Imagine a waste-free future for your business, your family, and yourself A circular economy is an economic system designed to save money, eliminate waste, and achieve deep sustainability. No-brainer, right? Circular Economy For Dummies explains why the old way of doing things (linear economy) is fast going the way of the dinosaurs, and it gets you ready to think circular. From business processes and material lifecycles to circular design in just about every industry, this book is a fascinating glimpse into our sustainable future. Whether you're looking to close the resource loop in your business or develop a greener lifestyle for yourself and your family, this book shows you how. Learn how to innovate for circular economy, how to turn trash into treasure, and how to calculate the (potentially large) amount of money this will save you. And--bonus--you'll feel good doing the right thing and being a part of our sustainable future! Challenge the assumptions behind the old-school "linear economy" model Learn how we can work together to achieve a waste-free future Save money by rethinking your resource use or business supply chain Reimagine households, neighborhoods, schools, companies, and societies The future is circular. Buck business-as-usual and learn how to create a circular economy for all!

The contributors argue that rare earths are essential to the information technology revolution on which humans have come to depend for communication, commerce, and, increasingly, engage in conflict. They demonstrate that rare earths are a strategic commodity over which political actors will and do struggle for control.

Energy price rises have been amongst the biggest change that has taken place in our society over the last few decades. Their impact, particularly when this book was first published in 1983, had a growing importance in social policy, practice and research, and fuel was, and still is, a major public issue. This collection of essays describes how any why domestic fuel prices have been rising faster than other prices and incomes, what impacts this has on domestic budgets, and the extent of 'fuel poverty'. The resulting problems of debts, disconnections, cold conditions and hypothermia are discussed by specialists in these fields. This book is ideal for students of economics and social policy.

This book presents an introduction, overview and extension of ecosystem management and environmental restoration principles and applications. It develops a new framework and approach to improving the environment through extensive case studies and analysis of environmental rehabilitation initiatives in the San Francisco Bay-Delta, Florida Everglades, Columbia River Basin in the Pacific Northwest, and the Green Heart region of western Netherlands. The book's comparative and integrative approach, with its grounding in ecology, engineering and management, will appeal to those working wherever population, resources and environment are in conflict.

Russia offers a fascinating example of the contrast between the attractions of a vast hydrocarbon resource base to major oil and gas companies and the problems that can be encountered in trying to invest in it. International Partnership in Russia provides a unique insight into the joint ventures which have been formed between domestic and international partners in Russia during the post-Soviet era. It outlines the highs and lows in their fortunes and analyses the reasons for their successes and failures, developing an original theory on the bargaining relationship between foreign and domestic partners in a weak institutional environment such as Russia. It provides a new strategy for partner engagement based on theoretical analysis, interviews with key players and the experiences of one of the authors at Russia's largest international partnership to date, TNK-BP. This book will be indispensable reading for energy economists, senior executives at oil and gas companies with exposure to Russia and other countries where local knowledge is vital for success, as well as for finance practitioners working in energy markets.

This 13-volume collection originally published between 1929 and 1982 contains a selection of titles from the fields of economics and political science. Many individual titles focus on Britain and include topics such as democracy; environmental planning; foreign policy; legislation; microeconomics; national income; and the welfare state. The earliest title looks at the nature of nationality, and two further titles look at politics in France. This set will be an insight for those interested in the history of either field.

Today's beleaguered yet expanding carbon market represents a type of relationship between economy and ecology scarcely imaginable forty years ago. This collection brings together a comprehensive array of perspectives to critically scrutinise the development and on-going maintenance of this global carbon market. The book's contributors recognise that the market itself, as well as the notion of the environment that it instantiates, is highly political and contested; thus the chapters investigate the market system and its insertion into and influence on climate and environmental governance within the global political economy. The book does this by analysing the routines, institutions, techniques and technologies established or refuted through practices of social and material negotiation. As well as an examination of the carbon market from a political perspective, the book includes contributions that equally interrogate what politics means, does and requires within climate and environmental governance. The book is organised into three sections.The first section investigates the political developments, technical arrangements and contextualising factors that lead up to the implementation of the carbon markets. The second section interrogates the social, political, material, technical and technological details of the carbon markets, as well as the relationship and connections between these details and the broader political economics/ecologic context. The final section asks what the political impacts and consequences of the markets are, what they mean for the climate governance regime and how they impact on the broader capitalist systems.

