Economic growth,national income and the blocked choices for the environment

Summary This paper explains why the identification of the increase of national income (or GNP) with economic growth, increase in welfare and economic success is theoretically wrong. This incorrect use of terms strengthens the one-sided orientation of economic policy on the growth of production, often at the expense of the environment. Two examples are given of how this course of affairs is blocking the social choices regarding a fundamental solution of the environmental problem. An overview is given of the possibilities of correcting the Gross National Product (GNP) figures for environmental losses. None of these are perfect, since shadow prices for environmental functions directly comparable with the market prices of goods produced can be construed only in exceptional cases. The conclusion is that the only way to arrive at national income figures corrected for environmental losses is to supplement the corrections for expenditures on preventive, restoratory and compensatory measures (defensive expenditures) with the estimated expenditures on measures required to meet physical standards, based on health and a sustainable economic development.Dr Roefie Hueting is Head of the Department of Environment Statistics at the Netherlands Central Bureau of Statistics and a Visiting Fellow at the International Institute for Environment and Society (IIUG). He is a previous contributor toThe Environmentalist (1985, pp.253–262). Dr Christian Leipert is a staff member at IIUG.     

A conspectus on valuing the environment

A distinction is drawn between opportunity cost and willingness‐to‐pay (WTP) valuations of the environment and the latter are shown to be appropriate only in situations where no agreed environmental standards exist. WTP measures of environmental effects form the basis of the Pigovian model of externalities. This model is applicable where individuals directly perceive environmental effects as nuisances or the reverse. But with many environmental problems direct perception does not occur and the Pigovian model is not applicable. In these circumstances it is wrong to talk of biases in WTP estimations since no ‘true’ WTP exists. A decision rule grounded in WTP could still be used but is open to serious objections. The preferred approach is through the development of environmental standards.     

Application of a value-based equivalency method to assess environmental damage compensation under the European Environmental Liability Directive

The Environmental Liability Directive (ELD) establishes a framework of liability based on the ‘polluter-pays’ principle to prevent and remedy environmental damage. The ELD requires the testing of appropriate equivalency methods to assess the scale of compensatory measures needed to offset damage. The aim of this paper is to contribute to fill the existing knowledge gap on the application of the value equivalency approach for damage compensation in this context. We analyze the toxic spill damaging the Doñana National Park (Spain) in 1998. The welfare losses associated with the resource damage are estimated using non-market valuation and compared to the value of the compensatory measures taken after the accident. Our results show that the in-kind compensation may have been insufficient to offset the welfare losses. We conclude that a more comprehensive knowledge of the human welfare effects caused by environmental damage is of substantial importance to determine compensatory remediation, as insufficient information in this respect can lead to erroneous decisions causing loss to society.     

Modeling protected species as an undesirable output: the case of sea turtle interactions in Hawaii's longline fishery

Interactions with sea turtles have occurred at an alarming rate in swordfish longlining in Hawaii in recent years and various regulations have been put forward to protect sea turtles. In order to understand the cost of reducing sea turtle interactions, methods have been developed to derive the shadow price of sea turtle bycatch based on fisher's welfare loss from a specific regulation. This paper illustrates an alternative method of calculating temporal and trip-specific cost of sea turtle bycatch reduction. The advantages of this method lie in the computation of shadow price without assuming specific regulation implementation and its relatively modest data requirement. A parametric output distance function is used to simultaneously model desirable and undesirable catches. Using the duality argument, the revenue-related shadow price of sea turtle bycatch can be derived from the estimated distance function. Average shadow price of sea turtle bycatch for the period 1991-1999 is estimated to be US $30873 in 1991 dollars. Average shadow prices of sea turtle bycatch by trip characteristics, such as fishing year, trip type and location are also estimated. Such information can be useful for policy makers to analyze tradeoffs and make appropriate policy decisions.     

On measuring wealth: a case study on the state of Queensland

In order for policy makers to plan effectively for sustainable development, there is a need for measures of welfare that consider changes in the natural capital stock. Current measures based on conventional national accounting are flawed because they are based solely on flow measures and do not account for environmental effects. In this paper, we use an expanded measure of wealth to estimate the value of natural capital for Queensland. The state's stock of natural capital is valued at A dollar 355.6 billion, of which non-timber forest resources account for 45.3%, ecosystem services 20.0%, and mineral resources 17.6%. This figure is a conservative estimate of the true value since some significant components such as the ecological and life-support functions of the environment are excluded. The estimates highlight the relative importance of different forms of natural capital and can be used to draw the attention of policymakers to the need to give adequate weight to the value of such services in decision-making processes.     

