In recent years climate change has become a leading issue on both the business and political agenda. With the Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change now ratified, business is bracing itself for the reality of serious regulation on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions."The Business of Climate Change" presents a state-of-the-art analysis of corporate responses to the climate change issue. The book describes and assesses a number of recent business approaches that will help to identify effective strategies and promote the dissemination of proactive corporate practices on climate change worldwide. By identifying the factors that cause companies to pursue low-carbon strategies and support the Kyoto process, the book will also be helpful to governments in formulating policy.Business and industry have a crucial role to play in the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. They are major emitters of greenhouse gases, and pressure is mounting for them to engage in a range of mitigation strategies, from emission inventorying and trading schemes to investments in low-carbon technologies. Behind the scenes a number of companies have started to develop strategies to curtail greenhouse gas emissions.These strategies can be very diverse in nature. At a political level, companies try to influence policy implementation and, more specifically, to test ideas in anticipation of possible regulation on the climate change issue. At a more practical level, there are a burgeoning number of initiatives to conserve energy use in production, transportation and buildings, to develop renewable sources of energy, to measure carbon emissions and sequestration at a detailed level, and to develop various markets for trading carbon credits among companies and countries. Some technologies, such as hybrid cars and compact fluorescent lighting, are now market realities.Common to all of these initiatives is that they operate in an environment of high complexity and uncertainty. The political implementation of the Kyoto Protocol remains uncertain and many details remain unspecified. Economic instruments such as emission trading are favored, but their mechanisms are still hotly debated and the future price of credits is unknown. New markets for low-emission products and technologies are beginning to appear, but there are currently few regulatory drivers to assist their development. The impact of potential regulation on business will vary tremendously between companies and sectors. The fossil fuel and energy sectors fear the economics of action, while sectors such as insurance and agriculture fear the economics of inaction. Combined with the remaining uncertainties about what form climate change may take, corporate responses to reduce risks have to differentiate between sectors and have to be flexible. For individual companies, these big uncertainties demand new thinking and contingency planning."The Business of Climate Change" is split into four sections: 'Introduction and overview' presents a broad perspective on business and climate policies. 'Policy instruments' outlines early experiences with different types of policy instruments to curb greenhouse gas emissions, ranging from emission trading to voluntary agreements. 'Sector analysis' assesses developments within sectors of industry that are likely to play an important role in future climate policies: oil, cement, chemical, automotive and insurance. Finally, 'Case studies' discusses bottom-up initiatives to combat climate change in five different organizations.This book will be essential reading for policy-makers searching for instruments that have proven business support; academics and researchers analyzing the complexity of how business is responding to the challenge of climate change; and businesses wishing to learn about best practice in the sectors most likely to be seriously affected.

Advances in Environmental Accounting & Management aims to advance knowledge of the governance and management of corporate environmental impacts and the accounting for these, including issues related to measurement, valuation, and disclosure. It also aims to increase the awareness of management, accounting practitioners, investors and other stakeholders of the financial and social consequences of corporate environmental impacts, encouraging greater environmental accountability and responsibility. Researchers and practitioners are encouraged to submit papers on any social and environmental issue, based on theoretical and empirical research, conceptual arguments and descriptive models. Coverage includes, but is not limited to the following issues: Environmental accounting including, for instance, issues related to the measurement and valuation of environmental costs and liabilities. Accountability for environmental issues such as climate change, water scarcity and biodiversity. Social/Environmental/Sustainability disclosures, reporting and assurance. Environmental management and control systems. Social and ethical investing.