Written in a way that facilitates understanding of complex concepts, laws, and policy, Production, Growth, and the Environment: An Economic Approach explores how economic growth usually makes people better off, but also asks at what environmental cost? These costs are not often realized until after the fact, when their remediation is more expensive, and sometimes not reversible. Very few books on environmental economics model the joint production of desirable and undesirable outcomes in any depth. This book fills that void. It discusses the demographic transition and the escape from the Malthusian trap. It also covers the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis that examines the relation between polluting outputs and economic welfare. The book integrates environmental valuation methods with the production possibility frontier (PPF) approach. It presents both types of outcomes in a PPF framework that accounts for scarcity and allows the concepts of technical and allocative efficiencies to be introduced and measured. The PPF can then measure technological progress/regress and can be used to measure whether resource use is sustainable over time. It can also be used to determine shadow prices for non-market desirable outputs such as ecological services and non-market undesirable by-products such as SO2, NOx, and CO2 that arise from fossil fuel combustion. The beauty of the PPF framework is that it can be depicted in simple two-dimensional diagrams that make the concepts easy to understand. The author uses this framework to introduce concepts such as technical efficiency, allocative efficiency, technological progress/regress, shadow pricing, externalities, public goods, pollution taxes, and permits. In addition, each chapter has numerous problems and discussion questions that provide examples and practice in using the introduced theories. The book also includes a chapter that shows how the solver routine in Excel can be used to measure technical and allocative efficiency. This gives you the tools to examine all outcomes and therefore make a decision that takes into account the environmental challenges along with any economic benefits.

The development of an international substantive environmental right has long been a contested issue. Concurrently, environmental rights have developed in a fragmented way and to a limited extent through different legal regimes. This book examines the potential for the development of a global environmental right which would create legal duties for all decision-makers relating to the environment and provide the bedrock for a new system of international environmental governance. The book analyses not only traditional international environmental law and human rights law but also the development of corporate law, the development of the GATT and the WTO. It uses this basis to build an understanding of the wider international legal architecture and why that architecture often leads to poor outcomes for the environment. The book summarizes the state of scientific knowledge, as it is this, which drives the justification for legal reform. It also analyses existing systems that have developed within the practice of decision-making processes to demonstrate the role that they can play within new systems of environmental governance. Taking a problem solving approach, the book seeks to demonstrate how straightforward and logical changes to the architecture would solve fundamental problems and argues for the development of a new environmental right that creates clear legal responsibilities for decision-makers, illustrating how governments and institutions would need to adjust to make the changes operative and successful. This problem solving approach extends to the provision of a draft treaty annexed to the book. This innovative and interdisciplinary book is of great interest to students and researchers in international environmental law, environmental politics, environmental economics, and environmental management, as well as those studying more specifically the WTO, international trade law, human rights law, constitutional law and company law.

This wonderful book demonstrates how rural livelihoods - as well as diets, health and ways of life - are enhanced by the so-called neglected and underutilized plant species which, in the book s Syrian case study, include such deliciously interesting things as capers, laurel, jujube and figs. Using value chain analysis the author illuminates the opportunities for strengthening arid land economies with attention to such species, while simultaneously maintaining the diversity and integrity of those plant genomes, landscapes and cultures. And keeping the world worth tasting. KEN WILSON, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE CHRISTENSEN FUND Alexandra Giuliani delivers a convincing and very practical account of how biodiversity products derived from neglected and underutilized plant species enter the markets in Syria. By highlighting the value of these plant products for the family income and health status of marginal farmer families in rural drylands and semi-arid areas, she brings the message home as to why it is so important to maintain biodiversity of the genetic resources not by protection alone, but rather through their judicious use. KATHARINA JENNY, SENIOR ADVISOR, FEDERAL DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS, SWISS AGENCY FOR DEVELOPMENT AND COOPERATION Just four crops - maize, potatoes, rice and wheat - provide more than 90 per cent of the world s food. Old varieties of even these crops are disappearing as farmers and consumers strive for more uniformity in food products. This in turn affects less obvious elements, such as insects that play a role in pollinating plants or controlling pests and the soil organisms that help plants extract nutrients from the soil. Also, farmers need a broad base of agrobiodiversity to be able to respond and adapt to environmental changes and to improve their production. This is especially important in the face of climate change and changing economic and political pressures. This book from Bioversity International describes a study conducted in Syria of how communities are developing markets for local products derived from neglected and underutilized plants. Based on concrete case studies, the data and processes documented in this book show the potential of biodiversity to make a significant contribution to livelihood security in communities that inhabit difficult environments with unique resources. The study also highlights the importance of local cultural knowledge and institutions in sustainable development of biodiversity markets. Published with Bioversity International."

