Policy is most successful when informed by rigorous research, but this has often proven difficult to achieve. Nowhere is this more evident than in government's response to environmental challenges, where there is still a substantial gap between expert knowledge and policy practice.
Sustainable Prosperity was established in 2008 with the goal of bridging this gap. What started as an ambitious idea at the time, SP has grown to become Canada’s major green-economy think tank and policy research network; earning a reputation as a national leader in generating and mobilizing policy-relevant research, and contributing to the transition of a more sustainable Canadian economy.
This success is in large part due to our unique three-way approach:
Harnessing leading-edge thinking
Recognizing the need to align the environment and the economy — and to back this with a solid body of evidence — SP has produced an impressive portfolio of multi-disciplinary policy-relevant research on market-based tools to advance a greener economy. Since 2008, SP has developed a network of over 130 academics, across 29 Canadian universities, plus over 20 international scholars. At the same time, we’ve also emphasized the involvement and training of young scholars and graduate students, which will help foster and develop a new generation of environmental economy and policy leaders.
A major focus of SP’s network initial research was on the creation of markets for environmental goods and services and the role of carbon pricing. Over the past eight years we have funded and produced dozens of research papers on many facets of this issue including design, equity, effectiveness and competitiveness. We’ve centered particular efforts in tracking the evolution and impacts of British Columbia’s carbon tax — North America’s sole tax of this kind to date. This work has played a key role in demonstrating the effectiveness of this policy tool, at a critical time when carbon pricing was under political attack across Canada and elsewhere.
More recently, we have been expanding research themes to include clean innovation, natural capital and productivity and evaluating the costs and innovation effects of environmental regulation. Starting in 2011, SP hosted a research symposium commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Porter Hypothesis, the path-breaking theory which spawned 20 years of academic debate about whether and how environmental regulation can improve innovation and competitiveness. The synthesis paper for this event was later published in the prestigious Review of Environmental Economics and Policy and is still the most widely read article of this prestigious journal. Building on this research work, we recently released a series of policy papers entitled Green Tape where we provide evidence of how environmental regulation can support strong economic performance.
Brokering unlikely partnerships
SP has also engaged over 100 non-academic partners from business, civil society and government. By bringing together academic experts with government and business leaders, we can tackle priority research and policy problems. These include research partnerships projects to accelerate clean innovation, and linking natural capital and productivity to improve Canada’s environmental and economic performance.
Mobilizing knowledge beyond the academic community
Understanding the importance of translating and disseminating research findings in order to influence policy-making, we’ve gone through great lengths to communicate our work to decision makers and the wider public. In the past few years we’ve arranged numerous high-level meetings between Canadian government leaders and world-leading green-economy experts.
At the same time, we also understand the need to inform the broader public. Our research and policy products have been promoted through a wide range of events including conferences, workshops and live webcasts. We’ve also extended our reach to a wider network of viewers by engaging both social media and more traditional media — spurring over 800 stories in print, television and radio.
Although the environment–economy discussion is Canada is changing, with an increasing number of business and political leaders now arguing that we should and can achieve both, Canada is still moving too slowly in its shift to a greener future — lagging in most environment-economy metrics among OECD countries (OECD, 2015). Moving forward, we will continue building on the work we’ve done around market-based instruments, but we will also expand our scope to explore the complimentary role of other types of public policies, investments and institutions for building a cleaner, more innovative and resource-efficient economy.
Recognizing this opportunity, we recently launched - with the Prime Minister of Canada - a new initiative called Smart Prosperity. The product of two years of work, we cultivated a prominent and diverse group of 26 Canadian leaders from business (including clean tech and natural resources sectors), labour, Indigenous, youth, and environmental backgrounds. This unlikely partnership is putting forward an ambitious vision, policy roadmap and communications strategy to help Canada achieve a cleaner and stronger economic future — all underpinned by SP’s research. This initiative is our most ambitious to date and will be a major focus of our work in the coming years.
We are thrilled to have recently been admitted as a GGKP knowledge partner and look forward to working closely with the platform’s partners.