Organic farmers replace agrochemicals with a greater diversity of crops, rotations, and sophisticated pest control strategies. As a result, organic farming can reduce groundwater pollution, threats to wildlife, and consumer exposure to pesticides. 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.
Tax reform is one of several policy tools that can accelerate positive environmental change.
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. In the last decade, eight Western European countries pioneered tax shifts, raising taxes on environmentally harmful activities and using the revenue to cut conventional taxes. 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. The list of international environmental accords now numbers almost 240.