This book explores the dilemma of siting a high-level nuclear waste (HLNW) repository. The authors examine siting conflicts from a variety of perspectives - political, psychological, and sociological - and identify the fundamental determinants of public opposition to waste disposal facilities as a means of designing more effective approaches to solving the typical siting dilemma. In assessing the causes of public opposition, the book draws on various surveys of attitudes toward the repository as a function of predictors such as perceptions of risk, benefits, and fairness. Exploring the factors that underlie public opposition to a repository enables one to understand why current siting efforts have failed. More importantly, the data are useful in defining what new strategies might be effective in obtaining public consent for a HLNW storage facility. One of the primary conclusions is that the current impasse in the siting of a HLNW repository stems primarily from a lack of national consensus on the need for such a facility. The book also recommends the need for a fair' siting process and the authors strongly favor a voluntary process to solve the siting dilemma. Such a process was initiated in the U.S. by the 1987 Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act; the process of finding a volunteer site has proven to be difficult, but there are signs that this process can work. Finally, the book focuses on the problems associated with siting a HLNW repository by treating this case as a generic example of the more basic siting dilemma. The analysis of public opposition and the recommendations we make for successful siting can be generalized to almost any attempt to site a noxious facility.

The main aim of this book is to develop and implement an innovative tool: exchange-entitlement mapping, or E-mapping for short. This tool enables us to look at the economic and social opportunities to develop human capabilities for different groups of individuals, depending on their group identity such as age, ethnicity or gender. In the context of this book, however, an entitlement approach is used to explain the channels through which macroeconomic shocks affect individual well-being, depending on the individual's identity and related social norms attached to this identity. In other words, by including capabilities into the existing E-mapping theory, this book shows how capabilities are socially shaped according to individual entitlements, and related entitlement failure, to a specific economic and social environment. In effect, the last part of the manuscript illustrates the E-mapping theory with the case study of the maquiladora identity in Mexico by combining an original survey of maquiladora households with an advanced time series analysis of the gender wage gap in the maquiladora industry in the post-NAFTA period.

Leon N. Moses In June 1991, the Transportation Center at Northwestern University sponsored Hazmat Transport '91: A National Conference on the Transportation of Hazardous Materials and Wastes. The faculty associated with the center were aware that there had been many professional, industrial and government conferences and meetings on the subject. However, they believed that the unique capacity of the Transportation Center to bring together leaders from industry and government, as well as leading scholars from economics, law, engineering, psychology and sociology who have done research on the problems associated with the transportation of hazardous materials and wastes (hazmats), could produce a set of integrated insights and understandings that would go well beyond those of previous conferences. The papers that make up this volume were all delivered at Hazmat Transport '91. From a legislative point of view, they tend to deal with issues associated with the Hazardous Materials Transportation Act of 1975 (HMTA), the original act passed to regulate the transportation of hazardous materials, and the Hazardous Materials Transportation Uniform Safety Act of 1990 (HMTVSA). There were talks and papers presented at the conference that focused on other recent legislation and transportation issues with which HMTUSA does not deal. The conference proceedings volume also had discussions and papers on significant managerial and regulatory issues that could not be included in this volume because of constraints on its size. Therefore, this essay is made up of three parts.

The purpose of this study is to better understand the essential interdependencies between the world economy and the global ecosystem, including human populations. World production, product prices, wages, interest rates, exchange rates, employment, and spending are shown to be mutually determined over time with the growth rates of country-specific renewable resources, the generation of waste, human population growth, waste assimilation by the basic fungible resource, and the sanitation and other health and human services provided by the government sectors. Particular attention is paid to alternative central bank policies and their potential effects upon future mixes of resources in world production and upon the level and composition of that production. Materials balance holds with respect to all production and consumption. Cash flow constraints hold with respect to all economic transactions; in particular, the decisions to save and invest are directly linked to financial market decisions.

Interest in biofuels began with oil shocks in the 1970's, but the more rapid development and consumption of biofuel industry in recent years has been primarily driven by mandates, subsidies, climate change concerns, emissions targets and energy security. From 2004 to 2006, fuel ethanol grew by 26% and biodiesel grew by 172%. As biofuel production continues to expand, investments in capacity expansion and research and development have been made. The 2008 food crisis emphasized the need to re-examine biofuel consequences. Biofuels remain an important renewable energy resource to substitute for fossil fuels, particularly in the transportation sector, yet biofuels' success is still uncertain. The future of biofuels in the energy supply mix relies on mitigating potential and improving the environmental gains. This book brings together leading authorities on biofuel from the World Bank to examine all of the impacts of biofuel (economic, social, environmental) within a unified framework and in a global perspective, making it of interest to academics in agricultural and environmental economics as well as industry and policy-makers.

