Although economists have long advocated the use of economic instruments in the implementation of environmental policy, they have only recently gained acceptance. There is a growing consensus within the European Union that both Member States and the environment would benefit from the use of such incentive-based economic instruments. Environment, Incentives and the Common Market has been written by members of the Study Group on the Environment and Economics of the National Environmental Forum, which includes economists and social scientists from all the major Dutch universities and research institutes. The book covers a wide range of topics on the use of taxation and tradeable permits in a variety of abatement policies. It concludes with comments on political feasibility.

Environment and sustainable development challenges are a matter of global concern. Trillions of dollars of mostly public money are invested every year in domestic and international policies and programs to address these challenges. The effectiveness of these policies and programs is critical to environmental sustainability. Performance audits that examine the effectiveness of governmental policies and programs heavily influence their implementation. Despite this, performance auditing in the environment field has received very little academic attention. This book takes a closer look at performance auditing of public sector environmental policies and programs. It examines trends in global environmental performance auditing; and how it is currently practiced drawing on a global survey and case studies from Canada, India and Australia. In doing so, it identifies issues and challenges faced by Supreme Audit Institutions in undertaking these performance audits. This book will be of interest to students, scholars and practitioners of sustainable development, environmental auditing and public sector auditing as well as to donor organisations engaged in these areas.

This book uses cutting-edge methods, such as big data mining methods on social media, generalized difference in difference, inoperational input-output models, improved data envelopment analysis, improved computable general equilibrium and others to calculate the economic impacts of climate and environmental disasters on China. This book provides the ideas, methods and cases of the redistribution of air pollution emissions in China through evaluating the benefits of meteorological disaster services and meteorological financial insurance. Using big data resources and data mining methods, as well as econometric models, etc., this book provides a comprehensive assessment of the economic impact of disasters in China and studies China's counterpart aid policy and international aid policy for disasters. This book is an academic monograph devoted to the China's case study. The intended readership includes academics, government officials, graduate students and people concerned about China.

It is widely accepted that limiting climate change to 2 DegreesC will require substantial and sustained investments in low-carbon technologies and infrastructure. However, the dominance of market fundamentalism in economic thinking for the past three decades has meant that governments have generally viewed large spending programs as politically undesirable. In this context, the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) represented a huge opportunity for proponents of public investment in environmental projects or "Green Keynesianism". This book examines the experience of Australia, Canada, Japan, Korea, and the United States with Green Keynesian stimulus programs in the wake of the GFC. Unfortunately, on the whole, the cases do not provide much optimism for proponents of Green Keynesianism. Much less funding than was originally allocated to green programs was actually spent in areas that would produce an environmental benefit. Furthermore, a number of projects had negligible or even detrimental environmental outcomes. While the book also documents several success stories, the research indicates overall that more careful consideration of the design of green stimulus programs is needed. In addition to concrete policy advice, the book provides a broader vision for how governments could use Keynesian policies to work toward creating an "ecological state". This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental politics, environmental economics, political economy, and sustainable development.

Originally published in 1992 Economics for the Wilds argues that an economics that properly values the resources of the wilds offers the best long-term security for their future. Most of the world's wilds have, in fact, always been utilized by local societies who have managed their resources sustainably, and one important guarantee for their preservation is therefore the continued participation of those communities and an adequate reward to them for their management. The book looks at the complexity and global nature of the issues, at the application of economics to the wilds and at the policies for their conservation and sustainable management which then result. It also examines specific forms of utilization of wild species and habitats, both sustainable and unsustainable, and including community-based development, tourism, the use of rainforest products, poaching and the impact of conservation on wildlife use. The book concludes that a comprehensive utilization strategy for wild resources is needed to ensure their continued existence and the continued flow of benefits from them.

