Mitchell analyses the extent to which the current political paradigm is capable of meeting the challenges of climate change. She argues that unless there are fundamental changes to policy-making, it is unlikely that energy policies will be able to deliver sufficient change to enable a move to a sustainable energy economy.

This volume celebrates the life and career of Gordon Rausser, pioneer and leader in natural resource economics, while critically overviewing the emerging literature in the field. As the chair of the Agriculture and Resource Economics department at UC Berkeley, Rausser led the transformation of the department from a traditional agricultural economics department to a diverse resource economics department addressing issues of agriculture, food, natural resources, environmental economics, energy, and development. This book builds on this theme, showcasing not only the scope of Rausser's work but also key developments in the field. The volume is organized into two parts. The first part speaks about the lessons of Gordon Rausser's career, in particular, his role as a leader in different spheres, his capacity to integrate teaching and entrepreneurship, and his impact on the world food system. The second part will address some of the significant developments in the field he contributed to and how it relates to his work. The chapters include contributions from modern leaders in the economics field and cover diverse topics from many subfields including public policy, public finance, law, econometrics, macroeconomics, and water resources. Providing an excellent reference, as well as a celebration of a pivotal figure in the field, this volume will be useful for practitioners and scholars in agricultural and resource economics, especially the many individuals familiar with Gordon Rausser and his career.

Climate change is one of the major environmental concern of many countries in the world. Negotiations to control potential climate changes have been taking place, from Rio to Kyoto, for the last five years. There is a widespread consciousness that the risk of incurring in relevant economic and environmental losses due to climate change is high. Scientific analyses have become more and more precise on the likely impacts of climate change. According to the Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, current trends in greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions may indeed cause the average global temperature to increase by 1-3. 5 DegreesC over the next 100 years. As a result, sea levels are expected to rise by 15 to 95 em and climate zones to shift towards the poles by 150 to 550 km in mid latitudes. In order to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change, the IPCC report concludes that a stabilization of atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide - one of the major GHGs - at 550 parts per million by volume (ppmv) is recommended. This would imply a reduction of global emissions of about 50 per cent with respect to current levels. In this context, countries are negotiating to achieve a world-wide agreement on GHGs emissions control in order to stabilize climate changes. Despite the agreement on targets achieved in Kyoto, many issues still remain unresolved.

This publication is concerned with two major current debates in public policy in all affluent societies. One is the widespread concern with the quality of the natural environment-the quality of air, water, land, and wilderness areas-which has expressed itself in the passage and implementation in recent years of a variety of environmental laws and regulations. A second debate concerns the adequacy of energy resources to meet the requirements of a growing economy. The requirement that industries must abate environmental pollution leads to increased costs of production and, in turn, to higher prices, falling output in those industries, and reduced employment and income in the region where such industries are located. There may be, at the same time, growth in indus tries that supply pollution abatement equipment and services in those or other regions. Over time, the health and economic benefits of higher envi ronmental quality express themselves in changing patterns of consumption."

This book offers new perspectives on the economic development of the Middle East and North Africa region. Offering both theoretical studies and empirical country studies, it examines micro- and macroeconomic issues and provides deep insights into the development challenges and prospects of various countries in the region. The articles examine a wide range of development issues, including economic growth, natural resource use, food security, poverty and inequality, corruption and transparency, military spending, water and resource scarcity, agriculture and aid effectiveness, and other relevant issues. The volume is aimed at scholars in economic and development studies as well as policy-makers and investors interested in the economic development of the MENA region.

The book is a study of the cooperation of Brazil and India on renewable energy. It is based on a research project on the energy sector of both the countries. It discusses the agreements in the energy sector between the two countries and the renewable energy policies developed in four decades. A scientific and technological mapping, a brief study of competitiveness and a primary research were carried out in order to find out the weaknesses and the opportunities for cooperation in renewable energies. This Publication will undoubtedly provoke the reader to reflect on the importance of cooperation given the growing protectionism not only in terms of energy security, but also in terms of investments in new technologies considering energy transition scenario. For Brazil and India, intensifying the dialogue is more than a strategy of visibility and the search for greater space in worldwide geopolitics.