The first 50 years of ASEAN integration has brought peace and prosperity to the Southeast Asian region, while the next 50 will undoubtedly be fraught with unprecedented challenges. Today ASEAN not only has to contend with its own internal challenges arising from the highly diverse political, economic and socio-cultural systems of its member countries, it also has to deal with external factors which include shifts in geostrategic balance, fraying global consensus on free trade, populism and xenophobia, climate change, digital revolutions and cybercrimes. Set against the above background, this edited collection considers some of the contemporary issues and challenges faced by ASEAN in its journey towards more cohesive and dynamic regional integration. Among the topics explored are ASEAN's evolving partnerships with its key strategic partners including China and the United States on economic policies and strategies, educational systems and frameworks, migration and environmental threats.

This book discusses the challenges faced by the homo resaliens and his need for a transition to a more sustainable social, economic, and environmental system. It fills a gap in the existing literature and provides a new perspective by changing the etymology of the word resilience: no more resiliere, but resalio. By comparing and analysing the relevant literature, the author has coined the term homo resaliens (resilient man), in contrast to the failure of the homo oeconomicus, the corruption of the homo politicus, the incompleteness of homo sustinens, and the limits of homo ecologicus. Opening a new debate in which the role of academia and res publica are fundamental to safeguard human communities and future generations, this book will greatly assist governments that wish to understand the socio-political and economic implication of resilience in terms of social inclusiveness and long term social and environmental sustainability.

The book is the first pioneering study to assess the impacts of the megaconferences on water policies, programmes and projects at global, regional and national levels. The results are bleak. The evaluation indicated that except for the UN Water Conference, held in Argentina in 1977, the impacts of the subsequent megaconferences have been at best marginal in terms of knowledge generation and synthesis, poverty alleviation, and/or environmental conservation.

A re-conceptualisation of the widely-held concept of the 'resource curse', which contends that resource booms inevitably lead to numerous political, social and economic problems. This book counters that these problems are by no means inevitable, but are rather the direct result of specific policy choices made by actors within particular regimes.

Managing for sustainable development has become increasingly accepted worldwide by corporate, public, and non-profit organizations as vital to the continued existence and development of both these organizations and their natural and social environments. This collection of original papers provides various perspectives on sustainable management practices, particularly as practiced by large corporations. The ten studies in this volume represent the latest theoretical and empirical research in the field of organizations and the natural environment. The contributors present a range of unique perspectives on issues including the impact of globalization on sustainability, cross-cultural comparisons of the impact of institutional contexts on environmental practices of Japanese and Chinese firms, comparisons of voluntary environmental initiatives undertaken by public and private sector organizations, processes of organizational change in response to stakeholder pressures, the transfer of environmental capabilities during mergers and acquisitions, why some companies keep the environmentally friendly features of their products secret, and the influence of emissions and health-impacts information on attitudes toward the environment. This volume opens and closes with two essays that comprehensively review the state of research in organizations and the natural environment and suggest directions for future researchers. This insightful book presents studies from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives: Human Resources Management, Strategy, Operations Management, Accounting, International Business, Marketing, and Development. It represents the latest state of knowledge in organizations and the natural environment and provides interesting perspectives for academics, environmental consultants as well as environmental managers from business, the public sector, NGOs, international development institutions, and government.

This original, timely and innovative collection is the first to offer critical IPE perspectives on the interconnections between energy, capitalism and the future of world order. The authors discuss the importance of energy for our understanding of the global political economy, climate change and key new developments like 'fracking'.