How Innovators and Enlightened Consumers are Transforming the Lives of Animals

This book explains how and why the state-socialist regime in Hungary used technology and propaganda to foster industrialization and the conservation of natural resources simultaneously. Further, this book explains why this process was ultimately a failure. By exploring the environmental pre-history of communist Hungary before analyzing the economic development of the Kadar regime, Pal investigates how economic and environmental policies and technology transfer were negotiated between the official communist ideology and the global economic reality of capitalist markets. Pal argues that the modernization project of the Kadar regime (1956-1990) facilitated ecological consciousness - at both an individual and societal level - which provoked great social unrest when positive environmental impact was not achieved. Today, global issues of climate change, urban pollution, resource depletion, and overpopulation transcend political systems, but economic and environmental discourses varied greatly in the twentieth century. This volume is important reading for all those interested in economic and environmental history, as well as political science.

This volume spotlights some of the most important economic issues confronting today's emerging developing countries. The topics studied in the book include the importance of productivity to economic growth, international trade and its relationship to productivity; immigration and brain drain; pollution havens, climate change, and the carbon tax; the effectiveness of foreign aid, the efficiency of education, and governance. Written by some of the most respected scholars in their respective fields, the individual chapters apply both economic theory and the most current empirical tools in rigorous but accessible exposition. Researchers can find value in the modeling and empirical techniques that can be applied to other countries and datasets. Policy makers can benefit from the intellectual foundation on which decisions on important issues can be based; and students of international trade, economic development, and environmental economics can gain knowledge of different country settings that give context to their fields of study.

These investigations identify and clarify some basic assumptions and methodological principles involved in ecological explanations of plant associations. How are plants geographically distributed into characteristic groups? What are the basic conditions that organize groups of interspecific plant populations that are characteristic of particular kinds of habitats? Answers to these questions concerning the geographical distribution of plants in late 19th century European plant geography and early 20th century American plant ecology can be distinguished according to differing logical assumptions concerning the habitats of plant associations. Through an analysis of several significant case studies in the early history of plant ecology, Konopka distinguishes a logic of habitats that conceives of plant associations in an analogy to individual organisms with a logic that conceives of plant associations in a reciprocal relation to habitat physiography. He argues that a phenomenological conception of the logical attributes of habitats can philosophically complement the physiographic tradition in early plant ecology and provide an attractive alternative to standard reductionism and holism debates that persist today. This wide ranging and original analysis will be valuable for readers interested in the history and philosophy of ecology.

First published in 1970. The aim of this book is to provide an introduction to the special problems of agriculture in modern economies. The author writes for students of economics who have already acquired the elements of economic theory; no attempt is made, therefore, to explain simple theoretical concepts, but instead these are used in the analysis of some of the main problems of agricultural adjustment. Emphasis is placed on the position of agriculture in the economies of western Europe and of the United States. Sufficient historical background is given to explain the present use of the factors of production in agriculture and the way in which this use and policies of agricultural support vary from one country to another. Agricultural support policies are discussed with reference to their effect on consumers, producers and on rural society.

Here is a refreshing look at how American cities are leading the way toward greener, cleaner, and more sustainable forms of economic development.
In Emerald Cities, Joan Fitzgerald shows how in the absence of a comprehensive national policy, cities like Chicago, New York, Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle have taken the lead in addressing the interrelated environmental problems of global warming, pollution, energy dependence, and social justice. Cities are major sources of pollution but because of their population density, reliance on public transportation, and other factors, Fitzgerald argues that they are uniquely suited to promote and benefit from green economic development. For cities facing worsening budget constraints, investing in high-paying green jobs in renewable energy technology, construction, manufacturing, recycling, and other fields will solve two problems at once, sparking economic growth while at the same time dramatically improving quality of life. Fitzgerald also examines how investing in green research and technology may help to revitalize older industrial cities and offers examples of cities that don't make the top-ten green lists such as Toledo and Cleveland, Ohio and Syracuse, New York. And for cities wishing to emulate those already engaged in developing greener economic practices, Fitzgerald shows which strategies will be most effective according to each city's size, economic history, geography, and other unique circumstances. But cities cannot act alone, and Fitzgerald analyzes the role of state and national government policy in helping cities create the next wave of clean technology growth.
Lucid, forward-looking, and guided by a level-headed optimism that clearly distinguishes between genuine progress and exaggerated claims, Emerald Cities points the way toward a sustainable future for the American city.

