Environmental Economics for Sustainable Growth A Handbook for Practitioners

About this book

Environmental Economics for Sustainable Growth is aimed at practitioners in environmental economics and policy. This is the first book which comprehensively describes the environment-economy link at both the macro and micro level, puts it in the framework of sustainable development, and focuses on environmental valuation techniques as the key to operationalizing sustainable development at both the macro policy level and the micro level of project and programme evaluation. The book also describes in a step-by-step fashion how to perform environmental valuation studies in developing countries and transition economies, and again illustrates the methodologies with empirical studies.

Contents

Part 1 Introduction and structure: objectives of the book; description of the chapters. Part 2 Sustainable development vision in a global context: the earliest definition of sustainable development; economic dimension of sustainable development; environmental sustainability; social sustainability; measures of strong and weak sustainability; sustainable development vision in a political context; integrating environment and development; strategies and political economy. Part 3 Macroeconomic policies and the environment: macroeconomic policies and the environment; tools and methods of macroeconomic analysis; conclusions; case studies. Part 4 An introduction to environmental management at the sectoral level: partial or sectoral market equilibrium; consumer and producer surplus; market failures; policy and institutional failures; shadow pricing; environmental management principles; conclusions; case studies. Part 5 Policies, instruments and the environment: analytical tools; optimality of private decisions; environmental instruments; instruments in practice; lessons and conclusions to the chapter; problem set; solution to problem set. Part 6 Laws, regulations and institutions: legal system for environmental protection; international legal instruments; environmental laws; environmental institutions; conclusions; annexes. Part 7 National environmental strategies (NES): past experience; identifying and prioritizing problems; defining priorities for action - diagnozing causes; defining priorities for action - finding solutions; plan implementation; conclusions; questions for discussion. Part 8 Economy-wide policies and the valuation of environmental impacts: the project cycle and environmental assessment; appraisal of a project with environmental impacts; step 1 - EA and the with-without analysis; step 2 - financial and economic appraisal; step 3 - shadow pricing for market failures; step 4 - discount rate and comparison of costs and benefits; step 5 - decision-making with participation; conclusion. Part 9 Economic principles and overview of valuation methods: total economic value of an environmental asset; basic concepts of valuation methods; overview of valuation methods; economics underlying valuation methods. Part 10 Revealed preferences - direct proxy methods: productivity change method (PCM); substitute cost method (SCM); case studies. Part 11 Revealed preference - indirect proxy methods: travel cost method; hedonic price method (HPM) - the conceptual framework; case studies. Part 12 Stated preference - contingent valuation methods: contingent valuation method - the conceptual framework; CVM methodology; numerical examples. Part 13 Use of monetary value of environmental and natural resources for benefit cost analysis - an application to a soil moisture conservation project in Tunisia: background; methodology; exercise - case study of the BCA for the Tunisia soil moisture conservation project; solution set; discussion. Part 14 Use of monetary values

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