Assigning Degrees of Ease or Difficulty for Pet Animal Maintenance: The EMODE System Concept

Pet animal management is subject to varied husbandry practices and the resulting consequences often impact negatively on animal welfare. The perceptions held by someone who proposes to keep an animal regarding the ease or difficulty with which its biological needs can be provided for in captivity are key factors in whether that animal is acquired and how well or poorly it does. We propose a system to ‘score’ animals and assign them to categories indicating the ease or difficulty with which they can be kept as pets in accordance with welfare and public health and safety considerations. The ‘EMODE’ (‘Easy’, ‘Moderate’, ‘Difficult’, ‘Extreme’) system has two fundamental components: animal welfare—which considers the ‘five freedoms’ principles; and public health and safety—which considers management associated with risks from disease or injury to the keeper and to others. EMODE incorporates two tiers of assessment and guidance, and may offer a reasonable guide for the majority of relevant animals. EMODE Tier 1 provides a primary and general assessment of animals by class or group, and EMODE Tier 2 provides a secondary refined assessment of animals by species or breed. EMODE offers a user-friendly and versatile foundation concept for the future development of guidance for the layperson who may be considering acquiring a pet or for certain personnel when considering assigning species to restrictive lists of suitable animals, for example, ‘positive lists’ as used by governments to control animals in trade and keeping.     

Ethical Beliefs and Behaviour in Contingent Valuation Surveys

A common assumption in the economic valuation of the environment is that environmental resources can essentially be treated identically to produced goods and services in estimating welfare measures. The most critical aspect of this assumption in this regard is that individuals are willing to trade-off environmental quality changes in exchange for changes in their income. In this paper, we briefly review some of the conceptual arguments over this issue, and existing empirical evidence, before presenting the results of a new pilot study which addresses some of the possible problems in viewing the environment in this fashion.     

What are the implications of human rights for minerals taxation?

This article examines the relationship between a state's taxation of mineral revenues and the human rights obligation to use ‘maximum available resources’ to further citizens' welfare. These both have implications for understanding the other but there has been little attention to their interaction.Contemporary (economic and policy) approaches to mineral taxation revolve around economic rent and providing a ‘neutral’ economic environment that does not influence investment decisions. There is no reference to human rights obligations—these are just part of the state's general responsibilities for which it can legitimately raise taxes. Taxation analysis largely ignores whether the state wants money to ensure there is adequate food for the population, or instead to stage the Miss Universe pageant.Human rights has relevance for the state's management of resources. The requirement for states to apply ‘maximum available resources’ to fulfil human rights suggests that mineral extraction (and taxation) should occur as fast as possible to be applied for the human rights of the current population A more considered analysis weighs against such a literal interpretation. Nevertheless, the requirement of using ‘maximum available resources’ to fulfil human rights has important implications for mineral taxation.     

Management of sustainability transitions through planning in shrinking resource city contexts: an evaluation of Yubari City,Japan

This paper evaluates the planning competences required to enact a managed transition to sustainability at the municipal level for cities facing population, economic and employment decline. Drawing on the ‘shrinking cities’ literature, we argue consolidation of the built environment can become a focal point for sustaining citizen welfare when transitioning cities that are facing decline, especially those previously reliant on resource industries. We evaluate the former coal mining city of Yubari, Japan, which is developing a consolidated urban form with the aim of creating a ‘sustainable’ future city. Findings from interviews and content analysis of Yubari’s planning policy indicate, however, that to translate ‘shrinking’ a city into a managed transition, spatial planning must be accompanied by a wider range of social policy measures and strong cross-sectoral engagement. We also caution that the unique geographical and political context of Yubari mean its model may not be directly replicable in other contexts.     

Towards a Community Based Ethic: A Phenomenological Account of Environmental Change From the Sundarbans’s Islanders

Rapid changes in the environment are far from being a new phenomenon, especially for vulnerable zones like the Sundarbans, India. In the era of climate change, when these islands are witnessing a lot of initiatives to combat the increasing negative impacts of various environmental changes, this article showcases why it is imperative to study the everyday phenomenological experiences of the islanders to be able to go beyond the climate-affected narratives and generate a deeper understanding of the phenomenon itself—‘environmental change’. This article provides the islanders’ phenomenological accounts of environmental change and borrowing from Heidegger’s concept of ‘Being-in-the-world’ explicates the reason behind the disparity in acknowledging environmental change across individuals. Making this interpretive phenomenological account of environmental change as the ground, this article offers a rubric of community-based ethic which perhaps can prove to be effective in addressing any place-specific environmental change, over and above the prevalent approach of place-based ethic.     

