This volume analyses the process and structure of ecotaxes in India to bring forth its rationale, application and incidence on emerging environmental problems on the backdrop of the environmental issues confronted by the Indian economy. Being at infant stage in India, the concept of ecotaxes is plagued with large empirical difficulties. This book provides a holistic understanding of the complexities in the design and implementation of these fiscal instruments at the country level. After elaborating on the theory, history of its applications, the book provides an innovative methodological exercise. It examines the adequacy and relevance of ecotaxation in the Indian context, along with ensuring that the distortions due to the proposed levy are minimised. The incidence of these taxes on the households, the double dividend hypothesis and the effect on competitiveness of the producer are a few of the core themes elaborated upon in this book. This is demonstrated through a linear general equilibrium framework of Environmentally extended Social Accounting Matrix (E-SAM).The book provides material for the researchers and graduate students on the methodological structure of eco-taxes. The proposed methodological intervention could be utilised by the researchers who wish to analyse the macroeconomic impact of any tax through the framework of Social Accounting Matrix (SAM). Additionally, the process as well as the implications and nuances provided in the book will assist the policy makers to design innovative policies for dealing with environmental issues. The volume also has something for the practitioners by helping them comprehend various effects of these instruments on different stake holders of the economy and thus will be useful as a policy prescription. The three policy scenarios analysed in this study could be considered by the policymakers while attempting to design these instruments in the Indian context and thus ending the extensive reliance on the age old and grossly ineffective Command and Control (CAC) Policies.

This book uses resource economics costing approaches incorporating externalities to estimate the returns for the country's irrigation and demonstrates how underestimating the cost of water leads farmers to overestimate profits. The importance of the subject can be judged in light of the fact that India is the largest user of groundwater both for irrigation and for drinking purposes, pumping twice as much as the United States and six times as much as Europe. Despite water's vital role in ensuring economic security for the nation and farmers alike by supporting more than 70% of food production, water resource economists are yet to impress upon farmers and policymakers the true value of water and the urgent need for its sustainable extraction, recharge and use. In an endeavor to promote more awareness, the book further delineates the roles of the demand side and supply side in the economics of irrigation, and explains how the cost of water varies with the efforts to recharge it, crop patterns, degrees of initial and premature well failure and degrees of externalities. It also discusses the importance of micro-irrigation in the economics of saving water for irrigation, estimating the marginal productivity of water and how it improves with drip irrigation, the economics of water sharing and water markets, optimal control theory in sustainable extraction of water, payment of ecosystem services for water and how India can effectively recover. In closing, the book highlights the role of socioeconomic and hydrogeological factors in the economics of irrigation, which vary considerably across hard rock areas and the resulting limitations on generalizing.

This volume explores interactions between academia and different societal stakeholders with a focus on sustainability. It examines the significance and potential of transdisciplinary collaboration as a tool for sustainability and the SDGs. Traditionally, academia has focused on research and education. More recently, however, the challenges of sustainable development and achieving the SDGs have required the co-production of knowledge between academic and non-academic actors. Compromising theory, methods and case studies from a broad span of transdisciplinary collaboration, Transdisciplinarity For Sustainability: Aligning Diverse Practices is written by specialists from various academic disciplines and represents an important step forward in systematising knowledge and understanding of transdisciplinary collaboration. They are designed to provide a roadmap for further research in the field and facilitate pursuing and realizing the SDGs. The book will appeal to researchers and postgraduate students in a variety of disciplines such as architecture, design, economics, social sciences, engineering and sustainability studies. It will also be of significant value to professionals who are engaged in transdisciplinary collaboration that supports sustainable development.

This book provides an interdisciplinary account of how technological advances - mainly in the domains of energy and transportation - contribute to the transformation towards a more sustainable economic system. Drawing on methods from engineering, the management sciences and economics, which it combines in the framework of a systems sciences approach, the book presents qualitative and quantitative studies on government regulation, resources management and firms' strategy. Topics covered include the state-market dilemma of government CO2 emission targets, implications of the electrification of the economy, incentives and coercion in government transport policies, and innovations in the electric vehicle industry.