Canada is a well-endowed country that serves as an ideal model to lead the reader through the development of energy, resources, and society historically and into a post-carbon future. The book provides an historical perspective and describes the physical resource limitations, energy budgets, and climate realities that will determine the potential for any transition to renewable energy. Political and social realities, including jurisdiction and energy equality issues, are addressed. However, we cannot simply mandate or legislate policies according to social and political aspirations. Policies must comply with the realities of physical laws, such as the energy return on investment (EROI) for fossil-fuel based and renewable energy systems. EROI is discussed in both historical terms and in reference to the greater efficiencies inherent in a distributed generation, mainly electric, post-carbon society. Meyer explores the often misleading concepts and terms that have become embedded in society and tend to dictate our policy making, as well as the language, social and personal goals, and metrics that need to change before the physical transition can begin at the required scale. This book also reviews what nations have been doing thus far in terms of renewables, including the successes and failures in Canada and across the globe. Ontario's green energy fiasco, and a comparison of the different circumstances of Norway and Alberta, for example, are covered as part of the author's comparison of a wide range of countries. What are the achievements, plans, and problems that determine how well different countries are positioned to make "the transition"? The transition path is complex, and the tools we need to develop and the physical infrastructure investments we need to make, are daunting. At some point in time, Canada and Canadians, like all nations, will be living on 100% renewable energy. Whether the social and technological level that endures sees us travelling to the stars, or subsisting at a standard of living more similar to the pre-fossil fuel era, is far from certain.

Water provides benefits as a commodity for agriculture, industry, and households, and as a public good such as fisheries habitat, water quality and recreational use. To aid in cost-benefit analysis under conditions where market determined price signals are usually unavailable, economists have developed a range of alternative valuation methods for measuring economic benefits. This volume provides the most comprehensive exposition to-date of the application of economic valuation methods to proposed water resources investments and policies. It provides a conceptual framework for valuation of both commodity and public good uses of water, addressing non-market valuation techniques appropriate to measuring public benefits - including water quality improvement, recreation, and fish habitat enhancement. The book describes the various measurement methods, illustrates how they are applied in practice, and discusses their strengths, limitations, and appropriate roles. In this second edition, all chapters have been thoroughly updated, and in particular the coverage of water markets and valuation of ecosystem services from water has been expanded. Robert Young, author of the 2005 edition, has been joined for this new edition by John Loomis, who brings additional expertise on ecosystem services and the environmental economics of water for recreational and other public good uses of water.

Water provides benefits as a commodity for agriculture, industry, and households, and as a public good such as fisheries habitat, water quality and recreational use. To aid in cost-benefit analysis under conditions where market determined price signals are usually unavailable, economists have developed a range of alternative valuation methods for measuring economic benefits. This volume provides the most comprehensive exposition to-date of the application of economic valuation methods to proposed water resources investments and policies. It provides a conceptual framework for valuation of both commodity and public good uses of water, addressing non-market valuation techniques appropriate to measuring public benefits - including water quality improvement, recreation, and fish habitat enhancement. The book describes the various measurement methods, illustrates how they are applied in practice, and discusses their strengths, limitations, and appropriate roles. In this second edition, all chapters have been thoroughly updated, and in particular the coverage of water markets and valuation of ecosystem services from water has been expanded. Robert Young, author of the 2005 edition, has been joined for this new edition by John Loomis, who brings additional expertise on ecosystem services and the environmental economics of water for recreational and other public good uses of water.

The interlinked issues of air pollution and energy policies in an enlarged Europe are currently subjects of major interest in economic, environmental, geography and regional sciences. This interest is understandable given the considerable consequences on human health and on climate change issues at not only a European, but a global level. In addition, the recent effects of economic fluctuation and oil prices as well as the actual restructuring of the European energy supply and security market raise a great deal of policy challenges. These issues have become an increasingly relevant concern, as the optimal design of policy by centralised European institutions has come under greater scrutiny.

This book presents an integrated approach to recent regulations on air pollution with particular emphasis on transborder air pollution, climate change and energy policies in the new Europe. This integrated vision embraces the extent to which global pollution influences policy decisions at different institutional levels; the magnitude, by virtue of policy simulation analysis, of environmental policy tools (i.e. environmental taxes) on aggregate welfare and transboundary air emissions fluxes in light of the recent enlargement process; the European Trading System and its flexible mechanisms to curb carbon emissions and fulfil the European Union Kyoto Protocol s commitments; and the developments of the new European energy strategy and its interdependencies across energy requirements, innovation, competitiveness and climate change.

