Sustainability Alignment Manual: Using Market-Based Instruments to Accelerate Sustainability Progress at the Local Level

The Sustainability Alignment Manual has been developed through a partnership between Sustainable Prosperity and Dr. Amelia Clarke from the University of Waterloo’s School of Environment, Enterprise, and Development.

It offers municipalities an inventory of market-based instruments that support the eight environmental topics most prevalent in a Sustainability Community Plan:

Section 1 explains how aligning municipal price signals can contribute to the municipal SCP implementation and revenue gaps.

Section 2 reviews the main families of market-based instruments (MBIs).

Section 3 contains inventories of local government MBIs for each of the eight most-prevalent topics within SCPs, and provides important considerations for their use.

Section 4 is a glossary of terms surrounding the MBIs listed in Section 3, offering a description of each MBI and the range of topics they can each support.

Thank you to the Metcalf Foundation for financial assistance for this project.