This textbook provides broad coverage of energy supply and use. It discusses how energy is produced, transformed, delivered to end users, and consumed. The author discusses all of this at an undergraduate level, accessible to students of varying backgrounds. High-level and human-scale perspectives are included. As a high-level example, the book discusses the shares of global primary energy that are provided by oil, gas, coal, hydroelectricity, and renewables, as well as trends in energy consumption and supply over time. Human-scale examples will resonate with readers' every day experiences. The link between economic development and energy consumption is presented, which facilitates understanding of how global energy consumption growth is inevitable as economic development occurs. Coverage includes separate chapters on the oil, natural gas, coal, and electricity sectors. Each of these provides high-level descriptions of the technology involved in the production of that type of energy as well as the processing and transportation that occurs to bring the energy to end users. The book discusses the technological implications of energy transitions such as increased use of renewables or changes in the use of nuclear energy using Germany and Japan as examples. It closes with a discussion of future energy use.

This book is a guide to how financial steering is designed, measured and implemented with a special focus on the energy industry. The authors offer an overview of and practical insights into the links between financial steering and accounting, and the temporary cycles of investment, divestment, return and loss, market highs and lows that form the framework of the entire energy industry across all value chain stages. The faster and the larger the cash cycles of investments and their returns, the greater not only the value created, but also the potential loss if the financial steering is not properly designed and managed. Value and value generation require an understanding of how value is both defined and measured in both and how the business/project economics model of a company works - financial steering provides this. Further, the book also discusses accounting topics such as impairments, new IFRS standards and the impact of accounting on key performance indicators of financial steering, which are associated with these investment decision valuations. The combination of accounting with the cash flow perspective provides a complete understanding of selected practical topics of financial steering which are explained in detail in a large number of examples and case studies. The book is intended for a wide range of finance/controlling/treasury/accounting professionals and students. It is written in practical and simple terms to outline the financial steering concept and to bring it to life in daily work and in the decision making process for financial steering. All illustrated concepts are in the same manner relevant and applicable to all other asset-intense industry sectors and their financial steering processes.

Governing the Interlinkages between the SDGs: Approaches, Opportunities and Challenges identifies the institutional processes, governance mechanisms and policy mixes that are conducive to devising strategies of integrated Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) implementation. The book edited by Anita Breuer, Daniele Malerba, Srinivasa Srigiri and Pooja Balasubramanian examines the dedicated policies targeting the SDGs, as well as political and institutional drivers of synergies and trade-offs between the SDGs in selected key areas - both cross-nationally and in specific country contexts. Their analysis moves beyond the focus on links between SDG indicators and targets. Instead, the book takes advantage of recent evidence from the initial implementation phase of the SDGs and each chapter explores the question of which political-institutional prerequisites, governance mechanisms and policy instruments are suited to accelerate the implementation of the SDGs. The findings presented are intended to both inform high-level policy debates and to provide orientation for practitioners working on development cooperation. This volume will be of great interest to practitioners and policy makers in the field of sustainable development, as well as academics in the fields of sustainability research, political science, and economics.

Capitalism is criticized as both the cause of, and the main barrier to, effective mitigation of climate change. Yet, from the earliest days of the international negotiations, states have agreed that technological innovation, believed to be a primary strength of capitalism, is crucial to prevention of a dangerous accumulation of atmospheric greenhouse gases. Nations prefer to rely on innovative technologies to reduce emissions than to use regulations to constrain markets and limit social choice. The contributors to this volume show that the strengths of the system that creates ever new consumer products and industrial processes actually prevent the generation of technological innovations that would most effectively mitigate climate change. Through comprehensive research of the US innovation system and how companies respond to its supporting institutions, they demonstrate that liberal capitalism's perceived strengths are also its weaknesses. They also show that current theories of technological innovation are incomplete and suggest the institutional changes needed to generate climate innovations.

Renewable energy is rising within an energy system dominated by powerful vested energy interests in fossil fuels, nuclear and electric utilities. Analyzing renewables in six very different countries, the author argues that it is the extent to which states have controlled these vested interests that determines the success or failure of renewables.