This book places islanders' struggles and knowledge at the forefront of island studies. Written by experts from diverse fields and locations, it covers a wide range of topics, from the history of island studies to critical ocean studies. In remapping the field of island studies from Okinawa, an emerging hub of community-based knowledge and interdisciplinary collaboration between leading critics and theorists in geography, linguistics, tourism, literature, international relations, and peace studies reveals the challenges for the future of island studies. The book consists of two parts: the first offers a collection of individual contributions that demonstrate the vital role that the field's interdisciplinarity can play in creating bridges between the political and social issues islanders and the islands face and the disciplines involved. The second part provides a cross-disciplinary discussion between the authors and scholars of island studies in Okinawa, including local experts, and suggests new ways to think about the future of island studies that are intricately linked to islanders' agency, preservation of languages and heritage, and the security of the islands. As such, the book directly addresses the current state of the field as well as with its future.

This fully updated and comprehensively revised edition of a classic text concentrates on the economics of conserving the living environment. It begins by covering the ethical foundations and basic economic paradigms' essential for understanding and assessing ecological economics. General strategies for global environmental conservation, policies for government intervention, developing countries, preserving wildlife and biodiversity, open-access to and common property in natural resources, conservation of natural areas, forestry, agriculture and the environment, tourism, sustainable development and demographic change are also all covered. This second edition deals with contemporary environmental policy issues that can be expected to be of lasting concern and importance - each chapter benefiting from either the addition of substantial sections of new material, valuable explanations or updates and revisions in light of developments in theory or world events and conditions. Updated techniques of economic analysis are also introduced, explained simply, and applied as appropriate. Economics of Environmental Conservation, Second Edition is written in an engaging and accessible manner and as such will be warmly received by both specialists and non-specialists in economics. It will find a wide readership amongst academics and policymakers in the fields of ecological, environmental and natural resource economics as well as those involved in development studies, environmental management and science, and conservation ecology and biology. Particular chapters will be of interest to those in tourism studies, agriculture, wildlife management and forestr

Natural gas markets have undergone momentous changes, worldwide. This book updates and expands on the dynamics, performance and forward path of expanding natural gas use in the US and worldwide, including international trade. It brings together major research themes and findings with recent updates and analysis of new trends and developments. It also explores many considerations for natural gas market development, such as the importance of infrastructure, transparent pricing, and institutional capacity. This book is unique in providing background on the full natural gas value chain as well as information and analysis that can foster scenario-building and decision-making. Of particular value are the lessons learned and demonstrated for those countries that aspire to build effective natural gas markets and to expand natural gas development and use.

New information and strategies for managing the energy crisis from the perspective of growing economies are presented. Numerous case studies illustrate the particular challenges that developing countries, many of which are faced with insufficient resources, encounter. As a result, many unique strategies to the problems of energy management an conservation, environmental engineering, clean technologies, biological and chemical waste treatment and waste management have been developed.

This book combines energy economics and big data modeling analysis in energy conversion and management and comprehensively introduces the relevant theories, key technologies, and application examples of the smart energy economy. With the help of time series big data modeling results, energy economy managers develop reasonable and feasible pricing mechanisms of electricity price and improve the absorption capacity of the power grid. In addition, they also carry out scientific power equipment scheduling and cost-benefit analysis according to the results of data mining, so as to avoid the loss caused by accidental damage of equipment. Energy users adjust their power consumption behavior through the modeling results provided and achieve the effect of energy saving and emission reduction while reasonably reducing the electricity expenditure. This book provides an important reference for professionals in related fields such as smart energy, smart economy, energy Internet, artificial intelligence, energy economics and policy.

A dramatic change of ownership, regulation, and organisation of essential public services, such as electricity, gas, and telecommunications, has taken place in Europe in less than 20 years. This was not the outcome of spontaneous adaptation, but an entirely top-down policy experiment, mainly conceived in London during Mrs Thatcher's years, then pursued in Brussels - the 'capital' of the European Union - and imposed on more or less reluctant players by laws, directives, regulations, and administrative and judicial decisions. The European reform paradigm revolves around three pillars: privatisation, unbundling, and regulated liberalisation of network industries. These industries, despite the reforms, are still special, as they include core natural monopoly components (the electricity grid, the gas pipelines, the telephony networks, etc.), are often based on complex system integration of different segments (for example of electricity generation, transmission, distribution and retail supply), and offer services that have critical social and economic importance, from heating to internet. This book offers a careful scrutiny of energy and telephony reforms and prices paid by households in 15 countries across Western Europe. It attempts to answer such questions as: Are the consumers in Europe happier than they were before the reforms? Do they pay less? Do they get a better quality for the services? Network Industries and Social Welfare provides an overview of the main facts, the conceptual issues, and of the empirical evidence on pricing, perceptions of quality of service, and the issues of utility poverty and social affordability. It suggests that the benefits of the reforms for the consumers have often been limited and that governments should reconsider their overconfidence in regulated market mechanisms in network industries.

