BOOK REVIEWS inert resource, not a web of life, and eco-feminists and deep ecologists who acknowledge a spiritual dimension to their politics are dismissed as ‘romantic’. It is as- sumed, too, that no-one fought for environmental justice before the community action at Love Canal in 1978 – there is little reference, for example, to the centuries-old struggle of Native Americans to protect their sacred lands from commercial exploitation. Despite its shortcomings, this book should be essen- tial reading for academics concerned with the impact of new social movements on business strategy and govern- ment policy, as well as for community activists. Hope- fully, it will also be read by business strategists who are open to a fresh perspective on what genuine stakeholder engagement might involve. Alan Neale East London Business School, London, UK DOI: 10.1002/bse.307 THE MARKET AND THE ENVIRONMENT: THE EF- FECTIVENESS OF MARKET-BASED POLICY INSTRU- MENTS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL REFORM, edited by Thomas Sterner, 1999. Elgar, xvi +488 pp, £75.00 (hbk). ISBN 1-85898-906-X This volume brings together 21 papers, most of which were first presented at a Swedish workshop of the European Research Network on Market-Based Instru- ments for Sustainable Development. The Network itself receives funding from DGXII of the European Commis- sion under the ‘Concerted action’ initiative. The contrib- utors are an eclectic group, reflecting the participants in the workshop. They include young researchers and well-established academic environmental economists, members of research institutes, consultants and civil servants. Although the bulk of the contributions deal with issues related to OECD nations, there are several papers focused on Eastern Europe and Africa, and one on Asia. The editor’s preface distances the main thrust of the collection from the prevailing debate on such instru- ments: the ‘double-dividend’ hypothesis. There is a sin- gle paper on this, which reviews the context in which ecological tax reform has been treated in the literature. This identifies the extent to which the debate on this hypothesis has become bound up with issues of carbon taxation, with very little empirical research to test the hypothesis outside this area. Park and Pezzey conclude that the weak version of the hypothesis is easy to support, but that there are sufficient doubts on both theoretical and empirical grounds about the strong ver- sion to discard this as a justification for ecological tax reform where ecotaxes cannot be shown to have clear benefits in terms of raising environmental standards. The general focus in the remainder of the collection is on examining the conditions in which market-based instruments can replace or reinforce traditional com- mand and control regulations designed to protect the environment and promote sustainability. The instru- ments considered range across the spectrum, and in- clude road user charges, water fees, energy levies, access licences, utility pricing schemes, tradable pollution per- mits, non-compliance fines and so on. In some cases, the interpretation of what constitutes a genuine ecotax varies from paper to paper, reflecting the considerable uncertainty in the minds of both academics and policy makers in this respect. It is difficult to see where some contributors draw a line between the need to remove pricing distortions caused by inefficient taxes and subsi- dies in general, which may in passing also alleviate detrimental environmental impacts, and the promotion of market-based instruments primarily as a more effec- tive and efficient means to delivering environmental improvements. The main interest of the volume is the light thrown on the contribution that market-based instruments can make to delivering improved environmental standards in OECD nations. The papers that deal with this serve as a touchstone for measuring progress in this respect since the OECD itself initiated this debate in the late 1980s. Hogg provides a useful preliminary assessment of the effectiveness of the UK Landfill Tax, which follows a paper by the editor offering a discussion of the impact of Swedish waste management and recycling policy. Cramton and Kerr examine the distributional effects of carbon regulation and the attractions of auctioning car- bon permits in a paper that adds a North American perspective to the debate on implementing the Kyoto protocol. Nordlander’s paper, which is an updated version of a part of the final report of the Swedish Green Tax Com- mission, compares energy and environmental taxes across OECD nations. From a UK perspective, one of the more intriguing findings in this review is that whereas the UK is at the top of the league with respect to taxes on vehicle fuel, it is at the bottom for taxes on domestic heating fuel. Although distortions to trade caused by the very wide range of tax rates on energy and fuel amongst OECD nations must exist, harmonization would pre- sumably need to be preceded by some agreement on optimal rates of ecotaxation: it is not self-evident that the higher the tax the better the environmental effect. The paper by Jeppesen, Folmer and Komen throws an intriguing light on the effects of ecotaxes on interna- tional trade and capital movements. They conclude, after reviewing the theoretical and empirical literature, that there is little consensus to support the general argument that more rigorous national environmental standards, however enforced, promote either measur- able trade distortions or large-scale flights of capital to nations with lower standards. The current empiricalevi- dence is found to be inconclusive, with each case need- ing to be considered on its merits, suggesting that further research might help defuse what has become an uninformed political diatribe. The most thought-provoking contribution, Tieten- berg’s examination of the ‘third phase’ of environmental Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment Bus. Strat. Env. 10, 395–397 (2001) 396