Biofuels are a renewable source of energy used mainly for transportation. They link together food, energy and natural resources sectors, and involve ecological, social and inequality issues. They are an emblematic example of the interactions between economic, environmental, social and political decisions and, as a recent and complex issue, require updated and detailed information to be understood. This book aims to shed light on several economic, social and environmental issues connected to biofuel production and policies. The Economics of Biofuels adopts detailed descriptions, rigorous data analysis and precise econometric methods to estimate the effects of biofuel on different socio-economic factors, avoiding complicated and sometimes ineffective models based on context-specific parameters. In particular, the book focuses on the impact of bioenergy policy on biocommodity production and trade, and on the related phenomenon of land acquisitions to grow biofuel commodities. The book's main findings are derived by an original and unique dataset collecting information on the investors acquiring land in Africa and on the voluntary standard, certification and labelling schemes adopted by them as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategy. The analysis links together in an original way public and private initiatives to make biofuel sustainable. Therefore, this book represents an improvement in the understanding of biofuel production and policy's sustainability. This book is of interest to those who study environmental economics, agricultural economics and sustainable development. It is also suitable for those in the renewable energy sector, with a particular focus on biofuel sustainability.

This book reviews how far East Asian nations have implemented green fiscal reform, and show how they can advance carbon-energy tax reform to realize low carbon development, with special reference to European policy and experience. East Asian nations are learning European experiences to adopt them in their political, economic and institutional contexts. However, implementation has been slow in practice, partly due to low acceptability that comes from the same concerns as in Europe, and partly due to weak institutional arrangements for the reform. The slow progress in the revenue side turns our eyes to the expenditure side: how East Asian nations have increased environmental-related expenditures, and how far they have greened sectorial expenditures. This "lifecycle" assessment of fiscal reform, coupled with the assessment of the institutional arrangement constitutes the features of this book. The book helps to provide an overall picture of green fiscal reform and carbon-energy tax reform in the East Asian region. The region has a variety of countries, from lowest income to high income nations. Nations have different interests in substance and barriers for reform. This book covers recent development of environmental fiscal reform and carbon-energy taxation in wider nations in the region, including South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and Japan. In addition, the book's holistic view helps to understand why a specific nation has interest and concern on some aspects of the reforms.

What are the potential adverse impacts of climate change? How can society determine the amount of protection against climate change that is warranted, given the benefits and costs of various policies? In concise, informative chapters, Climate Economics and Policy considers the key issues involved in one of the most important policy debates of our time. Beginning with an overview and policy history, it explores the potential impact of climate change on a variety of domains, including water resources, agriculture, and forests. The contributors then provide assessments of policies that will affect greenhouse gas emissions, including electricity restructuring, carbon sequestration in forests, and early reduction programs. In considering both domestic and international policy options, the authors examine command and control strategies, energy efficiency opportunities, taxes, emissions trading, subsidy reform, and inducements for technological progress. Both policymakers and the general public will find this volume to be a convenient and authoritative guide to climate change risk and policy. It is a useful resource for professional education programs, and an important addition for college courses in environmental economics and environmental studies. Climate Economics and Policy is a collection of Issue Briefs, prepared by the staff of Resources for the Future (RFF) and outside experts. Many are adapted from pieces originally disseminated on Weathervane, RFF's acclaimed web site on global climate change.

The part played by the Brazilian tropical timber industry in deforesting the Amazon region has not been studied very much. This book describes the expansion of the timber industry in the Brazilian federal state of Para since the 1960s, when Amazon development became an important item on the government's agenda.

This volume includes many of the most influential and interesting academic articles related to the economics of mobile source pollution control. The papers included explore why vehicles and vehicle markets are unique, provide estimates of the type and magnitude of the social costs of driving and examine estimation methods and estimates of the various elasticities of vehicle demand. Analysis of the social costs and policies to reduce both traditional air pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions are included. Selected articles review the range of evaluation of both regulatory and market-based approaches to controlling emissions. The complexity of the effects of different policies are emphasized and the unintended consequences of regulation are explored in the context of vehicle emissions reduction policies.

The impact of globalisation on the environment is a much debated issue, reflected in the growing literature on the effects of trade liberalization, the activities of transnational corporations and international finance. Using case-studies from Latin America, this book sets out these debates and presents new empirical evidence on key questions.