We have written this book as a guide to the design and analysis of field studies of resource selection, concentrating primarily on statistical aspects of the comparison of the use and availability of resources of different types. Our in tended audience is field ecologists in general and wildlife biologists in particular who are attempting to measure the extent to which real animal populations are selective in their choice of food and habitat. As such, we have made no attempt to address those aspects of theoretical ecology that are concerned with how animals might choose their resources if they acted in an optimal manner. The book is based on the concept of a resource selection function, where this is a function of characteristics measured on resource units such that its value for a unit is proportional to the probability of that unit being used. We argue that this concept leads to a unified theory for the analysis and interpretation of data on resource selection and can replace many ad hoc statistical methods that have been used in the past."

The third and final in a series, this text bridges the conceptual foundations of capacity development and the difficulties and practical realities in the field. It demystifies the process of capacity development to make it more "user-friendly".;The book has two parts. The first shows how long-standing development dilemmas can be turned into opportunities for capacity development and societal transformation. It proposes a set of principles to guide the search for context-specific approaches as the norm, and based on these default principles the authors explore relevant issues in comprehensible stages through a capacity lens.;The second part is a compilation of experiences and lessons from around the world, to showcase promising initiatives and innovative solutions. It forms a casebook of insights and good (rather than best) practices on how development stakeholders can turn development dilemmas into opportunities tailored to the needs of their societies.

In their pursuit of policies to combat global warming, countries will find that they may also receive additional benefits which are not directly associated with the primary aim. These ancillary benefits are likely to include, for example, a reduction in pollution as a result of carbon containment policies. International Climate Policy to Combat Global Warming is one of the first books which analyses climate policy, taking account of ancillary as well as primary benefits. The author integrates ancillary benefits into the theory and explores the implications for international policy measures. Because of the private character of ancillary benefits, the author is able to treat climate policy as an impure public good which in turn has an impact on the efficient climate protection level. He highlights the general failures of the standard approach to climate policy design and goes on to propose a new approach to international negotiations on climate change. He suggests a flexible matching scheme which would help overcome free-rider incentives and which would have considerable advantages over traditional co-operative designs. By proposing a novel framework for the analysis of, and solution to, the problem of global warming, this book will be welcomed by environmental and ecological economists, policymakers and researchers of political science.

This book is a study on the Japanese city gas industry, which has been rapidly liberalized in recent years. Especially, it focuses on the background, reasons, methods, and effects of the privatization of publicly owned city gas utilities in Japan. In Japan, after the Great East Japan Earthquake, the liberalization of the electric power and gas business has progressed rapidly. There are a number of studies on the reform of Japan's electricity market, but there are few studies on city gas business. This book describes the state of Japan's public city gas utilities and the necessity of their privatization. And it explains the role of concession as a method of privatization. Then it verifies that the effects of past privatization cases are insufficient. The book also covers deregulation of public utilities in Europe, which triggered Japan's liberalization of its energy and other public utility sectors, and privatization of electricity and gas businesses in India, a developing country in Asia. Finally, this book explores future regulation and business of city gas industry. Pipeline network should be regulated to comply with future unbundling starting from 2022, and gas business altogether with electricity and water businesses need more digitization.

For centuries, bird guano has played a pivotal role in the agricultural and economic development of Latin America, East Asia, and Oceania. As their populations ballooned during the Industrial Revolution, North American and European powers came to depend on this unique resource as well, helping them meet their ever-increasing farming needs. This book explores how the production and commodification of guano has shaped the modern Pacific Basin and the world's relationship to the region. Marrying traditional methods of historical analysis with a broad interdisciplinary approach, Gregory T. Cushman casts this once little-known commodity as an engine of Western industrialization, offering new insight into uniquely modern developments such as environmental consciousness and conservation movements; the ascendance of science, technology, and expertise; international relations; and world war.

