ABSTRACT
The APEC region is one of the most dynamic regions of the world, with rapidly accumulating material wealth. The maintenance of such growth requires that countries adopt sustainable management of resources as one of their key policy objectives. An appropriate conception of sustainable management includes both aspects of efficiency and sustainability. It is the argument of this paper that the current concerns raised in some quarters as to the anti-competitive nature of many environmental regulations does not stem from legitimate differences between countries over what levels of pollution are sustainable, but rather from the failure of domestic governments to introduce sufficiently adaptive environmental regulatory regimes. It is the hypothesis of this paper that such adaptiveness would reduce many of the apparent conflicts between sustainability and efficiency, thus, helping to retain the competitiveness of certain pollutive, or resource intensive, sectors as international economic integration proceeds. There is evidence that some APEC countries have been particularly more adept at mitigating efficiency and sustainability conflicts than others. New Zealand stands out as a country which has been particularly successful in this regard.