This ground-breaking book focuses on neo-Austrian capital theory and its application to the modelling of long-run economy-environment interactions. The book begins by presenting an overview of the modelling approach and offers an historical survey of capital theory and its development. The authors then provide a detailed introduction to the neo-Austrian modelling technique and extend it to include time horizons and growth models. The model is then applied to environmental issues such as green national accounts, resource rents and climate change to show how the neo-Austrian approach gives fresh and illuminating insights. An empirical application to the iron and steel industry is also presented. Capital and Time in Ecological Economics will be of interest to ecological and environmental economists, economic capital theorists and all those following developments in the neo-Austrian approach to economics.

A Shock to the System is a guide to the decisions that will be faced by electricity providers, customers, and policymakers. Produced by a team of analysts at Resources for the Future, this concise and balanced work provides background necessary to understand the increasing role of competition in electricity markets. The authors introduce important concepts and terminology, and offer the history of public policy regarding electricity. They identify the significant proposals for implementing competition, and examine the potential consequences for regulation, industry structure, cost recovery, and the environment.

For years, the Environmental Protection Agency has been conducting programmatic 'economic analyses,' also known as Regulatory Impact Analyses (RIAs), to assess the economic effects of its regulatory efforts. This important volume explains the purpose of these analyses, along with their design, execution, conclusions, and their ultimate impact on environmental rules. Richard Morgenstern, formerly director of EPA's Office of Policy Analysis, has assembled twelve original case studies of RIAs performed over the past decade on matters such as lead in gasoline, ozone depletion, asbestos, clean drinking water, and sewage management. The contributors, most of whom actually worked on these RIAs, provide detailed examination of why and how they were performed. The case studies critique the nature, amount, and quality of data used by the EPA in their benefit-cost and cost-effectiveness analyses as well as the use (or abuse) of the results in final decisionmaking. The authors illustrate how the analyses take into account difficult issues such as discounting, risk, nonmonetized benefits and costs, and equity. Morgenstern provides the necessary historical context and the legal framework for requiring and conducting EAs. He describes new procedures outlined by the Clinton administration and synthesizes the case studies into thoughtful cross-cutting conclusions, drawing important lessons that will improve future analyses.

Assessing natural resource damages often requires the use of nonmarket valuation techniques that were developed for use in benefit-cost analyses. Natural resource damage assessment dramatically changes the context for applying them. Two aspects of this context are especially important. First, damages are to be measured by the monetary value of the losses people experience, including their use and nonuse values, because of injuries to natural resources---a process requiring careful delineation of how the injuries connect to the resource's services. Second, a single identified entry---not generalized, anonymous taxpayers---must pay damages based on what is measured, and evaluations of the measurement techniques take place not in agency meeting rooms but in courtrooms.Contributors to Valuing Natural Assets examine the ways in which requirements for damage assessment change how the measures are used, presented, received, and defended. Drawing upon their personal involvement with the process and the research issues it has raised---both in providing analysis for defendants or plaintiffs in damage assessment cases and in writing for academic journals---their chapters reflect individual research programs that temper the rigorous demands of scholarship with the equally demanding standards of litigation.

While more than 2,700 emergency removals of hazardous materials have taken place under Superfund, implementing the long-term cleanup program has been the object of considerable controversy. One of the most contentious issues is whether the liability standards in the law should be revised. The authors analyze the pros and cons associated with the current liability approach, as well as with a variety of alternative strategies.

Environmental Sustainability, Growth Trajectory and Gender focuses on three major issues affecting developing economies: environmental sustainability, growth trajectory and gender. The social, economic and environmental consequences of climate change and loss of essential ecosystems are becoming increasingly apparent. Within the global community, the challenges of sustainable development and gender equality are growing in importance. The knowledge and collective action of women would improve productivity, boost conservation of ecosystems and enhance economic growth in developing countries. Environmental Sustainability, Growth Trajectory and Gender provides a wealth of information for academic researchers, postgraduate students, and faculties of different disciplines, and will lead to increased awareness, policies and actions that will enhance gender equality and provide full enjoyment of sustainable development.

The Emergence of Ecological Modernisation offers a wealth of empirical research material from an international perspective, bringing together previously scattered sources for the first time. It addresses a series of theoretical issues that are of key contemporary relevance, such as the relationship between ecological modernisation and sustainable development; strategies for promoting ecological modernisation, and the extent to which it is possible to 'green' contemporary capitalism.