Consensus is growing internationally that traditional command-and-control approaches to environmental regulation have borne much of their low-hanging fruit. Yet it is far from clear what should complement or replace them. Regulatory agencies and policy-makers are struggling with a lack of information about regulatory reform, about what works and what doesn't, and about how best to harness the resources of both government and non-government stakeholders. Progress is being impeded unnecessarily by a lack of shared knowledge of how similar agencies elsewhere are meeting similar challenges and by a lack of data on the success or otherwise of existing initiatives. Despite recent and valuable attempts to deal with such problems in the European Union and North America, these remain islands of wisdom in a sea of ignorance. For example, when it comes to dealing with small and medium-sized enterprises, very little is known, and what is known is not effectively distilled and disseminated. Much the same could be said about the roles of third parties, commercial and non-commercial, as surrogate regulators, and more broadly of many current initiatives to reconfigure the regulatory state. Based on the authors' work for the OECD, Victorian Environmental Protection Authority and the Western Australian Department of Environment Protection, Leaders and Laggards addresses these problems by identifying innovative regulatory best practice internationally in a number of specific contexts, evaluating empirically the effectiveness of regulatory reform and providing policy prescriptions that would better enable agencies to fulfil their regulatory missions. Focusing primarily on the differing requirements for both corporations and small and medium-sized enterprises in North America and Europe, the book aims to complement existing initiatives and to expand knowledge of regulatory reform by showing: how existing experience can best be put to practical use "on the ground"; by drawing lessons from experiments in innovative regulation internationally; by reporting and extrapolating on original case studies; and by advancing understanding on which instruments and strategies are likely to be of most value and why. The authors argue that the development of theory has outstripped its application. In essence, Leaders and Laggards aims to ground a myriad of theory on the reinvention of environmental regulation into practice. The book will be essential reading for environmental policy-makers, regulatory and other government officials responsible for policy design and implementation, academics and postgraduate students in environmental management, environmental law and environmental policy, and a more general readership within environmental policy and management studies. It will also be of interest to those in industry, such as environmental managers and corporate strategists, who are considering the use of more innovative environmental and regulatory strategies, and to environmental NGOs.

Transportation issues are often too complicated to be addressed by conventional parametric methods. Increasing data availability and recent advancements in machine learning provide new methods to tackle the challenging transportation problems. Readers will learn how to develop and apply different types of machine learning models to transportation related problems. Example applications include transportation data generations, traffic sensing, transportation mode recognition, transportation system management and control, traffic flow prediction, and traffic safety analysis.

After the drop in the price of oil, the issue of a carbon tax to complement the EU emission trading scheme is coming back to the fore of political debate. In this volume on carbon pricing, the reader can find an excellent mix of economic theory and policy analysis. To anyone interested in this field, this collection of papers represents a very important contribution to an in-depth understanding of the main tools that can be used to successfully fight climate change.' - Alberto Majocchi, University of Pavia, ItalyCarbon Pricing reflects upon and further develops the ongoing and worthwhile global debate into how to design carbon pricing, as well as how to utilize the financial proceeds in the best possible way for society. The world has recently witnessed a significant downward adjustment in fossil fuel prices, which has negative implications for the future of our environment. In light of these negative developments, it is important to understand the benefits of environmental sustainability through well-documented research. This discerning book considers the design of carbon taxes and examines the consequential outcomes of different taxation compositions as regulatory instruments. Expert contributors assess a variety of national experiences to provide an empirical insight into the use of carbon taxes, emissions trading, energy taxes and excise taxes. The overarching discussion concludes that successful policies used by some countries can be implemented in other jurisdictions with minimum new research and experimentation. This astute work will benefit scholars, practitioners and policymakers alike with an interest in the fields of environmental law, environmental economics, sustainable development and taxation law. Contributors: B. Bahn-Walkowiak, J. Bruha, H. Bruhova-Foltynova, B. Butcher, M. Calaf Forn, N. Chalifour, S. Cheng, E. Croci, S. Elgie, E. Guglyuvatyy, M. Jofra Sora, C. Kettner, K. Kratena, E. Meyer, I. Meyer, S. Onoda, J. Papy, T.F. Pedersen, V. Pisa, I. Puig Ventosa, A. Ravazzi Douvan, M. Sargl, K. Schlegelmilch, M.W. Sommer, N.P. Stoianoff, P. ten Brink, W.E. Weishaar, H. Wilts, S. Withana, Sirini, G. Wittmann, A. Wolfsteiner