This book focuses on value addition to various waste streams, which include industrial waste, agricultural waste, and municipal solid and liquid waste. It addresses the utilization of waste to generate valuable products such as electricity, fuel, fertilizers, and chemicals, while placing special emphasis on environmental concerns and presenting a multidisciplinary approach for handling waste. Including chapters authored by prominent national and international experts, the book will be of interest to researchers, professionals and policymakers alike.

This book presents a new approach to recurrent property taxation based on occupancy, size, and location, that will strengthen local governments. Reflecting on the concept of "beneficial property taxation" first proposed by Alfred Marshall, the political economy constraints faced by traditional property taxation are examined and compared with evidence for beneficial property tax seen in China, Mexico, and sub-Saharan Africa. The benefits of this form of taxation are highlighted in relation to the financing of local public services and infrastructure that are required for sustainable development. This book provides a policy-oriented look at property taxation that engages with the sustainable development goals and lay the foundations for a post-pandemic recovery. It will be relevant to researchers and policymakers interested in development economics and the governance of taxation.

This book outlines the latest trends in the use of multicriteria analysis in agriculture by highlighting recent applications for modeling agricultural decision-making. It introduces specific case studies using multicriteria analysis as a method for selecting multiattribute discrete alternatives or solving multiobjective planning problems. The book is intended for a broad readership, including agricultural and environmental economists, engineers and all scientists whose work involves the management of agricultural resources and decision-making in agriculture. The methods and applications presented in this book cover decision-making processes in agricultural and environmental contexts. The methodologies described consider multiple criteria simultaneously in a wide range of complex decision-making contexts by taking into account multiple, conflicting criteria. Given the wide range of case studies covered, the book offers a comprehensive guide to decision-making in the agricultural context and beyond.

This book provides an up-to-date series of advanced chapters on applied financial econometric techniques pertaining the various fields of commodities finance, mathematics & stochastics, international macroeconomics and financial econometrics. Financial Mathematics, Volatility and Covariance Modelling: Volume 2 provides a key repository on the current state of knowledge, the latest debates and recent literature on financial mathematics, volatility and covariance modelling. The first section is devoted to mathematical finance, stochastic modelling and control optimization. Chapters explore the recent financial crisis, the increase of uncertainty and volatility, and propose an alternative approach to deal with these issues. The second section covers financial volatility and covariance modelling and explores proposals for dealing with recent developments in financial econometrics This book will be useful to students and researchers in applied econometrics; academics and students seeking convenient access to an unfamiliar area. It will also be of great interest established researchers seeking a single repository on the current state of knowledge, current debates and relevant literature.

Originally published in 1986. Energy economics emerged in the 1970s as one of the most controversial and critical aspects of European economic and political development. This book provides a fully comprehensive but easily accessible guide to the key issues of energy policy, placing them in a European context. As well as discussing oil price movements and their effects on European prosperity, it assesses the role of energy conservation and pricing policies. The chapters discuss the economic, political and social impact of nuclear power programmes, North Sea oil and gas discoveries, Soviet gas imports, and coal field closures, and go on to forecast possible future developments. This is for all those concerned with European and energy studies, especially political scientists, geographers, economists, and environmental and resource specialists.