Nonpoint-source pollution (NPSP) poses a special challenge to society's ability to manage its collective environmental good - especially surface and groundwater quality. Since there is no point', such as an outfall pipe, from which the pollution is being discharged and can be measured, pollution can reach the ambient environment without being monitored. Since management of air and water polution requires the definition and enforcement of limits on discharges or the imposition of fees on those discharges, inability to measure limits our ability to manage this environmental problem. This book presents a state-of-the-art review and discussion of economists' efforts to resolve this major problem and attempts to provide a way of working around it. The book sets forth the theoretical issues, modeling, and the actual programs set up to confront this issue.

In this book, Professor Uzawa modifies and extends the theoretical premises of orthodox economic theory to those broad enough to be capable of analyzing the phenomena related to environmental disequilibrium, particularly global warming, and of finding institutional arrangements and policy measures that may bring about a more optimal state where natural and institutional components are harmoniously blended. He constructs a theoretical framework in which three major problems concerning global environmental issues may effectively be addressed. First, all phenomena involved with global environmental issues exhibit externalities of one kind or another. Secondly, global environmental issues involve international and intergenerational equity and justice. Thirdly, global environmental issues concern the management of the atmosphere, the oceans, water, soil, and other natural resources that have to be decided by a consensus of all affected countries.

This volume addresses economic challenges and policy reforms in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Despite important resources and strategic advantages, the region suffers from a number of economic, social, and political problems that impedes normal economic take-off. The volume contains theoretical and empirical studies covering individual countries and panel studies addressing these economic challenges. Chapters address issues such as economic growth; poverty and inequality; subsidies and public finances policies; external trade and financial liberalization; remittances, corruption, transparency, and institutions; renewable energy, digitalization, terrorism, regional integration, capital flight, money laundering, financial development and brain drain. Providing a comprehensive understanding of the most important and urgent economic challenges in the region, this volume will be a useful reference for researchers and policymakers interested in the MENA region.

Industrial Applications of Renewable Plastics: Environmental, Technological, and Economic Advances provides practical information to help engineers and materials scientists deploy renewable plastics in the plastics market. It explores the uses, possibilities, and problems of renewable plastics and composites to assist in material selection and rejection. The designer's main problems are examined, along with basic reminders that deal with structures and processing methods that can help those who are generally familiar with metals understand the unique properties of plastic materials. The book offers a candid overview of main issues, including conservation of fossil resources, geopolitical considerations, greenhouse effects, competition with food crops, deforestation, pollution, and disposal of renewable plastics. In addition, an overview of some tools related to sustainability (Life cycle assessments, CO2 emissions, carbon footprint, and more) is provided. The book is an essential resource for engineers and materials scientists involved in material selection, design, manufacturing, molding, fabrication, and other links in the supply chain of plastics. The material contained is of great relevance to many major industries, including automotive and transport, packaging, aeronautics, shipbuilding, industrial and military equipment, electrical and electronics, energy, and more.

provides the first in-depth investigation of how non-timber forest products are an integral part of local, national, and global bioeconomies. reveals how essential these products are to creating a greener and more sustainable future will be of great interest to students and scholars of forest and natural resource management, bioeconomics, circular economy and ecological economics more widely

Dynamic Decisions highlights how some managers and policymakers sleepwalk into decision paralysis. Strategically, they partly recognise their world is changing radically as energy systems transition. In deciding what to invest in, they default to rewarding the predictable and proven, often misdiagnosing the ignored risks of innately ambiguous markets. To remedy this, the author frames ambiguity as a source of opportunity. As extant advantages obsolesce, new entrants could disrupt to gain dominance. Some managers could repurpose, reframe, and reconfigure their resources and processes to create tomorrow's profitable niches today. To profit from these emerging business landscapes, managers can PIVOT and BOUnCE to win by transitioning into a dynamic mindset. Endowed with a creative mind to innovate, humans could reshape their firms and their societies. Armed with these capabilities, albeit partial, managers could choose to adapt responsive strategic actions that are tangible, actionable, and achievable, with policy sustaining societal benefits by expanding people's access to opportunities.Dynamic Decisions is written for managers and policymakers that seek to benefit their firms and communities in how they conduct their business and themselves. Connecting theory to practice with actual business cases, this book is organised into four clusters that act as building blocks to structure the reader's decision-making process. Through experimentation, learning, and adaptation, the reader of Dynamic Decisions will redirect their strategic actions that are necessary to nurture tomorrow's profitable niches today.

