This sub-program aims to create awareness for the economic cost of environmentally unsustainable policies and practices, improve understanding of  the benefits and costs of interventions and catalyze the design of market-based incentives to adopt environmentally sustainable behavior.

This sub-program consists of  environmental and natural resource economics (EE) courses on methods for valuing environmental impacts, assessing trade-offs among various societal objectives, and formulating policy instruments that address the unevenness of costs and benefits from using environmental goods and services. Course modules include: sustainable development indicators, green accounting, market-based instruments for pollution control, benefit-cost analysis and valuation of environmental degradation and resource scarcity, and the interface among trade, environment, and poverty. Skills are also developed to design incentives and create mechanisms for capturing the total economic value of environmental services such as biodiversity, watershed protection, soil formation, and erosion resistance. 

The ENRM program continues to hold annually the global Environmental Economics for Development Policy (EEDP) course to enable middle level decision makers to become aware of potential uses of EE, understand key concepts, and draft  terms of reference on how to introduce economic instruments for mainstreaming environmental concerns into development policy (re)formulation.  The target audience for the global course and its regional variants consists of economists and environmental specialists from government, the private sector, bilateral and multilateral aid agencies and non-government groups.  While the first seven annual EEDP courses had been held at Washington DC, the eight course was held in Paris, France and a roving series is being explored with the next target location in Africa. 

The EEDP courses are complemented by collaboration with regional and country-level   initiatives that build research and teaching capacity of academic institutions and think-tanks.  At the regional level they include inputs to intensive training events conducted by the South Asian Network on Development and Environmental Economics (SANDEE) and the Economy and Environment Program for Southeast Asia (EEPSEA).  At the country level, EE courses at  partner academic institutions in China will continue to be enhanced  by WB inputs; in Bolivia, an upcoming capacity building program implemented by an environmental NGO will receive technical advice from WBIEN, and in Brazil,  a series of workshops focused on payment for ecosystem services will be continued.