Using the water footprint concept, this impactful book aids our understanding of how we can reduce water consumption and pollution to sustainable levels. Since the publication of the first edition, the question of how to reduce our water footprint has become even more urgent. Freshwater scarcity is increasingly perceived as a global systemic risk and overconsumption of water is widespread. The water footprint, a concept founded by the author, is an indicator of direct and indirect freshwater use by a consumer or producer that can be used to analyze water usage along supply chains and assess the sustainability, efficiency and fairness of our water use. This new edition is fully revised and updated to reflect continued developments in this rapidly growing field of knowledge. New chapters are added covering the history of the water footprint concept; the environmental footprint of the human species versus planetary boundaries; and the human right to water as a foundation to equitable sharing. All other chapters are fully revised with new findings, applications and references, including major new research on energy, vegetarian diets and intelligent water allocation over competing demands. The Water Footprint of Modern Consumer Society is a key textbook for students of interdisciplinary water studies and those taking other related courses within the environmental sciences. It will also be of interest to those working in the governmental sector, environmental and consumer organizations, the business sector and UN institutions, where there is growing interest in the water footprint concept.

Democratization, globalization, and increased environmental awareness have had a profound impact on the regulation of industry in the energy and natural resources sector. This book analyses the changes in character of the way this industry is regulated, and seeks to make connections with theoretical perspectives on regulation as a major part of the modern legal system. Part I examines the emergence of alternatives to regulation, such as 'soft law' in developing countries, the European Electricity and Gas Directives of 1996 and 1998, the idea of regulation of company structure as opposed to performance, multi-faceted government alternative regulatory instruments, and market mechanics. Part II analyses conventional methods of regulation, and how they have evolved, including case studies from the Netherlands, the USA, Singapore, New Zealand, and the UK. Part III looks at regulatory innovations such as environmental audit, self-regulation, the 'Voluntary Action Plan', private-sector standard setting, and certification. Part IV examines the role of non-state actors, and their response to national and supranational regulatory changes, and globalization. Recent shifts in the perception of energy security, failures in energy company corporate governance, and evolving self-regulatory frameworks renders this a timely and worthy examination of the issues facing the energy and natural resources industry today.

The restoration of the Florida Everglades, the largest ecosystem restoration project in the world, is now underway. Missing from the original plan, however, is a study of the region's cities and farms and the economic impact their growth will make on this already endangered ecosystem. This book provides that analysis. Richard Weisskoff applies the widely-used Regional Economic Modeling Inc. (REMI) model to forecast the future of South Florida's six million-person, $300 billion economy. In addition, he supplies four significant pieces to the model, namely, detailed projections for agriculture, investment, tourism, and restoration spending. By integrating these and the results of a second economic modeling system (IMPLAN), he traces out three development paths for the region to the year 2030, and the demands for water and urban land required for each path. Also featured are the results of two land use/land cover surveys which are then used to measure the change in the value of ecosystem services in the Everglades region. The author provides an economic history of the region and statistically documents the transformation of the original Everglades into the sprawling cities and the sugar-citrus-cattle emporium, all of which share the same fragile ecosystem. The study concludes that the ultimate success of the restoration of the Everglades will depend on choices made regarding the future of the region's cities and farms. While the volume focuses on the Everglades, it serves also as a case study for other such restoration projects. Ecological and environmental economists, regional scientists, planning professionals, and government agencies will find this timely volume of great interest.

Water issues in the American West share many similarities with those seen elsewhere in the world as population growth exacerbates longstanding problems of inappropriate water use and management. The contributors to this timely volume examine the universal challenge of sustainable water management to improve the use of water resources already developed and find ways to moderate our growing collective thirst. The volume begins with an exploration of the opportunities, arguments, and mechanisms for transferring lessons between the American West and foreign nations. Succeeding chapters cover individual issues such as: water allocation and the relationship between market mechanisms and government-based approaches, the challenge of environmental protection, the protection of cultural values with a focus on indigenous water rights, the significance of international and interstate rivers in promoting regional conflict and cooperation, and the role of water management in sustainable development. A comprehensive look at one of our most pressing issues, In Search of Sustainable Water Management will be of great interest to scholars and practitioners in the areas of water management, law, policy studies, economics, planning and public administration.