A global blue economy is an economic arena that depends on the benefits and values realized from the coastal and marine environments. This book explains the "sustainable blue economy" as a marine-based economy that provides social and economic benefits for current and future generations. It restores, protects, and maintains the diversity, productivity, and resilience of marine ecosystems, and is based on clean technologies, renewable energy, and circular material flows.

This book takes a compelling approach to describing what is needed to create the kind of future that most people on Earth really want. Our global society is hopelessly addicted to a particular vision of the world and a future that has become both unsustainable and undesirable. Addicted to Growth frames our current predicament as a societal addiction to a 'growth at all costs' economic paradigm. While economic growth has produced many benefits, its side effects are now producing existential problems that are rapidly getting worse. Robert Costanza considers lessons from what works at the individual level to overcome addictions and applies them to a societal scale. Costanza recognises that the first step to recovery is recognising the addiction and that it is leading to disaster; however, simply pointing out the dire consequences of our societal addiction is only the first step and can be counterproductive by itself in motivating change. The key next step is creating a truly shared vision of the kind of world we all want, and the book explores creative ways to implement this societal therapy. The final step is using that shared vision to motivate the changes needed to achieve it, including adaptive transformations of our economic systems, property rights regimes, and governance institutions. An exciting contribution from a key thinker in the field, this book will be a valuable resource to students and scholars of public policy and sustainability studies, and anyone interested in understanding and overcoming our societal addiction to growth.

This book shows the push and pull effects between resources, human security and conflicts in Africa. It recognizes the need for resources in Africa to be processed into finished goods in order to influence global market and redefine the pattern of trade relations with powerful countries of Asia, America and Europe in shaping the destiny and future of African countries. The achievement of this laudable objective is plagued by the security challenges which are directly or indirectly linked to resource-related conflicts rocking most of the resource endowed countries in the continent, thereby threatening global peace and security. To deal with this menace in the continent, it requires global co-operation and support of foreign governments, international organizations, international non-government organizations, governments of host countries and its citizens. The book presents the cases and experiences of countries that are endowed with resource, as well as have experienced different forms of human insecurity and have witnessed environmental conflicts in its analysis, which make the discourse interesting and quite educating.

The potential conflict among economic and ecological goals has formed the central fault line of environmental politics in the United States and most other countries since the 1970s. The accepted view is that efforts to protect the environment will detract from economic growth, jobs, and global competitiveness. Conversely, much advocacy on behalf of the environment focuses on the need to control growth and avoid its more damaging effects. This offers a stark choice between prosperity and growth, on the one hand, and ecological degradation on the other. Stopping or reversing growth in most countries is unrealistic, economically risky, politically difficult, and is likely to harm the very groups that should be protected. At the same time, a strategy of unguided "growth above all" would cause ecological catastrophe. Over the last decade, the concept of green growth - the idea that the right mix of policies, investments, and technologies will lead to beneficial growth within ecological limits - has become central to global and national debates and policy due to the financial crisis and climate change. As Daniel J. Fiorino argues, in order for green growth to occur, ecological goals must be incorporated into the structure of the economic and political systems. In this book, he looks at green growth, a vast topic that has heretofore not been systematically covered in the literature on environmental policy and politics. Fiorino looks at its role in global, national, and local policy making; its relationship to sustainable development; controversies surrounding it (both from the left and right); its potential role in ameliorating inequality; and the policy strategies that are linked with it. The book also examines the political feasibility of green growth as a policy framework. While he focuses on the United States, Fiorino will draw comparisons to green growth policy in other countries, including Germany, China, and Brazil.