Voluntary environmental agreements (VEAs) - generally agreements between government and business - have been regarded by many as a key new instrument for meeting environmental objectives in a flexible manner. Their performance to date has, however, also led to considerable criticism, with several parties arguing that they are methods for avoiding real action that goes beyond "business-as-usual". Is either of these positions justified? The aim of this book is to highlight and learn the lessons from existing experience, looking not just at results but also at specific elements of agreements and also at the process of the agreement itself. Lessons are drawn from experience from across the world, covering the full range of environmental challenges, and from the perspective of key stakeholder groups. Importantly, the book also presents tools for assessing and improving existing agreements and includes recommendations and guidelines for future agreements in key areas such as climate change. It also deals at length with the problem of how such agreements might be used in developing and transitional economies. The overall view of the book is that there is a real potential for the future use of VEAs as part of the policy mix and as a tool for sharing the responsibility for meeting environmental objectives. For the agreements to play this role, however, significant steps are needed to ensure that they are effective, efficient, equitable and appropriately linked to a portfolio of other instruments. The book is divided into four sections. First, existing agreements, their development and efficacy are considered; second, the prospects for voluntary agreements in developing and transitional economies are discussed; third, a range of authors examine the role of VEAs as part of the policy mix to combat climate change; and, finally, the book concludes with an examination of how new tools for evaluating and improving VEAs could be utilized in the future. Voluntary Environmental Agreements will be of interest not only to academics, governments and businesses wishing to understand this specific instrument, but also to those already implementing or considering applying VEAs to meet their environmental objectives.

1 Einleitung.- 2 Methoden und Grenzen der modellgestutzten Analyse wirtschaftspolitischer Strategien.- 2.1 Methoden und Grenzen oekonomischer Modellanalysen.- 2.2 Gesamtwirtschaftliche Modelle.- 2.3 Mikrosimulationsmodelle.- 3 OEkologische Steuerreform und wirtschaftliche Rahmenbedingungen.- 3.1 Referenzszenario: Entwicklung der Rahmenbedingungen.- 3.1.1 Vorbemerkungen.- 3.1.2 Energiewirtschaftliche Rahmenbedingungen bei moderaten und bei hoeheren Rohoelpreisen und Wechselkursen.- 3.1.2.1 Rohoelpreise.- 3.1.2.2 Importpreise fur Steinkohle und Erdgas.- 3.1.2.3 Entwicklung der Importpreise fur Elektrizitat.- 3.1.2.4 Zusammenfassung der Annahmen fur die kunftige Preisentwicklung.- 3.1.2.5 Entwicklung der Stromerzeugung im Inland sowie der Importe.- 3.2 Steuerszenario: Die oekologische Steuerreform in Deutschland.- 3.2.1 Struktur und Steuersatze.- 3.2.2 Sonderregelungen und klimapolitisch flankierende Massnahmen..- 3.2.3 Effektive Be- und Entlastungen durch die oekologische Steuerreform im Produzierenden Gewerbe und in der Landwirtschaft.- 4 Simulationen: Modelle und Ergebnisse.- 4.1 Das umweltoekonometrische Modell PANTA RHEI III.- 4.1.1 Kurzbeschreibung von PANTA RHEI III.- 4.1.2 Das Referenzszenario des Modells PANTA RHEI.- 4.1.3 Simulationsergebnisse mit dem Modell PANTA RHEI.- 4.1.4 Alternatives Energiepreis- und Wechselkursszenario.- 4.1.5 Simulationsergebnisse mit dem Modell PANTA RHEI fur das Szenario hoeherer Energiepreise.- 4.2 Das umweltoekonomische Simulationsmodell LEAN.- 4.2.1 Kurzbeschreibung des Modells LEAN.- 4.2.2 Das Referenzszenario des Modells LEAN.- 4.2.3 Simulationsergebnisse mit dem Modell LEAN.- 4.2.3.1 Methodik.- 4.2.3.2 Gesamteffekt der oekologischen Steuerreform.- 4.2.3.3 Dekompositionsanalyse der Effekte der oekologischen Steuerreform.- 4.2.3.4 Alternatives Energiepreisszenario (Hochpreisszenario).- 4.3 Verteilungswirkungen im Potsdamer Steuer- und Transfer-Mikrosimulationsmodell.- 4.3.1 UEberblick.- 4.3.2 Das Modell.- 4.3.3 Abbildung des Steuer- und Transfersystems.- 4.3.4 Verteilungswirkungen in den Steuerszenarien.- 4.3.5 Zusammenfassung.- 5 Vergleich der Ergebnisse und Beurteilung der oekologischen Steuerreform.- 5.1 Modelltheoretische Voruberlegungen.- 5.2 Gesamtwirtschaftliche Effekte.- 5.3 Verteilungswirkungen.- 5.4 Energieverbrauch und Emissionen.- 5.5 Umweltpolitische Beurteilung.- 5.5.1 Theoretische und empirische Probleme der Internalisierung externer Effekte durch OEkosteuern.- 5.5.2 Sonderregelungen und komplementare Instrumente.- 5.5.2.1 Zur Notwendigkeit eines Instrumentenmix.- 5.5.2.2 Substitution fossiler Energietrager durch erneuerbare Energien.- 5.5.2.3 Effiziente Umwandlung durch Kraft-Warme-Kopplung sowie Gas-und Dampfkraftwerke.- 5.6 Langerfristige Effekte der oekologischen Steuerreform.- 5.6.1 Anreiz zu umweltentlastender Innovation.- 5.6.2 Induzierter Strukturwandel.- 6 Wirtschaftspolitische Schlussfolgerungen.- Verzeichnis der Abbildungen.- Verzeichnis der Tabellen.