Teresa Brennan marshalls the insights of Marx and Freud to provide a compelling and insightful analysis of the exhaustion pervading modern capitalism: environmental collapse, the rising poverty levels, and the increase in global economic disparity. Linking the consumption of environmental resources to our own depleted psychic life, she shows that modernity must be rethought if we are to find a sustainable future for both the environment and our own psychic life. This book should prove of value to political and social theorists, philosophers, economists, and anyone interested in the environment.

Author Biography:
Teresa Brennan is Schmidt Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Florida Atlantic University, USA.

Contemporary Environmental Accounting: Issues, Concepts and Practice has been written by two of the world's leading experts in the field in order to provide the most comprehensive and state-of-the-art textbook on environmental accounting yet attempted. The book is suitable for both undergraduate and graduate students and their teachers, professional accountants, and corporate and organisational managers. Although no prior knowledge of environmental accounting is necessary to understand the critical issues at stake, academic accountants will also find that the book provides a useful introduction to the topic. The goals of the book are to discuss and illustrate contemporary conceptual approaches to environmental accounting; to make readers aware of crucial controversial topics; and to offer practical examples of how the concepts have been applied throughout Europe, North America and Australia. In order to increase the usefulness of the book for relevant courses, each chapter concludes with a set of questions for review. This book is essential reading for all those who are interested in how environmental issues influence accounting. A solutions manual is available on request with the purchase of this book.

Why is it that market instruments have not been used to their full potential in environmental policy? Using a public choice perspective, this book critically analyses the political economy of environmental policy with special emphasis on the role of powerful interest groups which have blocked the introduction of market instruments.Drawing on new case studies of market instruments, Dr Dijkstra examines the attitudes of interest groups and how they influence environmental policy. He discusses the preferences of shareholders and workers in the polluting industry, the environmental movement and the environmental bureaucracy. He then investigates the circumstances under which market instruments will have low or no probability of being accepted, assuming that they are welfare-maximizing. The Political Economy of Environmental Policy will be of interest to environmental and ecological economists, policymakers, political scientists and public choice scholars.

Since the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1997, the negotiation of policy responses to climate change has become an area of major research. This authoritative volume sets out the main debates and processes of joint implementation - bilateral or multilateral investments in greenhouse gas emission reduction or sequestration - and explores the issues involved in constructing an appropriate institutional framework. It examines the key economic, environmental, social and ethical impacts, and assesses the operational design of the flexibility mechanisms of joint implementation, including emissions trading and the Clean Development Mechanism. An approach is developed in which streamlined assessment procedures are combined with institutional safeguards in order to balance the demand for practical mechanisms with the environmental objectives of the Protocol. The book provides detailed case studies of energy sector investment in Eastern European host countries.

Many different types of private investment are described and their impact on the environment analyzed, leading to the conclusion - surprising for many - that improved environmental performance can accompany foreign direct investment. The book, the first in-depth study of these important links, is built around a series of case studies of various industries in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and Costa Rica. The authors, a multi-national, multi-disciplinary team of experts, show how governments of developing countries can actually attract foreign investors by integrating environmental considerations into their investment promotion efforts. The book also identifies points of leverage for actions by governments, investors, environmental groups, and customers to increase even further the environmental benefits that can accompany private capital flows. This book makes an important and timely contribution to the debate on foreign direct investment and sustainable development. It will be of great interest to scholars and students of environmental economics, development economics, international finance, law, and management as well as to policymakers, environmental advocates, and private investors.

The majority of societies are facing a conflict between the increasing levels of road traffic congestion, especially during peak hours and in urban areas, and a decline in the social acceptability of road expansion. This has led governments as well as non-governmental organizations to consider other methods of reducing road traffic. This book examines the efficiency and feasibility of the regulation of road traffic congestion in theory and practice, and within the context of social and political feasibility.As long ago as the 1920s it was recognized that road pricing offered an efficient means of handling congested road traffic flows. Since then the severity of traffic congestion has increased so dramatically that it has turned the matter from an academic interest into one of the most serious problems affecting urbanized areas and transport arteries today. Increasing transport levels have other important external costs such as environmental effects, noise annoyance and accidents. As a result the need to find effective means of relieving congestion has become an important issue both at the national and local level. This book examines Pigouvian taxes, the most popular policy prescription among economists, as well as considering a variety of other policies which may be more politically and socially acceptable. The contributors discuss alternatives to Pigouvian taxes, as well as congestion and urban development, congestion pricing and road infrastructure investment, and road pricing and urban sustainability. This important and timely book will become an essential reference source for policymakers at the national and local level as well as academics and postgraduate students interested in transport economics and environmental economics.