Rapid growth of the global economy has accelerated the degradation of the Earth's most important asset: the environment. Increasing poverty and challenges arising from climate change further threaten the planet's natural systems. With a rising global population, the demand on natural resources to cover even basic human needs is intensifying - supporting businesses that promote the sustainable use of natural resources and help ensure their long-term viability is imperative. As part of a pioneering movement to harness business towards effecting environmental change, The Nature Conservancy launched EcoEnterprises Fund in 2000 to provide investment capital to grow small "eco"-businesses in Latin America. There is a compelling need for financing this niche. Companies of this size truly drive change - creating the engine for economic activity and generating livelihoods for bottom of the pyramid rural peoples which brings about positive social and conservation impacts. EcoEnterprises Fund's portfolio highlights twenty-three cutting-edge companies, in expanding sectors such as organic agriculture, ecotourism, sustainable forestry, and non-timber forest products which include innovative industry first-movers-from organic shrimp to biodynamic flowers, and ready-to-drink smoothies made from the latest Amazonian berry. With a successful ten-year track record, EcoEnterprises Fund has valuable learning to share - from what pitfalls to avoid when structuring investments to what types of assistance entrepreneurs in these emerging environmental sectors need most. Portfolio for the Planet translates a decade of experience into accessible lessons for both veterans and newcomers in the field: for those interested in investing in sustainable businesses, discovering novel approaches to environmental conservation, or seeing entrepreneurs pursue their dreams.

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the vulnerabilities of socio-economic systems globally and exposed the risks that natural capital degradation imposes on human health, economy, and society. This book studies the environmental challenges faced by developing economies in a post-COVID-19 world. Exploring diverse case studies from South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, the volume discusses the impact that economic development and, recently, COVID-19 has had on the environment, ecology, and economy of these regions. It analyses nature conservation policies aimed at minimizing ecological damage arising from economic development and discusses the policy objectives of sustainable development. It also highlights the significant role that environmental economics networks have played in capacity building, framing of policies using ecological economics tools, and developing a local leadership trained in addressing local sustainability issues. An important contribution to the study of environmental economics of the Global South, the book will be of interest to students and researchers of economics, environment, development studies, development economics, environmental policies, and South Asia studies. It will also be useful for policymakers and NGOs working in this field.

The Low-Carbon Good Life is about how to reverse and repair four interlocking crises arising from modern material consumption: the climate crisis, growing inequality, biodiversity loss and food-related ill-health. Across the world today and throughout history, good lives are characterised by healthy food, connections to nature, being active, togetherness, personal growth, a spiritual framework and sustainable consumption. A low-carbon good life offers opportunities to live in ways that will bring greater happiness and contentment. Slower ways of living await. A global target of no more than one tonne of carbon per person would allow the poorest to consume more and everyone to find our models of low-carbon good lives. But dropping old habits is hard, and large-scale impacts will need fresh forms of public engagement and citizen action. Local to national governments need to act; equally, they need pushing by the power and collective action of citizens. Innovative and engaging and written in a style that combines storytelling with scientific evidence, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate change, sustainability, environmental economics and sustainable consumption, as well as non-specialist readers concerned about the climate crisis.

This book provides support to academics and researchers, as well as those operating in the management and engineering fields that need to deal with policies and strategies that allow to move towards a more sustainable paradigm, a greener economy that guarantees economic development and the improvement of living and working conditions. Drawing on the latest developments, ideas, research and best practice, this book examines the new advances in the subjects of circular economy.

"Global warming is the greatest problem of our time. Unfortunately, the debate is marred by prejudice, misinformation and bigotry. But here is an original and timely book that sets out exactly what are the real problems.... So if you really want to save the planet, read this book."
Maggie Pagano, Assistant Editor, Financial News

This book adds a whole new dimension to the editors' previous work on the social, economic, and environmental effects of global trade. For the first time it brings all three pillars of sustainability together into one coherent multiregional input-output (MRIO) framework. It shows the power of MRIO analysis to illuminate the local and global interdependencies of economic, environmental, and social systems and the benefits to be gained through analysing all three together. Change one thing and everything else changes. With chapters from around 60 researchers across 34 countries, this book illustrates the effect of natural resources and government policy settings 1990-2015 on the balancing act that was-and is-global trade. It provides a holistic systems' view of how supply chains work, revealing how easily they can become fragmented and out of kilter. And within all the chaos of COVID-19 it shows how MRIO is the one tool that can help rebuild a post-pandemic global economy into a fairer, safer world.