Mainstreaming sustainability in public finances: where PFM meets landscape approaches

Abstract

Tackling climate change and environmental sustainability requires collaboration of multiple stakeholders, across several sectors. Traditionally, government responses to environmental issues have tended to come from regulation, taxation, and subsidies. This article is concerned with taking a holistic approach to integrating sustainability into government policy and practice through public financial management (PFM) and proposes incorporating features of a landscape approach, a concept from conservation and ecology studies, into PFM. The article sets out the many benefits of integrating landscape approaches with PFM and provides an operational framework for policy practitioners. In so doing, the public sector is positioned as one of many sectors in the landscape, and government public finances as a tool to directly address climate change, and to support initiatives driven by non-governmental actors.