This book explores China's low-carbon consumption in the context of residential behaviour, corporate practices and policy Implication. It first calculates the carbon and ecological footprints of residential consumption, including both direct and indirect emissions, before discussing Chinese residential behavioural aspects and determinants of electricity saving, low-carbon transportation, low-carbon product purchasing, and e-waste recycling. The authors then investigate the relationship between industrial growth and carbon emissions, using the example of the iron and steel industry to examine the motivation for energy intensive industries to reduce carbon emissions. They also consider energy efficiency and inter-company collaboration on carbon emission reduction. Lastly, the book describes the major low-carbon policies in China and their impact, economic cost and public acceptance.

This book discusses leafy spices or herbs known as "aromatic herbs", which, apart from being used in culinary art for flavoring of foods and beverages, are also known to possess antiseptic, anti-oxidant and other medicinal properties, in addition to many nutraceutical and cosmetic properties. Of the numerous herbs twelve of the commercially important herbs are imported into 4 major European markets, namely, France, Germany, United Kingdom and The Netherlands to the tune of 12000 to 13000 tonnes per annum. This book discusses these leafy herbs and their tremendous commercial potential in international trade. The book offers a comprehensive insight into commercial herbs, with an objective of enhancing their yield, and provides a platform for further research into the global trade potential.

Hardly a day passes without prominent journalists, policymakers, academics, or scientists calling attention to the worldwide scale of the environmental crisis confronting humankind. While climate change has generated the greatest alarm in recent years, other global problems - desertification, toxic pollution, species extinctions, drought and deforestation, to name just a few - loom close behind. The scope of the most pressing environmental problems far exceeds the capacity of individual nation-states, much less smaller political entities. This disjuncture between the enormous scale of challenges confronting the global community and the inadequacy of existing governmental mechanisms is, of course, a familiar feature of international affairs in the era of accelerated globalization since the end of the Cold War. As flows of money, goods, labor, and information (not to mention pollutants) have become increasingly global, governments have failed to keep pace by establishing new cooperative regimes or ceding authority to supranational regulatory institutions. Moreover, just as the problems confronting them have become more acute, nation-states have seen their authority diminished by economic globalization, the growth of non-governmental activist groups, and the accelerating flow of information. If such challenges are becoming more extreme in recent years, however, they are not as new as some commentary might suggest. As this book shows, nation-states have long sought agreements to manage migratory wildlife, just as they have negotiated conventions governing the exploitation of rivers and other bodies of water. Similarly, nation-states have long attempted to control resources beyond their borders, to impose their standards of proper environmental exploitation on others, or to draw on expertise developed elsewhere to cope with environmental problems at home. This collection examines this little-understood history, providing context, reference points, and even lessons that should inform ongoing debates about the best choices for the future.

This book explores opportunities for diversifying modern Kazakhstan's economy, which is still heavily dependent on its natural resources, as well as looking at economic opportunities for the whole Central Asian region arising from the Chinese government's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The book is comprised of four parts. Part 1 explores the first main theme of the book: development of the economy based on the resource sector with the example of Kazakhstan. Part 2 examines opportunities for diversification arising from BRI: a rise of transport and communication industries alongside the new Belt and Road economic route. Part 3 explores the view from China on the perspectives of regional development, not least the economic reasons for the launch of this programme, investments and planned effects. Part 4 discusses other internal sources for diversification of the economy in Kazakhstan based on development of local industry in the oil and gas sector, small- and medium-sized enterprises and tertiary sector of the economy. This book will be of value for students, academics, policy-makers, and practitioners focused on economic development and business in the Central Asian region, as well as those who are working on the design of instruments for economic development in their own countries.

This book focuses on the level of industrial synergy development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt in China. The main contents include: Linkage Development of the Manufacturing and Logistics Industries of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, Cooperative Development of the Information Industry in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, Coordination and Deepening of Agricultural Development in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, Coordinated Development of the Ecological Environment in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, Development of Regional Financial Integration in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, Port Coordinated Development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, as well as Industrial Division of the Yangtze River Economic Belt.

