Sustainable economy

The Sustainable Economy Program aims to identify options for Australia to make a rapid transition to an environmentally and socially sustainable economy. Australia has tremendous opportunity to leverage its abundant natural resources and skills in innovation to build a fair, sustainable and prosperous economy – one that provides a secure future for all Australians. Yet to do so, we need to get the policy settings right.
The Sustainable Economy Program is underpinned by an understanding of the problems caused by systemic short-termism in both the public and private sectors and by the failure to value public goods which are hard to measure or monetise. The Program will address these problems in two ways:
Valuing What Matters
The economic invisibility of resource depletion and pollution leads to systemic failures in public and private decision making. As a result, we lack a coherent set of policies for sustainably managing our natural capital. Valuing What Matters will demonstrate the value of Australia’s natural wealth in order to promote better decision making about how we manage our natural capital.
Greening Our Economy
Australia is not doing enough to build a diverse economic structure that can thrive in a resource- and carbon-constrained future. Our poor resource productivity and dependence on commodities is a potential vulnerability in a world of volatile prices and rapid capital flows. Greening Our Economy will identify enabling policies and conditions to tip the economic playing field towards activities that support the transition to a fair, sustainable and prosperous economy.
The Sustainable Economy Program has been funded by your donations. CPD would also like to thank the generous support of the Thomas Foundation for our marine sector research, as well as Graeme Wood for his important contribution to the advancement of a new economic agenda in Australia.