The WTO has laid the foundations for a new era of trade relations, and increased trade liberalization has improved global efficiency in production and consumption. The strengthening of trade rules, however, has increased the scope for disputes over interpretations of more extensive and complicated agreements, and has spilt over into environmental and scientific matters. One of the unforeseen consequences of the WTO agreements has been controversy over risk. This volume explores aspects of risk with special reference to the WTO, where national instruments to reduce risk may conflict with international trade rules. The book is divided into sections dealing with: * accounting for risk in trade agreements * risk and the WTO * managing risk in policy making * negotiating experience with risk * national risks and quarantine standards * managing biotechnology. The chapters offer many perspectives on risk assessment and benefit from a rich diversity of approaches as befits contributions from authors with backgrounds in law, economics, political science and environmental and natural science as well as policy making. Globalization and the Environment is a fascinating book that will draw its readership from these fields.

This book is dedicated to furthering scientific understanding of drought assessment and management and the policy issues associated with drought preparedness worldwide. The authors invited to contribute to the volume are uniquely qualified to address their respective topics. The book is divided into two parts. Part One emphasizes theoretical aspects of drought assessment, management, and preparedness; it also includes a discussion of the concept of drought. These chapters are aimed at improving the reader's understanding and awareness of drought; appropriate technologies to monitor drought's onset, development and termination; emerging methodologies to estimate impacts; adjustment strategies to alleviate drought effects; and a methodology for countries to follow in the development of a national drought policy and plan. Part One concludes with an insightful examination of how changes in climate may alter climatic variability and the frequency and intensity of extreme events, particularly drought. The successes and failures of previous assessment and response efforts are highlighted in Part Two through case studies in Israel, India, Brazil, South Africa, Australia, the United States, and China. Several of these case studies provide insight into the difficulties inherent in the provision of timely and effective drought assistance by government in both a developed and developing country setting. The lessons learned in these instances provide both an extraordinary opportunity and challenge to other drought-prone nations to learn from these experiences and avoid some of the mistakes of the past. Some of the case studies in Part Two illustrate remarkable progress in drought preparedness andare examples for other nations to follow.