Circular economy principles are driving to overcome the challenges of today's linear take-make-dispose production and consumption patterns through keeping the value of products, materials, and resources circulating in the economy as long as possible. Sustainable Consumption and Production, Volume II: Circular Economy and Beyond aims to explore the sustainable consumption and production transition to a circular economy, while addressing critical global challenges by innovating and transforming product and service markets towards sustainable development. This book explores how consumers, private sector, relevant international organizations, and governments can play an active role in innovating businesses to help companies, individuals (consumers and citizens), organizations, and sectors, to remain competitive, while transitioning towards sustainable markets and economies. It is of interest to economists, students, businesses, and policymakers. Chapter "Tourism as (Un)sustainable Production and Consumption" is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This book sets out some positive directions to move forward including government policy and regulatory options, an innovative GRID (Greening, Regenerative, Improvement Districts) scheme that can assist with funding and management, and the first steps towards an innovative carbon credit scheme for the built environment. Decarbonising cities is a global agenda with huge significance for the future of urban civilisation. Global demonstrations have shown that technology and design issues are largely solved. However, the mainstreaming of low carbon urban development, particularly at the precinct scale, currently lacks sufficient: standards for measuring carbon covering operational, embodied and transport emissions; assessment and decision-making tools to assist in design options; certifying processes for carbon neutrality within the built environment; and accreditation processes for enabling carbon credits to be generated from precinct-wide urban development. Numerous barriers are currently hindering greater adoption of high performance, low carbon developments, many of which relate to implementation and governance. How to enable and manage precinct-scale renewables and other low carbon technologies within an urban setting is a particular challenge.

'The book is a pioneering attempt to see exactly what difference economic valuation of environmental effects would have made to six actual, on-going, development projects, if it had been done at the time of appraisal. It combines theoretical rigour with applied economic skills, presented with robust common sense.' - James Winpenny, Overseas Development Institute;This book is a practical and readable guide to valuing the environment and the implications for public investment and policy, useful for students as well as professional economists, policy-makers, engineers, environmental and social planners. It describes how the environment can be valued and how these valuation concepts can be applied to investment decisions.;The book provides first a general introduction to the key issues and concepts, considering the nature and magnitude of environmental problems, the cost-benefit method of evaluation and detailed methods for valuing the environment. It then analyses in detail six case-studies, based on actual or proposed major investment projects by the UK Overseas Development Administration or the World Bank. These include water quality in China, the supply of electricity in Bangladesh

This book asks the question, how would economics look today and into the future if one started with a blank sheet of paper? Written mainly for a technical audience, yet accessible to the lay reader, Economics of a Crowded Planet addresses the ontology, epistemology and methodology of a future economics as if from outside the economy looking in. It presents a conceptual framework for a future economics drawing from systems science and hierarchy theory, integrating central concepts from present-day economics, so as to orient the field in a direction that can serve society's future needs in practical ways. The exposition reveals a paradigm called 'market planetarianism': the idea that the power of markets may be used to steer the economy toward a desired long-term goal. Both a prescriptive doctrine and an economic methodology, it treats the economy and nature as instances of complex, evolutionary systems, demanding analytical tools quite unlike those of the 20th-century mainstream.

This is a global survey and assessment of the structure, evolution, and performance of water institutions administration policies and regulatory practices in regional, national, and international settings. The coverage includes analysis and discussion of the rationale for institutional innovations, based on case study findings; specific suggestions for sustainable institutional design; and recommendations for implementing institutional reforms.

Jointly published with INRA, Paris.
What will people eat in the future and how can the food requirements in terms of quantity and quality be met? This EU-based study elucidates the need for a productivity level that will make agriculture competitive on the market and yet is reconciled with the need to manage natural resources and lands wisely. In this book the necessary changes for European agriculture from the biological, medical, economic and political perspective are discussed.

Originally published in 1994, this book links the distant past with the urgent problems of today, taking the reader on a literary and scientific tour of global pollution from pre-history to the post-industrial age. Ancient problems such as lead poisoning in Rome and water pollution in Mesopotamia provide the background to a discussion of modern catastrophes including the hole in the ozone layer, climate change and the global drinking water crisis. The book chronicles 800 years of pollution in London, charts the growth of environmental activism and spotlights the rise of the consumer society as the driving force behind today's malaise.

This open access textbook provides a concise introduction to economic approaches and mathematical methods for the study of water allocation and distribution problems. Written in an accessible and straightforward style, it discusses and analyzes central issues in integrated water resource management, water tariffs, water markets, and transboundary water management. By illustrating the interplay between the hydrological cycle and the rules and institutions that govern today's water allocation policies, the authors develop a modern perspective on water management. Moreover, the book presents an in-depth assessment of the political and ethical dimensions of water management and its institutional embeddedness, by discussing distribution issues and issues of the enforceability of human rights in managing water resources. Given its scope, the book will appeal to advanced undergraduate and graduate students of economics and engineering, as well as practitioners in the water sector, seeking a deeper understanding of economic approaches to the study of water management.