This book aims to make the best use of fine-grained smart meter data to process and translate them into actual information and incorporated into consumer behavior modeling and distribution system operations. It begins with an overview of recent developments in smart meter data analytics. Since data management is the basis of further smart meter data analytics and its applications, three issues on data management, i.e., data compression, anomaly detection, and data generation, are subsequently studied. The following works try to model complex consumer behavior. Specific works include load profiling, pattern recognition, personalized price design, socio-demographic information identification, and household behavior coding. On this basis, the book extends consumer behavior in spatial and temporal scale. Works such as consumer aggregation, individual load forecasting, and aggregated load forecasting are introduced. We hope this book can inspire readers to define new problems, apply novel methods, and obtain interesting results with massive smart meter data or even other monitoring data in the power systems.

Some European lands have been progressively alleviated of human pressures, particularly traditional agriculture in remote areas. This book proposes that this land abandonment can be seen as an opportunity to restore natural ecosystems via rewilding. We define rewilding as the passive management of ecological successions having in mind the long-term goal of restoring natural ecosystem processes. The book aims at introducing the concept of rewilding to scientists, students and practitioners. The first part presents the theory of rewilding in the European context. The second part of the book directly addresses the link between rewilding, biodiversity, and habitats. The third and last part is dedicated to practical aspects of the implementation of rewilding as a land management option. We believe that this book will both set the basis for future research on rewilding and help practitioners think about how rewilding can take place in areas under their management.

Rich countries are paying poor countries to fight climate change on their behalf - and one way they are doing it is through carbon sinks. These are reservoirs of organic carbon tied up in plants and in the earth, rather than being in the atmosphere as greenhouse gases. This book looks critically at this mode of climate change mitigation. Can it work? Is it just? Will poorer countries benefit? The book considers the scientific, economic and ethical basis for this type of mitigation. Previous attention has been focused mainly on reducing emissions from deforestation and land degradation (REDD), but this book is one of the first attempts to examine the potential for carbon sinks in agriculture in crop plants and the soil. In assessing this, the author examines exactly how north-south climate mitigation trading works, or does not, and what the pitfalls are. It highlights the complex relationship between agriculture, particularly different forms of farming systems, and the mitigation of climate change. The arguments are backed up by original research with farmers in Brazil to demonstrate the challenges and prospects which these proposals offer in terms of payments for environmental services from agriculture through carbon trading.

Written by an economist and an investment professional, this book addresses the twin crises that the world is facing in the form of a simultaneous financial and environmental credit crunch. Financially, consumers are less able to consume now, and pay later. Environmentally, we may have already reached our credit limit and the bill for past financial and environmental consumption is falling due. Whether the financial credit crunch constrains consumers in a way that will be environmentally supportive, naturally slowing the consumption of finite resources, or hinders any effective resolution of the environmental credit crunch is of crucial importance. Policy responses to the financial crisis are likely to be constrained by the political need to support the economic status quo, and when combined with a global reduction in available investment capital there are serious challenges ahead if the economic and environmental damage of the environmental credit crunch is to be minimised. This book asks whether financial crunch-induced changes in consumer behaviour will be enough to avoid, or reduce, the environmental crunch many believe is just round the corner. Donovan and Hudson combine their respective economic and environmental perspectives to address this key question, reviewing this 'tale of two crunches' from the perspective of different economic sectors. The answer to the conundrum this book poses may lie in the only unlimited resource on the planet - human ingenuity.

The accounting profession, especially in the US, has lost credibility and this has serious implications for environmental reporting. As a number of papers in this volume attest, the amount of environmental reporting has increased in the period from the 1980s-mid 1990s. However, the value of those disclosures is open to serious question. The research for most of the papers in this volume was completed prior to the Enron scandal, but the findings indicate a need to re-evaluate what is reported about the firm's relationship to the physical environment.