The Five Freedoms of Animal Welfare are Rights

In this paper I defend a theory of welfare rights for nonhuman animals. I do this by demonstrating that a well-established framework for protecting the interests of farm animals, the ‘Five Freedoms of Animal Welfare’, is already functioning just as a set of rights. To support this claim I adopt a common approach to detecting evidence for deontological reasoning and look at the structural features of rights. I first consider Hohfeld’s system of legal rights and consider whether the Five Freedoms may be understood as liberties or claim rights, before making a more successful comparison with side constraints and an interest theory of rights as understood by Nozick and Raz. I also respond to a likely objection that it is not possible to have some welfare rights without a right to freedom from exploitation. The argument therefore contributes to breaking down the stubborn division between ‘animal welfare’ and ‘animal rights’.     

The rise of the eco-preneur and the messy world of environmental innovation

Abstract

Media and academic debates about the environment have increasingly made reference to the so-called ‘eco-preneur’ (‘green entrepreneur’ or ‘environmental entrepreneur’). These discussions encourage us to see the potential of such figures to act as drivers of environmental innovation. Their combination of entrepreneurial zeal and green motivations is seen as providing them with the ability to transcend the usual tensions between business and the environment. In academic circles a new literature is beginning to emerge around this perspective, ‘eco-preneurship’. In this paper we investigate the usefulness of eco-preneurship for understanding environmental innovation. In particular we ask where this literature, supported by popular images in the media, fixes our gaze when we think about environmental innovation in society. And, crucially, what might we be missing by concentrating our attention on these eco-preneurs? The paper concludes by suggesting that environmental innovation is better understood as an inherently messy and complex institutional process, which cannot be reduced to the psychology of entrepreneurial personalities.     

Using local knowledge to model asymmetric preference formation in willingness to pay for environmental services

This paper describes an approach to account for asymmetric preference formation in discrete choice models used for environmental valuation. The paper draws on data from a case study on preferences for environmental change resulting from a hypothetical rural development and conservation programme in Indonesia. Local knowledge on the current state of the environment was used to define an individual-specific status quo that consistently frames changes in a range of environmental services as gains or losses matching the perceptions of the local population living in the vicinity of a National Park. I estimated choice models that included separate parameters for increases and decreases in attribute levels for the environmental services and derived the indicators of local willingness to pay (WTP) corresponding to the bidirectional changes relative to the individual-specific status quo option. I found clear evidence of an asymmetric response to increase and decrease in attribute levels relative to the status quo. Ignoring asymmetric preference formation can therefore result in biased estimates of WTP indicators and welfare measures of change in cases where the outcomes of environmental programmes can plausibly result in both an increase and a decrease relative to a reference option. Compared to a symmetrical modelling approach, the combination of simultaneously accounting for asymmetric preference formation and preference heterogeneity in the choice model yielded additional insights that may be used to inform the development of local strategies towards biodiversity conservation.     

A role for technical environmental assessment in perceptions of environmental quality and well-being

There is growing interest in including measures of external reality in models of person-environment transactions. That step is necessary to avoid circularity in reasoning and to change environments in desired ways. This study tests the utility of technical assessments of environmental quality, derived independently of the judgements of respondents or observers. Nine components based on objective facts about the residential environment, nine components based on person charactertistics, plus age and sex were used to predict 13 criteria which reflect the residents' perceptions of various aspects of their environment and of its impact on their well-being. The technical environmental assessment indices made statistically significant independent contributions which cross-validated with all of the 13 criteria. The person components plus age and sex also made independent contributions which cross-validated with 12 of the 13 criteria. The results support the idea that technical environmental assessments can play a constructive role in clarifying person-environment transactions, and that they are complementary to rather than redundant with personal characteristics of respondents in affecting environmental perceptions.     

The importance of the will to improve: how ‘sustainability’ sidelined local livelihoods in a carbon-forestry investment in Uganda

This paper describes a ‘win–win’ discourse on local sustainable development and global climate change mitigation regarding Kachung, a Swedish–Norwegian climate forestry investment in Uganda certified under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). In many ways, this investment is a typical example of how private interests and capital accumulation are prioritised over local concerns in natural resource management under neoliberalism. This study, however, indicated that investors had genuine intentions of creating mutual benefits for the global environment and local people. Drawing on Li (2007), we show that this ‘will to improve’ was nevertheless constructed in ways that resulted in prioritisation of global climate change mitigation over local context-specific concerns.

We identify three core factors making the win–win discourse around Kachung plantation especially resilient: (i) the perceived urgency of climate change mitigation, (ii) the apolitical framing of ‘sustainability’ as an environmental issue that can be fixed through external technical interventions and (iii) the devaluation of local and context-specific knowledge. We end by suggesting that research on the neoliberalisation of nature focus more on analysing the rationales behind specific interventions. This would leave us better equipped to suggest how such interventions should be modified to produce true wins for local contexts.     

