The book interprets nature and the environment as a scarce resource. It offers a theoretical study of the allocation problem and describes different policy approaches to the environmental problem. The entire spectrum of the allocation issue is studied. The author incorporates several economic approaches, including neoclassical analysis, the public goods approach and optimization theory. The different aspects of environmental allocation are studied in the context of a single model that is used throughout the book. The sixth edition includes new sections on ethical aspects of environmental evaluation, and international emission trading and biodiversity.

Contaminated land policy is a key concern of governments and policy makers across the globe, yet discussion has traditionally focused on the particular experience of the United States. This major new book develops a framework for assessing laws and regulations regarding contaminated land and polluted properties, their clean up and reuse, and the assignment of costs and responsibilities for reclamation.In Contaminated Land, the authors, a European and two Americans, lay out a framework for cross- national comparisons of policy contexts as well as ways of examining the outcomes of different approaches to contaminated land and systematically compare approaches to this issue in both the EU and US. The use of this framework leads to a reassessment of specific policies, such as the polluter pays principle, which may be more successful in the EU than it has been in the US, and subsidiarity which, while problematic in Europe, may hold promise in a US application. Specific issues discussed include the nature and extent of the contaminated land problem, legal implications, regulation in the US, the 1980 Comprehensive Environmental Liability, Compensation and Reclamation Act, European experience and EU environmental policy, integrated comparative analysis and some lessons for the future. Contaminated Land offers valuable insights on policy responses to the problem of badly polluted land from the perspectives of planning, economics and sociology. In particular, this volume offers frameworks for comparison of different national settings to help determine the preferred and most promising approaches to contaminated land in any social, economic and legal policy context.

Dieses Buch enthalt eine Auswahl wesentlicher Publikationen von Otto Rentz. Die Themenschwerpunkte seiner Arbeit und damit der Publikationen liegen in den Gebieten Produktion, Operations Research, Umweltschutz, nachhaltiges Wirtschaften und Energiewirtschaft. Das Buch gibt damit einen Uberblick uber das vielfaltige Werk des Autors, die von ihm untersuchten Probleme, der angewandten Methoden und der erzielten Ergebnisse. "

Critical Issues in Environmental Taxation is an internationally refereed publication devoted to environmental taxation issues on a worldwide basis. It seeks to provide insights and analysis for achieving environmental goals through tax policy. By sharing the perspectives of the authors in response to the diverse challenges posed by environmental taxation issues, effective approaches used in one country may be considered and possibly implemented by governmental authorities in other countries. This volume (the third in the series) contains 37 articles written by authors from around the world, with the articles grouped into six categories by topic. Preliminary drafts of the articles were presented at the Fifth Annual Global Conference on Environmental Taxation Issues held on September 9-11 2004 in Pavia, Italy. The articles in this volume were selected after being subjected to a rigorous peer review process. The articles are interesting, thought provoking, and have been written by some of the best environmental taxation scholars in the world.

This important collection reprints the most significant papers and case studies on the prevention and resolution of conflict over water resources. It focuses in particular on the human dynamics that are involved when conflicts over water resources impact on different interest groups, economic sectors and legal or political boundaries. It addresses key issues which arise at both the local and the international level, including amongst others: How do people interact in these situations of conflict? What methods do they use to find a compromise? What institutions do they create - either jointly or unilaterally - to help overcome problems in the future? This interdisciplinary collection will be essential reading for professional water practitioners throughout the world, including engineers, economists, geographers, geologists, and political scientists concerned with water disputes and conflict resolution. It will make a significant contribution to the study of water as an essential theme in the increasingly important topic of environmental security.

This book provides insight into how governments are using a variety of innovative fiscal and non-fiscal instruments to develop circular economies with significant economic and environmental benefits. It emphasises the urgent need for these circular economies and to move away from our current, linear model that has led to environmental degradation, volatility of resource prices and supply risks from uneven distribution of natural resources. Natural Resource Management and the Circular Economy illustrates how governments have promoted the development of an economy that can provide substantial net material savings; mitigate price volatility and supply risks; and improve ecosystem health and long-term resilience of the economy. Through a series of case studies, it details the various innovative policy instruments which can be utilised, including regulations; market-based instruments; incentives; research and innovation support; information exchanges; and support for voluntary approaches. The book also proposes a series of best practices for different countries, both developed and developing, who are implementing their circular economy.

