The Economics of Environmental Degradation Tragedy for the Commons?

About this book

Provides an institutional economics approach to analyse the underlying causes of continuing environmental degradation.

Contents

Part 1 The economices of environmental degradations - an institutional approach; defining degradation; degradation and sustainability; 'property': market failure and environmental degradation; 'policy': domestic and global policy failures and environmental degradation; 'population': population, economic scale and degradation; 'poverty': poor people, poor societies and degradation; 'price': trade and degradation;the causes of degradation. Part 2 Market failure and enviromental degradation; externalities; externalities between locations; externalities across frontiers; externalities between generations. Part 3 Policy failure and resource degradation; the theory of resource over-exploitation and degradation; addressing the fundamental causes of resource degradation; the forces for resource conversion - resources as assets; the decline of the African elephant - a case study; classic policy failure: subsidies to conversions; whose policy failure? domestic or global. Part 4 The causes of envirnmental degradation: population,scarcity and growth; rapid population and degradation: ecologists' warnings and malthusian models; the neoclassical view of the problem of scarce resources and environmental degradation; the concept of scale of the economy: meta-resources and sustainable development; some failures of technological and behavioural responses; the role of institutional factors; conclusions; Part 5 Poverty and degradation; world poverty and world resources; links between poverty and degradation; a case study concerning fuelwood; poverty, policies and aid; conclusion; Part 6 Societal poverty: indebtedness and degradation; background to the debt crisis; trade-related changes; structral adjustment reforms; debt-for-nature swaps; conclusion; Part 7 International trade and environmental quality; environmental factors, comparative advantage and innternational trade; international trade and south-north transfers of enviromental resources; economic development and state intervention in economy-environment interactions; international trade and environmental degradation: a case study of international trade in wood-based products; conclusion.

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