This book, first published in 1988, provides an overview of the diverse work that was being done in applied and theoretical environmental and resource economics. Some essays reflect upon the background of the work of John Krutilla, one of the founders of Resources for the Future and a leading scholar of environmental economics, and the development of the field to date. Other essays examine and convey findings on particular resource problems and theoretical issues and resource policies and the practice of applied welfare economics. This title will be of interest to students of economics and environmental studies.
This element offers a review and synthesis of the research on economic methods for evaluating regulations that improve air quality, save energy, and reduce climate risks. The intended audience is regulators and other constituencies interested in the nexus between scholarship and practice; analysts in government agencies and research organizations; and academic scholars and their graduate students. Topics include the evolution of regulatory impact assessment in the OECD; cost estimation, including engineering, partial equilibrium, and general equilibrium approaches; benefit valuation, with an emphasis on the value of reducing risk of illness and premature mortality, and methods for pricing carbon emissions; discounting methods, and their relationship to carbon pricing; the distribution of regulatory costs and benefits; and uncertainty evaluation methods for addressing less and more fundamental uncertainty. Perspective on the relevance and limitations of current research is offered. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
As cities in developing countries grow and become more prosperous, energy use shifts from fuelwood to fuels like charcoal, kerosene, and coal, and, ultimately, to fuels such as liquid petroleum gas, and electricity. Energy use is not usually considered as a social issue. Yet, as this book demonstrates, the movement away from traditional fuels has a strong socio-economic dimension, as poor people are the last to attain the benefits of using modern energy. The result is that health risks from the continued use of wood fuel fall most heavily on the poor, and indoor pollution from wood stoves has its greatest effect on women and children who cook and spend much more of their time indoors. Barnes, Krutilla, and Hyde provide the first worldwide assessment of the energy transition as it occurs in urban households, drawing upon data collected by the World Bank Energy Sector Management Assistance Programme (ESMAP). From 1984-2000, the program conducted over 25,000 household energy surveys in 45 cities spanning 12 countries and 3 continents. Additionally, GIS mapping software was used to compile a biomass database of vegetation patterns surrounding 34 cities. Using this rich set of geographic, biological, and socioeconomic data, the authors describe problems and policy options associated with each stage in the energy transition. The authors show how the poorest are most vulnerable to changes in energy markets and demonstrate how the collection of biomass fuel contributes to deforestation. Their book serves as an important contribution to development studies, and as a guide for policymakers hoping to encourage sustainable energy markets and an improved quality of life for growing urban populations.
First Published in 2011. This is Volume 10 of in a set of ten titles on Resources for the Future Library Collection Forests, Lands and Recreation. The research on which this monograph is based was stimulated by some ideas presented in George Stankey's A Strategy for the Definition and Management of Wilderness Quality and the conceptual model presented in a paper by Anthony Fisher and John Krutilla entitled, Determination of Optimal Capacity of Resource-Based Recreation Facilities. This study explores in an effort to develop operational means of determining optimal capacity of intended low-density recreation facilities was ( 1 ) to establish the empirical relation between the benefits enjoyed during a wilderness outing as a function, among other things, of the number of other parties encountered, and (2) a means of estimating the expected frequency of encounters as a function of the intensity of use of any wilderness area.
This book, first published in 1988, provides an overview of the diverse work that was being done in applied and theoretical environmental and resource economics. Some essays reflect upon the background of the work of John Krutilla, one of the founders of Resources for the Future and a leading scholar of environmental economics, and the development of the field to date. Other essays examine and convey findings on particular resource problems and theoretical issues and resource policies and the practice of applied welfare economics. This title will be of interest to students of economics and environmental studies.
Economics of Natural Resources and the Environment brings together the approaches of natural resource economics and environmental economics to provide a comprhensive overview of the economics of national international and global environmental problems. A unifying theme throuhhout the book is the concept of "sustainable development" defined as "maximizing the net benefits of economic development while maintaining the services and quality of natural resources over time." The authors emphasize the continuing importance of a mainstream approach. They stress "economic efficiency—getting the most welfare out of a given endowment of resources." And they address the larger moral issues as well. Chapter topics include the historical development of environmental economics, environmental ethics, and pollution control policy in "free" mixed market and centrally planned economies. Other current issues seen from an economic perspective include destruction of the ozone layer, the greenhouse effect, policy weapons in the fight against pollution, and the special problems of the third world. Economics of Natural Resources and the Environment offers a thorough review and synthesis of the major work of the field's senior scholars. It will be of value not only to students of natural resource economics, environmental economics, geography, and environmental sciences but also to all with an interest in economic appraoches to environmental issues.