This book provides a brief history of the notion of development and related policies. Readers will find an overview of the main development notions and debates from 1950 to the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals. The author argues that sustainable development is equal to empowerment within a specific historical setting; development is a dialectic relationship between people's empowerment and the existing social and economic structures. The book examines some well-known growth theories from Harrod in 1939 to contemporary debates views about the role of the state and the market. Some major structural changes are also examined from economic growth in Asia to international finance: the author contends that contemporary issues on development can be better understood with the help of the founding fathers of economics, from the Mercantilist era to Marx. They help to understand the difficult relationship between development and market forces within different models of social and economic reproduction. The author contends that the main development challenge is that of building a global partnership in a system with enormous differences in economic powers and offers some examples of how to re-balance the existing economic powers particularly in trade and finance.

Drawing on more modern expressions of economic analysis, this book explores the interplay between wellbeing, nature and moral values in economics. In standard accounts of economics, these three themes are typically treated in isolation from each other, or else overlooked entirely. This book argues that due to this blinkered approach, standard economic analysis is poorly equipped to deal with global contemporary challenges including climate change, biodiversity loss, sustainability, and the risk of pandemic diseases. The book reviews the economic literature to show that the last few decades has seen the re-insertion into economic analysis of human wellbeing, natural resources and moral values: three themes present in early economic thought that are highly relevant to the challenges ahead. The book argues for the greater integration of these three themes as the natural environment is crucial to human wellbeing, and moral values are essential for environmentally benign behaviors. The book also focuses on how specific moral values, identified by contemporary moral psychology, actually shape economic behavior rather than how abstract ethical principles they should shape economic behavior. The book will be of significant interest to readers in the economics and social sciences, particularly behavioral economics and social psychology.

Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC): A Manual provides a comprehensive summary of the EKC, summarizing work on this economic tool that can analyze environmental pollution problems. By enabling users to reconcile environmental and economic development policies, Environmental Kuznets Curve studies lend themselves to the investigation of the energy-growth and finance-energy nexus. The book obviates a dependence on outmoded tools, such as carrying capacity, externalities, ecosystem valuation and cost benefit analysis, while also encouraging flexible approaches to a variety of challenges.

This edited collection brings together leading theoretical and applied research with the intent to design a sustainable global financial future. The contributors argue that our world cannot move toward sustainability, address climate change, reverse environmental degradation, and improve human well-being without aligning the financial system with sustainable development goals like those outlined by the United Nations. Such a system would: a) be environmentally and socially responsible; b) align with planetary boundaries; c) manage natural resources sustainably; d) avoid doing more harm than good; and e) be resilient and adaptable to changing conditions. The overarching theme in this collection of chapters is a response to the worldwide, supranational sustainable finance discussions about how we can transition to a new socio-ecological system where finance, human well-being, and planetary health are recognized as being highly intertwined.

This book explores the evolving roles of energy stakeholders and geopolitical considerations, leveraging on the dizzying array of planned and actual projects for solar, wind, hydropower, waste-to-energy, and nuclear power in the region. Over the next few decades, favorable economics for low carbon energy sources combined with stagnant oil demand growth will facilitate a shift away from today's fossil fuel-based energy system. Will the countries of the Middle East and North Africa be losers or leaders in this energy transition? Will state-society relations undergo a change as a result? It suggests that ultimately, politics more so than economics or environmental pressure will determine the speed, scope, and effects of low carbon energy uptake in the region. This book is of interest to academics working in the fields of International Relations, International Political Economy, Comparative Political Economy, Energy Economics, and International Business. Consultants, practitioners, policy-makers, and risk analysts will also find the insights helpful.

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.

Environmental finance and green banking are central drivers of the transition to a sustainable economy and essential components in solutions to climate change. This book presents the latest research on theory and practices in these interdisciplinary fields, incorporating both public and corporate finance. It introduces three parts - environmental investing and financing, green banking and environmental policies in the public sector. The book explores the current trends, dynamics and ways forward for environmental finance and green banking, including fundamental theories (e.g., environmental Kuznets curve) and comparisons between traditional and green bond efficiency, corporate governance practices and disclosure, green central banking, climate finance, sustainable strategies, green Islamic banking, and public climate fund management in multi-country context. The contributors to this book highlight significant challenges ahead while recognizing potential opportunities, such as the revolution in green investments and trading in green bonds. This book is a welcome addition to the literature on environmental economics and finance and the economics of sustainability and climate change.

This book provides readers with cutting-edge techniques that can be applied to energy and environmental economics. Further, it highlights the effects that both globalization and economic growth have on the environment. In addition to offering a broader perspective on the relationship between environmental pollution, energy consumption and economic growth, the book studies the relationship between economic growth and environmental damage by drawing on the theoretical hypothesis of the Environmental Kuznets Curve. The book presents new econometric techniques and innovative approaches to the study of the energy economy. Accordingly, it can be used to help analyse the current state of the energy economy, the environment and globalization, and can serve as a theoretical reference manual for doctoral students and academics seeking new analytical techniques.

