Table 1 suggests the following conclusions.(a)In some areas, notably waste, monetary benefitestimation has been extremely influential in de-termining policy. Notably, the initial setting of theUK landfill tax was based on monetary estimatesof environmental costs.(b)Benefit and damage studies are also being usedto inform decisions about other possible market-based instruments, notably a pesticides tax and atax on extraction of aggregates from quarries.(c) The setting of environmental standards is stilldetermined by considerations unrelated to ben-efit estimates, e.g. critical loads, avoidance ofhealth impacts, etc. None the less, CBA is beingused indirectly to substantiate those targets andto help determine the time-paths for their achieve-ment.(d)Some agencies, such as the Health and SafetyExecutive (HSE) and the Forestry Commission,routinely use CBA. This use extends beyondproject appraisal to the role of costs and benefitsin setting risk standards (HSE) and in the justifi-cation of afforestation in terms of non-timberbenefits (Forestry Commission).(e) The Environment Agency has shown consider-able interest in CBA, reflecting the requirementsof the Environment Act of 1995 to take intoaccount the likely costs and benefits of its ac-tions, and to be excused from this requirementonly if it is ‘unreasonable’ to do so. While therequirement does not formally mandate any par-ticular form of CBA, considerable effort in theEA has gone into devising guidelines on the useof unit monetary values for assessing schemesand policies based on ‘benefits transfer’, i.e. the‘borrowing’ of money values from one contextfor application in another context.(f) Overall, substantially greater use is made ofCBA and benefit estimation than is probablyrealized