Estimating Economic Values for Nature presents, in one volume, a collection of V. Kerry Smith's papers prepared over 25 years dealing with the theory and practice of non-market valuation for environmental resources. Taken together, the papers explore the conceptual basis, the implementation process and empirical performance of all available methods of measuring economic values for the services of nature and how these values are constructed from people's choices. The issues discussed in this volume include travel cost recreation demand, averting behaviour, household production, hedonic property value, hedonic wage and contingent valuation methods. These essays describe what has been learned from past benefit analysis, using meta-analysis, as well as the issues at the frontier of current research in the area. This important volume will be welcomed by environmental and public economists, as well as practitioners of cost-benefit analysis, as an authoritative and comprehensive discussion of non-market valuation.
Almost 5 years ago we began working together on research for the U.S. Environmental Protec tion Agency (EPA) to measure the benefits of water quality regulations. EPA had awarded a contract to Research Triangle Inst~ute (RTIl in response to a proposal that Bill wrote on measuring these benefits. After meeting with the EPA project officer, Dr Ann Fisher, the basic outlines of what would become this research were framed. Upon the suggestion of Bob Anderson, then chief of the Benefits Branch at EPA, we selected the Monongahela River as the focal point of a case study that would compare alternative benefit measurement approaches. Exactly how this case study would be done remained vague, but Ann urged that there be a survey and that nonuse benefits be included in the question naire design. Of course, Bill agreed. At the same time, Kerry was independently working on a review article that tied together some of the loose threads in the option value literature. He had also been thinking about how to measure option value, as well as working on ways to generalize the travel cost approach for estimating benefits of site attributes. Glenn Morris at RTI suggested that Bill have lunch with him and Kerry and that they could talk about Bill's research to see if there were any mutual interest. Over the lunch and Bill's ever present dessert in a Chapel Hill restaurant, we found out just how much we have in common.
Ecosystem services can be broadly defined as the aspects of ecosystems that provide benefits to people. This book provides guidance on the valuation of ecosystem services, using the case of multifunctional wetlands to illustrate and make recommendations regarding the methods and techniques that can be applied to appraise management options. It provides a review of ecosystem service valuation rationale, including its importance from both a policy and project appraisal perspective, and a useful reference when considering policy and appraisal of ecosystem management options. It shows how legal obligations and other high-level management targets should be taken into account in valuation exercises, thus giving important policy context to the management options.The authors set out what they call an Ecosystem Services Approach to the full appraisal of the role of ecosystem services in the economy and society. Although concentrating on wetlands, the approaches suggested provide an assessment framework that can be applied to other types of ecosystem assets.
Originally published in 1974, Technical Change, Relative Prices, and Environmental Resource Evaluation explores the relationship between natural environmental resources and the differential implications of technological change and relative price appreciation. Smith claims that price is linked to technological progress and comments on the economic issues surrounding this. This title will be of interest to students of Environmental Studies and Economics.
Assessing natural resource damages often requires the use of nonmarket valuation techniques that were developed for use in benefit-cost analyses. Natural resource damage assessment dramatically changes the context for applying them. Two aspects of this context are especially important. First, damages are to be measured by the monetary value of the losses people experience, including their use and nonuse values, because of injuries to natural resources---a process requiring careful delineation of how the injuries connect to the resource's services. Second, a single identified entry---not generalized, anonymous taxpayers---must pay damages based on what is measured, and evaluations of the measurement techniques take place not in agency meeting rooms but in courtrooms. Contributors to Valuing Natural Assets examine the ways in which requirements for damage assessment change how the measures are used, presented, received, and defended. Drawing upon their personal involvement with the process and the research issues it has raised---both in providing analysis for defendants or plaintiffs in damage assessment cases and in writing for academic journals---their chapters reflect individual research programs that temper the rigorous demands of scholarship with the equally demanding standards of litigation.
The purpose of this report is to produce a review on water resource valuation issues and techniques specifically for the appraisal and negotiation of raw (as opposed to bulk or retail) water resource allocation for agricultural development projects. The review considers raw water in naturally occurring watercourses, lakes, wetlands, soil and aquifers, taking an ecosystem function perspective at a catchment scale, and takes account of the demands from irrigated and rainfed agriculture. It is hoped that the review will have particular application to developing countries where agreed methods for reconciling competing uses are often absent, but nevertheless takes account of valuation approaches that have been made in post industrial economies.
The subject of environment economics has become an important focus of debate around the world with experts as well as ordinary citizens concluding that the environment and the economy can no longer be viewed as separate entities. As a result, contemporary environmental issues are increasingly seem from the point of view of their economics effects and their consequences for human well-being now and in the future. Environmental Economics provides a comprehensive introduction to the dynamic relationship between economics and environmental policy. The authors offer a broad overview of important issues, including the changing role of economics during a time of increasing environmental concern, the impact of markets and governmental policy, environmental protection through economic mechanisms, and a practical look at how environmental economics are played out in commercial and scientific arenas.
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