The purpose of the laws introducing caps is to deliver an environmental outcome – tightening caps is completely in line with that objective while loosening them is not.
However, this leaves open whether the improved environmental outcome has been "bought" at the expense of a reduction in the rate of economic growth.
Achieving the same result under a carbon tax approach would require government to intervene to lower the tax rate temporarily, which would be more complicated and produce a less desirable long term environmental outcome.
Through the use of a unique paired-waterbody design, our dataset reduced the potential for confounding variables to impact our environmental outcome measurements.
However, achieving sustainable environment management seems remote, as our understanding of ecosystem response to human influence is insufficient to predict the environmental outcome of proposed development activities.
Our investigation reveals tensions among several of the evaluative criteria, such as between environmental outcome and efficiency, and between cost-effectiveness and incentives for participation and compliance.