This book gathers the latest advances, innovations, and applications in the field of environmental and construction engineering, as presented by international researchers and engineers at the 2nd International Conference on Efficient Production and Processing, held on February 25-26, 2021. It covers highly diverse topics, including use of secondary raw materials in construction technologies; urban waste management logistics; use of recycled materials in road construction; safety and security in waste handling; food science and agriculture; waste and water treatment; and environmental economics. The contributions, which were selected by means of a rigorous international peer-review process, highlight numerous exciting ideas that will spur novel research directions and foster multidisciplinary collaborations.

Twenty-First Century India is the first study of India's development giving a fully integrated account of population and development. It is built on new projections of the population for fifty years from the Census of 2001. India's population then had already passed 1 billion. Twenty-five years later it will exceed 1.4 billion, and will almost certainly pass 1.5 billion by mid-century. The projections incorporate for the first time both inter-state migration and the role of HIV/AIDS. They also show India's urban future, with close to half a billion urban inhabitants by the year 2026. The implications of this population growth are then traced out in a range of modelling and analytical work. Growing numbers are found to complicate the task of achieving widespread education in a number of India's states, while other states are already experiencing declines in their school-age population. Demographic growth also contributes to poverty, and increasing divergence in social conditions among the states. As population growth slows in the country overall, the labour force continues to grow relatively fast, with difficult consequences for employment. But national economic growth could be accelerated by the 'demographic bonus' of the declining proportion of dependents to workers in the population. The book is reasonably optimistic about India's food prospects: the country can continue to feed itself. It can also enjoy higher levels of energy use, manufacturing, and modern forms of transport, while experiencing less chemical pollution. India's cities can become cleaner and healthier places to live. Perhaps the most difficult environmental issue, and the one most strongly related to population growth, is water. Some states also face severe pressures on common property resources. A policy chapter concludes the book. India's future problems are large, but in principle manageable. However, whether the country will actually achieve sustainable development for all is another matter.

This highly topical study of tropical deforestation reports on the first phase of a large, integrated, multi-institutional, and team-based study. Based in Mexico, it is designed to understand and project land changes in a development frontier that pits the rapidly growing needs of smallholder farmers to cut down forests for cultivation against federally sponsored initiatives committed to various international programmes of forest preservation and complementary economic programmes.

This doctoral thesis presents a novel approach to landslide risk assessment that explores the various dimensions of landslide risk in an integrated perspective. The research approach introduced here is tailored for use with landslide databases and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). A landslide susceptibility model is at the heart of this new approach, enabling to identify and delineate areas at risk of landslides and to assess infrastructure exposure. Landslide risk is a pressing societal issue that is still poorly understood. Temporal landslide hazard is derived from landslide frequency statistics and a hydrological simulation approach to estimate triggering thresholds. These methods are integrated into a powerful toolset for cost modeling that uses historical data to compile, model, and extrapolate damage costs on different spatial scales over time. The combination of this toolset with techniques to analyze fiscal cost impacts supports integrated risk assessment by quantifying the economic relevance of landslide losses.

This book is devoted to CO2 capture and utilization (CCU) from a green, biotechnological and economic perspective, and presents the potential of, and the bottlenecks and breakthroughs in converting a stable molecule such as CO2 into specialty chemicals and materials or energy-rich compounds. The use of renewable energy (solar, wind, geothermal, hydro) and non-fossil hydrogen is a must for converting large volumes of CO2 into energy products, and as such, the authors explore and compare the availability of hydrogen from water using these sources with that using oil or methane. Divided into 13 chapters, the book offers an analysis of the conditions under which CO2 utilization is possible, and discusses CO2 capture from concentrated sources and the atmosphere. It also analyzes the technological (non-chemical) uses of CO2, carbonation of basic minerals and industrial sludge, and the microbial-catalytic-electrochemical-photoelectrochemical-plasma conversion of CO2 into chemicals and energy products. Further, the book provides examples of advanced bioelectrochemical syntheses and RuBisCO engineering, as well as a techno-energetic and economic analysis of CCU. Written by leading international experts, this book offers a unique perspective on the potential of the various technologies discussed, and a vision for a sustainable future. Intended for graduates with a good understanding of chemistry, catalysis, biotechnology, electrochemistry and photochemistry, it particularly appeals to researchers (in academia and industry) and university teachers.

