ABSTRACT
On the questions of environmental financing and taxes, France has made some interesting moves, creating fiscal mechanisms for financing environmental agencies engaged in specific tasks. For example, the French Agency for Environment and Energy Conservation (ADEME) is financed partly by a tax on waste emission, and certain water districts function in the same way: there is a fiscal penalty levied on industrial emissions in order to apply pressure to reduce them. In the case of the ADEME, industry’s continued production of certain industrial wastes leads to funding for research or activities seeking to mediate their production: the polluter-pays principle. Such earmarked taxes function well when the collection and use of such funds is constantly monitored. Indeed, how are French earmarked taxes working now after 15 years’ operation? Is the idea exportable? Following are excerpts from a presentation made in Paris in 1997 by Jacques Vernier, then President of the ADEME.
