Environmental goods and services can be used freely and they are defined as public or common goods. On the account of the fact that, their overusage impose an external cost on producers and consumers such as air, water, soil, smell and noise pollution, congestions and so on. These problems are closely related to the consequences of the market failure to state and enforce property rights. Thus, environmental degredations or negative externalities cause a divergence between private and social costs of the products and services. Both command and control measures and economic instruments can be used to control pollution in order to internalize the external costs. The command and control measures include legal regulations, bans, standards on emissions, products, processes and wastes. The economic instruments are based on the market systems such as taxes, charges, state aids, treadeable pollution permits, deposit refund systems, and so on. The choice of the most suitable instrument and/or instruments to use in any particular case are linked to the legal and administrative framework and the nature of the environmental pollutions. In Turkey, by the Environmental Law of 1983 (No:2873, Article 3) endorses the "polluter pays" principle and handels environmental issues on a very broad scope. On the other hand, this act has entirely accepted that command and control measures must be used to control pollution. Currently, charges are imposed on solid wastes and waste water generated by producers and consumers. Generally, taxing pollution is an efficient approach for conservation of natural resources and the environment. Pallutant products and/or processes are imposed an appropriate tax which is proportional to the waste generatian or to equal the external costs of them. The environmental tax revenues must be used to encourage the pollution prevention investments. The usefulness of taxes on polluting inputs and outputs as an important instrument in reducing the pollution in Turkey as well as other developing countries is emhasized in this article.
Key words: na Article Language: EnglishTurkish
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