This book addresses the interactions between Germany's energy transition and the EU's energy policy framework. It seeks to analyze the manifold connections between the prospects of the proclaimed "Energy Union" and the future of Germany's energy transition, and identifies relevant lessons for the transformation at the EU level that can be learned from the case of Germany, as a first-mover of transforming energy systems towards renewables. The various repercussions (political, economic and systemic) from the national transition are explored within the EU context as it responds to the German transition, taking into account both existing frictions and potential synergies between predominantly national sustainability policies and the EU's push towards harmonized policies within a common market. The book's overall aim is to identify the most critical issues, in order to avoid pitfalls and capitalize on opportunities.

Stabilization of atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases to safe levels will require, at least in the longer term, some kind of technological revolution. This, in turn, can only be achieved through investments in the research, development and demonstration (RD&D) of carbon-free energy technologies. Innovation under Uncertainty presents original research and insights on the uncertain future of carbon-free energy technologies. The authors, by means of structured interviews with technology experts, portray a probabilistic landscape of future technologies' costs, potentials and limits to diffusion.This book collates the results of interviews with more than a hundred and twenty energy technology experts on a wide range of topics, from the impact of public European RD&D investment on the future cost of different low-carbon energy technologies to issues such as technological and diffusion barriers. The results offer important and concrete insights and recommendations concerning the potential role for public expenditure in innovation to bring clean generation technologies to the market. This unprecedented collection of qualitative and quantitative estimates will be invaluable to academics and policy makers drafting future energy policies, and integrated assessment and energy modelers characterizing the future development of different technological options. Contributors: L. Aleluia, V. Bosetti, M. Bunn, M. Catenacci, L.A. Diaz, G. Fiorese, A. Lee, E. Verdolini,

This authoritative two volume collection illustrates the most important methods for valuing non-priced environmental goods. It will be essential reading for new researchers as well as providing an excellent source of well-known material for scholars already working in this area.The first volume provides a variety of papers on different applications of opportunity cost, travel-cost, hedonic price and contingent valuation methods which emphasise both theory and practice. Classic articles on discrete choice, non-use values and the WTA v. WTP controversy are included. It also includes contributions from psychologists which identify anomalies in economic theory as well as developing more robust evaluation methods. The second volume addresses the problem of evaluation when there are multi-attribute goods and programmes and considers how the validity of results can be assessed. Allocative mechanisms for environmental resources are also illustrated with analysis of some of the property rights issues surrounding damage to resources. A series of case studies evaluate major issues: biodiversity; wetlands; landscape; noise; safety and air pollution. The volume concludes with the transfer of benefit estimates between sites, the usefulness of meta-analysis and two thought provoking articles concerning the meaning of valuation.

The Economics and Politics of China's Energy Security Transition clarifies China's energy and foreign policies through a comprehensive examination of energy sources, providing an insider's unique perspective for assessing China's energy policies. China's historic decline in coal consumption since 2013-2014 and a plateauing of its carbon dioxide emissions have given China an unprecedented opportunity to decarbonize while growing its economy. In response to global questions about China's institutional, administrative, and political challenges and risks, this book provides the answers that everyone is asking.

The study group Environmental Standards' established in 1987 as an expert panel of the German Academy of Sciences and Technology in Berlin compiled this book on setting environmental standards that has been literally written and authorized by all group members. The group consisted of eleven individuals representing the following disciplines: physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, law, psychology, and sociology/economics. Firstly, Environmental Standards summarizes the state of the art in each discipline with respect to the topic of environmental standards, limited to one major case study: the effects of ionizing radiation. Within the subject of ionizing radiation and its impacts, the book intends to provide a complete and accurate picture of the various health impacts and environmental problems. Second, this volume provides guidelines for a desirable procedure that would guarantee the inclusion of all scientific data and reasoning but would also assure the incorporation of social costs, cultural values and individual preferences in the decision making process. The study includes a section that describes an analytic framework for collective decision making under uncertainty and a section on institutional innovations necessary to implement a procedure for integrating scientific input and rational decision making. The procedural suggestions are focused around a new environmental institution that is empowered to initiate and promulgate new standards on the basis of a present process of linking scientific data with social values and preferences. The volume represents a rare example of integrating the natural and social sciences and developing consistent and complete procedural guidelinesfor standard setting in a democratic society.

Over-exploitation of environment and natural resources is becoming increasingly widespread in the modern world. To combat this, environmental economists have attempted to value such resources in order to ensure that they are given due recognition in any ex ante appraisal, or ex post evaluation of projects or policies; and also to ensure that optimal levels of consumption are determined for the resource. This authoritative title brings together seminal papers published in the last three decades which demonstrate the application of a number of techniques employed to value a range of environmental and natural resources. It will be of immense value to students, scholars and practitioners with an interest in environmental affairs and natural resources.