Tibetan plateau. Anthropologist Geoff Childs tells host Steve Curwood that he’s found one village that is managing the resource sustainably."
The traditional ethnic resident of Nubri, a valley in Gurkha district of Nepal, have a religious and cultural tradition of living in harmony with the land. However, local authorities additional action to guarantee the sustainable farming of this supposed medicine. Childs found, "In terms of the village regulations the first one that I just mentioned is the exclusion of all outsiders. The second one is they've got a designated starting date, and they arrive at that by looking at the snow melt, looking at the conditions in the alpine pasture and figuring out what's going to be the likely time when it's best to gather it. And so for a couple weeks prior to the official starting date, every adult in the village has to check in four times daily to the village meetinghouse to prove that you're not collecting early. A third thing that they do is they tax it. For the first member of your household, the tax is very low; it's 100 rupees or approximately $1 dollar. For every additional household member, it's 4,500 rupees, so about $50 dollars, and they gather that tax and use it for communal purposes."
A great story and example of using incentives to find sustainable solutions. The transcript and audio download of the interview can be found here.
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