Regional Industries and Environmental Impacts. Long-run Regional Economic Effects of Climate Change: The Case of the Coastal and Estuary Zone of the German Northwest

The paper explores the relations of (1) regionalized climate change impulses; (2) their impacts on regional industry sectors; and (3) a regional econometric impact analysis. It develops a methodology by which the impulses of a regional climate change scenario can be transformed into ‘primary’ impacts on the capital stock and value added of climate-sensitive regional industries. These industries are vulnerable to ‘creeping’, i.e. continuous, climate change impulses, and they tend to react through ‘defensive’ investment. In addition, a singular flooding event is simulated for a specific local area and its different capital stocks. The stock damages and value-added losses of both the continuous industrial impacts and the singular flooding are inserted into a regional econometric model. This is sectorally disaggregated in stock, value-added and investment functions. It is also calibrated in the very-long run (through to the year 2040), according to different scenarios. The regional economic ‘secondary’ effects on the regional GNP are calculated. In addition to the calculation of regional economic primary and secondary impacts, the methodological issue of generating more transparency of the causal chains by use of damage functions, reaction functions, and comparative defensive strategies are discussed.     

Population dynamics and the economics of invasive species management: the greenhouse whitefly in California-grown strawberries

In agriculture, relatively few efficacious control measures may be available for an invasive pest. In the case of a new insect pest, insecticide use decisions are affected by regulations associated with its registration, insect population dynamics, and seasonal market price cycles. We assess the costs and benefits of environmental regulations designed to regulate insecticide applications on an invasive species. We construct a bioeconomic model, based on detailed scientific data, of management decisions for a specific invasion: greenhouse whiteflies in California-grown strawberries. The empirical model integrates whitefly population dynamics, the effect of whitefly feeding on strawberry yields, and weekly strawberry price. We use the model to assess the optimality of alternative treatment programs on a simulated greenhouse whitefly population. Our results show that regulations may lead growers to "under-spray" when placed in an economic context, and provide some general lessons about the design of optimal invasive species control policies.     

Opportunities and Challenges in Applying the 3Rs to Zoos and Aquariums

Since Russell and Burch (1959) suggested the principles of replacement, reduction, and refinement (3Rs) as a foundation for animal research, their influence has only grown in the research community. In this paper, we discuss whether the 3Rs can be constructively used as a prism to analyse decisions regarding the welfare of animals housed in zoos and aquariums (henceforth “zoo animals”). We analyse opportunities and challenges for each of the three Rs when applied to zoo animals. We discuss the following reasons to consider the use of the 3Rs in relation to zoo animals: (1) there are similarities between motivations for housing animals in zoos and using them in research that are ethically relevant to consider; (2) the professional zoo community has committed to progress towards evidence-based best practice models to ensure and enhance the welfare of animals housed in zoos; and (3) there is a growing public concern regarding the welfare of zoo animals which can, to some extent, be met by viewing current practices through the prism of the 3Rs.

     

How Should Death Be Taken into Account in Welfare Assessments?

That death is not a welfare issue appears to be a widespread view among animal welfare researchers. This paper demonstrates that this view is based on a mistaken assumption about harm, which is coupled to ‘welfare’ being conceived as ‘welfare at a time’. Assessments of welfare at a time ignore issues of longevity. In order to assess the welfare issue of death, it is necessary to structure welfare assessment as comparisons of possible lives of the animals. The paper also demonstrates that excluding the welfare issues of being deprived of life from the ethical assessment of killing distorts the ethical considerations.     

Consumer understanding of product lifetimes

Throwing products away before they fail or are broken is at the heart of consumer behaviour in developed economies such as the UK. Products are often discarded for reasons of fashion, or to keep up with technological advances, rather than because they have reached the end of their functional life. Such behaviours contribute to resource depletion, greenhouse gas emissions, and physical waste which needs to be managed. Extending the length of time that products are kept in use (whether by their original or subsequent owners) can contribute to greater resource efficiency, with significant potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This research was undertaken to support the development of evidence-based policy in the UK on the role of longer product lifetimes in achieving sustainable consumption and waste prevention. Twelve qualitative discussion groups, involving 115 consumers, were carried out to explore consumer influences on product lifetimes including: which factors influence purchase decisions; the care of products in use; and disposal decisions. A new typology was developed to describe how products meet consumers’ various needs for ‘workhorses’, ‘investment’ and ‘up-to-date’ products; and how lifetime is an outcome of the ‘nature’ of a product (functional life) and its ‘nurture’ (lifetime in use) by consumers. The results demonstrate that consumers have come to expect constant and rapid up-dating of products. In particular, having the latest versions of products is strongly associated with personal identity and feelings of success in life. There is little evidence of concern about the environmental consequences of a ‘throwaway society’. The low cost of new products, which enables rapid updating for reasons of fashion, is a key barrier to encouraging consumers to keep products in use for longer. Some opportunities were identified however for certain ‘workhorse’ and ‘investment’ products that are valued more for their functionality than fashion.