Farmers in Europe have doubled the area cultivated with organic methods to 4 million hectares in only 3 years. In Italy and Austria, the share of agricultural land certified organic topped 10 percent in 1999. However, farmers around the world are expected to scale back plantings of genetically modified seeds in 2000. By levying taxes on fossil fuels and pesticides and other pollutants, governments can simultaneously reduce environmental decay and reduce levies on income, wages, profits, and built property. Although these nations have taken the first modest steps, environmental taxes must be boosted above the 3 percent of worldwide tax revenue they now generate if they are to halt global environmental decline.
International treaties can help to push reforms forward, according to the book.
The list of international environmental accords now numbers almost 240. Five were forged in the past year alone, and more than two-thirds of the total were crafted since the 1972 UN conference on the environment in Stockholm. However, most of these treaties are neither strong enough nor monitored and enforced sufficiently to reverse ecological decline.