ANALYSIS Demand-side policies for environmental protection and sustainable usage of renewable resources Jill L. Caviglia-Harris a, *, James R. Kahn b , Trellis Green c a Department of Economics and Finance, Salisbury University, Salisbury, MD 21801-6860, USA b Environmental Studies Program, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, VA 24450, USA c Department of Economics, Southern Mississippi University, Hattiesburg, MS 39406, USA Received 28 November 2001; received in revised form 24 June 2002; accepted 6 January 2003 Abstract Since many renewable resource systems such as tropical and temperate forests, coral reefs, and wild fisheries are often exploited at unsustainable rates, studies aimed at reducing these trends have focused on the market failures associated with over-exploitation. Within this framework, the literature devised what we term supply-side policies to correct these market failures. Here we introduce demand-side policies into the mix of renewable resource and environmental management policies. These policies are designed to increase the demand for goods produced in a sustainable fashion by: (1) promoting the long-term conservation of natural capital assets, (2) promoting the attainment of economic efficiency, and (3) providing greater political acceptability relative to supply-side policies. # 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Demand-side policies; Renewable resources; Exploited; Environmental policy; Tropical forests; Fisheries 1. Introduction Renewable resource systems such as tropical and temperate forests, coral reefs, and wild fish- eries are often exploited at unsustainable rates (Brown and Pearce, 1994). Many would argue that some of these ecosystems are in a state of de facto collapse, despite the use of traditional manage- ment policies (Thorpe et al., 2000; Food and Agricultural Organization, 1995; Safina, 1995). One reason why many of these renewable re- sources are being exploited at higher than sustain- able rates is because of the increase in global demand for the harvested products of these ecosystems (Edwards, 1992; Amelung and Diehl, * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: jlcaviglia-harris@salisbury.edu (J.L. Caviglia-Harris), kahnj@wlu.edu (J.R. Kahn), trellis.green@usm.edu (T. Green). Ecological Economics 45 (2003) 119  /132 www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolecon 0921-8009/03/$ - see front matter # 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S0921-8009(03)00009-0