The effectiveness of international environment agreements has so far been studied almost exclusively from an institutional or regime-centric perspective. Such analysis focuses on the actors in agreement-making and downplays the role of the structures and constraints within which they operate. This work argues that a distinction must be made between effective institutions dealing with environmental problems, and the remedying of an environmental problem. Gabriella Kutting introduces the concept of environmental effectiveness to address this problem, and goes beyond previous studies by not only criticizing existing approaches, but offering an alternative. Kutting's approach introduces a new perspective to the effectiveness debate, based on a more holistic methodology and an ecocentric rather than environmental management viewpoint. This book outlines the structures in which agreement-making operates, and demonstrates that a fundamental reassessment of the relationship between environment and society is necessary.;This work offers new insights into the study of social organization and its effect on the environment. It should be useful as a resource for researchers and students of inte

The effectiveness of international environment agreements has so far been studied almost exclusively from an institutional or regime-centric perspective. Such analysis focuses on the actors in agreement-making and downplays the role of the structures and constraints within which they operate. This work argues that a distinction must be made between effective institutions dealing with environmental problems, and the remedying of an environmental problem. Gabriella Kutting introduces the concept of environmental effectiveness to address this problem, and goes beyond previous studies by not only criticizing existing approaches, but offering an alternative. Kutting's approach introduces a new perspective to the effectiveness debate, based on a more holistic methodology and an ecocentric rather than environmental management viewpoint. This book outlines the structures in which agreement-making operates, and demonstrates that a fundamental reassessment of the relationship between environment and society is necessary.;This work offers new insights into the study of social organization and its effect on the environment. It should be useful as a resource for researchers and students of inte

Industrialization to achieve economic development has resulted in global environmental degradation. While the impacts of industrial activity on the natural environment are a major concern in developed countries, much less is known about these impacts in developing countries. This source book identifies and quantifies the environmental consequences of industrial growth, and provides policy advice, including the use of clean technologies and environmentally sound production techniques, with special reference to the developing world.The developing world is often seen as having a high percentage of heavily polluting activities within its industrial sector. This, combined with a substantial agricultural sector, which contributes to deforestation, the erosion of the top soil and desertification, has lead to extreme pressures on the environment and impoverishes the population by destroying its natural resource base. This crisis suggests that sound industrialization policies are of paramount importance in a developing countries' economic development, and calls for the management of natural resources and the adoption of low-waste or environmentally clean technologies. The authors consider the industrial sector as a pollutant vis-a-vis other sectors of the economy, and then focus on some industry-specific pollutants within the manufacturing sector and some process-specific industrial pollutants. They conclude by reviewing the economic implications of promoting environmentally sound industrial development, specifically addressing the question of the conflict or complementarity which may exist between environmental goods and industrial production. The book will be essential to those working in industry, development and environmental economics.

This study integrates scientific findings about the Global Warming Potential (GWP) - for example, the roles of pollution, population growth, agricultural development and sustainable resources - with advances in economic theory and methods, so as to explain how and why climate and economy are complementary at the local, national and global levels. The primary purpose of this work is to provide analytical bases for the creation of pragmatic, ecology-environment-economy policies, rather than to overwhelm the reader with technical processing that does not offer any comprehensive examination of the effects of the economy upon the environment, and vice versa. Modelling and data processing are treated as secondary requirements and follow, rather than precede, the framework developed in this book.

Integrating Environment and Economy provides a detailed and accessible examination of how integrated approaches enable economic and social activities to support environmental objectives. This is a key text for the many taught Masters courses covering the issues of environmental management and economic development
Features of the book:
* covers strong areas of undergraduate and postgraduate study
* detailed practice-based case studies at both local and regional levels
* up-to-date theory using real-life examples


eBook available with sample pages: 0203012895