This paper analyses Sweden’s policies for addressing a range of key environmental challenges. Although Sweden has a deliberately comprehensive approach to establishing its environmental objectives and policies, some issues have received particular attention. These include acidification and climate change arising from harmful cross-border and global air emissions, damage to waterways stemming from nutrient run-off from farming, and solid waste management. This review concentrates on the scope for Sweden to refine and extend the use of economic instruments to achieve better environmental outcomes in each of these areas. At the same time, more systematic and rigorous use of cost-benefit analysis in designing policies and in evaluating measures that have been put in place, would help Sweden to achieve its desired environmental objectives in the least costly way, or alternatively, to achieve the best environmental results for a given economic sacrifice ...