The book is primarily aimed at Postgraduates and Postdoctoral research students in economics, environmental economics, environmental sciences, or environmental policy disciplines. However, it should also be of interest to environmental economists, energy policy analysts, members of governmental and non-governmental agencies dealing with environmental policy, climate change or air pollution."

As demand for fresh water rises, together with population, water scarcity already features on the national security agenda of many countries. In this book, Dinardevelops a theory to explain solutions to property rights conflicts over shared rivers. Through systematic analysis of available treaty texts, corresponding side-payment and cost-sharing patterns are gleaned. Geographic and economic variables are used to explain recurring property rights outcomes.

Rather than focusing on a specific river or particular geographic region, the book analyzes numerous rivers, dictated by the large number of treaty observations, and is able to test several hypotheses, devising general conclusions about the manner in which states resolve their water disputes. Policy implications are thereby also gained. While the book simultaneously considers conflict and cooperation along international rivers, it is the focus on negotiated agreements, and their embodied side-payment and cost-sharing regimes, that justifies the use of particular independent variables.

This book aims to explore the avenue of landscape economics and provides the building blocks (from different scientific disciplines) for an economic analysis of landscapes. What exactly constitutes and determines the value of a landscape? It focuses on the value of landscapes in its broadest sense, thereby covering a variety of topics including stakeholder involvement in landscape design, landscape governance and landscape perceptions from different countries. Merely saying that landscapes have value or are important is not sufficient - not when resources are scarce and have alternative uses. Measuring and quantifying the economic value of changes in landscapes would help ensure that landscape management decisions are both (economically) rational and sound.

The first edition of this important work was the winner of the 2002 Publication of Enduring Quality award by the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists. The continuing premise for the book is that estimates of the economic values of environmental and natural resource services are essential for effective policy-making. As previous editions, the third edition, which includes two additional co-authors, presents a comprehensive treatment of the theory and methods involved in estimating environmental benefits.

Researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners will welcome the work as an up-to-date reference on recent developments. Students will gain a better understanding of the contribution that economics as a discipline can make to decisions concerning pollution control and human health, recreation, environmental amenities, and other critical issues concerning the way we use and interact with environmental and natural resource systems. To reflect recent progress in both the theory and practice of non-market valuation, the third edition includes more details on empirical approaches to measurement, expanded discussion of the reasons for divergence between "willingness to pay" and "willingness to accept compensation," and increased coverage of econometric issues encountered in estimation. In keeping with its cutting edge orientation, it also includes more discussion of survey design, equilibrium sorting models, and the implications of behavioral economics for welfare measurements and benefit cost analysis.

In today's global 'commercial society' an inquiry into the economic role of government is gaining momentum. Many crucial goods for the well-being of a society are not 'commercial': national security and clean air are good examples. This means that the economic role of government is not limited to cure so-called 'market failures' but it has to provide for non-commercial goods. Unfortunately in the last few decades the decline of the political-economic culture of Western post-industrial societies has left scope for people to blindly believe in a free, deregulated market.

This book brings the culture of the state in from the cold, by confronting readers at the start with the necessity of recognizing the fundamental difference between private commercial interests, whose provision rests on the culture of profit, and public shared interests, whose provision rests on the culture of the state. This book also explores how much individual well-being depends on both.

The only chance for public shared interests, with their non-profit nature, to successfully keep their ground in the face of the overwhelming power of private commercial/financial interests, lies in regenerating a political-economic state culture whereby governments and policy-makers/politicians understand their responsibility and social function to consist primarily in pursuing the satisfaction of the former and not in acting on behalf of the latter.

Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen's (1906-94) most original contribution is his bioeconomic theory. Based on a profound rethinking of the foundations of neoclassical economics, bioeconomics represents a completely new paradigm compared to both the standard and the Marxist approach. Opening economics to natural sciences led Georgescu-Roegen to point out the bio-physical limits to growth. In the last years of his life, he also criticised the sustainable development paradigm, but his criticism disappeared together with him, only to re-emerge recently, thanks to the research on his archiveand to the interest for his viewpoints within the framework of 'degrowth'. In his last years Georgescu-Roegen intended to publish a text entitled Bioeconomics, as an initial systematic arrangement of this doctrine. This book aims to pick up that project in two ways: first, collecting Goergescu-Roegen's main contributions to bioeconomic theory, some still unpublished, and tackling the principal nubs of the discipline particularly the criticism of sustainable development. Second, recuperating that full multidisciplinarity that represents the profoundest characteristic of the bioeconomic theory. The concluding essay is now considered a cornerstone of the degrowth perspective.

This authoritative but highly accessible book presents the reader with a powerful framework for understanding the critical role of the energy return on investment (EROI) in the survival and well-being of individuals, ecosystems, businesses, economies and nations. Growth and development are fundamental and ubiquitous processes at all scales, from individuals to food crops to national economies. While we are all familiar with the concepts of economic growth and living standards as measured by gross domestic product (GDP), we often take for granted the energy use that underpins GDP and our expectations for year-on-year growth. In this book, you will learn how these measures of "progress" are completely dependent on the balance that can be achieved between energy costs (inputs) and gains. Nothing is made or moved without an energy surplus, and it is the EROI of available energy sources more than any other single factor that determines the shape of civilization. Nearly all politics and economics assume that policy and market forces are the levers upon which future outcomes will hinge. However, this book presents many examples of historical and current events that can be explained much more clearly from an energetic perspective. In addition, a future scenario is developed that gives a central place to EROI in assessing the potential of governmental and private initiatives to substitute so-called renewable energy sources for diminishing stocks of fossil fuels. When cheap fossil fuels are no longer available in the abundance needed to mask economic problems and power business as usual, it will be EROI more than the plethora of "green" technologies that creates the boundary conditions for a sustainable future.

The major challenge for the current generation of mankind is to develop a shared vision of a future that is both desirable to the vast majority of humanity and ecologically sustainable. Creating a Sustainable and Desirable Future offers a broad, critical discussion on what such a future should or can be, with global perspectives written by some of the world's leading thinkers, including: Wendell Berry, Van Jones, Frances Moore Lappe, Peggy Liu, Hunter Lovins, Gus Speth, Bill McKibben, and many more.

Revealed Biodiversity: An Economic History of the Human Impact aims to show that for several centuries environmental conditions have been substantially the product of economic fluctuations. It contests the notion of perpetual decline in species composition. The arguments are supported by far more precise historical detail than is usual in books about ecology. The need to take the gains to human society into account when assessing environmental change is strongly emphasized. The book features case studies including England, the Netherlands, USA, East Asia, Brazil, and the areas of modern agricultural 'land grab'.This book is important for its close attention to the documented historical record of environmental change in several countries over several centuries; for its demonstration of how much wildlife populations have been influenced by fluctuations in market activity; for revealing the need to be sensitive to historical baselines; and for emphasizing the imperative of taking the gains to human society into account when assessing environmental change. It, therefore, has considerable significance for environmental and conservation policies as well as for future studies in ecological history.

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 book reveals the changing dynamics of the helium industry on both the supply-side and the demand-side. The helium industry has a long-term future and this important gas will have a role to play for many decades to come. Major new users of helium are expected to enter the market, especially in nuclear energy (both fission and fusion). Prices and volumes supplied and expected to rise and this will prompt greater efforts towards the development of new helium sources and helium conservation and recycling.

The threats posed by global climate change are widely recognized and carbon emmissions are the major source of greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere. Burning fossil fuels causes long-lasting, pervasive damages, costly to those of us alive today and even more to our children and our children's children. The United States is the second largest carbon emitting country in the world and should play a key role in global efforts to reduce emissions. Paying for Pollution incisively examines the very real costs-economic and social-of climate change and the challenges of concerted action to reduce future losses due to damages of higher temperatures and more extreme weather. Gilbert E. Metcalf argues that there is a convergence of social, economic, environmental, and political forces that provides an opening for a new approach to climate policy, one based on market principles that can appeal to politicians across the political spectrum. After all, markets work best when the price of a good reflects all its costs. Metcalf suggests that a thoughtfully and politically sensitive designed carbon tax could also contribute to an improved tax system, something desired by Republican and Democratic politicians alike. That is, a carbon tax increases fiscal flexibility by providing new revenues to finance reforms to the income tax that improve the fairness of the tax code and contribute to economic growth. Metcalf compares the benefits of a carbon tax to other potential policies, such as cap and trade, to reduce the threats of climate change. None, he shows, are as effective, efficient, and fair as a carbon tax.